Andrew Hanson, Senior Music and Economics major, shares about their internship with the Walla Walla Symphony.
“My name is Andrew Hanson, I am a senior majoring in music (trombone performance) and economics. This summer I am interning at the Walla Walla Symphony. For them I have been working on numerous projects, as well as providing onsite support for their summer camp. I have had two projects so far which have given me experience with graphic design. One of them was making the yearbook for the Walla Walla Symphony Youth Orchestra, which is a group for kids learning music which meets during the school year. The other was color-coding multiple transcriptions of songs to enable kids to play them on boomwhackers. Boomwhackers are instruments consisting of colorful plastic tubes of different lengths. Each length of tube produces a different pitch when struck against a surface, and the color reflects what note it plays. I color-coded sheet music with colored notes which correspond to the boomwhacker which plays those notes. I also learned how to manage the symphony’s database which holds information of every piece that they have played or have in stock. I spent about 15 hours going through it and adding information. My favorite part of this internship so far has been working at Rock Camp, which is the summer camp that the symphony puts on. The camp is only a week long, but it is packed with fun. 
The idea of the camp is that on the first day of the week kids will form rock bands with each other, and by the end of the week, each band will play a song in a big concert. The concert is completely run by students–from performers to sound engineers and announcers. During the week the campers will attend classes led by instructors–including but not limited to guitar, bass, drumming, and voice classes. They will also spend a lot of time rehearsing their songs for the concert, and instructors go around to each band and assist in any way they can. Some bands know exactly what they’re doing, and others need a bit more guidance. I got to help a group who decided to play one of my favorite songs: A Message to You Rudy by The Specials. It was a ton of fun working with these kids, they were all so motivated to perform well, and they made a lot of progress. At the end of the week, they let me perform with them and we all had a blast. It was not only a dream of mine to perform that song, but it was awesome to get to test out my music teaching ability with kids who were happy to be there. For the rest of the summer I will be working on more projects, and there will be one more summer camp in August which I will be happy to assist with.”