mid-1890s, plans for starting a brass band were already being discussed at a meeting at Charles Nieminen's shoemaker's shop in October 1895. A committee was appointed to procure musical instruments and managed to buy them, second hand, in Chicago. Others joined the search for a director and had to go outside Eveleth to contact one Alex Koivunen, who had recently come from Finland and was living in Negaunee, Michigan; he agreed to move to Eveleth. The final problem of rehearsal quarters was easily solved by all the potential musicians joining the temperance society, which then gave them free and unlimited use of the hall. When Koivunen left the band, he was followed briefly by Herman Lindberg, and then permanently by Filemon Jacobson.

However, the Finnish band that most Finns in Eveleth now remember is another one, started in 1906 by Victor Taipale, one of the most widely known Finnish American musicians. Born in Nurmo, Finland, in 1875, Taipale had behind him years of experience in several Finnish army battalion bands, education at the Rauma teachers' seminary and the Viipuri choir and organ school, and private lessons with some of Finland's foremost musicians. Arriving in the United States in 1900, Taipale first worked in Worcester, Massachusetts, doing choral work and band directing with the temperance society there. In 1901 he came to Minnesota, and in Eveleth he was to prove not only his skill but his luck : he managed to recruit fifteen musicians who all had experience behind them in Finnish military bands: Waldemar Eklund, A. Kyllönen and Knut F. Öhman, from the Helsinki Guard Regiment; Lauri Husgafvel from the Uusimaa Battalion; Kalle Kajander from the Turku Battalion; John Paavola and Jacob Pehkonen from the Vaasa Battalion; Matti Huru, Emil Kauppinen, August Miettinen, Ville Penttilä and Kaarlo A. Sarviranta from the Oulu Battalion; John Collander and John Toivola from the Häme Battalion, and Arthur Rehnström from the Viipuri Battalion. Other outstanding musicians in Taipale's band were Kalle Kleimola, Victor Parkkonen, August Potti, Hilding and Peter Sholund and Oscar Yrjölä.

Other early musical activities in Eveleth include a male chorus, Sointu, and a mixed chorus, Sävel. However, apparently older than either of these was the Eveleth Finnish Lauluseura, which, according to the minutes of the Valon Lähde in 1900 was at that time requesting permission of that society to use its name as the official name of the chorus. Permission was granted, and for a long time that chorus did call itself the Valon Lähde Chorus. The Swedish Finnish temperance society was also sponsor of a

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