Board of Directors

John Arnott

President

John joined the board of directors in 2015 after having played with the Civic Symphony for four years and serving on committees for three.  He is part of the finance committee, helping to coordinate the construction of the association’s annual budget.  He continues in his role of facilities coordinator, having started in 2012, researching and negotiating venue rentals and support services for the association’s ensembles’ rehearsals and performances. 

John first played with an SF Civic Music ensemble in the Summer Workshop of 2011.  The workshop’s primary goal of providing a route for musicians to re-enter the world of ensemble playing was perfect for John, who had left his violin in the closet literally for decades before picking it up again in the early 2000s.  He then joined the Civic Symphony for the Fall concert that year.  He has also played with our “Mozart to Mendelssohn” orchestra (M2M) and the SF Civic Strings.

He is hard-pressed to name a favorite piece, but still loves Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien, which was on an album he found in his parents’ collection as a young boy. He was thrilled to have a chance to play that piece with M2M in May, 2025

Gerri Donato

Gerri joined the 2nd violin section of the SF Civic Symphony in 2008 when the Old First Presbyterian orchestra disbanded. She has participated in the Summer Workshop each year since its inception, and recently joined the 1st violins of the Civic Strings ensemble. When she isn’t performing with one of the groups, she enjoys ushering at the other association concerts. As duty called, she has served on the board at various times as vice president, secretary, and since 2013 as treasurer.

As a resident of San Francisco for 45 years, Gerri has come to appreciate the unique role played by the SF Civic Music Association in absorbing new and established members of our community into a variety of performing ensembles to meet the needs of musicians of all skill levels, and in providing high-level amateur musical performances to the public free of charge.

A retired physical therapist, when not practicing her instrument or performing her duties as treasurer of the association, Gerri can be found in the pool practicing with her synchronized swimming teammates, perfecting her Tai Chi skills, keeping up with several book clubs, cycling around the Bay Area and beyond, and providing feedback to our elected leaders and their appointees in Washington, D.C.

David Lansky

Treasurer

David is a life-long classical music fan and devoted M2M audience member (and spouse of a violinist).  He has volunteered with SFCMA as an usher since 2023 and helped set up the 2025 gala auction while also soliciting donations and grants.  He believes strongly in Civic Music's mission and would like to bring his experience with governance and management to the organization and continue to create opportunities for amateur musicians to play and learn and perform for the community.

Now retired, he has 25 years of experience as the CEO of non-profit organizations.  His knowledge of non-profit finances, legal matters, personnel, marketing, and governance activities will be a helpful addition to our Board.

David will not call himself a musician, but he’s an enthusiast.  As a child, he attended Boston Symphony, Tanglewood, and Cleveland Symphony concerts.  He played clarinet in grade school, sax in middle-age, and started playing piano 5 years ago.  He’s painstakingly working on a Chopin waltz and a Mozart sonata these days.  His wife Patricia has been active in M2M for 4 years.

Kat Feller

Secretary

Kat has been musically inclined pretty much her entire life.  She is the daughter of Roland and Lois Feller, fellow SF Civic musicians. 

A native San Franciscan, she grew up in a musical family and with a strong lifelong love of music. She is a music teacher, and plays violin and viola, and is currently with M2M as violist and Coordinator. Fun fact: Kat could be considered a quadruple threat. She plays violin, viola, is the M2M orchestra coordinator… and sings!

She is a regular performer with Lamplighters Music Theatre and Pocket Opera, as well as playing in civic groups and with Villa Sinfonia. She has her bachelors in Musical Theatre and Vocal Performance from Chico State University.

Diane Rigda

Diane joined the Civic Symphony in 1999, playing flute and piccolo, and has watched this organization evolve into what it is today.  She started playing flute at 10 years old in Cleveland, Ohio, where she grew up.  Diane fondly remembers the magic of that feeling the first time she made a sound in the flute and has been grateful for all the family and friends who supported her playing over the years.  In high school she played in her high school marching band and was drum major during her junior and senior years.  She continued to play in various groups during college at Cornell University.  Prior to joining the Civic Symphony, Diane was the conductor of the San Francisco Deutscher Musik Verein, a 30-piece volunteer brass/woodwind concert band (founded in 1937!), for almost 12 years.  

