Category: NC Symphony – Kainoa K & Rhoda Y

Taking even a small part in the running of the Symphony’s concert was a really exciting experience! I started my time there with Mr. Schiller introducing me to several employees of the Symphony and showing me around the venue. Afterwards, I spent some time behind the marketing table near the entrance to the amphitheater, answering questions from concertgoers and passing out brochures for the upcoming Summerfest shows and the 2022-23 season, and then once the music started I was allowed to just listen and enjoy! Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade was the main item on the program, which is one of my absolute favorite pieces of music, so it was really lovely to get to watch the performance. Aside from the music, it was also neat to see the community that has built around these shows. Via just watching the evening play out, no behind-the-scenes tour or insider pointers required, it became clear how much people genuinely love coming to these concerts, from the grandparents excitedly bringing their grandchildren for the first time to the families that would show up as much as two hours early to compete in the pre-show picnic contest held weekly for the outdoors summer shows. Everyone at the Symphony puts in a lot of effort to make these concerts as enjoyable as possible, and it really pays off!

Sorry that this is a few days late, I just started writing my Day 4 update and realized I never actually uploaded this post! Slight delay aside, Thursday was another good day interning with the Symphony! Day 3’s work mainly consisted of working on the spreadsheet I began work on the previous day, digging up contact information for music teachers at schools in some of the rural counties that the Symphony’s education program has yet to reach. Even though the work was a bit tedious, seeing the tiny or nonexistent arts programs at some of the schools I was researching really highlighted how privileged a lot of Wake County schools and especially Cary Academy are to have the resources we do!

Much smaller but still interesting, another task I had on Day 3 was to sort through a pile of education concert booklets for previous years’ shows, similar to the one I helped prepare on Days 1 and 2.

Exemplifying the extensive history of the Symphony, one of the oldest booklets in the pile, from the 90’s, proudly advertised that its year of creation was the 50th anniversary of the education concerts! North Carolina has such a rich musical history, and it is really cool to see the Symphony continue such long-running traditions to this day.

Day 2 was mostly a continuation of the work I started Monday. Aside from a meeting with Ms. Haddock, who went over expectations and rules regarding working with the Symphony, I spent the most of the day continuing my research for the education concert booklets. Research subjects of the day included Georges Bizet, a French romantic era composer, J. Rosamond Johnson, an American composer from the Harlem Renaissance, Anthony Kelley, a contemporary American composer who is currently a professor at Duke, and Arturo Marquez, a contemporary Mexican composer.

Knowledge of not only the music written by the super traditionally famous names, but also of the more diverse composers throughout history is both really interesting and important, so it’s cool to see the effort the Symphony puts into that when planning these concerts.

Nearing the end of the day, after I finished my research for the booklets, I worked on finding contact information for music teachers in schools from counties that the NC Symphony’s education program has not yet been able to extend to and organizing the information in a spreadsheet. Even though the Symphony’s education program has reached counties all over the state, the organization aims to reach every single one, so hopefully some of the information I compiled will be useful in continuing that mission!