ut an instrument of really beautiful tone color . If there were other saxophonists who could play as Leeson does, the saxophone would speedily make its appearance in the symphony orchestra." During the early 1930s, he joined the faculty at the Hollywood Conservatory of Music and taught there for several years. He considered his formal "concert debut" to have been a Hollywood Conservatory recital on June 11, 1931. By 1934 he was working and performing in New York, including an October 1934 recital at The Barbizon Hotel. In July 1936 he visited a series of midwestern and southwestern U.S. campuses offering summer musical institutes. The following summer Leeson taught at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan, as he did in 1939. From 1934 to 1939, Leeson collaborated with American composer Paul Creston, resulting in several major pieces for the classical saxophone repertoire, which they premiered. Leeson and Creston recorded the composer's "Suite" (a-sax/pno) in 1938 for New Music Quarterly Recordings (catalog 1314-A-B).( On February 5, 1937, Cecil Leeson was the first saxophonist to play at Town Hall in New York City. He was also one of the first saxophonists to appear as a soloist with major American symphony orchestras. More than 50 works for saxophone were written for him by composers such as Leon Stein, Edvard Moritz, Paul Creston, and Ferde Grofé. Leeson taught saxophone performance at Northwestern University from 1955 to 1961 and then at Ball State University. His papers and his collection of original Adolphe Sax and other famous saxophones are in the America's National Music Museum at the University of So