Diane is proud to represent a woodwind/brass voice on the Board and is learning about the treasurer duties in order to be a solid backup for the current Treasurer, Gerri Donato.  She is interested in developing more extensive outreach for our players by facilitating ensembles to perform in small venues throughout San Francisco. 

The privilege of playing in a full-size orchestra is a gift which Diane values immensely.  When not playing flute, she is a probate paralegal, formerly a travel writer/world traveler.  She now enjoys pedaling her bicycle to work as well as to rehearsals.  She lives with her husband, Steve Dowd (a violinist and violist, currently playing in M2M), and their daughter, currently a student at Sonoma State University.  Though she has lived in San Francisco for over 35 years, she still has family in Ohio and carries the mid-West culture within.

Vik Sharma

Vik Sharma joined the SF Civic Music Board in Fall of 2020. He first joined the Civic Symphony in Fall 2011 along with Civic colleague John Arnott, both having met at an orchestra class of nine players at CCSF the prior Spring! Like many, Vik started playing violin with the Civic Symphony after a multi-decade hiatus from any playing, having also like many, begun his musical career in 4th grade in school and with private instruction which continued through high school, during which time Vik also played second violin for two years with the Los Gatos-Saratoga Symphony, a well-loved community orchestra. As an undergrad at UC Berkeley, Vik became exposed to chamber music through a remarkable performance class taught by Felix Khuner, a founding member of the Kolisch String Quartet which premiered works by Bartok, Hindemith, Schoenberg and others in the 1920s-1940s. In the course of three years, he and his fellow students played works by Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Haydn, Bartok, and Mendelssohn.

Inspired by a love of chamber music and by participation of colleagues at SF Civic, Vik organized three annual Civic Chamber music concerts and one Civic Chamber music workshop, held at the Koret Auditorium in the San Francisco Public Library beginning in the Fall of 2013. It was at this concert that Ayako Onoda was introduced to the Association as a performer, and she shortly thereafter joined the Board of Directors becoming, its President for many years. All the while, Vik continued to play violin in the Civic Symphony, often viola in Civic Strings, until the founding of the Mozart to Mendelssohn Symphony, where he now plays viola. His other career, still active, has been as a molecular biologist working in early stage research to understand the molecular mechanisms of human diseases with the goal of developing therapeutics against them.

Karen Man

Karen has been contributing her design management skills towards marketing and concert promotions for the SF Civic Music Association, beginning in 2023. She first joined the SF Civic Music Association in 2022, as pianist with Civic Symphony, and appreciated the dedication she found amongst fellow orchestra members. Music has always been a part of Karen’s life, whether listening to a diverse range of styles and genres — CantoPop, punk rock, from Horowitz, to The Smiths, Ibrahim Maalouf to the Magic Flute — or learning a new piece of music.

Starting at age 6, Karen began music lessons in singing and to read vocal sheet music. Eventually she learned to play vocal music on the school piano, as well as bells and clarinet. Her singing eventually led to a place in the San Francisco School of the Arts, and with the addition of private piano lessons she learned classical piano technique and repertoire. Getting out of the practice room and into a rehearsal space with other musicians has been rewarding.

Coinciding with music, Karen is also an Interior Designer with projects on both coasts and has developed designs for clients including commercial developments, hospitality, healthcare, and private residences. She is also an adjunct instructor with the Academy of Art, taught Interior Design Senior Thesis at San Francisco State University, and has also previously played piano for ballet. During her non-work hours, when not volunteering, she also teaches piano.

Wenqi Shao

Wenqi first joined the San Francisco Civic Music Association in the summer of 2019 as a violinist in the Summer Workshop, after a multi-year hiatus from orchestras. Since then, Wenqi has played the violin regularly with Civic Symphony and the Summer Workshop and even performed a piano concerto solo with the Summer Workshop in 2022. She is an active member of the musical community in San Francisco and also performs with Awesöme Orchestra and the SF Philharmonic. Wenqi is on the board of the California Youth Symphony. She really believes in the SF Civic Music Association’s mission of providing performance opportunities to musicians of all skill levels, and high-level amateur musical performances to the public free-of-charge.

By day, Wenqi is a growth and data science leader for a high-growth tech startup and data influencer. Outside of work and music, Wenqi is an avid runner, tennis player, and has completed an Ultramarathon, a Half Ironman, and a Double Century. She reads prolifically, more than 100 books a year and with several book clubs, and loves learning new skills and exploring new places. You can find Wenqi always up for an adventure.