I’m often asked by friends and colleagues what life is like during the summer at the North Carolina Symphony’s Artistic Operations and Education Departments. After all, schools on the traditional calendar are out, and therefore we don’t give any of our Education Concerts for elementary school children. Additionally, most of our other programs aren’t as visibly active as they are from September to June.

It’s true, there aren’t as many scheduled public events, but these summer months are busy in a different way. Summer is the time when we lay groundwork for the numerous events occurring in the upcoming season – from planning pre-concert talks and chamber music programs to preparing conductor itineraries and guest artist visas. For the Education Department that includes more than 45 statewide Education Concerts, a couple dozen small ensemble performances, open dress rehearsals, master classes and a veritable cornucopia of instrument zoos – plus much more! To list everything would take too long. For me, summer is one of the busiest times of the year.

The largest project we tackle during the summer is the production of teacher and student handbooks which accompany our Education Concerts. With more than 50,000 students and 1,000 educators using these books each year, these are some of the most significant publications that the North Carolina Symphony produces.

The 70-some-odd pages are authored by four North Carolina music educators who start their work in the spring, after the artistic staff has finished selecting the works for the upcoming education concert program. When I receive the authors’ material in June, it is raw and unformatted. From there I work to organize and construct each lonesome file into something that resembles a book. After that, the two-month-long “hot potato” game between the NCS editors and our graphic design contractors begins. That is what my life at the office has looked like for a few weeks: elbow deep in drafts of the education concert books. What a great feeling it was this afternoon to give that final “sign-off” and send the books to print! The first public glimpse of the books will be at our Education Concert Workshop on August 10.

As an added bonus this year, I’ll have more editing to do in August, when three teams of teacher authors will submit material for our first-ever middle and high school concert guides. I can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with.

Of course, during this time we’ll also be planning the details for more than 14 other education programs. For more information on these programs, please click over to the education pages and read for yourself. (Yes, that was a shameless plug.)

So, that’s a picture of what summer is like for us here in the Education Department office at the North Carolina Symphony. It’s a lot to accomplish over these few hot months of the year, but when the concerts and our other programs start up again in September, it always proves to be more than worth the effort. Enjoy your summer!!