The Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra is a community-based orchestra in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The founder and first conductor was Waldo Cohn, a Manhattan Project biochemist and an accomplished cellist who started hosting chamber music sessions in his home upon arriving in Oak Ridge in 1943. As the group grew, they began rehearsing in the high school, and gave their first concert in June 1944 under the name Oak Ridge Symphonette. Brass and woodwinds were added to the group later that year, and the first full symphonic orchestra concert was in November 1944. In his later years, Cohn recalled that some of the amateur musicians in the orchestra had difficulty attending rehearsals because of World War II gas rationing, the difficulty of travel on streets that were not yet paved, and round-the-clock