Yolanda Hager, who died Oct. 19 at age 88, was an accomplished cellist who played in Denver’s renowned Brico orchestra and a music teacher whose protégés went on to play in youth and civic orchestras.
She grew up near Canton, S.D., where she began music lessons as a child. By age 12, she took up the cello.
She married a physician with whom she had six children. Upon his death in 1966, Hager became a professional musician. She joined the local musicians union, assuring a steady income from concerts at Red Rocks and other venues, private appointments and recording sessions.
Hager played with other local musicians hired to support visiting artists including Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra, whose taste in music stood in dramatic contrast to the classical genre that she preferred.
“It wasn’t her kind of music, but it was music,” said her daughter Jane Williams.
Hager’s kind of music paralleled the often-challenging compositions favored by Antonia Brico, the celebrated Dutch pianist and conductor who founded Denver’s local Bach Society and the Denver Businessmen’s Orchestra, which became the Brico Symphony Orchestra in 1968.
Brico and Hager became close personally and professionally. Brico taught all the Hager children and recommended Hager to parents seeking a music teacher.
The Hager children began piano lessons at age 5 and chose a second instrument by age 7, when they also took conducting lessons from Brico. Each child chose a different instrument, along with the piano.
Nearly all continue to play as adults, and son Douglas shaped his children into a home quartet. Hager’s daughter Margaret became a professional musician with the Colorado Springs Symphony and now the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra.
Visitors to the Hager household compared it to a music conservatory. Almost always, someone was playing or tuning an instrument.
The Hagers owned two pianos and a pipe organ. The family storage area contained enough musical instruments to furnish a school orchestra, as one of Hager’s grandchildren learned.
“When my sons were young and Mom wanted to get them started, one knew he wanted to play cello, but the other didn’t know what he wanted,” Williams said.
“So he went to Mom’s house and said perhaps he’d try the trumpet. Mom ran upstairs and got him a trumpet. Then he said, well, maybe the French horn. So she ran up and got him a French horn. He went through half a dozen instruments. She had all of them.”
Survivors include daughters Shannon Joseph (accordion, African instruments) of New Orleans, Jane Williams (violin) of Highlands Ranch and Margaret Hager (viola) of San Antonio; sons Lloyd Hager (trombone) of Bailey, Douglas Hager (cello) of Denver and Robert Hager (French horn) of Fort Collins; sister Grace Winter (vocal) of Sioux Falls, S.D.; and seven grandchildren.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
