WARREN — Anniversaries normally are a time of celebration.

The W.D Packard Concert Band’s 68th anniversary concert Sunday at Packard Music Hall also will have a melancholy tone.

The band already planned to honor longtime saxophone player Richard James Rollo, who died July 15 at age 66. Two saxophone pieces — Earle Hagen’s “Harlem Nocturne” with Daniel Carioti as the alto sax soloist, and an arrangement of “Royal Garden Blues” that features the entire saxophone section — are programmed in his memory.

Thomas A. Groth, executive director of the band, said, “‘Harlem Nocturne’ has a sax solo he (Rollo) played with the band, and Dan Carioti, who was probably his closest friend, will be playing it Sunday. And ‘Royal Garden Blues,’ Rich played that with the Big Band Sound of Packard at our jazz festival. I figured those two songs would be a good way to memorialize him.”

Then the band learned earlier this month that Donald W. “Bill” Byo died at age 91. Byo joined the band in 1957, two years after its debut. He served as co-conductor of the band with Robert E. Fleming from 1983 until Fleming retired in 2004, and then continued as principal conductor until 2012.

“Bill was an outstanding musician, and he was just as great a human being,” Groth said. “Always a smile, always helpful, just a true gentleman.”

The band honored Byo with a full program in 2021, when he retired as its principal bassoonist and moved to New Mexico. The program for Sunday’s concert already was set before Byo’s death. Since his funeral is Saturday and Byo will have family in town for the ceremony, Groth decided to add a short acknowledgment of his passing to the anniversary concert rather than wait to do something in 2024 (the November concert always is programmed around Veterans Day and December is a Christmas show).

Sunday’s concert commemorates the official opening of Packard Music Hall on Oct. 15, 1955, with a concert by the W.D. Packard Concert Band. Both the hall and the band were created through a trust established by industrialist William Doud Packard in his 1920 will, and that trust continues to fund the professional band today.

Groth said he built this year’s anniversary concert around “Come Sunday,” composed by Omar Thomas, who became an assistant professor of harmony at Berklee College of Music in Boston at age 23. He later taught at the Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University and currently serves as professor of composition and jazz studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Come Sunday” is a two-movement tribute to the Hammond organ and its central role in black worship services.

“I’ve wanted to do it for a long time,” Groth said. “Personally, I think it’s one of the best band pieces written in the last five, six years. It really is a great piece.”

Guest conductor for Sunday will be Galen S. Karriker, director of bands and associate professor of music at the University of Akron.

The concert will feature Ryan Nowlin’s “Fanfare: A Vision and a Dream,” which the band commissioned in 2008; Roy M. Miller’s Packard march medley; and “Anniversary March,” which was written by Brad J. Gilliland. Gilliland was friends with Packard, and he was Packard’s choice to be the first conductor of the band, but Gilliland died in 1931.

Other selections include a salute to American jazz arranged by Sammy Nestico, Peter Kleine Schaars’ “Harlem Suburb Shuffle” and a medley of marches.

If you go …

WHAT: W.D. Packard Concert Band’s 68th anniversary concert with Galen S. Karriker, guest conductor

WHEN: 3 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Packard Music Hall, 1703 Mahoning Ave. NW, Warren

HOW MUCH: Admission is free, and funding is provided by the W.D. Packard trust.