The Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra is a community-based

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

Oak Ridge, Tennessee Oak Ridge is a city in Anderson and Roane counties in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee, about west of downtown Knoxville. Oak Ridge's population was 31,402 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Knoxville Metropolitan Area. Oak ...

. The founder and first conductor was

Waldo Cohn Waldo E. Cohn (1910–1999) was an American biochemist known principally for developing techniques for separation of isotopes necessary for the Manhattan Project. Birth and education He was born in San Francisco, California, on 28 June 1910, a ...

, a

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

biochemist Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. They study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. Biochemists study DNA, proteins and Cell (biology), cell parts. The word "biochemist" is a portmanteau of ...

and an accomplished

cellist The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 ...

who started hosting

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

sessions in his home upon arriving in Oak Ridge in 1943. As the group grew, they began rehearsing in the

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

, and gave their first concert in June 1944 under the name Oak Ridge Symphonette.

Brass Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other with ...

and

woodwinds Woodwind instruments are a family of musical instruments within the greater category of wind instruments. Common examples include flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and saxophone. There are two main types of woodwind instruments: flutes and reed ...

were added to the group later that year, and the first full

symphonic A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning com ...

orchestra concert was in November 1944.June Adamson
Waldo Cohn (1910-1999)
''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', accessed December 11, 2010 In his later years, Cohn recalled that some of the amateur musicians in the orchestra had difficulty attending rehearsals because of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

gas rationing Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, services, or an artificial restriction of demand. Rationing controls the size of the ration, which is one's allowed portion of the resources being distributed on a particular ...

, the difficulty of travel on streets that were not yet

paved Pavement may refer to: * Pavement (architecture), an outdoor floor or superficial surface covering * Road surface, the durable surfacing of roads and walkways ** Asphalt concrete, a common form of road surface * Sidewalk or pavement, a walkway alo ...

, and round-the-clock operating schedules at Oak Ridge's Manhattan Project production facilities that required them to work at night.Waldo E. Cohn
Creating the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra (1944)
In: ''HUMAN RADIATION STUDIES: REMEMBERING THE EARLY YEARS; Oral History of Biochemist Waldo E. Cohn, Ph.D., Conducted January 18, 1995''.

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

Office of Human Radiation Experiments, June 1995 Oak Ridge residents have boasted that the new city had a symphony orchestra before it had

sidewalk A sidewalk (North American English), pavement (British English), footpath in Australia, India, New Zealand and Ireland, or footway, is a path along the side of a street, street, highway, terminals. Usually constructed of concrete, pavers, brick ...

s. The orchestra has been in continuous existence since its formation in 1944. Many of the early members of the orchestra left Oak Ridge at the end of World War II, so professional musicians began to be hired to augment the amateur volunteers. Virtuoso violinist

Isaac Stern Isaac Stern (July 21, 1920 – September 22, 2001) was an American violinist. Born in Poland, Stern came to the US when he was 14 months old. Stern performed both nationally and internationally, notably touring the Soviet Union and China, and ...

appeared with the orchestra as a soloist in 1948 as a favor to Cohn, who was an old friend. Other early soloists included

Percy Grainger Percy Aldridge Grainger (born George Percy Grainger; 8 July 188220 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who lived in the United States from 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918. In the course of a long an ...

Yaltah Menuhin Yaltah Menuhin (7 October 1921 – 9 June 2001) was an American-born British pianist, artist and poet. Early life Yaltah was born in San Francisco, the youngest of three extraordinarily musically gifted children. Her siblings were Yehudi Menuhin ...

Nadia Reisenberg Nadia Reisenberg Sherman (14 July 1904 – 10 June 1983) was an American pianist of Lithuanian birth. Biography Nadia Reisenberg was born in Vilnius to a Jewish family. Her parents were Aaron and Rachel Reisenberg., adapted from Dr. Anne K. Gray' ...

Samuel Sanders Samuel Sanders (June 27, 1937July 9, 1999) was an American classical collaborative pianist and pedagogue. He was born with a congenital heart condition that required him to undergo surgery at the age of nine. His first piano teacher was Hedwig ...

