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Summer Education Internship at the Nashville Symphony
from my instagram feed, May 18, 2015: Nashville Symphony Education & Community Engagement Staff and Interns, Summer 2015
“The internship experience at the Nashville Symphony has been a dream come true.” says Margie Way-Kiani, one of our summer interns. “I’ve aways wanted a behind-the-scenes view of how the Nashville Symphony functions so successfully, and now I’ve had a small taste of that through the Education & Community Engagement Department.”
One of the Nashville Symphony’s many education programs, our internships provide opportunities for college students to gain experience working at not only a major American orchestra, but also the largest performing arts nonprofit in the state of Tennessee. Typically, an internship lasts a semester and is offered in the Fall, Spring, and Summer, following the usual academic calendar. This summer, the symphony is hosting an intern each in our Operations, Development, and Human Resources departments, and four interns in Education & Community Engagement.
Side By Side 2015
Nashville Symphony Concertmaster Jun Iwasaki & CYS Principal Second Violin Maggie Kasinger backstage before the annual Side-By-Side concert, May 21, 2015
This week the Nashville Symphony was joined by students from Curb Youth Symphony, Carol Nies, director, for our annual Side-By-Side Concert, featuring a truly massive combined orchestra on stage in Laura Turner Hall for a day of rehearsals on Wednesday and the performance on Thursday night. The orchestra was conducted by Nashville Symphony Assistant Conductor Vinay Parameswaran on performances of Rossini’s Overture to William Tell, the third movement of the Violin Concerto No. 3 by Camille Saint-Saëns featuring 2015 Curb Competition winner Kaili Wang, and the Finale from Symphony No. 2 by Jean Sibelius. The concert closed with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s masterful Romeo and Juliet Overture, conducted by Nashville Symphony Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero.
Spirits were high in the hall as symphony musicians were joined by teenagers from throughout Middle Tennessee – for many of our musicians this annual event is nostalgic and special as so many of them played in youth orchestras themselves when they were in high school.
Nashville Symphony Formalizes Partnership With NSA
from my Instagram feed: NSA dancers wait for their cue during a performance of Swan Lake with the Nashville Symphony at Schermerhorn, February 11, 2015
This week Nashville Symphony Education staff met with Oceana Sheehan, Assistant Principal of Nashville School of the Arts, and Bob Kucher, Director of Secondary Partnerships and Programs at the PENCIL Foundation, to formalize the partnership between the symphony and the school. It was a relatively simple process and in fact a pleasant one: we filled out some paperwork and discussed our plans for the ongoing collaboration between the two institutions next season.
Although not existing “on paper” until now, the symphony and NSA have in fact had a rich and dynamic partnership for several years now: both institutions collaborate on many events and projects throughout the year that occur both at Schermerhorn and at the school’s campus on Foster Road.
One on a Part
Or, Making Lemonade at the Symphony
When the ice storm hit Nashville in February 2015, schools were closed for more than a week. Two weeks later – at the beginning of March – schools were closed again for a snow storm. As a result, the Nashville Symphony had to cancel three mornings of Young People’s Concerts at Schermerhorn and a run-out concert to a local high school: we missed 7 performances, which would have put the orchestra in front of around 10,000 students total.
When the weather had passed and all the staff were able to get back in the hall at the same time we held a meeting to comb the calendar for the possibility of making up these canceled events – our Young People’s Concerts (YPCs) are the symphony’s flagship education program, an important component in the execution of our education mission. Usually these concerts are scheduled more than a year in advance, due to the difficulty in finding times when the availability of the orchestra, the conductor, scheduled guest artists, the MNPS school calendar, and the hall all line up and allow time not only for performances but rehearsals also. Young People’s Concerts are written into the initial schedule for the orchestra each year for this reason – it’s nearly impossible to find adequate dates and times when all these elements align mid-season.
And so it proved.
SOUNDCHECK for all students
I just learned today that the Nashville Symphony has changed our program for student tickets to be inclusive of all students, from Kindergarten through university and graduate school. This program – called SOUNDCHECK – provides $10 tickets to Aegis Sciences Classical Series performances and has been in existence for years, but until this week the program has been limited to students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate programs.
Postscript: A Day at the Hall
March 19, 2015
6:27 am: as I drink my morning tea I check the Newschannel5 website to see if they have posted their story on the Suzuki program yet – Dave told me it was going to air yesterday but I didn’t have the opportunity to see it. It’s there!
School Patrol: Students Learn Suzuki Violin Method
I hastily put together a short postscript to my post from two weeks ago before I get off the couch and prepare for another day at the hall
This is a postscript to A Day at the Hall
The Contestants
They arrive at the hall separately. After checking in at the registration table, they sit at tables in the dimly lit lobby and wait. There is some hushed conversation murmuring amongst the pillars but it is mostly between those that accompanied them; the contestants do not talk to each other.
All are teenagers. The rules specify that contestants must be at least fourteen and no older than eighteen the day of the competition – no regulation regarding school grade levels was made this year, so although most of them are in high school, there are two contestants who are college freshmen, and at least one eighth grader. Of the twenty-one who completed the application and are scheduled to audition, exactly two-thirds are girls. Originally nine boys were scheduled to compete but two withdrew in the past week, one of them bowing out only last night.
A Day at the Hall
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
6:56 am: drive into town in pouring rain and heavy traffic – listen to Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 10 in G Major, Op. 96 and drink my coffee on the way in
7:37 am: after walking to the hall from the parking lot a block and a half away, enter through the stage door and make my way up to my office: nobody else is here yet – take a few minutes to begin this blog post
7:54 am: change into my suit
note Maestro Giulini on my office wall looking over my shoulder
8:05 am: there is still nobody here so I pose for a quick suit selfie to insert here later
8:10 am: sit quietly for a few minutes
8:30 am: Education & Community Engagement Program Manager Kelley Bell arrives and we head down to a kitchen on the second floor to prepare what seems like a vast amount of coffee for the volunteers who will arrive shortly to help us this morning. Since neither of us have done this before we manage to make a bit of a mess (which we clean up as best we can) and only acceptable coffee, but we finally make our way with the cart down to the West Atrium where several volunteers are waiting. After some rearranging of tables and conferring with the volunteers and members of security staff (who will help with traffic flow for the buses full of elementary school students that are about to arrive), everything seems ready so I head backstage to try to catch concertmaster Jun Iwasaki before the buses pull in. Luckily I run into Jun in the hall and we hold a brief meeting in his dressing room about a program we are planning together for May. I stop by the Green Room to check on our guest artists for today’s concerts (more about them later), then I head back towards One Symphony Place where the first buses are beginning to pull in – it’s now about 9:45 am.
Walter Bitner 
