“What a Lovely Way to Begin”: Community Chamber Concerts

For Yang, having grown up in San Francisco means he’s even more driven to participate in the Symphony’s community programs. And for a string player, the intimacy of a chamber concert anywhere is thrilling. But the experience feels even more meaningful in free, community-oriented spaces like San Francisco’s libraries.

“My parents couldn’t afford to go to the symphony when I was a kid, so they don't take it for granted now,” he says. “These library concerts provide that for the community. So many of these people wouldn't come to a regular concert, whether they're intimidated or they don't have the funds. I love that you get all sorts of people walking through.”

The library shows aren’t just fulfilling on a matter of principle, though. When Yang and Symphony bassist (and fellow Bay Area native) Charles Chandler recently played an afternoon show for roughly 70 people, Yang was struck by the beauty of it, how the physical space shaped the music.

“It sounds so good there with all the marble, and the light coming through. It just feels great,” says Yang. He’s become entranced, in particular, with the air at smaller performances. “People can feel the air moving, which is phenomenal,” he says. Last summer, the pair finally did an experiment where he lit a match, then watched as the air coming out of the F-hole in Chandler’s bass blew it out.

“The low rumbling of Charles’ bass—I mean, everyone can feel it. Babies can feel it. This is why you go see live music, right?” says Yang. “And my 300-year-old Testore…these instruments create this incredible range of colors in that space. It’s been incredibly fun and meaningful and important.”

San Francisco Symphony musicians have performed in a total of 19 SFPL locations so far, and the goal is to perform in all 28. For Catherine Starr, manager of the Ingleside Branch, the chamber concerts her branch has hosted have been nothing short of “magical.” She’s seen firsthand how they make classical music accessible—in more ways than one.

“The fact that they’re free is wonderful, so that right there, making them available to everyone at every pocketbook level, is a gift,” she says.

“But I think what makes them really special is the way the musicians share with our patrons,” she adds. “Whether it’s intriguing facts about the composer or the historic period in which the piece was written, or information about their instruments, which could be hundreds of years old, or personal anecdotes, and the way they invite questions from the patrons as well… it helps to anchor the listening experience, and it’s just very warm and inviting.”

Starr notes that the audiences at these hour-long chamber concerts have included seniors, families with kids of all ages, caregivers with babies, and others who might not feel able to sit through a performance at Davies Symphony Hall.

“In some cases, we’re seeing young children for whom this may be their very first introduction to live music, and it's so intimate,” she says. “What a lovely way to begin.”
 

“A Magical Experience”: Free Community Ticket Program

The Free Community Ticket Program is among the most impactful of the Symphony’s initiatives, going on numbers alone: Since 2021, the Symphony has granted an average of 10,000 complimentary tickets each season to San Franciscans working in social services, health care, the arts, community nonprofits, and more.

The Symphony makes at least 40 free tickets available to each Symphony concert; in the 2024–25 season, tickets were distributed to more than 200 nonprofit organizations and their constituents. Grounded by the belief that world-class musical performance should be accessible to all, the Community Ticket Program provides many with their first Symphony experience.

That has meant the world to the community members of Five Keys Home Free, a trauma-informed reentry program that provides housing and support to formerly incarcerated women. Free tickets to the Symphony, which arrive about once a month, have proven a consistent source of joy for both staff and clients currently receiving support from the organization.

That’s no small feat for people who have experienced years of abuse and incarceration, says Sheila Von Driska, Five Keys Home Free’s development director.

“Many of these women have come out after decades of prison, and the fact that they can go see a symphony—in really good seats, most of the time!—that’s a magical experience,” she says.

For Tammy Johnson, Five Keys Home Free’s program director, a night out seeing live music with friends stands in stark contrast to much of her life: She was subjected to human trafficking at age 14 and spent 28 years in prison for being present when someone else committed a murder.

Johnson notes that Home Free provides women with a level of independence many transitional housing programs don’t. You can go to the grocery store—or the symphony. In July 2024, she was one of a group of seven women who received tickets to John Legend’s program with the San Francisco Symphony. The group sent Von Driska a photo of them all dressed up, posing and smiling before the performance. “It was beautiful,” says Johnson.

Susan Bustamante, now a Home Free reentry coach and an advocate with the California Coalition of Women Prisoners, has been instrumental in shaping Home Free’s support programs. Her work with Home Free was featured as part of a month-long Symphony focus on the organization in print, online, and digital displays throughout Davies Symphony Hall.

