Lois Stout: Mormon Musician
Lois Stout is a violinist, conductor, and educator. She was raised in Indiana, and went to college in Duluth, Minnesota, where she had the rare opportunity to study with many accomplished European violinists post World War II, such as Isaac Stern and Raphael Druian. She later earned a master’s degree in violin performance.
After college, in a climate that wouldn’t hire women in orchestras, she substituted and freelanced after her husband lost his job and she needed to provide an income. She joined the orchestras of traveling Broadway plays and performers and performed with entertainers such as Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Frank Sinatra, and Red Skelton. She worked with young string players along the East Coast and up into Canada. She founded the FAME (For the Advancement of Music Ensembles) Orchestra of Maryland, which was invited to perform at the International String Conference in Graz, Austria.
She also learned about investing and carefully planned a future for herself, which she needed when her husband fell ill and had to retire early.
After she followed her Brigham Young University-bound children to Utah, she founded the Timpanogos Festival Orchestra and Chorus, which grew into three orchestras to fit different levels of talent. In 1999, she co-founded the Timpanogos String Camp and maintains a large private studio of advanced violin students.
Every Christmastime, Stout and her daughter Lisa Brodie put on Handel’s Messiah in the Alpine Tabernacle in American Fork.
She and her late husband are the parents of four children. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
