The Associação Recreativa de Nossa Senhora de Fátima do Arco de São Jorge was founded on October 13, 1933 by Silvano Abreu Cardoso, also its first Artistic Director. Until the seventies, the collectivity was called the School Banda Nossa Senhora de Fátima.
This philharmonic is heiress of the Grupo Musical de Nossa Senhora de Fátima, group of instruments of vane existing in the parish since 1929, of which Mr. Silvano was founder and artistic animator. This group encouraged not only religious festivals (with special emphasis on São José Day, patron saint of parish, Christmas and Easter), but also, in the summer, the liturgical festivals of the parish – São José and Blessed Sacrament.
Self-taught, mr. Silvano Abreu Cardoso had acquired some of his musical training during his school career at the School Salesiana de Artes e Ofícios and was a good connoisseur of the regional artistic and musical panorama of that time.

After the Philharmonic of Faial, at the end of the 19th century, and the Banda Municipal de Santana, in 1926, Mr. Silvano Abreu Cardoso, in order to break the isolation to which the population of the parish was voted and to increase the artistic and religious formation of the populations, as well as their literacy, through the teaching of music and letters (reading and writing), decided to found the School Banda de Nossa Senhora de Fátima, since a grouping of this type would have a much greater impact with the local population and surrounding parishes; in addition, it made it possible to recruit young musicians (boys) easier and in much larger numbers than a group of straws.
With the departure of the founder to the Portuguese continent in the late fifties, the religious component of the essays also disappeared.
On July 16, 1986, due to the compulsory Collection of Finance and legalization of its activity, as happened to many old collectivities in the country, Banda was integrated into the Associação Recreativa de Nossa Senhora de Fátima do Arco de São Jorge, constituting its Musical Section.

For many years, the band operated in precarious facilities, in several places of the parish. On February 16, 2005, the Centro Cívico do Arco de São Jorge was installed, a collective equipment carried out by the then Regional Secretariat of Social Equipment, and from that date onwards, it enjoyed good conditions to carry on its activities.
It has been present in concerts, popular arraial and programs of animation of public entities, a little throughout the Autonomous Region.
The most striking moment of his record was his participation in the day of the Autonomous Region of Madeira at Expo’98, in Lisbon, on September 4, 1998.
It currently has a staff of 27 performers and a music school with about 10 apprentices.
The Direction is chaired by Fernanda de Gouveia Ferreira, Teacher of Musical Education of the 1st and 2nd Cycles of Basic Education.