WARREN — The W.D. Packard Concert Band will start the new year with a new conductor.

Galen S. Karriker, director of bands at the University of Akron and a frequent guest conductor the past two years, will be the permanent replacement for Stephen L. Gage, who died in February 2023.

He will lead the band for its first concert of 2024 at 3 p.m. Jan. 14 at Packard Music Hall.

“Over the last 16 months, we’ve had a number of guest conductors,” said Thomas Groth, executive director of the band. “We just felt Galen was the best for the band. The musicians enjoy playing under him, and he’s got a great rapport with the music, running a rehearsal and conducting the concert.”

The band members were told about Karriker’s selection before their concert in November.

“I knew I’d made the right decision when, after I announced to everybody that we had offered the job to Galen and he had accepted it, the band immediately gave him a standing ovation,” Groth said. “There was just widespread approval.”

Karriker said Saturday he was honored to be chosen.

“I’m still kind of in awe of the history of that organization,” he said. “For Tom to think enough of me to ask me to do that, it certainly gives you pause — why me? I’m certainly thankful and grateful, and I appreciate the people I get to make music with on stage. They’re just really great people and great musicians.”

Karriker earned his bachelor’s degree in music education from Louisiana State University and his master of music and doctor of musical arts degrees from Michigan State University.

He was appointed assistant director of bands at the University of Akron in 1999 and became director of bands in 2013, according to his university bio. He conducts the UA Wind Symphony and Concert Band and coordinates the university bands.

The first time Karriker was asked to be a guest conductor for the band was in 2017, but it was too close to his wife’s due date for the birth of their second child, he said. He made his debut with the band in the summer of 2022, and he stepped in to conduct its 67th anniversary concert in October of that year when Gage’s illness initially was diagnosed. He also conducted the memorial concert the band played to honor Gage last April.

“Obviously, he was a major figure in the band profession and also the teaching world,” Karriker said. “What a breadth of impact he had on so many people.”

Karriker said he knew Gage professionally for years as well as many of the musicians who play in the band. He also had a connection to Gage’s predecessor, Donald W. “Bill” Byo, who died in June 2023. Karriker conducted the band’s 68th anniversary concert last October, which honored Byo.

“Bill Byo’s son was my music education professor at Louisiana State University in the 1980s, Karriker said. “When I stepped onto the stage for the (2023) anniversary concert, I was more nervous than I’d been in quite some time because there in the audience was my music education professor I hadn’t seen in 30-plus years, so it was an interesting connecting of the dots. The degrees of separation get smaller and smaller the older you get.”

Karriker said he still is “ruminating” on what kinds of music he will program for the band, and he looks forward to collaborating with Groth on that process. The goal is to craft concerts that make the audience members tap their toes but also “touch the heart and maybe push the mind.”

And he knows from his experience with the band that its musicians are capable of all of those things.

“There’s something very appealing about coming into an environment like the Packard Band,” he said. “They’re not there to learn notes and rhythms (like students). This is a group of professional musicians. There’s something joyful about coming together with people you know personally and professionally, having a sense of camaraderie and knowing everyone has their act together and knows what they have to do to make the music come to life and play a concert.

“You take what is normally a several week process and truncate into an afternoon. It’s exhilarating that we have to put this together in short order and have to play it at the highest level … . It will be fun to drive over once a month and spend an afternoon with them.”