UTEP Interns to Take Note at Chamber Music Festival
Ten music students from The University of Texas at El Paso will get hands-on training in how to execute an arts event as interns during the annual El Paso Pro-Musica (EPPM) Chamber Music Festival that starts Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020.
The graduate and undergraduate students will serve the festival in different capacities through their internships that conclude Sunday, June 19. They will work behind the scenes to assist the performers and in the venues to greet and usher the patrons and coordinate media. The goal of the exercise is to have the students engage the public to broaden their perspectives as future arts entrepreneurs.
The EPPM Chamber Music Festival will conclude Feb. 1, 2020.
Interns will work – and perform – at 9 a.m. Friday, Jan. 10, at Salt+Honey Bakery Café, 801 N. Piedras St., No. 6 (north of Yandell). The event will begin with a performance by Zuill Bailey, EPPM artistic director, Grammy Award winner and UTEP music instructor. They also will support the performance of jazz pianist Matt Herskowitz at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 12, in the UTEP Fox Fine Arts Center Recital Hall.
“They will work the front of the house and the back of the house to see how things roll,” said Felipa Solis, EPPM executive director and a leader with UTEP’s Center for Arts Entrepreneurship (CAE), a collaboration between the University and EPPM. “They will learn the concepts from point A to point B. They will learn from the beginning. We all had to learn from the beginning at some point. It will be on the job training for them.”
Solis said that she developed the festival internship concept with Bailey and Steve Wilson, DMA, chair and professor of music at UTEP.
The trio promoted the pilot internship program through class announcements and posters around the department offices and practice rooms in the Fox Fine Arts Center. About 40 students applied for the 10 internship slots. Solis and Wilson based their selections on academics, interviews, interest in performance and participation in the Department of Music and community projects.
Solis said that the performers, who also are educators in their own right, know that interns will be part of the festival and look forward to the opportunity to assist the students.
“They all understand that in a sense they are passing the classical music torch and they are happy to participate,” she said.
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