Frances Yates; Co-Founder of Evenings on the Roof

Frances Mullen Yates, a concert pianist who, with her husband, Peter, co-founded Evenings on the Roof--the first organized chamber music series in Los Angeles--died of renal failure on Wednesday at a nursing home in Woodstock, Va. She was 92.

Yates distinguished herself playing the works of Charles Ives, who along with Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage and Igor Stravinsky, was among the 20th century composers showcased in concerts conducted at the rooftop music studio of the Yates’ home in Silver Lake. The series, created in 1939, moved to other locations in the metropolitan area and was renamed the Monday Evening Concerts in 1954. For the last 25 years, it has been an integral part of the music program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“Frances was an excellent, hard-working musician who’d perform a week after having a baby,” said pianist Leonard Stein, former head of USC’s Schoenberg Institute, who played in the series from 1939 to 1942. “She and Peter had no fear of presenting modern music, though critics hated it, at the time.”

Dorrance Stalvey, director of music programs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, called the couple “forward looking--focused on ‘the new.’ ”

“Those evenings were very important to emigre composers such as Arnold Schoenberg who settled here in the 1930s. Stravinsky even wrote a work dedicated to them,” he said.

Yates, whose husband died in 1976, is survived by two children, Peter Barheidt Yates of Alexandria, Va., and George Cochrane Yates of Asheville, N.C., as well as five grandchildren.