How the Fort Collins Symphony is celebrating the woman behind its 100-year history

On a crisp evening in early November, a smattering of onlookers settled into their seats at The Lincoln Center in Fort Collins.

Before them, members of the Fort Collins Symphony readied themselves — greeting their fellow musicians, pulling bows and plucking strings as a cacophony filled the expansive performance hall.

There was a level of informality in the air. The musicians were all in street clothes, as was the Symphony's conductor, Maestro Wes Kenney, who wove through rows of seats and stopped for the occasional chat before taking the stage.

Jason Vieaux — a Grammy-winning classical guitarist and guest musician with the Symphony — sat near Kenney with a guitar perched on his left knee. At Kenney's signal, he began to play the first piece of the night: Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez."

Vieaux's fingers moved at near lightspeed, soon joined by a flurry of flutes — then the symphony's string section, its woodwind and brass instruments and percussion — together melding Vieaux's guitarwork into a veritable orchestra piece. Well, kind of.

There was still plenty of melding to do as Kenney stopped and started the orchestra throughout the evening — offering notes, suggestions and direction as they meticulously polished the concerto. As part of the symphony's open rehearsal program, the public was invited to watch the intimate evening rehearsal.

In just a few days, the performance hall would take on an entirely different air, with Vieaux, Kenney and the orchestra taking the stage in front of nearly 800 people for a formal performance of the symphony's Nov. 4 "Rodrigo Reverie" signature concert.

It's all a very well-oiled operation by now, and it should be. The symphony has had a century of practice.

A century of the symphony: Fort Collins Symphony's beginnings

Before she could even "talk plain," Editha Todd Leonard said she knew she was destined for the violin.

As a little girl growing up at the turn of the 20th century in Fort Collins, she finally got her wish when her parents purchased her a violin from the Sears Roebuck catalog, Leonard recalled in an oral history interview recorded in 1994 when she was 89 years old.

Her dad, a home builder, agreed to build something for William Runge, the owner of Fort Collins' Runge Music Co. In exchange, little Editha got her first fiddle lessons.

Before long, she was a seasoned musician, having regularly played in the summer orchestra at Fort Collins' Library Park, in the orchestra for silent movies and vaudeville shows at Old Town's American Theater, and even as second fiddle for the Denver Symphony when she was still a teenager.

By 1922 or 1923, longtime Fort Collins music teacher Kathryn Bauder needed someone to substitute teach her junior high school orchestra and Leonard volunteered.

"The kids had so much fun, and I did, too, that we just kept going," Leonard recalled in her 1994 interview.

The junior high band grew and evolved, turning into a fledgling concert orchestra made up of a ragtag crew of students and professors from Colorado Agricultural College, now Colorado State University, and students from the music school Leonard ran out of her home.

The orchestra went dormant around World War II and was later picked back up in the late 1940s when Will Schwartz, a war veteran with a newly-minted master's degree in violin performance and conducting from Julliard, accepted a teaching position in CSU's music department, according to Fort Collins Symphony Executive Director Mary Kopco.

Under Schwartz's direction, the resurrected symphony hosted its first rehearsal on Oct. 5, 1949. Editha Todd Leonard served as its concert master, according to Kopco.

The Fort Collins Symphonic Society, now the Fort Collins Symphony Association, was officially incorporated in 1950. For years, that's where many — even Kopco — thought the symphony's history began. Fittingly, in 2020, the symphony celebrated it 70th season in Fort Collins.

Something else happened that year, though.

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing performing arts organizations largely underground, Kopco said she and other symphony staff started passing time by going through the extensive symphony records kept by the archive at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery.

There, they kept seeing one name come up: Editha Todd Leonard. They soon realized that while the Fort Collins Symphony was officially incorporated in 1950, its roots could be traced to 1922 or 1923, when Leonard took over Bauder's band and turned it into a community concert orchestra.

"We kept reading about Editha Todd Leonard, and when we started digging in we thought this is a really interesting history," Kopco explained. "As a historian and someone who’s interested in women as the founders of arts and culture (organizations) in many western communities, I thought, 'Wow, we really need to give this woman her due.'"

While orchestras have historically been male-dominated, Kopco — who previously ran Deadwood, South Dakota's Adams Museum and House before joining the Fort Collins Symphony in 2015 — said women in the American West played larger roles in the founding of the region's cultural institutions.

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"In Fort Collins absolutely that was the case," Kopco said. "You had Auntie Stone who set up the first schoolhouse, and her niece was the first school teacher. Elfreda Stebbins was the first librarian. I could go down a whole list of organizations that were founded or began with women."

Kopco was quick to say neither she, nor her team at the symphony "uncovered" Leonard's role in founding what would eventually become the Fort Collins Symphony. Leonard had been a well-known Fort Collins resident before her 1999 death, and was researched and written about extensively over the years, Kopco said.

"What really happened was we realized here was an opportunity to tell an important story of the founding of what became the Fort Collins Symphony," she said.

Celebrating through music

After settling on a new founding year — 1923 — the Fort Collins Symphony got to work planning a way to celebrate its century in Fort Collins. Earlier this year, the lineup for its 2023-24 "Then & Now" season was unveiled.

It began Oct. 7, with a rare sold-out performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, "Ode to Joy" featuring the Larimer Chorale. Its next performance — a Halloween POPS concert on Oct. 18 — also saw a big turnout with a nearly sold-out crowd.

"Building back an audience (after the COVID-19 pandemic) was something we were really concerned about, so having a sellout crowd at the Beethoven concert was really fabulous," said Kopco.

"What’s pretty neat is that when you do have a sellout, not only does it help pay for orchestra salaries, but it also helps pay seed money for future concerts," Kopco said, adding that the symphony typically puts on five signature concerts, two POPS concerts, one family concert and four youth education concerts each year.

"It gives us an opportunity to show how varied orchestral music is," she added.

'Tis the season: Take in a show (or dozens of other things to do this holiday season in and around Fort Collins)

For Maestro Wes Kenney, who has been at the helm of the Fort Collins Symphony since 2003, anniversaries are all well and good, but mostly "they're just an excuse to hang good music on," Kenney said before the symphony's open rehearsal with Vieaux last month.

The symphony's 100th anniversary season gave Kenney reason to go hunting for pieces that fit within its century-mark theme. He tracked down and sprinkled in several pieces of music written in 1923. For the Nov. 4 "Rodrigo Reverie" signature concert, he included Joseph Haydn’s energetic Symphony No. 100 as a nod to the symphony's 100 years.

Three more signature concerts, one family concert and one concert celebrating Hollywood's epic cinematic scores are planned for the symphony's special season.

“We’re absolutely proud of (turning 100)," Kenney said. "I’m thrilled to be celebrating this anniversary, and if it sells tickets and if we have great music and have great guest artists as a result of doing that …. I mean, that’s just a feather in the cap of the existence of the Fort Collins Symphony.”

Take in a show as part of Fort Collins Symphony's 100th season

Jan. 21: Peter & the Wolf (family concert at Timberline Church Auditorium)

Feb. 3: Dvořák Discovery – “New World Symphony” and Violin Concerto

March 2: Magnificent Mozart – Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter”

April 12: Then & Now: Reel Music Film Music Concert

May 11: Resplendent Rachmaninoff – Piano Concerto No. 2

For tickets, visit lctix.com.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: How Fort Collins Symphony is celebrating its century mark, roots