The Port Townsend Summer Band’s Aug. 25 concert marked Miles Vokurka’s final outing as the band’s director, but Marge Rosen got a dry run at replacing him when she stepped up as one of the day’s local guest conductors. With a musical background dating back to childhood and including “decades” of experience as an adult musician, Rosen was taking part in nonprofit community bands “even back when I was working a nine-to-five job,” before she became a music teacher. “I was trained on the piano, and moved from that to the trumpet,” Rosen said. “Music is my life’s work. It’s who I am, and what I do.” Rosen’s experience with the Port Townsend Summer Band in particular is more recent, since she joined it as part of an assortment of area bands this season, shortly after moving to Port Angeles. “I’ve been playing in as many different groups as I can,” Rosen said. “It was Miles, with whom I was playing alongside in the Sequim band, who recruited me into succeeding him as the director of the Port Townsend Summer Band, after he’d heard about my work as a conductor of other community bands in and around Seattle.” Rosen was welcomed aboard as the new director after an “impromptu audition” with the band. “I’m thankful for this opportunity to work with a very fine group of people,” Rosen said. “And I’ve always loved Port Townsend for how charming it is. I always tried to visit here annually anyway, and the Summer Band is exactly what you would expect from a town like this. It’s an iconic small-town band that plays concerts in the gazebo and overlooking the water. These people believe in contributing to their community.” Prior to Vokurka’s tenure during the past two years, the Port Townsend Summer Band was led for 17 years by former director Karl Bach, and Rosen expects her tenure as director will resemble Bach’s in many ways, since they both honed their skills as Naval musicians. “I was in the U.S. Navy Band from 1991 to 1997,” said Rosen, who eagerly awaits her opportunity to lead the band in rousing patriotic standards during Memorial Day and Veterans Day at the American Legion’s Marvin G. Shields Memorial Post 26 Hall. “I appreciate everyone’s confidence in me, and I hope I’ll be able to spend many years here, making music.”