Music in Winnipeg

The first Selkirk settlers (a group of Highland Scots sent by the Earl of Selkirk and led by Miles Macdonnell) arrived at the Red River Settlement in 1812, and a second fort, Fort Garry, was established in 1821. By the mid-1850s the name Winnipeg was in use. The town's population was 200 in 1870 when Manitoba entered Confederation, but a dozen years later, when the railway had reached Winnipeg, its population had increased to 7000. Thereafter, immigration and other factors increased this number dramatically, to 70,000 in 1904. By the 1960s population growth had slowed and has remained slow compared with other urban centres. Winnipeg is Canada's seventh largest city.

As early as 1833 there was a piano in the Red River Settlement, but fiddling was the most popular form of music.'There was nothing wrong with the fiddling of the early Red River musicians whose lively strains inspired the young gallant of the day to wear out three pairs of moccasins in one night in the swift swirling of the Red River dances' ('Fifty years of music in Winnipeg'). Many of the fiddlers were Métis, and one of them, Pierre Falcon, achieved a considerable reputation as a songwriter. In 1867 Red River Hall, a room in a building above a store, was set up as Winnipeg's first place of theatrical amusement. According to historical notes in a 1907 program, (see bibliography)'... the ladies and gentlemen are requested not to applaud, as it is feared that the building might collapse...' The hall was also used for Sunday evening church services, often with the ceiling propped up by firewood poles. The building burnt down in 1874.

In 1870 members of the First Ontario Rifles Musical and Dramatic Association (with Col Wolseley's expedition, sent to restore order after the Red River Rebellion) presented Winnipeg with another early public theatrical and musical performance. This took place 16 Dec 1870, and consisted of a first (musical) part of orchestral and choral selections, and a second (dramatic) part described as'A New Sensational Burlesque, in Three Acts, never Before Played on Any Stage'. The Rifles sold some of their instruments when they departed, enabling Winnipeggers in 1871 to form their first band, under Harry Walker, and a Provisional Battalion Band existed in 1873 providing minstrel performance. Winnipeg had a reed organ with five stops at Grace Church in 1873, and St Boniface a pipe organ in 1875. A year later Winnipeg boasted a glee club, and on 14 March the City Hall Theatre opened with a concert in aid of the General Hospital. The theatre, which seated 500 and had a gallery across one end, was in use until 1883. That year the Winnipeg Theatre and Opera House (originally called Victoria Hall was built. It was altered, and was renamed the Walker Theatre, in 1907.

The first Philharmonic Society on the Prairies was founded in Winnipeg in 1880 by Capt W.N. Kennedy, who invited a Professor Hammerschmidt from the USA to be its first conductor. Hammerschmidt was succeeded by Joseph Hecker, a German immigrant who moved to the USA before the society could establish itself with any permanence. Another group performing in the 1880s was the Apollo Club, an orchestra of some 35 amateur musicians. Probably the first virtuoso performer to visit Winnipeg was Frantz Jehin-Prume ca 1881. In 1883 the Hess Opera from England inaugurated the Princess Opera House with a performance of Iolanthe. Until 1899, when it burned down, the theatre was home to the local Operatic Society. The tenor Thomas Persse, a member of the society 1884-5, appeared in its productions of Gilbert & Sullivan. The founder of the society was P.R. MacLagan, formerly of Montreal, the organist at Holy Trinity Church and a music teacher. Despite these evidences of musical activity, Charles H. Wheeler (a music critic for 25 years) could write in the newly founded Winnipeg Tribune:'Can three musicians be found in the city? Aye, can there be one found? The answer is emphatically NO' (8 Feb 1890).

The Women's Musical Club began in 1894 as a weekly practice and study group and had expanded by 1899 into an energetic organization for the promotion of all aspects of music and the presentation of concerts. The Junior Musical Club was founded in 1900, and the Clef Club was incorporated in 1906. Russell E. Chester's article'Music in Winnipeg 1900-1907' recounts this Winnipeg-born musician's memories of the period.