, and

Albert Spalding Albert Goodwill Spalding (September 2, 1849 – September 9, 1915) was an American pitcher, manager, and executive in the early years of professional baseball, and the co-founder of A.G. Spalding sporting goods company. He was born and raised ...

. In more recent years, soloists have included

U.S. Senator The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powe ...

Lamar Alexander Andrew Lamar Alexander Jr. (born July 3, 1940) is a retired American lawyer and politician who served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 2003 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he also was the 45th governor of Tennessee fro ...

, water percussionist

David Cossin David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...

, and virtuoso

bassist A bassist (also known as a bass player or bass guitarist) is a musician who plays a Bass (instrument), bass instrument such as a double bass (upright bass, contrabass, wood bass), bass guitar (electric bass, acoustic bass), synthbass, keyboar ...

Edgar Meyer Edgar Meyer (born November 24, 1960) is an American bassist and composer. His styles include classical, bluegrass, newgrass, and jazz. He has won five Grammy Awards and been nominated seven times. Meyer is a member of the Telluride Bluegrass ...

, a graduate of Oak Ridge High School. Cohn continued to serve as conductor until 1955. Under his leadership, the orchestra concentrated on a traditional classical repertoire, but also introduced works by

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

s such as Edward McDowell and

Henry Cowell Henry Dixon Cowell (; March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher and teacher. Marchioni, Tonimarie (2012)"Henry Cowell: A Life Stranger Than Fiction" ''The Juilliard Journal''. Retrieved 19 June 202 ...

. In 1952 the symphony presented the premiere performance of ''Overture to a Dedication of a Nuclear Reactor'', composed by Arthur Roberts and considered to be "the first serious musical composition inspired by the atomic age."Nick Ravo
Waldo Cohn, 89, a Developer Of Plutonium for the Atom Bomb
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', September 1, 1999Music: Atom Overture
''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'', March 31, 1952 The ''Overture'' was dedicated to Cohn, who was conductor for the premiere. In 2008, the orchestra launched a series of concerts called "Isotone," designed to connect music with science. The Isotone concerts feature original compositions written as tributes to famous

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

s and include scientific equipment from the collection of the

American Museum of Science and Energy The American Museum of Science and Energy (AMSE) is a science museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, designed to teach children and adults about energy, especially nuclear power, and to document the role Oak Ridge played in the Manhattan Project. The mu ...

. The February 2010 Isotone Concert presented the premiere performance of a 12-minute composition by Larry Spivak entitled ''Space''; a

van de Graaff generator A Van de Graaff generator is an electrostatic generator which uses a moving belt to accumulate electric charge on a hollow metal globe on the top of an insulated column, creating very high electric potentials. It produces very high voltage direct ...

was used in the performance to create effects of

lightning Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electric charge, electrically charged regions, both in the atmosphere or with one on the land, ground, temporarily neutralize themselves, causing the instantaneous ...

. Items such as

Geiger counter A Geiger counter (also known as a Geiger–Müller counter) is an electronic instrument used for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation. It is widely used in applications such as radiation dosimetry, radiological protection, experimental ph ...

s have been used in other concerts. The first two seasons' compositions honored

Marie Curie Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie ( , , ; born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first ...

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superflu ...

, and Stephen Hawking. The compositions for the 2010-2011 season were scheduled to honor

Glenn Seaborg Glenn Theodore Seaborg (; April 19, 1912February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work in ...

and

Lise Meitner Elise Meitner ( , ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who was one of those responsible for the discovery of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. While working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute on rad ...

.About Isotone Concerts
Oak Ridge Civic Music Association website, accessed December 11, 2010 Dan Allcott became the Oak Ridge Symphony conductor beginning with the 2010-2011 season.Carolyn Krause
New ORSO conductor debuts Saturday
, ''The Oak Ridger'', October 1, 2010 He succeeded Cornelia Kodkani-Laemmli, who had led the orchestra for several years.Harold Duckett
Cornelia Kodkani-Laemmli reflects on end-of-season departure from Oak Ridge Symphony
Knoxville.com, September 18, 2009

References

External links

* {{authority control American orchestras Musical groups established in 1944 Oak Ridge, Tennessee Tourist attractions in Anderson County, Tennessee Performing arts in Tennessee Musical groups from Tennessee 1944 establishments in Tennessee