Critics attend thousands of concerts, but few linger as cherished memories. The October 2005 Auburn Symphony Orchestra's extraordinary performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11, "The Year 1905" is one.

On Sunday, the orchestra brings this symphony to Benaroya Hall, for its 10th anniversary celebration, along with Wagner's overture to "Die Meistersinger" and Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 with Craig Sheppard as soloist.

As with so many of Shostakovich's works, the symphony is the musical representation of an actual event, in this case the 1905 morning when 140,000 serfs converged peacefully on the vast square outside the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, to petition the czar for better wages and conditions. The czar was not there. His guards panicked at the immense crowd, came out shooting, and created a massacre.

In 2004, Auburn Symphony conductor Stewart Kershaw was attending a conference at the Winter Palace. He knew the 11th symphony well, and says, "Each day, crossing that immense square -- with 5,000 people it would still appear to be empty -- the symphony was drilling through my head." He knew the 100th anniversary of the uprising would be the following year, and determined to perform the work in commemoration.

A few days after that moving Auburn performance, Kershaw says, "A light bulb went off in my head." Realizing it would still be Shostakovich's anniversary year (the composer was born September 1906), he decided the orchestra's 10th anniversary celebration would be a performance of the symphony at Benaroya Hall.

It took only a short time to raise $100,000 for the project, spearheaded by the city of Auburn, which gave $25,000.

This orchestra is an anomaly. Most orchestras begin as community ensembles, as did the Tacoma and Federal Way Symphony Orchestras, the Bellevue and Seattle Philharmonic Orchestras. Many remain as community orchestras, with devoted amateur or semi-professional musicians who earn a living doing something else.

The Auburn Symphony, the youngest orchestra in the area after the Seattle Symphony, began, as Kershaw puts it, at the top, largely because of a collaboration between Kershaw and Josie Emmons (now Josie Emmons Turner), then cultural program director for the city of Auburn.

It has continued to survive and thrive because Auburn, growing at breakneck speed, recognized that to stand out on the map of South King County, the city must not only build infrastructure but nurture its arts. City council members and Mayor Pete Lewis, one of the original symphony board members, have been visible supporters at Auburn Symphony concerts and the Auburn Arts Commission has given steady support as have Auburn companies.

In 1983, Kershaw was appointed music director of Pacific Northwest Ballet and, in 1989, was asked to create a permanent PNB orchestra. "I was struck by the wealth of musicianship and artistry which so many professional musicians in the Northwest had, and which went underutilized. If they were not members of Seattle Symphony, they had virtually no outlet to perform professional symphony concerts on stage. I had this dream of somehow, somewhere, finding a venue, a city which would share my dream of creating an orchestra for them."

He never lost that dream, and on one serendipitous night in 1996, he and a few friends, including Emmons, went out after a concert. Emmons also had a dream: that Auburn would someday have its own orchestra. At that time, Auburn's Bravo series of arts events included bringing in a visiting orchestra twice a year.

There and then, using a cocktail napkin for paper, the two worked out how much it would cost for the city to field its own orchestra rather than bring in outsiders, and decided it was feasible. Emmons built a board of trustees, Kershaw auditioned the musicians, and in February 1997, the Auburn Symphony gave its first concert.

From the outset, Kershaw insisted no rehearsal or performance would take place unless every player was paid an appropriate wage. At one time he took out an equity loan on his house, which eventually reached $45,000, to cover those wages. "That was scary," he admits," but thanks to a generous bequest from a long-time board member, Gertrude Sprenger, and another major gift, we are now in the black."

Only one original board member, Lee Valenta, still serves. "One reason for our success," he says, "is that the board has been consistently focused on the quality of the orchestra. We never wanted to backpedal. Even in hard financial times, we never cut concerts, we stuck with it. Everyone believed in this so much, and everyone pitched in in the absence of staff." They still do.

As of now, the orchestra gives three pairs of concerts a season, two on the Bravo series and one self-supported, performed at the City's Performing Arts Center at Auburn High School, plus two chamber music concerts. School children are invited to rehearsals, and up to 600 may come. Kershaw has a microphone and, even though it is a rehearsal, takes time to explain to the kids what's going on.

Each year, he auditions gifted young performers from the area who are invited to sit in and play with the orchestra during a concert. For the Shostakovich this weekend, there will be three, a violinist, 13, and a cellist and harpist, both 17.

"I consider myself a lucky man," says Kershaw. "Few conductors have the opportunity to create an orchestra. We all need somehow to leave a legacy for future generations, and what a wonderful legacy to leave!"

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