Clef Club Orchestra

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Clef Club Orchestra · The Clef Club was a society, social centre and union for African American musicians in Harlem. James Reese Europe and a few colleagues founded it on 11 April 1910, to put Black musicians in touch with employers and better-paid jobs, at a time when the ordinary musicians' union was open only to white musicians. The office was across from Marshall's Hotel, a meeting place for Black musicians. In its first weeks the club already had more than a hundred and thirty-five members. It was a meeting place and a fraternity as well as an employment agency and a concert hall.

Music and breakthrough

The Clef Club Orchestra grew out of a benefit evening to pay for office space. The orchestra was led by James Reese Europe and numbered more than a hundred musicians with a great variety of instruments. Besides violins, cellos, basses and wind instruments, the stage held mandolins, guitars, banjos and a large bass drum, sometimes with a male chorus and ten pianists. Between 1912 and 1915 the orchestra played at Carnegie Hall in New York, on the initiative of David Mannes, among others, who wanted a benefit concert for the Music Settlement School in Harlem. The first concert raised five thousand dollars and was well received, although the press sometimes wrote about it in a condescending way.

Influence

The orchestra showed that African American musicians could give a symphonic concert in a large hall. The club went under in the mid-1920s. The orchestra therefore stands at the beginning of the road that Black music travelled to the great stages, and it belongs to the prehistory of jazz.

Listening

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