James Seidel will celebrate his concert, “A Few of Our Favorites,” Sunday April 30, 2017 at 3 p.m. in the Scottish Rite Cathedral in West Reading. The program will include two guest soloists: cornetist William Stowman, trumpet professor at Messiah College, and alto saxophonist Alexandra Vargas, the 2017 winner of the Ringgold Band Young Artist Award.

After finishing the remainder of the season, Seidel will step down; meanwhile, the band is in the process of searching for a new director, he said. He said his decision to retire “wasn’t because anything went wrong; it’s because everything’s been going right.”

“The direction is good,” he said. “I have such great memories created by this band that I was able to share with my students.”

He was band director at Exeter High School until he retired in 2010.

Seidel was a 16-year-old studying trumpet with the late Walter Gier when he first played with the Ringgold Band. Gier suggested he perform in a 1967 concert by the band when Albertus Meyers, a former John Philip Sousa Band cornetist and director of the Allentown Band from 1926 to 1976, came to Reading to guest-conduct.

“After that, I was hooked,” Seidel said. “I was at every rehearsal and played every job I could, even while I was in college.”

A 1969 Exeter High School graduate, he earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Mansfield University and a masters in trumpet performance from West Chester University.

He became a cornet soloist for the band and then, in 1980, its conductor.

“I’ve gotten to play with Keith Brion’s New Sousa Band and toured with them, and I’ve had a lot of other great experiences,” Seidel said. “I’ve had an incredible ride, and a lot of it is because of the Ringgold. I found my passion as a young kid, and there’s a long list of people of Berks County who were supportive of me.”

The 165-year-old band is one of the oldest in the country, and “people did this because of their love and passion for playing great band music,” he said.

“When you walk into the building we own (at 3539-A Freemont St., Laureldale), and see the pictures on the wall, and realize you’re making history every time you walk in that door, it’s a very exciting thing,” he said.

During his tenure, many soloists have played with the band, including Jim Smith, a trombonist from Oley, who used the Ringgold to get back to playing after developing a medical condition and now plays in the Chicago Symphony; and Carol Jantsch, principal tubist of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Seidel said that in planning Sunday’s concert, he asked members to submit their favorite pieces to him. He said he received enough for a seven-hour concert, but narrowed it down by choosing pieces that showed up on more than one list.

Among the works on the program will be Alfred Reed’s “Armenian Dreams,” Gustav Holst’s “First Suite for Military Band” (number one among college band directors), the Overture to Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Gomes’ opera “Il Guarany,” Percy Grainger’s arrangement of “Irish Tune From County Derry” (also known as “Danny Boy”) and “The Rose Variations,” for solo cornet and band, by Robert Russell Bennett, featuring Stowman.

Seidel also chose a new favorite of his own: the rarely heard “The Cry of the Last Unicorn” by contemporary American composer Rossano Galante. This piece tells the story of a unicorn who is the last survivor of a slaughter of unicorns by human beings; he is hunted and killed, and the horses, outraged, stampede the humans.

“It creates vivid pictures of what that would look like in sound,” Seidel said.

Seidel said that after he retires, he looks forward to playing in ensembles in which he’s not in charge, writing a definitive history of the Ringgold Band and spending time with his eight grandchildren.