The mandate of the Orono Cornet Band is to present a snapshot of Canada in its infancy, a largely rural society with many small centres of commercial and cultural activity.

Through the music and depiction of colourful characters from the 1870’s, we provide a window into the Canada of our founders – a living history.

The music of early Canada and what it reveals about this time is often overlooked today. While the 19c musical traditions of Britain and America are better known and certainly made their influence felt in early Canada, the first stirrings of our national identity after 1867 found voice in the young country’s music. Folk music carried timeless traditions from the old country intact; the music composed in these years reveals the aspirations of a people embracing their new land.

At the time of Confederation, the village band was a sophisticated part of the local society. At a time before recorded music, it provided not only entertainment in the form of concerts and dances, but also added an official stamp to all civic events, whether serious or celebratory. The town band was a democratic institution of and for all residents, rich or poor, and thus it reflected all segments of society, and all aspects of life.

The original Orono Cornet Band was just such a band in the tiny Ontario village of Orono, just northeast of Oshawa. Although it survived well into the 20th century, the group left some music, a picture, and some notoriety as a somewhat unruly group at times. Its resurrection began with the more general idea of a small town band festival. In 2000, Orono trombonist Dave Climenhage founded the The Great Canadian Town Band Festival, an annual weekend event where all manner of town bands gathered in Orono for a lively series of concerts, parades and dances. The success of this annual celebration eventually led to collaboration with another trombonist and fellow instrument collector and restorer, Herb Poole. Their vision was to recreate the past in even more detail by recruiting the best brass players available to present 19c music on the restored 19c brass instruments from their collections. The result is the rebirth of the Orono Cornet Band.

The mandate of the Orono Cornet Band is to present a snapshot of Canada in its infancy, a largely rural society with many small centres of commercial and cultural activity. Through the music and depiction of colourful characters from the 1870’s, we provide a window into the Canada of our founders, a living history.

New Article about us in Wholenote.

Sound the Cornets! News from Orono

By Jack MacQuarrie

The Band in Concert

The Orono Cornet Band: While I was at the aforementioned Amis du Jazz concert in Port Perry I bumped into two friends that I hadn’t seen for some time. I first met Dave Climenhage about twenty years ago in the Clarington Concert Band. I first met Herb Poole over thirty years ago while playing in the Metropolitan Silver Band. They invited me to a concert by the Orono Cornet Band in the town of Orono, where Dave Climenhage had organized the Great Canadian Town Band Festival (GCTBF) in Orono from the year 2000 to the year 2005.
For six consecutive years this festival brought together some of the finest brass and woodwind ensembles in Canada and the U.S. such as The Boss Brass, The Hannaford Street Silver Band, The True North Brass, The Spitfire Band and The Central Band of the Canadian Armed Forces. It also hosted guest artists like conductor and trombone virtuoso Alain Trudel.
After the annual festival was discontinued, the Great Canadian Town Band Festival still existed as an entity in name. Dave was looking for a project that would bring alive Canada’s musical heritage and further the objectives of the GCTBF. He still had the charter for the GCTBF and the desire to continue in some fashion. He was a long time collector of brass and woodwind instruments and eventually linked up with fellow collector Herb Poole, bass trombonist with the Canadian Opera Company.
Together they began to work on the idea of a Heritage Brass band that would recreate the 19th century Brass Band movement in Canada. From the early 1850s on, the saxhorn band concept (12 brass instruments) had spread to almost every town and village in Canada. This movement began in France and England in the 1840s and quickly spread all over Europe and North America. These newly developed valved brass instruments were relatively easy to learn to play and could play any notes on the chromatic scale. They became the mainstay of musical performance in Canada, which did not have a classical orchestral tradition at the time. These bands performed at local dances, in parades and at all civic events including July 1 which later became Canada Day. In short it was the music that was most accessible to Canadians from 1850 to the end of the century.
Herb and Dave decided that they would hire professional brass players from the GTA who were interested in taking up the challenge of performing on 150-year-old instruments and who were willing to work with them as they tried to establish an audience for the brass music of 19th century Canada. Herb recruited musicians from the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra and a number of top level freelance brass players from other GTA ensembles.
The aim of the Orono Cornet Band is to recreate a 12 piece brass band of the Confederation period in Canada to perform on period instruments and to play music composed in Canada or known to be regularly performed in Canada. Gathering Canadian music of the period took time. As they looked at brass band music collections from the period, it was clear that most of the music they performed came from American publishing companies. They worked hard to glean
from these sources important works by Canadian composers such as Calixa Lavallee (Marche Indienne). They have also found music originating outside Canada but performed regularly here, such as popular
marching songs like The Girl I Left Behind Me. Herb Poole is the band’s artistic director and has sourced music with very distinct Canadian period content. The instruments the band performs on come from Herb’s and Dave’s collections and were built in the period 1850 to 1870. Many of these were restored by Herb. They are both constantly researching historic events for important music. The Battle of Ridgeway in 1866 is one such event, for example. It resulted in the composition of The Maple Leaf Forever and the words to the Canadian Militia Fenian Marching Song. They hope to perform these at a re-enactment of the Battle of Ridgeway in June next year. The band has been performing now for over five years. They have performed at heritage events each of those five years, including the V-Brass festival at Toronto’s Harbourfront, Clarington’s Heritage Festival and the RCMP Musical Ride. For the RCMP Musical Ride they performed music of the Band of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police at Fort MacLeod, Alberta, first performed in 1876.
They are currently working on getting people to know about the Orono Cornet Band and have completed their first recording. They also have a new website at oronocornetband.com with videos and soundtracks. It’s worth checking out that website.