While on a tour with the Great-Southern in 1892 Chambers demonstrated his stamina and skill with the cornet with a solo performed from the 14,500 foot summit of Pike’s Peak.

His forte was a phenomenally high register ascending to the third high C. He liked to tell his store audience: “It is all really very simple; all you have to do is to develop the muscle in and around the lips, by long hours of the right kind of practice, and anyone can do the same things I do on the cornet.” He was regularly featured in cornet solos with Francesco Fanciulli’s Seventy-First Regiment Band on the mall at Central Park.

One of his favorite concert tricks was to hold the cornet inverted during difficult solos, pushing the valves up instead of down and with the backs of his fingers and maintaining correct tempo.

The famous French composer was averse to the cornet, but he relented and accompanied Chambers in his own Élégie Op.

On February 20, 1910, he performed on the cornet (his wife accompanying him on piano) at the Maine Memorial Service for the United Spanish War Veterans at Carnegie Hall in New York.

His most widely known works include The Boys of the Old Brigade (unrelated to the Irish republican song of the same name) and Chicago Tribune, both marches.