Yankee Brass Band Music Directors
Paul Maybery
Founding Music Director
In Memoriam: Paul Maybery, Yankee Brass Band, Founding Music Director (1947-2023)
Paul Maybery has developed an international reputation, leading a versatile musical life as an arranger, conductor, educator, tubist, and musicologist. Since 1982 he has served as music director of the Great Western Rocky Mountain Brass Band Festival in Silverton, Colorado, and, since 1986 the Yankee Brass Band, based first at the Hotel Coolidge in White River Junction, Vermont for ten years and later at Norwich University in Vermont, Colby College in Maine, Keene State College in New Hampshire, and Moravian College in Pennsylvania. From 1995 through 1999 he led the Wildcat Brass Band in Indiana, Pennsylvania, as Principal Guest Conductor. For five seasons he led the brass band for the Grand Military Encampment in San Diego, for seven years was Music Director of the Calhoun-Isles Community in Minneapolis, and for nearly ten years, Associate Music Director at Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Starting in 1998, he served as Divisional Music and Ministry Arts Director for The Salvation Army’s Northern Division in Minnesota and North Dakota, where he was Bandmaster of the Northern Division Band.
Dr. James Chesebrough
Music Director, 2022-Present
Dr. James Chesebrough received his Bachelor of Music Education degree from Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio, and his subsequent degrees in conducting from the University of Connecticut. As a graduate student, he served as the assistant conductor of the University of Connecticut Wind Ensemble. His interest in 19th-century music began with his doctoral dissertation on David Wallis Reeves, bandmaster of the American Band of Providence, Rhode Island from 1866-1900. In 2004 he became the director of the Newmont Military Band, an historic recreation of an ensemble from the 1890’s. He has also performed in two tours with the Yankee Brass Band, and arranged period music for these and other ensembles including the Centennial Brass Band of Portland, ME.