March 1, 2026
Cathryn Down, Second Violin
A Bay Area native, Cathryn Down joined the San Francisco Symphony as an acting member in 1994 and became a permanent member of the violin section in 2001.
What was your first experience playing with the SF Symphony?
My first time playing with the Symphony was as a substitute in a recording session for Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration with Herbert Blomstedt. After seven years playing as a substitute, I won a tenure-track position in 2001 when MTT was music director.
How did you begin playing the violin?
My mother, who was assistant concertmaster of the San Jose Symphony, gave me a violin a few months before my second birthday. I had a Suzuki teacher beginning when I was five. Growing up in the Bay Area, I joined the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra in its inaugural year. It has been my dream to play in the SF Symphony since I was 13.
Story continues below...
What was your first experience playing with the SF Symphony?
My first time playing with the Symphony was as a substitute in a recording session for Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration with Herbert Blomstedt. After seven years playing as a substitute, I won a tenure-track position in 2001 when MTT was music director.
How did you begin playing the violin?
My mother, who was assistant concertmaster of the San Jose Symphony, gave me a violin a few months before my second birthday. I had a Suzuki teacher beginning when I was five. Growing up in the Bay Area, I joined the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra in its inaugural year. It has been my dream to play in the SF Symphony since I was 13.
Story continues below...
What were your next steps in getting here?
My journey was not a straight line, like life is not a straight line. I quit the violin for most of my teenage years and planned to study business or economics in college. Then one day I decided I needed to get back on my music path. So I went to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where I got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees studying with Zaven Melikian, who had played with the SF Symphony and then became concertmaster of the SF Opera Orchestra.
What kind of violin do you play?
I have a Jean-Baptiste Villaume. I looked for three years for a violin, and I was looking for an Italian instrument. I looked all over Europe during the years I spent working in Germany and Belgium. I did not find one. On a trip back to the Bay Area, I called Nash Mondragon at the Cremona Violin Shop in San Francisco. He showed me three violins, and I looked at the one in the middle and asked, “what’s that?” with incredible delight and awe at the beauty of the instrument. He said, “that one is French.” At that moment, it no longer mattered where it was made. I played it and fell in love with it.
Do you have a preconcert routine?
I don’t like to talk much before a concert. I honor my introverted nature.
What do you enjoy besides music?
I’m a recent graduate of the Academy of Intuition Medicine. I have stayed connected to the Academy and now tutor students going through the program.
Does that connect back to music?
Art and music take us out of our linear minds of getting things done and the necessities of life—taking care of business, so to speak. Those are all things we have to do in our material world. There is a whole other domain that exists that can help us, and exists whether or not we pay attention to it. That’s a higher spiritual domain. Playing music, coming to concerts, creating art, looking at art—anything done for the sake of the love of beauty is one of the most healing things we can do for ourselves and those around us, because we are changed from the inside out.
My journey was not a straight line, like life is not a straight line. I quit the violin for most of my teenage years and planned to study business or economics in college. Then one day I decided I needed to get back on my music path. So I went to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where I got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees studying with Zaven Melikian, who had played with the SF Symphony and then became concertmaster of the SF Opera Orchestra.
What kind of violin do you play?
I have a Jean-Baptiste Villaume. I looked for three years for a violin, and I was looking for an Italian instrument. I looked all over Europe during the years I spent working in Germany and Belgium. I did not find one. On a trip back to the Bay Area, I called Nash Mondragon at the Cremona Violin Shop in San Francisco. He showed me three violins, and I looked at the one in the middle and asked, “what’s that?” with incredible delight and awe at the beauty of the instrument. He said, “that one is French.” At that moment, it no longer mattered where it was made. I played it and fell in love with it.
Do you have a preconcert routine?
I don’t like to talk much before a concert. I honor my introverted nature.
What do you enjoy besides music?
I’m a recent graduate of the Academy of Intuition Medicine. I have stayed connected to the Academy and now tutor students going through the program.
Does that connect back to music?
Art and music take us out of our linear minds of getting things done and the necessities of life—taking care of business, so to speak. Those are all things we have to do in our material world. There is a whole other domain that exists that can help us, and exists whether or not we pay attention to it. That’s a higher spiritual domain. Playing music, coming to concerts, creating art, looking at art—anything done for the sake of the love of beauty is one of the most healing things we can do for ourselves and those around us, because we are changed from the inside out.
