Violinist Frances Darger has Died, Aged 99

Darger played in the Utah Symphony for almost 70 years from 1942 

Frances Darger was one of the longest-employed musicians to ever play for the Utah Symphony — she joined the orchestra in 1942 at the age of 17. She recently passed away of natural causes, her family stated.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Darger played with the Utah Symphony for 69 years. When she first joined, the orchestra was then called the Utah State Symphony Orchestra and had been running for just two years.

Darger was born Frances Edna Johnson in Salt Lake City in 1924 and was the third of five sisters, who had “formed a swing quintet called the Johnson Sisters,” and often sang and performed together. Near the end of World War II in 1945, the sisters traveled to perform in Los Angeles.

She also worked as the society editor of The Salt Lake Telegram, then the afternoon edition of The Salt Lake Tribune.

When Darger retired in 2012 at the age of 87, she held the record at the time for the longest tenure any musician had performed with an orchestra. Despite her retiring, she would check in on whatever repertoire the symphony was playing. 

“One thing about playing in the symphony orchestra [that] is so interesting is that you just have multiple generations in the workforce,” said Tad Calcara, principal clarinetist for the Utah Symphony since 1999. “A lot of the more senior members of the orchestra are people that were here [or] were hired by Maurice Abravanel, or prior to Abravanel, being part of the orchestra. Frances was one of them.”

Calcara added that when Darger joined the symphony, the roster of musicians “was very much tilted to the male side of things,” and that Darger was “a real pioneer, a groundbreaker in changing that situation … [she] deserves some credit for that, being one of the first back in the day when this was an exception, not the rule.”

Darger’s daughter, Peggy Sacher, said her grandmother “was a musician, and made sure [her daughters] all played instruments and sang.”

“She was on the picket line, when there was a couple of strikes, she was right there with everyone,” expressed Barbara Scowcroft, a Utah Symphony violinist and the music director/conductor of its youth orchestras. “She was such a solid colleague, and devoted to classical music.”

Ms. Darger is survived by her three children, 12 grandchildren, and 15 great grandchildren; she was predeceased by her husband and sisters. Our condolences to her family, friends, and colleagues.