Music written down by Forbes’ own renowned one-man band Harry Schaefer has been transformed into a five-minute composition for Forbes Town and District Band – and you’ll get to hear it during September’s River Arts Festival.

The band received a Country Arts Support Program to commission a Forbes history song last year: band master Justin Screen explained they turned to Forbes local and National Library historian Rob Willis for inspiration.

Mr Willis guided them to Harry Schaefer – a musician he often heard of when talking to old-time musicians in his early days recording Australian traditional music.

“Harry Schaefer was the one-man dance band,” Mr Willis said.

“There’s wonderful descriptions of Harry riding his pushbike with his bass drum strapped to his back and his fiddle across his front.”

With a foot pedal on the bass and violin in his hands, Schaefer would have them dancing all night at Town Hall – or at any number of halls around the district.

While many musicians of the day learned and played music by ear, Schaefer could also write the tunes down to share.

His hand-written manuscripts ended up in a local second hand shop and were given to Mr Willis, who saw that they were archived in the National Library.

Composer Tim Ferrier was commissioned to take the huge collection of music and write something for the band, for the modern age.

He was in town on Monday to work with the band toward the finished result – excited about hearing it come to life again.

Mr Ferrier has made a medley of five of Schaefer’s tunes – a well-known Scottish air followed by a couple of almost unknown Australian waltzes in Schaefer’s Waltz and Echuca Waltz, a traditional folk dance tune known by different names around the world and a dance of American origin from the early 10^th century.

“You take the melody, dream up some harmonies and some bass lines, work out what the harmonic possibilities are,” he said.

Mr Screen said the band would bring the piece to the Forbes public for the first time in September this year, during the River Arts Festival in September.

There will be plenty of opportunities to hear it in future too, with the band excited to have the local, commissioned piece for the community.