The Happy Gang includes Robert Farnon (far right), CBC announcer Herb May, Kathleen Stokes on the organ, Bert Pearl on the piano, and Blain Mathe on the violin. The Happy Gang includes Captain Robert Farnon , CBC announcer Herb May, Kathleen Stokes on the organ, Bert Pearl on the piano, and Blain Mathe on the violin. Robert Farnon, a pioneer (1917–2005), On July 24, 1917, Robert Farnon was born in Toronto. By the time he turned 80 in July 1997, he had achieved international renown as a composer, conductor, and arranger. He commemorated this milestone with two tribute concerts at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. His early years in Toronto gave him the musical and educational background for a glittering career that later led renowned conductor/pianist Andre Previn to describe him without hesitation as the best light music arranger in the world. He spent the last sixty years of his life in Europe, most recently in Guernsey, in the Channel Islands.

When Bob was five years old, he began hesitantly attempting to play the violin that his father had given him, but for a while, he preferred roller-skating over music. But since music ran in the family, Bob joined his brother Brian's dance band as their drummer and began playing one-off concerts and the occasional CBC broadcast after attending Our Lady of Lourdes, Humbercrest High School, and then Humbercrest Collegiate. He later picked up the trumpet since his brother Brian was having problems locating brass players, and because of his jazz trumpet skills, Geoffrey Waddington's CBC Orchestra persuaded him to join while he was just a teenager.Bob met Louis Wiseman, a CBC music copyist, while working for Waddington. Louis recognized Bob's promise and gave him private instruction in music theory, harmony, and counterpoint. Percy Faith quickly asked Bob to join his CBC Orchestra in order for him to manage the choral arrangements, which weren't Faith's strong suit, as well as his newly acquired trumpet playing and arranging skills. After Faith left to the United States in 1940, Bob was asked to take over as conductor of the CBC Orchestra. Bob also found time to pen two symphonies by the time he was 25 years old in 1942.Parallel to his work with the orchestra, Bob had joined the Happy Gang in 1937 as a founding member of CBC Radio, where he played trumpet, wrote music, and took part in comedy. Despite the 23-year run of the program, Bob's career changed in 1943. He enlisted in the military under the name Captain Robert Farnon to serve as the musical director of the Canadian Army Show. In 1944, he traveled to Britain with the Canadian Band of the Allied Expeditionary Soldiers to perform for the Allied forces in broadcasts and concerts.When the war ended in 1945 and the band was prepared to return to Canada, Bob established many contacts in the music industry there. As a result, Bob chose to remain in Britain and take advantage of the several job opportunities that were presented to him. After being released from the military, Bob was hired as an arranger for the Geraldo Orchestra, which he occasionally led when Geraldo wasn't there. He also had a contract with the music publishers Chappell's, for whom he wrote hundreds of pieces of light music throughout the years, many of which rose to fame as the themes for British and international radio and television series.

Richard Farnon True Name:Bruce Robert FarnonProfile:Born in Toronto, Ontario, on July 24th, and passed away in Guernsey on April 23, 2005Film score and "Light Music" composer and arranger During World War II, he was a captain in the Canadian Army and an accomplished jazz trumpeter. He led the Canadian Band of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). Film score and "Light Music" composer and arranger. During World War II, he was a captain in the Canadian Army and an accomplished jazz trumpeter. He led the Canadian Band of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF).

Robert Farnon

Composer, arranger, conductor, and trumpeter Robert (Joseph) Farnon was born in Toronto on July 24, 1917, and passed away in Guernsey, United Kingdom, on April 23, 2005. Farnon began by studying the violin; then, between the ages of seven and nine, he played the piano with his mother and Jack Gray. He started playing drums in his brother Brian's dance band in 1930. He also studied percussion under Duncan Snider. However, by 1934, he had switched to playing the trumpet exclusively. He performed in the CRBC and Toronto dance bands led by Bus Browne, Stanley St. John, Bob Shuttleworth, and others. Robert (Joseph) Farnon was a composer, arranger, conductor, and trumpeter who was born in Toronto on July 24, 1917, and died in Guernsey, United Kingdom, on April 23, 2005. When Farnon was a composition student of Louis Waizman in the 1930s, he organized music for Faith's choral ensembles as well as for André Kostelanetz's and Paul Whiteman's US orchestras. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra gave the world premiere performance of his first symphony, Symphonic Suite, on January 7, 1941. It was also performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra on numerous occasions.

Augustus Bridle (Toronto Daily Star, May 13, 1942) praised the composition's "extremely modern design without a single ugly dissonance; its infallible beauty of tone-painting and its continuous enchantment in both themes and harmonic invention; [and] its sagacious instrumentations" after one of these performances at Massey Hall. The only copies of both these scores as well as Cascades to the Sea, which was performed on August 31, 1944, under Jean-Marie Beaudet, were lost at sea in 1944, along with a shipment of supplies for the Army Show. The Toronto Symphony performed Farnon's 1942-completed Ottawa Symphony for the first time in 1943 on the CBC radio program "Concert Hour."

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