Leonard Falcone

Leonard V. Falcone (5 April 1899 – May 2, 1985) was best known for being Professor of Baritone Horn and Euphonium at Michigan State University, where he also served from 1927 to 1967 as Director of Bands. The school's Spartan Marching Band transitioned from an ROTC auxiliary to a nationally known Big Ten Conference marching band during his tenure. He was a well known performer, lecturer, arranger and conductor. Scholarship endowments at Michigan State University and Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp as well as the Falcone International Tuba and Euphonium Festival were established in his honor.

Falcone was born Leonardo Vincenzo Falcone ("fal-CONE-ee,") in Roseto Valfortore in Italy in the Spring of 1899. Playing first Alto Horn and also Violin, Falcone became active in the local town band. He studied multiple instruments and conducting under Maistro Donatto Donatelli of Naples in his teens. At age 16, he followed his brother Nicholas who had emigrated in 1912, to the United States. There he enrolled in the University School of Music in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which would become the University of Michigan School of Music years later, where he met many of his lifelong professional and personal colleagues and friends. Nicholas was to follow professor Wilfred Wilson as Director of Bands at the school in the 1920s. Nicholas, who first hired his brother Leonard as a tailor's assistant, having found work as a tailor and theater clarinet player, later hired him again to play trombone at the Ypsilanti Michigan silent movie theater when Nick began conducting the pit orchestra. Leonard Falcone proudly became a citizen of his adopted country in 1924. Two years later, he would graduate from college with a degree in violin.

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