J.J. Moncrieff, co-founder of the Winnipeg Tribune and vice-president of the Clef Club, was a moving force behind choral music, Winnipeg's chief form of musical expression until the end of World War II. Around 1900 a Dr Tees is said to have organized the first choral society in Winnipeg and directed the Methodist Choir. A 250-voice Festival Chorus, prepared by Rhys Thomas, took part in the 1903 Cycle of Musical Festivals. Moncrieff also was one of the founders of the Winnipeg Oratorio Society (1908-24) and in 1913 succeeded Ralph J. Horner as its conductor. With the Board of Trade, the society sponsored an annual spring festival which featured its own members, guest soloists, the Minneapolis SO, and groups such as Burton Kurth's St Cecilia Ladies' Choir. Together these forces gave impressive performances of the standard oratorios. Other Winnipeg choral groups active before World War I included the Elgar Musical Society, founded ca 1908 and at one time led by Edward Winen, the Jewish Folk Choir, founded in 1910, the Choral and Orchestral Society, and the Handel Society (Winnipeg). The Winnipeg City Band directed by Sam Barrowclough (also western manager of the Morris Piano Co) was among leaders in band music in the first decade of 20th century Winnipeg.

On 11 Dec 1915 a group of men, meeting in the Hotel Fort Garry to discuss the dearth of male singers in Winnipeg, founded the Men's Musical Club (Men's Music Club after 1960). The club's objectives were to participate in music making, to encourage young musicians, to sponsor visits by major musicians, and to proclaim'disapproval, discouragement and condemnation of any scheme, act or organization which in any way had a tendency to debase the standard of music in the Province of Manitoba.' The subsequent history of music in Winnipeg demonstrates that the club acted upon its principles. In 1916 it established the Winnipeg Male Voice Choir, and in 1918 the Manitoba (later Winnipeg Music Competition Festival). George S. Mathieson, secretary 1916-44 of the Men's Musical Club (succeeded by Richard W. Cooke) and co-founder of the competition festival, established the FCMF, with headquarters in Winnipeg.

Founded in 1922 under Hugh Ross, another choral-orchestral aggregation, the Winnipeg Philharmonic Society, has survived to become the city's most important oratorio choir. It, too, was linked intimately with the Men's Musical Club, which 1929-68 directly administered the ensemble, renamed the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir in 1929.

Among other choral groups which flourished between the two world wars were the Winnipeg Choral and Orchestral Society, under Arnold Dann 1922-5 and Ronald Gibson 1927-9; the Winnipeg Boys' Choir, formed in 1925 by the Men's Musical Club and conducted by Ethel Kinley 1925-43 and Beth Douglas 1943-62; the Kelvin High School Choir, founded in 1932 and conducted by Gladys Anderson Brown 1932-62 and later by Herbert Belyea and John Standing; the Daniel McIntyre High School Chorus conducted by Lola MacQuarrie and later by Glen Pierce; the CBC Singers (Choristers), founded in 1937 by W.H. Anderson; the Young Women's Musical Club Choir, founded in 1939 by Berythe Birse, who also established the Winnipeg Ladies' Choir in 1940; the Ukrainian Male Chorus, founded in 1941 (see Ukraine); and the Winnipeg Girls' Choir, founded in 1944 by Maurine Pottruff and Beth Cruikshank (d Winnipeg 6 Jun 1987, aged 80; conductor of the choir for 26 years).

