ILLUSTRATION BY CHANCE BRINKMAK-SULL
Polaris, Sirius, marimba, beat boxing and juggling. It might be difficult to make a concrete connection among these terms, but Aaron Williams and Bronkar Lee have based their life goals upon them.
“We love science and want to be astrophysicists someday,” Williams said.
Until then, the two are happy exploring music. Williams tap dances and works as a percussionist, keyboardist, vocalist and drummer. Lee is a rhythmic, juggling beat boxer.
Together, the duo known as Bronkar & Aaron will present “Collision of Rhythm” at 7:30 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater as part of the Family Entertainment Series.
The two met onstage at a TEDxYouth@Hollywood conference about two years ago.
“I saw Aaron doing his tap dance, and I thought, ‘I have to groove with this guy,’ ” Lee said.
Williams had a similar reaction after watching Lee’s performance.
“I looked at Bronkar perform and was blown,” Williams said. “You can actually make music by throwing bouncing balls at a drum.”
The two got together and jammed on the TEDx stage, and there was no looking back from that moment on.
“We are both instrumentalists, and we have marimba, tap dance, saxophone, harmonica, beat boxing, drumming, body percussion and vocal percussion, among other things in our show,” Lee said.
The performance also has some elements of rhythmic juggling, as they do “inverted juggling on drums,” he said.
What makes their performance more enjoyable is the onstage chemistry; they appreciate each other’s talents and are always inspired by one another.
“Bronkar is rhythmically advanced enough to where I can actually have fun, do creative things and go outside the box, and it doesn’t throw him off,” Williams said. “I can do crazy things, and he gets it.”
Lee calls Williams his “soul brother.”
“The biggest thing that I have learned from him is music theory,” Lee said. “He is a very advanced musician and is classically trained on the marimba and on percussion. He has a deep jazz background and is always teaching me and pushing me to learn more.”
Lee has a long list of favorite instruments — it all depends on what he is playing at that moment — and he wants to learn to play the piano and keyboard so he “can fully express myself through music, melody and composition. The two are a great map to guide you in that direction.”
The audience at Chautauqua Institution should prepare for a great musical evening, the duo said.
“They should expect to see two people on stage making music and having a great time,” Lee said. “We will make music using our bodies, the floor, drums, electronic, our mouths and the audience, because music can be found anywhere.”
The Chautauquan Daily 
