Denver Symphony Orchestra

The Denver Symphony Orchestra, established in 1934 and dissolved in 1989, was a professional American orchestra in Denver, Colorado. Until 1978, when the Boettcher Concert Hall was built to house the symphony orchestra, it performed in a succession of theaters, amphitheaters, and auditoriums. It was the predecessor to the Colorado Symphony, although the two ensembles were legally and structurally separate. Founding and early period A community ensemble called the Civic Symphony Orchestra had been formed in Denver in 1922. During the Great Depression, the orchestra struggled to pay its musicians and find paying customers. In 1934 Helen Marie Black, the symphony's volunteer publicist, Jeanne Cramner, and Lucille Wilkin founded the Denver Symphony Orchestra to consolidate all the musicians in the city and guarantee union wages. In 1935 they founded the Denver Symphony Guild to develop projects and fundraise for the orchestra. Black served as the Denver Symphony Orchestra's business manager for more than 30 years, twelve of them as an unpaid volunteer. She was the first female symphony manager in the United States. The orchestra's first concert was offered on November 30, 1934, at Denver's Broadway Theatre. Its Tuesday-night concerts were usually performed in the Municipal Auditorium. Both the community and professional orchestras were maintained through the 1946–47 season. Conductor Horace Tureman led both until his 1944 retirement due to illness. In 1945, Saul Caston, who had been associate conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra under both Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, was hired as the Denver Symphony's Conductor and Music Director. Caston built the orchestra significantly during his tenure, through touring, school performances, low-priced family ticket plans, and outdoor performances at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre, west of Denver. A 1951 Time article documented his leadership, declaring, "Last season the Denver Symphony was among the leaders in performing American music".