Great ideas live on forever and that was the inspiration for a new brass concert coming to Camp Timanous in Raymond.
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| Polished Brass, a nine-musician ensemble of the Maine Pops Concert Band, will present a free concert called 'Echoes Across the Water' at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 26 at Camp Timanous in Raymond. COURTESY PHOTO |
The free outdoor concert will offer a unique opportunity to enjoy live music from the shore or from the water. Guests may arrive by land and bring a lawn chair or blanket, or by boat and anchor in the cove. Picnic suppers are welcome; attendees are asked to carry out what they carry in. Golf cart transportation will be available from the parking lot to the grounds near the beach for those needing accessibility assistance.
Audience members are welcome to come by land or by water: people can sit near the beach or bring their boats to the cove to listen. In case of rain, the concert will move indoors to the camp's barn.
“The ‘come by land or come by lake’ idea is partly inspired by the ‘boat concerts’ I participated in the late 1960s as a camper at Amherst Summer Music Center, now the site of Kingsley Pines,” said Arthur McClanahan of Raymond, who manages Polished Brass along with his wife Diane. “People would arrive by boat, drop anchor, and listen to an evening of the ASMC band and orchestra.”
Polished Brass consists of musicians performing on trumpet, trombone, French horn, euphonium and tuba. In 2025, the Maine Pops Concert Band took a major step in expanding musical opportunities for its musicians and created the Polished Brass ensemble.
According to McClanahan, the small ensembles program is designed to allow increased opportunities for individual and group musical performance while also increasing band outreach to smaller venues, regional and town events, and community groups.
“My wife, Diane, and I are Raymond residents and we live on Panther Pond,” he said. “Echoes Across the Water also celebrates a piece of Panther Pond’s musical history when the Amherst Summer Music Center was then located adjacent to Camp Timanous.
That connection never faded. When Diane and Art began looking for a vacation spot after they married, they returned to Panther Pond to see if they could find a place to rent near ASMC. In 1980, they found one, a cottage at Plummerville Cottages, and they kept coming back every summer after that. In 1992, they bought a place of their own on the lake, locking in Panther Pond as their summer home for good.
They always dreamed of eventually retiring there, and that dream came true in 2020. The timing brought its own challenges, though: they retired right in the middle of the pandemic, when community involvement of any kind was hard to come by.
Music became their way back into community life. The couple had originally met through music years earlier in college, and it seemed a natural fit to pick it up again together in retirement. After attending a Maine Pops holiday concert, they joined the band in January 2023, marking the start of what is now three full years of playing together, she in the French Horn section, he on trumpet.
As Maine Pops grew to more than 100 members, the band became too large for some of the smaller venues it once played. The board's solution was to form smaller ensembles that could perform in more intimate settings — and, just as importantly, provide an entry point for musicians on the waiting list who hadn't yet been able to join the full concert band.
Today there are eight active ensembles under the Maine Pops umbrella, spanning flute, woodwind quintet, saxophone, clarinet and brass groups that perform throughout the greater Portland area.
The Camp Timanous site is located at 85 Plains Road in Raymond on Panther Pond and has a long and distinguished history. Its tradition as pioneers in youth education can be traced to 1886 when Dr. Luther Gulick and his wife, Charlotte, launched a children’s camp in Connecticut. They believed every child benefits from camping and founded the Camp Fire Girls organization in 1910.
Gulick had gained notoriety for introducing the first physical education programs for the New York City school system and he also developed the triangle logo for both Springfield College and the YMCA. The Gulicks moved their children’s camp to Sebago Lake in Maine in 1907.
Camp Timanous relocated to its present site on Panther Pond in Raymond in 1920.
The 100-plus-members of the Maine Pops Concert Band have a mission to “bring people together through the joy of live music” and McClanahan says this "Echoes Across the Water" concert fits that purpose. The Maine Pops Concert Band is directed by David Watts.
“Whether you come by car or by boat, ‘Echoes Across the Water’ promises an evening of brass music, summer scenery, and a distinctive Panther Pond experience,” McLanahan said. “Polished Brass is grateful to Camp Timanous director John Suitor for the opportunity to offer this musical evening.”
For further details about the Maine Pops Concert Band program and the Polished Brass ensemble, visit www.mainepops.org. <
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