PARIS – It’s been 26 years since Arthur Jerry “A.J.” Walker was the music teacher and band director at Oxford Hills High School.

But the students he taught, some of them from the fourth grade up through high school, still remember him fondly. He gave them an appreciation of music. He inspired them to do their best.

Tonight, after two rehearsal sessions, around 75 of his former students will answer the tap-tap of Walker’s baton one more time, as if reprising the theme from the movie, “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

The free reunion concert will gather together students from the late 1960s to late 1970s who were in the school band under Walker’s direction. Most live in Maine, but some are coming from Florida, Oregon, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Vermont and even Newfoundland.

Some of the students went on to become accomplished musicians. Others, like event organizer Sue Denison, haven’t played since high school.

“My poor clarinet was so old it had dried out. So I had to rent one,” she said. Then she downloaded a fingering chart off the Internet.

Like others playing in the band tonight, she’s been practicing for months all the old nostalgic pieces they played back then, including the school song, “Stand Up and Cheer.”

Walker did the arrangement on that song, based on an old march.

SAD 17 has helped in loaning out instruments to those who need them, she said.

Denison came up with the idea for a reunion concert after Walker came as a guest to her 1973 class reunion. It was so much fun reminiscing with him, she said, that she and others, including Carol Ricci, decided to take it one step further.

They were able to locate 275 of the 335 students who played in the school band under Walker’s tutelage from 1966 to 1978. Seventy-five of them answered the call, which Denison said is “a testament to how fondly we remember him.”

Walker, 62, retired and living in Standish, was in his 20s when he was teaching in the Oxford Hills district. He went on to teach in Millinocket.

“I started them out when they were young, and we all grew up together,” he said. “All I expected out of the kids is, you come in and do your very best,” he said.

He expects that won’t change at tonight’s concert, even though it’s been a while since he put down his baton.

“To be honest, I really don’t know what to expect.”