After World War II choral singing lost some of its former uncontested predominance because of increased interest in instrumental music. Nonetheless, Winnipeg remained one of North America's choral capitals. In 1949 groups under the continuing sponsorship of the Men's Musical Club included the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir, Male Voice Choir, Boys' Choir, Junior Male Voice Choir, and (Frances Christie's) Juvenile Boys' Choir. Others, post-war, have included the 80-voice choir of the Junior Musical Club, formed in 1949 under Beth Cruikshank; the Oriana Singers under Berythe Birse 1954-66; numerous fine choirs founded in the Mennonite community under Ernest Enns, Benjamin Horch, Victor Martens, and George Wiebe, and particularly the Mennonite Children's Choir, founded in 1957 by Helen Litz; and, in St Boniface, the Chorale des intrépides, founded in 1960 under Marcien Ferland. The Kelvin High School Choir, conducted by John Standing, distinguished itself by winning the George.S. Mathieson Trophy in 1975. It also performed on the CBC and BBC and made an LP entitled Kelvin High School Choir of Winnipeg (1973, CBC SM-219).

The churches of Winnipeg through their choirs have provided a training ground for young singers and regular employment for a select few in their paid quartets of soloists. Notable in the second and third quarters of the 20th century were the choirs of W.H. Anderson at Crescent Fort Rouge United, Hugh Bancroft at All Saints' Anglican, Marius Benoist at the St Boniface Cathedral (Roman Catholic), Ronald Gibson at Holy Trinity Anglican, Conrad Grimes at First Presbyterian, Filmer Hubble at St Stephen's Broadway United, Herbert Sadler at Westminster United, and Stewart Thomson at St George's Anglican, to name only a few. These choirs presented seasonal concerts and oratorios and entered the senior choir classes of the Manitoba (later Winnipeg) Music Competition Festival. Many of the organists and choirleaders also were busy teachers, and Anderson, Bancroft, Hubble, and Sadler in particular had outstanding pupils who, in turn, became leaders in musical life. Frans Niermeier (b 1903) was active as a church organist 1962-9, an arranger for CBC Winnipeg, a violinist with the CBC Winnipeg Orchestra, and teacher of theory, piano, and organ for several years.

City teachers and choirs developed a strong community of oratorio soloists, drawn from the Anglo-Saxon, French, Mennonite, and Ukrainian communities and all well trained in the style. Among the leading sopranos have been Nina Dempsey, Thérèse Deniset, Devina Bailey, Cora Doig James, Olga Irwin, Mary Morrison, Gertrude Newton, Sylvia Saurette, Phyllis Cooke Thomson, and Gladys Whitehead. Among the mezzo-sopranos and contraltos: Myfanwy Evans, Gladys Kriese-Caporale, May Lawson, Joan Maxwell, Peggie Anne Truscott, and Phyllis Worth. One can note among the tenors the Kent family (notably George), Victor Martens, John Martens, and Peter Koslowsky. Among baritones and basses were Orville Derraugh, Ronald Dodds, Roy Firth, Paul Fredette, Stanley Hoban, Wallace Lewis, Robert R. Publow, Cecil Semchyshyn, Alvin Reimer, W. Davidson Thomson, Albert Whiteman, Kerr Wilson, and J. Roberto Wood. (Important visiting soloists were not precluded, however, and there were memorable appearances by Maureen Forrester, Lois Marshall, James Milligan, and Patricia Rideout, among others.)

A list of Winnipeg accompanists would include Audrey Cooke Belyea, Douglas Bodle, Jean Broadfoot, Ada Bronstein, Chester Duncan, Cécile Henderson, Anna Moncrieff Hovey, Gordon Kushner, Dorothy Lawson, Roline Mackidd, Winnifred Sim, Thelma Wilson, and Mary Scarlett Wood (Mrs J. Roberto). Many among these singers and accompanists also taught effectively, as did Doris Mills Lewis, herself a chorister more than a soloist but a uniquely gifted teacher of singers.

At the turn of the century Alexander Scott conducted a Winnipeg Orchestral Society, and shortly before World War I, a permanent orchestra was attempted under Gustav Stephan. In March 1918 John Waterhouse conducted an orchestra of Men's Musical Club and Women's Musical Club members in Beethoven's Egmont Overture and Emperor Concerto (with the pianist Arnold Dann) and Mozart's 'Jupiter' Symphony. In 1920 at the annual Festival of Music of the Board of Trade, a Winnipeg symphony orchestra performed under the baton of Henri Bourgeault. In 1922 Arnold Dann (b England 1891, d USA 1964), who taught music at Wesley College, founded and conducted the Winnipeg Choral and Orchestral Society. That same year Charles Manning conducted a series of orchestra concerts at the Allen Theatre, with Waterhouse as concertmaster.