“Walking into [Davies] and seeing my face looking back at me—that was amazing, kind of overwhelming,” says Bustamante. “But really, for me, it’s about hearing the excitement from the ladies, seeing the excitement on their faces. It’s very fulfilling.”

“This group of women are so deserving,” says Von Driska. “To go through what they’ve gone through, and then have not just freedom, but then exciting freedom? You can’t put a price on that. It's really, really special, and we are so grateful to the Symphony for taking us under their wing.”
 

“Music Is Medicine”: Music in the Wards

Dan Smith, the San Francisco Symphony’s Associate Principal Bass, grew up expecting to become a physician. His mom was a nurse practitioner, and though he’d been admitted to Rice University in Houston on a music scholarship as a freshman, he declared pre-med, thinking it was much more practical to become a doctor.

Still, Smith leapt at the chance to volunteer playing music at a Houston hospital: “They had a little electric piano on wheels, and I would go around to different units and say ‘Hey, I was wondering if you’d like to hear a few songs and talk for a bit,’” he recalls. The interactions he had with patients were so powerful, he says, he was hooked almost instantly on music therapy: “I definitely believe music is medicine.”

Fifteen years later, Smith is a regular performer at Music in the Wards, the San Francisco Symphony’s partnership program with UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco. He’s one of the many Symphony musicians—ranging from soloists to small ensembles, with instruments including the violin, bassoon, harp, and percussion—who have performed in the hospital since the monthly program began in December 2016. And while Smith relishes performing multiple times a week at Davies Symphony Hall, there’s nothing he looks forward to like the handful of times each year he gets to play intimate, 90-minute shows for patients and staff at the hospital.

The program is “a gift” in a few ways, says Smith. “It’s nice to do something to show appreciation for the nurses, and hopefully bring a little peace to their day… it feels really personal when they tell you, ‘I needed this today,’ or ‘This week has been really tough.’”

Playing for young patients who are coping with serious or terminal illness has also felt meaningful. But ultimately, says Smith, it’s a gift for him. He signs up for every Music in the Wards opportunity he can. “You see kids who, all they can do is give you a thumbs up, and it's just the biggest wake-up call and perspective shift,” he says. “You've got to make sure you wake up every day grateful for whatever you have.”

To Brianna Negrete, a music therapist at UCSF Benioff, the impact of music therapy can’t be overstated. Negrete has been involved with the hospital’s partnership with the Symphony since it began and has seen countless moving interactions between patients and Symphony musicians during Music in the Wards performances.
 
“We see patients smile and dance who we haven’t seen do that before. We’ve had patients be motivated to get out of their room and walk for the first time to come see the musician who’s playing, when we’ve been trying for weeks [to help them walk], and that’s really, really powerful,” she says. “We’ve had patients who were screaming in pain just completely stop once they hear the music.”

It’s not just about lifting spirits, she says. There are measurable, physiological benefits to music. Medical professionals saw proof of this during the pandemic, especially. Music in the Wards went virtual during that time, providing much-needed beauty and comfort to both heroic first responders and sick patients during a time of deep anxiety and grief.

But the in-person concerts are magical on a different level, Negrete says, reeling off a half-dozen memorable experiences with Symphony musicians. Once, a Symphony harp player was performing in the hospital’s school room, where children who are spending months or years hospitalized take classes. UCSF Benioff medical staff heard beeping and realized that one young patient was enjoying the music so much it had lowered his heart rate. “His heart rate was dropping to a nice, relaxed state, so much that the machine wanted to make sure he was OK,” she says. “He was smiling and listening and totally fine.”

Negrete would also like to dispel the misconception that working with sick children is depressing. “We look at it from a lens of, ‘Look what we get to do to bring these patients and families so much joy,’” she says. “There’s a lot of beauty and a lot of joy and a lot of happiness here, and music is a big part of that. The Symphony makes that impact.”

And that impact continues to grow. This past spring, Symphony musicians performed for the first time at an adult hospital, thanks to a new collaboration with Art for Recovery at UCSF’s Hellen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. In the season ahead, musicians will bring live music to even more San Francisco Public Library branches and other neighborhood spaces, while the Free Community Ticket Program continues to welcome new audiences to the concert hall each week. In every corner of the city, these moments of connection help ensure the Symphony remains a vital thread in San Francisco’s cultural fabric.
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Emma Silvers is San Francisco arts and culture journalist.