POTSDAM -- The Potsdam Community Band, led by music director Theresa Witmer, will stage its 10th anniversary winter concert Sunday, Jan. 19 at 3 p.m. in Hosmer Hall at SUNY Potsdam.

Admission is free. Jan. 26 is the scheduled snow date.

While that concert is a few months off, rehearsals will be held in November, December and January. Band members are asked to meet a sign-up deadline of Oct. 21 if they plan to perform in January. Membership in the band is an all-volunteer effort, and leaders need time to select and prepare enough music for the different instrumentalists by early November.

New members are always welcomed and encouraged to sign up, and all members are asked to sign up by going to www.potsdamband.org/survey.

The 10th Year Celebration season will include new music, a soloist, and an additional conductor, Paul J. Buell, to share duties and Witmer.

Witmer and a few others formed the current Potsdam Community Band after a 25-year hiatus following the band led by Elmer James. He directed in the 1970s and 80s.

According to research done when the band began in 2010, Potsdam’s history with bands went as far back as the 1880s. Potsdam Museum records show a Potsdam Cornet Band sometimes known as the Silver Cornet Band in the 1880s. There also was the Potsdam Military Band up until the 1920s as well as a Potsdam Fireman’s Band in the early 1900s.

Newspaper archives also indicated a continued musical presence in the community through the end of World War II.

Over the last ten years, the Potsdam Community Band has performed at Ives Park during the Potsdam Summer Festival, on stage in Snell Hall and in Hosmer Hall on the SUNY Potsdam campus, as part of the Madrid Dam Series, and in Lake George at the summer band competition.

The band’s newsletters can be found at www.postsdamband.org/newsletter.