In 1923 Hugh Ross, one of the first conductors brought from England to direct the Winnipeg Male Voice Choir and the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir, formed the Winnipeg Orchestral Club, which gave five concerts annually until 1927. Peter Temple in 1930 formed a Winnipeg symphony orchestra which, in its one season, backed by the Men's Musical Club, performed with the Philharmonic Choir and broadcast over the CPR radio network. The orchestra was revived 1934-6 by Bernard Naylor. A Summer Symphony Orchestra under Geoffrey Waddington, with Albert Pratz as concertmaster, also survived two seasons (1939, 1940) under the sponsorship of the CBC and the musicians' union. Its activities were curtailed by World War II. Other orchestras, formed by Winnipeg's leading violin teachers - George Rutherford, Philip Shadwick, and John Waterhouse - and composed of their pupils and a few professionals, also were active in the early part of the century. Nevertheless, Winnipeg for many years looked to annual visits by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (see Fred M. Gee) for dependable and recurrent symphonic experience.

Winnipeg did not have a permanent symphony orchestra until after World War II. The modern Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra gave its first concert in 1948 under Walter Kaufmann. The orchestra's first home was the Winnipeg Auditorium (opened 1932), its second the Manitoba Centennial Concert Hall (opened in 1968). Kaufmann was succeeded as conductor by Victor Feldbrill in 1958, Feldbrill by George Cleve in 1968, and Cleve by Piero Gamba in 1971. Kazuhiro Koizumi was names music director in 1983 followed by Bramwell Tovey in 1989, Andrey Boreyko in 2001, and Alexander Mickelthwate in 2006. Two other important post-war orchestras have been the CBC Winnipeg Orchestra, and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra.

No opera-producing organization was able to establish a firm footing in Winnipeg until the late 1960s. However, musical theatre has always been part of Winnipeg's musical life. In 1911, the year that William Dichmont's musical play Miss Pepple (of New York) was published in Winnipeg, Ralph H. Horner produced his own comic opera, The Belles of Barcelona, with an opera company assembled locally. Several touring companies appeared at the Walker Theatre - the San Carlo Opera in 1919 and 1921; the Gallo English Opera in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas and The Chimes of Normandy in 1920; the Royal English Opera in more Gilbert & Sullivan, and in Chu Chin Chow and The Bohemian Girl in 1920; the D'Oyly Carte in 1928. In the 1940s and 1950s the operetta tradition was carried forward by the vigorous glee clubs and alumni choirs of the major high schools, particularly Kelvin and Daniel McIntyre, which mounted major productions, often with invited soloists. It was in a Kelvin production of The Mikado that the guest soprano and Kelvin graduate Mary Morrison met the young local tenor Jon Vickers and encouraged him to continue operatic study in Toronto.

In St Boniface the operas of Gounod were performed by the Société lyrique Gounod founded in 1935 by Marius Benoist. The group shortened its name to Société lyrique in 1952 and in subsequent years presented numerous operatic and choral-orchestral works, including Berlioz' L'Enfance du Christ and Benoist's La Légende du vent and Onadéga.

Rainbow Stage was founded in 1954, by local theatrical and musical people including James Duncan and Peggy Jarman Green, to present operettas and musicals of professional standard outdoors in the summer in Kildonan Park. After Duncan, Glen Harrison was its music director 1963-72, and Neil Harris, Filmer Hubble, and Robert McMullin have been among its conductors.

