‘A Night at the Light’ on July 25 is set to feature classical music beside Portland Head Light to mark Cape Elizabeth’s 250th anniversary.

Music Director Robert Moody will never forget a letter he got from a young girl about the Portland Symphony Orchestra’s annual concerts at Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth years ago, and how important they were to her and her family.

“It had been a tradition for her and her grandpa, for years, to go to the (annual) July 3rd concert and she was so sad to see it leave,” Moody said, of the orchestra’s Independence Pops concerts, once held on the parade ground at Fort Williams Park, where high school graduation is now held every year.

Due to financial constraints, however, the concerts were discontinued in 2008.

“It was a very sad, hard decision to make,” said Moody. “It was an incredible experience and great tradition for the symphony and for the people, but financially it was not sustainable for the symphony.”

But that’s no longer the case. On Saturday, July 25, next to Maine’s iconic Portland Head Light, thousands of people are expected to gather on the lawn for one of the most anticipated and noteworthy Portland Symphony Orchestra concerts in Cape Elizabeth history.

For the first time in seven years, the 70-plus-member ensemble is returning to the park for Cape Elizabeth’s 250th anniversary concert, “A Night at the Light.” The event will coincide with the town’s annual TD Beach to Beacon 10K road race, which begins in Cape Elizabeth near Crescent Beach State Park on Route 77 and finishes in front of Portland Head Light on Aug. 1.

Along with celebrating the Nov. 1, 1765, incorporation of the town, a portion of the net proceeds from ticket sales will support the Fort Williams Park Foundation’s latest arboretum project, which aims to create a 11?2-acre Children’s Garden at the park.

“The Fort Williams Park Foundation is thrilled to partner with the Cape Elizabeth 250th Anniversary Committee to organize this historic event,” said the foundation’s president, Bob Ayotte. “Not only does ‘A Night at the Light’ celebrate Cape Elizabeth’s 250th anniversary, it also celebrates Cape Elizabeth’s most treasured resource, Fort Williams Park.”

Thirty years ago, the nationally recognized Portland Symphony Orchestra performed its first Independence Day concert at the park, which attracted thousands from throughout New England. The orchestra’s most recent performance at Fort Williams Park in 2008 marked its 24th concert in Cape Elizabeth.

A Night at the Light is the first time the orchestra will be performing on the lawn next to Portland Head Light, said Moody, director of the Portland Symphony Orchestra. Moody said he has received several letters through the past seven years about whether the orchestra would return to Fort Williams.

“We have been working on how to come up with a way to do that for years now, and I am very, very happy that this ‘Night at the Light’ is going to happen,” he said. “I love connecting (the concert) to the celebration of the history of the park.”

A Night at the Light will feature Olympic-themed music by composer John Williams, as well as a variety of classical music by composer Aaron Copland.

“To play where you can see the water, and that wonderful, huge American flag and the (Portland) Head Light right behind you, doesn’t get much better than that,” Moody said. “If the weather cooperates, it’s incredibly enjoyable to play outdoors.”

The event is one of several being planned by the Cape Elizabeth 250th Anniversary Committee as part of a yearlong celebration culminating in the town’s 250th birthday on Nov. 1.

A Night at the Light is set for Saturday, July 25, from 6:30-8 p.m. Tickets, which went on sale May 1, are selling out quickly and can be purchased online at aNightAtTheLight.eventbrite.com. So far more than half of the event’s 3,000 tickets have been sold, according to Barbara Powers, chairwoman of the town’s 250th Anniversary Committee.

“When the 250th Anniversary Committee started meeting a year ago this was No. 1 on our list of an event we would like to sponsor,” Powers said.

“We were hoping to sell out before the event started, but we may have tickets available for sale the night of the event,” Ayotte added.

Since May, all of Cape’s 250th events have been well attended, Powers said, including an ice cream social at Turkey Hill Farm and the town’s annual Strawberry Festival, both in late June.

Within the last few years the foundation has raised more than $900,000 in private contributions “to preserve and enhance the natural beauty of Fort Williams Park through the development of a series of Arboretum projects,” said Ayotte. Since 2012, more than 80 percent of the $400,000 needed to build the Children’s Garden has been raised through grants, and individual and corporate donations, he said.

The garden will include a small and diverse woodland, a meadow filled with wildflowers and pollinating insects, a stream flowing into a lily pad-filled pond, willow tunnels among fields of native plants, and a picnic area where visitors can rest and regroup, according to project schematics. Ayotte said the garden would be created in a “very underutilized” area of Fort Williams near the park’s tennis courts.

The Children’s Garden will not be a playground. Instead it “is designed to let children explore their relationship with nature and will include a variety of opportunities for creative play,” said Ayotte. “It is our goal to complete our fundraising efforts this fall and begin the planning stage of the project with the expectation to start construction of the garden in the spring.”

TD Bank is the event’s presenting sponsor. Larry Wold, TD Bank president, said the company is proud to help bring the orchestra back to Fort Williams in celebration of the town’s 250th anniversary.

“We are committed to supporting open spaces, the arts and children, and to do all that with one event and in a community where we work and live is very exciting,” said Wold.

The Cape Elizabeth 250th Anniversary Committee chairwoman, Barbara Powers, stands on the lawn in front of the Portland Head Light at Fort Williams where the Portland Symphony Orchestra is scheduled to perform on July 25. Staff photo by Kayla J. CollinsRobert Moody leads the Portland Symphony Orchestra during the Independence Pops concert in July 2007, at Fort Williams Park. For the first time since 2008, the orchestra is returning July 25 to play at the park in Cape Elizabeth.File photo