Cassie Drake was so nervous about her upcoming performance — the most important of her life to date — that she flew to Los Angeles to perform her program for her former professors. Then she traveled to Salt Lake City to play the same program for Utah Symphony violist J.T. Posadas, a strong mentor during her high school years.

“I memorized the entire list [of potential works],” the 27-year-old Naples musician recalled. “I took a lot of trips out to just run this list as much as possible, to be as prepared as possible. I needed to play it in my sleep.”

When she had finished that performance, Drake won the prize she had coveted: a position as assistant principal violist in the Naples Philharmonic.

Not only was she coming in at a level of responsibility unusual for someone so young, but Drake was also making history here. She is the first graduate of the Naples Philharmonic Youth Orchestra in its 24 years to be accepted into the professional orchestra. Drake plays her first concert as assistant principal violist with the full orchestra at the opening Masterworks Series concert Oct. 30 and Nov. 1. That likely won’t be as nerve-wracking as the audition was, because Drake has played as a substitute in the Naples Philharmonic for at least a year. But in an audition, the musicians perform behind a screen so their identities — even their genders — aren’t known.

It had been a long road to that few minutes of performance from a journey that has mixed hard work with blessings.

Drake’s four brothers and sisters all took string instrument lessons, and as a youngster Cassie Drake played violin, like her older sister, Misty.

“I was very competitive,” she recalled, and that led to frustration. She put down the instrument. Then her mother surprised her on her 7th birthday with a viola.

“It has a voice unlike any other instrument in the orchestra. It’s incredibly unique because it can play so rich and deep like a cello, but you can be as virtuosic as a violinist, so it just opens up a really unique door that I think I needed, you know. Coming from a big family, I had to stand out a little bit.

“She was very smart about that,” she said of her mother, and laughed. “My dad was happy because you get more scholarships when you play viola.”

Starting with training here

Drake came through the Youth Symphonia and the Naples Philharmonic Youth Orchestra under the leadership of Gregg Anderson, both important learning experiences. But viola teachers were scarce, until Posadas came to the Naples Philharmonic as a violist. Even before then, the two Drake sisters and several Youth Orchestra friends had put together a quartet, and they began performing at benefits and donor dinners with Anderson accompanying them.

“We just loved to play and we said, ‘We’re going to continue as a quartet in the youth orchestra,’ which wasn’t a thing yet,” she said. The orchestra has since added chamber pieces for small groups.

Then Posadas became her viola teacher, and Drake began to sense this could be a career.

“He changed my life. He took our Anderson string quartet. He said, ‘You guys really have something,’” she recalled. Posadas encouraged the Anderson String Quartet, as they had become known, to audition for a national competition, and began coaching them. To their delight, they were accepted into the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition at the University of Notre Dame.

While the group didn’t win, its musicians came away with invaluable experience, and Cassie Drake came away with a firmly set trajectory. She applied to eight schools and received scholarships for all, but chose Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles for its small size and personal attention.

She was floored when one of its best teachers, Paul Coletti, took her on as a student.

“This school is one of the tops in the U.S., if not the world. And so everyone coming in had gone to Juilliard Pre-College or New England Conservatory of Music Pre-College. I mean, they were the cream of the crop. And I was from, you know, Naples, Florida.”

But she realized later that being from Naples, where onstage performances, concerts and chamber appearances were plentiful, had given her familiarity with audience performances that some of her classmates didn’t have. It also gave her an ease in talking with audiences, which is how she met Bernard Friedland, a World War II veteran and a violist, at the Sarasota Music Festival.

Friedland became her patron, allowing her to take advantage of another blessing: When her Colburn teacher retired from performance, Friedland procured his 1872 viola, one he had played for all his recordings and traveled with around the world on tours, and has lent it to her.

Among family

Friedland is now nearly 100, and in assisted living, so he is probably not able to attend her first concert Thursday as a full philharmonic member. But Drake will be among other people special to her. That is what made her audition so critical.

“The audition was terrifying because I knew everyone here. Everyone knew I was auditioning and there was lots of pressure,” she said.

When Drake’s name was announced as the winner, she stepped from behind the screen to see Lisa Mattson, another philharmonic violist, cellist Eric Dochinger “and just all these people that I consider my family. And they were just there cheering and screaming. They were crying. I was crying.

“It was such a moment of [coming] full circle for me to be a part of the Naples Philharmonic. It was something I never thought I could do, but growing up, I aspired to these people,” she said.

“Now they’re my colleagues and I’m sitting next to them.”

Series opener

What: Masterworks Series No. 1; the Naples Philharmonic, with Gabriella Montero performing the Rachmaninoff Piano Concert No. 2; Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man; Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, more; music director Alexander Shelley conducting

When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 30 and Nov. 1 Where: Hayes Hall, Artis—Naples, 5833 Pelican Bay Blvd., Naples

Tickets/where to buy: $15-$82; artisnaples.org; 239.597.1900; or at the box office

Good to know: Bag sizes restrictions have been relaxed but are still in force — see artisnaples.org/visit/security; also, The Baker Museum is open free to ticketholders until 8 p.m.