Confirmed and official! I'll be playing again on stage of the Davies Symphony Hall in late May! It's an outreach program that brings in former and current musicians from the community together along with the current members of the San Francisco Symphony.

 

As an adult starter (3 years so far), opportunities like this is extremely beneficial. I actually get to be one of the youngest participants (I'm 41), and I'm surrounded by people I can learn a lot from. Most of the participants have, at one point or another, been a serious musician in their past, but have since moved on with life. There are section practices spread across 2 weeks prior to the final day, each time led by a current, professional member of the SF Symphony - giving us a glimpse of how they would approach a new material, under limited time frame.

Final part of the workshop will be a FREE concert, open to public. We will be playing:

Elgar: Allegro piacevole from Serenade for String Orchestra
Mozart: Presto from Divertimento in D, KV 136

For the concert portion, they open the door for the public to come in, find a seat in the Dress Circle section (kinda like balcony level) where they get a clear view of all the musicians.  Excellent spot for anyone who wants to get a good view of their friend/family playing.

This would actually be my second time doing this with them (last time was October last year.)  Two things really surprised me:

1) Sense of team work.  Rather than the section leader dictating us amateurs how to play our parts, there was a great deal of encouragement and nudging us to work together as a team.  We were trained to identify right from the beginning to identify each others (and our own, of course,) strengths and weaknesses.  Then figure out how to work together so our section would improve more than any other section!  Little team -vs- team competition there.

2) How sensitive we had to play.  After having played through what we thought were pp and ff, the conductor told us that sounded more like mp and mf.  He asked us to play at even more drastic dynamic range, from ridiculously quiet to break the strings loud.  Our later attempts were better, but he kept asking us if we can play even more quietly.  I thought I was barely touching the string with one strand of hair, barely moving the bow.  Then the conductor turned around to the audience and asked for their opinion.  Yeah, they heard it just fine. O.o  Really impressed on us the importance of the bow control.  Same exercise in the louder range also gave us a confidence to really go for it, no questions asked.

I'm really looking forward to the experience!