The Ukrainian Opera Theatre has presented occasional performances of Ukrainian works, eg, four of Cossacks in Exile in 1964. COC touring productions visited Winnipeg several times prior to 1969, when A. Kerr Twaddle, and 13 others founded the Manitoba Opera Association; this became Winnipeg's permanent opera-producing organization, presenting works of the standard repertoire such as Il Trovatore, Madama Butterfly, and Tosca.

Among famed singers who have performed in Winnipeg have been Emma Albani, twice in 1897, Clara Butt in 1922, Geraldine Farrar in 1922, Dame Nellie Melba in 1923, Elena Gerhardt in 1924, Amelita Galli-Curci in 1927, Ernestine Schumann-Heink in 1928, Tito Schipa in 1929, Edward Johnson in 1929, Feodor Chaliapin in 1935, Marian Anderson in 1937, Richard Tauber in 1938, Paul Robeson in 1941, and Maggie Teyte in 1947.

The list of visiting instrumentalists, no less impressive than that of the singers, includes Mischa Elman in early 1920s, Josef Lhévinne in 1923, Ignace Jan Paderewski in 1924, Jascha Heifetz in 1924, Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1925, Moriz Rosenthal in 1928, Efrem Zimbalist in 1929, Josef Hofmann in 1933, Sir Yehudi Menuhin in 1938, Artur Rubinstein in 1942, Claudio Arrau in 1942, Isaac Stern in 1943, and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli in 1949. The Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra gave more than 100 performances in more than 30 annual visits to Winnipeg, under three successive conductors: Dimitri Mitropoulos, Antal Dorati, and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski.

The main force drawing these many artists to Winnipeg was Fred M. Gee, who presented them in his Celebrity Concerts (1927-67). Other concert presenters have included the Women's Musical Club, the Wednesday Morning Musicale, founded in 1933 by Eva Clare; and the University of Manitoba School of Music. Contemporary music series have been presented by Music Inter Alia (founded by Diana McIntosh), Thira, IZ Music, and Groundswell. Other musical organizations active in Winnipeg in 1991 include: the Winnpeg Singers directed by John Martens, and MusikBarock (a Baroque ensemble begun in 1989 which also performs operas). The annual summer Winnipeg Folk Festival, begun in 1974, has featured Canadian and international folk singers and groups. The West End Cultural Centre (opened 1987), presents approximately 250 shows per year, mostly folk and blues.

Although somewhat in the shadow of choral activity for many years, chamber music received impetus from the increasing number of instrumentalists and the expansion of music education in the 1950s. An early ensemble was the Tudor Quartet, which broadcast over the CBC for several years prior to 1940. Its members were Valberg Leland and Joseph Sera, violins, Eugene Hudson, viola, and Isaac Mamott, cello. Later ensembles have included the Dirk Keetbaas Players, a woodwind quintet, 1955-66; the Corydon Trio, formed in 1959 by Lea Foli, violin, Gerald Stanick, viola, and Claude Kenneson (succeeded by Peggie Sampson), cello; the Hidy Trio; the Manitoba University Consort; the Festival Quartet Canada, formed in 1967 by Arthur Polson; and the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society, with Gwen Hoebig, violin, and David Moroz, piano and artistic director. After inauguration in 1965 with a performance by the Amadeus Quartet, the Eva Clare Hall in the University of Manitoba School of Music became the scene of an annual recital series featuring such performers as the Winnipeg-born cellist Zara Nelsova and the Orford String Quartet.

Anne Pomer (1913-71), a prominent violinist, led a studio string orchestra during the 1940s and in 1958 was founding conductor of the Winnipeg Chamber Music Ensemble, a 16-member string orchestra. Pomer later moved to Rome where she formed a string ensemble, Complesso Classico a Plettro.

Most of the above-mentioned chamber musicians have been prominent teachers. Among others in the instrumental field who have been important as performers or teachers or both are the pianists William Aide, Jean Broadfoot, Alma Brock-Smith, Beth Cooil, Leonard Heaton, Megan Howes, Marek Jablonski, Roline Mackidd, John Melnyk, Grace Rich, and Snjolaug Sigurdson and the violinists George Bornoff, John Konrad, George Rutherford, and John Waterhouse. The composer-pianist-violinist S.C. Eckhardt-Gramatté also was an extraordinary teacher in all three of her disciplines. Among the city's noted theory teachers were Gwendda Owen Davies (piano also), and Russell Standing.

