Professor Harold Hill brought his 76 trombones to the Maine Center for the Arts on Sunday for a rousing performance of “The Music Man.”

Meredith Wilson’s classic musical about the traveling con man who takes an Iowa town by storm and loses his heart to Marian the Librarian when the 20th century was young was revived on Broadway in 2000. Susan Stroman that year won the Critics Circle Award for her direction and choreography of “The Music Man.”

The touring company, based on Stroman’s original staging, stopped for two Sunday performances in Orono and was almost as vibrant as the peaking fall foliage. It was over nearly as fast – in two hours and 30 minutes. That’s the sign of a well-rehearsed, tightly run show.

“The Music Man” is a staple of community theater companies and high school theater departments. Sometimes their leads are almost as good as the professionals in national touring companies, but they cannot get near them in two key areas – musicianship and dancing.

The 10-piece band that performed Sunday sounded like a full orchestra. The fact that the entire cast actually played trombones – not 76, but at least 26 – along with other band instruments ended the show on a tremendous high emotional note. The dance numbers were choreographed beautifully and executed perfectly.

Christy Rae Turnbow was delightful as Marian. Trained at Brigham Young University, her voice was stunning. She captured the depth of the librarian’s passion in “Goodnight, My Someone” and the intensity of her desire in “Till There Was You.”

While she brought to life the repressed and reserved Iowa woman in her acting scenes, Turnbow unleashed the depth of Marian’s passion when she sang. Whether portraying the practical romantic in “My White Knight” or the lover afraid of rejection in “Will I Ever Tell You?,” Turnbow’s voice mined every subtle nuance from Wilson’s score.

Like most actors, Chris Crouch, who played Professor Harold Hill, was not able to overcome the shadow left by Robert Preston, who created the role on Broadway and starred in the 1962 film version. The production company made Crouch’s tough task more difficult by playing the movie score at the kiosk set up to sell CDs, T-shirts, and other show merchandise. As theatergoers entered the MCA lobby for the afternoon show, Preston’s voice belting out “Seventy-six Trombones” filled the lobby.

Crouch never quite found the con man in Harold Hill. His voice, even with a microphone, was too thin for the big numbers like “Trouble” and “The Sadder-But-Wiser Girl.” He did find the romantic, however. His tenor blended nicely with Turnbow’s voice in the reprise of “Till There Was You” and his transformation from uncaring cad to star-struck lover was incredibly believable.

Unfortunately, sound problems plagued the production. All performers wore head microphones but often they weren’t turned on until halfway through a character’s line. They were too low for some actors so they were difficult to hear, and too high for others so they were hard to understand.

For more than 40 years, “The Music Man” has been delighting audiences. Judging from the reaction of theatergoers Sunday, the saga of Professor Harold Hill, Marian the Librarian and those 76 trombones is going to send audiences home humming for at least 40 more.