Denver Oldham first began formal piano lessons at the age of five with Edna Dalton after his kindergarten teacher discovered him improvising on nursery rhymes.
By the age of twelve he was performing with symphonies in the Long Island area regularly, and he soon held his first public solo recital at the behest of the Music Education League.
Beginning in 1982, Denver Oldham built up a library of recordings highlighting the works of varied, often underrepresented or minority American composers.
Oldham's first album, Charles Tomlinson Griffes: Collected Works for Piano, sold more than 80,000 copies,[6] and his recordings were featured on the National Public Radio show Performance Today.
Time magazine named John Alden Carpenter: Collected Piano Works as one of the top ten best classical recordings of 1986.