In 1919 the Manitoba Registered Music Teachers' Association was founded as the Winnipeg Music Teachers' Association by Eva Clare and others. Its objective - besides maintaining high standards among the private teachers it represented - was to introduce music into schools as an optional credit. In 1935 music became a recognized subject in Winnipeg high schools and Manitoba universities. In 1936 the Western Board of Music was formed. Ethel Kinley introduced group instrumental instruction in 1947, which was expanded under her successor, Marjorie Horner. P.G. Padwick had established a Manitoba school orchestra program as early as 1923. His work was carried on after 1938 by Ronald Gibson, Filmer Hubble, Glen Pierce, and Frances Port until 1964. Lola MacQuarrie became director of music for the Winnipeg schools in 1955 and was succeeded by Glen Pierce in 1966. The MMEA was founded in Winnipeg in 1959.

Among notable privately operated schools have been the Shinn Conservatory of Music, the Bornoff School of Music and its successor the Konrad Conservatory of Music, and the accordion and guitar schools founded by Ted Komar in 1950 and 1970. The music departments of the Mennonite Brethren Bible College and College of Arts (founded in 1944) and the Canadian Mennonite Bible College (founded in 1947) have continued to offer music courses, as has the Manitoba Conservatory of Music and Arts (founded in 1983).

James Croft, who arrived in Winnipeg in 1904, and later his son Henry James Croft, made the city a centre of violin rebuilding and repair, and the firm continued to sell instruments and music until the mid 1980s. Also prominent in the music business was Tom Tredwell, who was the manager 1938-56 of Western Music (Manitoba) Ltd, and who opened Tredwell's Music Centre in 1956. J.J.H. McLean and Co sold pianos, electric organs, and sheet music.

A Winnipeg Composers' Concert in 1948 featured music by W.H. Anderson, Chester Duncan, Walter MacNutt, and Barbara Pentland. Other composers who have resided in Winnipeg include S.C. Eckhardt-Gramatté, Bernard Naylor, Robert Turner, Victor Davies, Neil Harris, Leslie Mann, and Robert McMullin. The Manitoba Composers Association, formed 1983, has been active in sponsoring, publishing, and presenting works by T. Pat Carrabré, Gerhard Ginader, James Hiscott, Michael Matthews, Sid Robinovitch, Bruce Shavers, and others.

The first Icelanders arrived at Winnipeg in 1875, and in the ensuing years the city's ethnic diversity came to be reflected in musical expression of great variety. The Jewish, Mennonite, Scandinavian, and Slavic communities have produced energetic choral, orchestral, operatic, and folk ensembles. Among Jewish groups have been the Jewish Community Choir and Orchestra and the Jewish Women's Musical Club. The Mennonite community has organized concerts, produced oratorios, and trained many of the city's most active singers, instrumentalists, and church musicians. The large Ukrainian community has been particularly enterprising in folk opera and choral singing. In 1949, at a 75th civic birthday festival, Alec Lubimiw presented ensembles of Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Ukrainian, and Yugoslavian Canadians. Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish male-voice choirs performed in Winnipeg for many years. There also has been a United Scottish Society Male Choir. The Polish'Sokol' Choir won the Lord Tweedsmuir Memorial Trophy in 1964.

