“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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It was then that Shaw hired Herbert L. Clarke, his cornet teacher and a man regarded as the greatest cornet soloist in North America.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/em>. It will include a concert and a reenactment of the historical events related to the band.<\/p>\n\n\t\t