Meet the Director
Donald Rolle
Donald Rolle has been the Director and Conductor of the Rutherford Community Band since 2020. Prior to that, he was a Co-conductor and the Principal Bassoonist for several years.
Majoring in the bassoon, Don attended The School of Performing Arts in Manhattan and later the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of Maine, Rutgers University and The Juilliard School.
Don has performed at the Music Festivals of Tanglewood, Bowdoin, Estherwood and Aspen. He has been honored to conduct in Master Classes with several renowned maestros, including Leonard Bernstein.
As a bassoonist, Don has performed with the South Jersey Symphony, Garden State Philharmonic, Opera Theatre of Montclair, Princeton University Symphony Orchestra, Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company, Vari Musicisti, The Waldwick Band, Garden State Band and The Rutgers University Wind Ensemble. He has also been a guest conductor with the North Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
Our Founder
Thomas N. (“Doc”) Monroe
The Rutherford Community Band was founded in June 1941 by Thomas Newman (“Doc”) Monroe. He was the music teacher at Rutherford High School, then Director of Music Education in Rutherford and later Professor of Music and Chairman of the Department of Music & Theater Arts at Fairleigh Dickinson University - Rutherford Campus. Doc formed the band as a summer entertainment and educational activity for both adults and students in the larger community.
The first six open-air concerts in Lincoln Park were well received by the public, and the band was then sponsored by the Rutherford Department of Recreation.
Past Conductors
Dr. David Goss
Dr. David Goss served as the fourth Director and Conductor of the Rutherford Community Band from January 2017 until August 2020. He initially started with the band in January of 1994 as a clarinetist.
Once he began his undergraduate studies at Montclair State University, Ray Heller took him on as an assistant conductor and served in this role until summer 2010. He then moved to Gainesville, Florida to complete a Ph.D. in music education at the University of Florida before returning to New Jersey, and the band, between 2016 and 2020.
Dr. Goss has taught all levels of music from elementary through graduate music education courses. As a clarinetist, he has performed in France, Germany, Russia, and across the United States. He appears on multiple recordings as a performer and assistant producer with the Rutgers Wind Ensemble, University of Florida Wind Symphony, and the University of Florida Clarinet Ensemble. One of his notable musical accomplishments was performing and presenting a lecture-recital of both Clarinet Sonatas, Op. 120, Nos. 1 and 2 by Johannes Brahms in the original manuscript form.
Dr. Goss has presented at professional music education conferences in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Florida. In addition to his Ph.D. in music education from the University of Florida, he earned a master of music in wind conductor from Rutgers University, a master of arts in educational leadership from Montclair State University, and a bachelor of arts in music education from Montclair State University.
Raymond L. Heller
An institution in Rutherford, Ray Heller was born in Flushing Queens to a musical family. He was drafted into the Army after high school, serving as an engineer at nuclear test sites in Nevada and playing trumpet in the Army band. Afterwards he attended Julliard and Columbia University on the G. I. Bill.
While at Colombia he learned how to conduct an orchestra and teach music with modern techniques that were cutting edge at the time, his professors would videotape him conducting to critique his performance. It was also at Columbia that Ray first met Bill Hutzel, the Band Director at Rutherford High and the Director of the RCB at the time. He recruited Ray into his first teaching position at Pierrepont Elementary school, as well as a spot in the trumpet section of the community band.
In over thirty years as a music educator Ray taught thousands of students, encouraging them to pursue their interests and advocating for arts education. He pushed his students to succeed and become upstanding people who give back to the community, with a number of them becoming professional musicians and educators themselves.
When Bill Hutzel passed away suddenly in 1962, Ray took the reins of both the RHS Band and the RCB. He embarked on a decades long mission to build an outstanding music program for Rutherford’s children and develop the Community Band into the year-round multi-generational group it is today.
Ray retired from the Rutherford Schools in 1991, and focused entirely on the RCB. Under his direction the band added pop music, show tunes, movie scores, jazz and classical pieces to its repertoire. The band, which started out as an exclusively summer band, now plays shows all year throughout Rutherford; including the spring and winter concerts, Christmas caroling at the Rutherford tree lighting and the Kipp Center, and additional summer concerts in Ridgefield Park.
In his fifty-two years leading the Rutherford Community Band Ray conducted over six hundred concerts; taking the baton for the last time in June 2015, only three months before he passed away.
Matt Favaro
Matt Favaro attended Memorial High School in West New York, N.J., where he fell in love with music, playing trumpet in the band and singing in the chorus. He graduated from Montclair State College with a B.A. in Music Education. He later earned a Master’s Degree in music and became certified to be a school principal-supervisor. Matt taught his whole career in West New York, N.J. The first 42 years in elementary schools and the last three years in the new middle school before retiring in 2007.
Matt also joined the Rutherford Community Band that same year, and became a fixture in the trumpet section. In 2010, Ray Heller asked Matt to be his assistant conductor. After Ray passed in 2015 Matt stepped up as an interim co-director along with Don Rolle and Dr. Goss.
Matt married the love of his life and his high school sweet heart, Lucille. They have two children, Luann and Matt Jr.
Matt passed away August 11th 2020 at 80 years old.
William N. Hutzel
A decade after Thomas Monroe founded the band William N. Hutzel, a resident and music educator in the town, decided to expand the bands sound by allowing his high school students to play in the band. He was director of the band until his untimely death in 1962.