“It would have been like having your favourite rock band come to settle in Huntsville at a time when Huntsville was only 2,000 people,” says Neil Barlow, Muskoka Concert Band’s music director.
He’s referring to the degree of fame the Anglo Canadian Leather Company Band had 100 years ago, a piece of Huntsville’s history that many today aren’t aware of.
It began in 1918, when C.O. Shaw, the owner of the Anglo Canadian Leather Company, known locally simply as the tannery, hired Herbert L. Clarke to act as musical director for his company’s band.
The band comprised tannery employees, many of whom were Italian immigrants brought to Huntsville to fulfill the company’s growing labour requirements. It was originally called the Italian Band and Shaw was so impressed by their talent that he offered to provide them with music and instruments as a useful way to spend their non-work hours. The band later became known as the Anglo Canadian Leather Company Band and Shaw, who had been a talented cornet player as a young man, began practising and playing with them for pleasure. He began recruiting employees to the factory who were also gifted musicians and by 1918 the band was 50 members strong.
It was then that Shaw hired Herbert L. Clarke, his cornet teacher and a man regarded as the greatest cornet soloist in North America.
In addition to playing local concerts, the Anglo Canadian Leather Company Band was featured on radio and at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. It would became one of the greatest success stories in the concert band history of Canada for the first half of the 1900s.
The Muskoka Concert Band, in partnership with Huntsville Festival of the Arts, will bring this part of Huntsville’s history to life at the Algonquin Theatre with an upcoming multi-media performance, Brilliance: A Tribute to the Anglo Canadian Leather Co Band. It will include a concert and a reenactment of the historical events related to the band.
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- Herbert L. Clarke (left), leader of the Anglo-Canadian Leather Company Band with the company’s owner, C.O. Shaw (Image from Huntsville: With Spirit and Resolve, courtesy of the Muskoka Heritage Place Collection)
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- Muskoka Concert Band Music Director, Neil Barlow, in period uniform (supplied photo)
“The genesis of the project for me is rather personal,” says Barlow. “I got to know about Herbert L Clarke when I was a kid, when I was learning to play trumpet, because he wrote some of the literature that all young trumpeters use to learn how to play the instrument. And in the books, they said he was the conductor of the Anglo Canadian Leather Company Band in Huntsville, Ontario. And I thought to myself, what the heck is that?”
Twenty years ago, when Barlow and his wife moved to Huntsville, he began asking people about the band and found several people who had relatives who were involved with it. Ed Terziano, in particular, who used to work at the post office and whose dad played in the band, was a walking encyclopedia about town history, says Barlow.
The Muskoka Concert Band began talking about a concert that would bring some of that history to life. Barlow mentioned the project to some of the professional and semi-professional musicians he knows from other places, who expressed interest in being involved in the project, as did Huntsville Festival of the Arts. The 100th anniversary of Clarke joining the band, and its subsequent success, seemed like a fitting time.
The nucleus of the band for the performance will be members of the Muskoka Concert Band. They’ll be joined by musicians from across southern and central Ontario and as far away as Detroit.
“I’m really enjoying this because I’ve had an opportunity to talk with and invite what I think is Canada’s very best cornet soloist, Bob Venables, and he’s going to come to play with us,” says Barlow, adding that Venables played first trumpet for Phantom of the Opera for its entire 10-year run in Toronto. “He’s a very, very fine player. He will help us recreate the sound of the soloists at that time, too.”
“It’s been a really fun personal journey and I think it’s good for the community to remember some things about our history that some of us had forgotten,” says Barlow.
Brilliance is jointly sponsored by Huntsville Festival of the Arts and the Muskoka Concert Band. Tickets for the July 21 and 22 performances are available at the Algonquin Theatre box office or online here.
With notes from Huntsville: With Spirit and Resolve by Susan Pryke, and the Muskoka Concert Band.
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Looking forward to a great concert!