It's no easy chore to sit on symphony

SALT LAKE CITY — Anne Lee, who plays the cello, is a new member of the Utah Symphony this season, just getting started in her chosen career, and given the relatively few number of positions available in top-tier symphony orchestras, it's tempting to compare her accomplishment with, say, a football player coming out of college and making the NFL.

But that's not a fair comparison.

It's harder than that.

Wait'll you hear what it took Anne, who was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, to get to Salt Lake City. You'll wonder why she didn't choose a job with an easier career path, like astronaut, maybe, or brain surgeon.

It all started when she was 5 years old and her mom, Teresa, ignoring the fact that the instrument was taller than her daughter, signed her up for cello lessons.

She faithfully practiced and played through high school, then majored in music at McGill University in Montreal, then she and her cello spent two years at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she got her master's degree, followed that with a year's study under the incomparable Lluis Claret in Barcelona, Spain, and followed that with three years in the New World Symphony program in Miami Beach, an elite, advanced, very-difficult-to-get-into academy of music that specializes in teaching the fine art of succeeding in auditions.

All that prepared her for the audition process, which began about a year ago, during her final year in Miami.

In her first seven auditions, at symphonies from one end of North America to the other, she went 0-for-7.

Then, this past March, she finally nailed the one with the Utah Symphony.

She's 29 and making her first paycheck.

Your basic wunderkind, 24 years in the making.

"I feel so grown up," says Anne, her smile a mixture of excitement and enthusiasm.

Just looking at her, you'd have no idea what she went through to get here.

Passing an audition was the last difficult hurdle to overcome — the Hillary Step of making it to the top of the symphony world.

Anne explains the audition process.

First, you hear of an opening, sign up and fly to the site of the audition. (Just to be safe, Anne always buys a seat for her cello).

At any given audition, there are 20 to 40 cellists.

Each plays a 10-minute "blind" selection for the jury.