In addition to many mentioned above, musicians born in or near Winnipeg, St Boniface, and the other constituent municipalities have included Ernest Adams, Peter Allen, Evelyne Anderson, J.S.P. Bach, Peter Berring, Lloyd Blackman, the sopranos Belva Boroditsky and her sister Sara Boroditsky Udow, Lorne M. Betts, Deanna Durbin, Armand Ferland, Esther Ghan, Flora Matheson Goulden, Donna Grescoe, Frederick Grinke, Donald Hadfield, Joan Hall, the pianist Jack Henderson, Sheila Henig, Sydney Hodkinson, Phyllis Holtby, Margaret Ann Ireland, Diedre Irons, Terry Jacks, the tenor Robert Jeffrey, Juliette, Wally Koster, Gladys Kriese-Caporale, Gordon Kushner, Ethel Codd Luening, Gisele MacKenzie, Fraser MacPherson, David Martin, Brock McElheran, Gordon McLean, Hugh McLean, Morley Meredith, Norman Mittelmann, John Moncrieff, Mary Morrison, Gilbert, Sheila and Lorne Munroe, Kenneth Murphy, George Murray, Avis Phillips, Henriette (Platford) Asch (Ascher Duo), Ross Pratt, Jackie Rae, the CBC music executive Harold Redekopp, the harpsichordist Joyce Redekop-Fink, the violinist Victoria Polley Richards, Louise Roy, the mezzo-soprano Elsie Sawchuk, Victor and Erica Schultz, Bernie Senensky, Pat Shand, Ann Southam, Lucille Starr, Ben Steinberg, the violinist Vera Tarnowsky, and Frank Thorolfson.

Among performers active in Winnipeg have been singer-songwriters ​Neil Young, ​Randy Bachman, ​Burton Cummings and Chantal Kreviazuk; the pop/rock groups ​The Guess Who, ​Bachman-Turner Overdrive , ​Harlequin, ​Streetheart, Crash Test Dummies , The Watchmen and The Weakerthans; the jazz musicians ​Lenny Breau , Ron Halldorson, Knut Eide Haugsoen, Steve Hilliam, Walle Larssen, Marilyn Lerner, Greg Lowe, Ron Paley, Larry Roy, Ed Sersen, Reg Kelln and Rob Siwik; and the blues musicians Big Dave McLean and Brent Sam Parkin.

Bibliography

• Begg, Alexander, and Nursey, Walter R. Ten Years in Winnipeg (Winnipeg 1890)
• 'Formal Opening of the Walker Theatre', concert program, Winnipeg 18-19 Feb 1907
• 'Music in Winnipeg,' The Canadian Courier, 12 Oct 1912
• Wheeler, Charles H.'Music in Manitoba,' The Year Book of Canadian Art 1913, compiled by the Arts and Letters Club (Toronto, London 1913)
• 'Fifty years of music in Winnipeg,' MCan, vol 16, Aug 1920 ]
• Musical Life and Arts, music periodical (Winnipeg 1924-5)
• Lamont, Joyce.'City's musical history began at turn of century,' Winnipeg Free Press, 28 May 1949
• Maley, S. Roy.'City's music comes of age,' Winnipeg Tribune, 28 May 1949
• Hoogstraten, Vinia.'Winnipeg: where music is king,' Mayfair, Apr 1952
• Maley, S. Roy.'The outlook was bleak for culture,' Winnipeg Tribune, 6 Apr 1965
• 'Clubs filled city's musical vacuum,' ibid
• 'A mellow melody of many tongues,' ibid
• Friesen, Olga.'Historical sketch,' Sharps & Flats, vol 6, Nov 1965
• Chester, Russell E.'Music in Winnipeg 1900-1907,' CMB, 8, Spring-Summer 1974
• Benoist, Marius, et al. Chapeau bas, 2 vols (St Boniface, Man, 1980, 1985)
• Potter, Mitch.'A renaissance in Winnipeg,' MSc, Nov/Dec 1986
• Mcilroy, Randy.'Canadian notes (jazz scene in Winnipeg),' Coda, Aug/Sep 1989
• Howard, Laurel.'Prairie dawning,' Music, Dec 1989
• Hartman, James B.'The growth of music in early Winnipeg to 1920,' Manitoba History, 40, 2000

Films

Listen to the Prairies (NFB 1951). A shorter version is titled A City Sings