Harold J. Crosby Band Camp

DEXTER — The Harold J. Crosby Community Band is pleased to announce John R Knox as the guest conductor for their band camp Sept. 15-17. Knox is the conductor of the Westbrook City band, the Kora Temple Shrine Band, and the Oktoberfest German Band in Portland.

Knox began his “musical career” in fourth grade in the Saco public schools, and continued playing trumpet through high school at Thornton Academy and the University of Southern Maine in Gorham. While in high school he attended the Summer Youth Music School at the University of New Hampshire, and in the Maine All-State band. 

After college, Knox temporarily left his active playing. He married and raised a family then joined Kora Shrine Temple in the early 1980’s to regularly play with the Kora Shrine Band. He returned to more active trumpet playing in several other community bands in southern Maine including the Chandler’s of Portland, the Portland Commandery Band, the S.D. Warren (Westbrook) Band, and more recently, the Cumberland Community Band. He enjoys performing in other smaller brass ensembles – quintets and especially the Oktoberfest German Band. 

When the longtime conductor of the Kora and Westbrook City Bands – Jerry Brooks – laid down his baton, with his expertise in playing several instruments , Noble Knox “inherited” the position of music director/conductor and has been doing so for the past five years. Soon after, he also assumed the leadership of the Oktoberfest Band.

Knox will be the conductor and guest trumpet soloist for the 2023 Harold J Crosby Band Camp in downtown Dexter. The program will include a Jerry Brooks arrangement of the Shrine International Band March, a world premier of an “untitled Brass March” from an unpublished hand written manuscript of Harold J Crosby, a Heywood Jones “University of Maine” (Concert Fantasy for Band), a special trumpet solo by Knox and the band as well as other Harold J Crosby marches not played for many years.

Registration for band camp is online https://www.cuthbert-foundation.org/Band-Camp/band-camp-registration-1 or call 207-924-6235.

The public is welcome to the final performance at the town hall on Sunday, Sept. 17 at 1:30 p.m. For more information call 207-924-6235 or email crosbycommunityband@gmail.com.