The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

As improbable as it may seem, the local Symphony Society is the oldest orchestral organization west of the Mississippi that has continued without a break from the year it began in 1907. Over the years, local Dayton and Waitsburg members of the Walla Walla Symphony have come and gone. Incidentally, Cal Malone, of Waitsburg, was a charter member of the Walla Walla Symphony in 1907. Cordiner Hall, located on the Whitman College Campus, was completed in 1968. In its nearly 10 years of existence, Cordiner Hall has more than fulfilled the dreams of its planners of becoming a focal point in Walla Walla for musical and cultural events.

According to "Waitsburg: One of a Kind," Abbie Kingman was regarded as the oldest lady in Waitsburg. In 1880, her family came west, traveling from Chicago in a passenger coach on the Michigan Central Railroad. In that publication, she said:

Today (1956) we have to flip a switch to have the world's finest musical talenthellip; by radio, television, record or tape player. A person who appreciated good music could truly be starved for it in the "good old days" here. If you could play a musical instrument, no more popular person was to be found in the community. Many early day settlers left fine homes in the east to accept frugal surroundings, which held few or none of the refinements such as the concert hall their old hometown had possessed. So, it is no wonder that the promotion of a musical group had such importance to the Waitsburg of the late 19th century.

I was reading "A Dream Fulfilled: One Hundred Years of the Walla Walla Symphony Orchestra" by Dan Shultz, written in 2006. Shultz writes from a perspective tempered by involvement with the orchestras for more than half a century. He writes:

The Walla Walla Symphony gave its firth concert in the 1,300-seat Keylor Grand Theatre, a new performance hall constructed two years earlier. Edgar Fischer just resigned from his position at the Whitman Conservatory of Music. He contacted accomplished musicians in the city. In the end, he had a small orchestra of 29. When the doors of the Keylor Grand Theatre opened on Dec. 12, 1907, the audience was mesmerized by the beauty of music many had listened to only on noisy records or in arrangements for piano. During the next six years, the orchestra presented three concerts each season in the Keylor Grand and other places around town. The Walla Walla Symphony, unlike many orchestras that had to stop for lack of players, flourished because of the nearby airbase and the V-12 Program at Whitman College during World War II. Concerts by the Walla Walla Symphony, which were free to the servicemen and their guests hellip; helped ease the anxiety and pressure of those years.