On the first of May, appropriately, the springiest lady of the San Francisco Symphony, Agnes Albert, was honored with a dinner dance at Runnymede Farm in Woodside to benefit, also appropriately, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. This great lady had only done more for young musicians than anyone else in the City's history, both at the San Francisco Conservatory and through the Symphony.

Our one and only Agnes has been a member of the San Francisco Symphony's Board of Governors since 1952, been its vice president since 1962, and chair of its Artistic Policy Committee since 1978. That's for starters. In 1970 she initiated and organized the Summer Music Workshop and Fall In-School Program, giving crucial financial support to these joint projects of the Symphony and the San Francisco Unified School District. She put up $100,000 which the NEA then matched and for six weeks each summer, the best of the City's musical students were taught by the professionals of the Symphony and the best of those students were allowed to play alongside the symphony musicians in a concert at the end of the term. At the time, she said she hoped to extend the program into the surrounding counties, but it didn't happen quite that way.

Then three years later, she established the Agnes Albert Youth Music Education Fund and in 1981, was a leader in creating the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra which, drawing members from surrounding counties does something to fulfill Agnes Albert's hopes in lieu an extension of the short-lived Summer Music Workshop. She's done so many things for our music world. For instance, she played a key role in arranging for the first American concert by Yo Yo Ma, at the age of 12. And she has been a major supporter of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

As the niece of Richard Tobin, one of the 25 founding members of the San Francisco Symphony Association in 1909, Agnes Albert Tobin has indeed inherited her role. The first Richard Tobin who came here in 1847, founded the Hibernia Savings and Loan Society. Subsequent Tobins married De Youngs and Thierriots, the San Francisco Chronicle's family. The Agnes Tobin who preceded her, her aunt, was a lady of distinguished literary accomplishments.

Agnes has been honored but not nearly enough. In 1974, she received the Steinway Award. In 1985, she was honored at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, another of her favored institutions to which she donated a grand piano. (She also serves on the Fine Arts Museums' board.) Two years later, she, along with Louise Davies and Anna Logan Upton, received the Leonardo Da Vinci Award from the California Federation of Arts, and in 1992, the 60-seat, small recital hall at the Conservatory was named after her.

A musician herself, a pianist, Agnes has played publicly here--with the Symphony, and the Pro Arte, Hungarian, Budapest and Lenox String Quartets-- but not for a while. Mostly she can be seen at the Symphony and around town, usually wearing her trademark felt hat. She's been an pioneer, a prime mover, a model and in the best sense a musical angel. And oh yes, she is 91 this year. You'd never know it. It's the music that does it. She gives and it gives back and we are much the richer.

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