Some people/majors would pursue an internship between school years, during the summer. What are things a music major would do the summer after the freshman year? Gig privately, take gen eds? Are there “organized” internship-like summer-long missions that are regularly found - summer playing on Disney cruise ship, summer jazz fest organizer aid, etc?
Practice
Most of the ones we know are at summer festivals.
I know a lot (mainly Music Education majors) that either help out with high school marching band(s) or do DCI. Many do both actually.
Summer festivals. Many schools have a summer abroad program for their students and also will accept students from other schools. Here is a quick link to just a few of them. Some are paid and some you pay and some have scholarships.
http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/conservatory/mecc/festivals/
My son will finish his sophomore year at Eastman in May. Last summer he practiced and worked for a local food vendor. This summer he is working at a summer music camp. His classmates are all attending festivals. He has no interest. He is a performance/music ed major and he really seems to be leaning toward working in education. He just really seems to enjoy it.
He could do any of the things suggested above. Some students go to festivals, but it can be hard to practice rep and improve your craft if you are busy with a festival for 8 or 9 weeks, so others stay home, practice, gig, work retail jobs, teach. There are many options.
My son worked for a music related website doing data entry after his first year. After his second year, he worked at the music library of a local university. This year, he is looking for an internship and will probably work at the library again. He also practiced and had gigs both summers.
Last year D did a festival, this year home to rest, travel with friends and practice, next summer most likely off to another festival.
My son is a counselor at a summer arts camp. There’s no place he’d rather be, and there’s nothing like a good job for building confidence and maturity!
S went to a liberal arts college for undergrad so he had the typical gen ed requirements - social sciences, literature, 2 math classes, 2 lb sciences, etc. The summer after his freshman year, he came home, knocked off four gen eds and worked parttime as a lifeguard-I don’t recommend taking on this much. It hurt his practice, he cut back on the work in order to study.
He went to festivals the other three summers. The festivals were great for learning about grad school opportunities and making contact with faculty and other people in general. All of the festivals he went to had college days where one could talk to representatives from conservatories and colleges. This summer he is working for $$ as one of several grad student head RAs at a festival and will be taking lessons from a teacher at the festival-he contacted the teacher and negotiated the deal. I don’t think the lessons are free since he is not a participant.
Music students who are in industry, arts administration and recording tend to have the jobs that pay; they are often bundled into credit earning internship experiences (obviously varies from school to school). S did have a friend that is now a HS music teacher who worked at a theme park as a band musician on summer. Not much money but fun.
Scratch the idea of summer jobs on Disney Cruise Lines! Those jobs aren’t “part time” or “summer”- none of their cruise line jobs are included in Disney’s College Internship Program and, in fact, the performance jobs in the theme parks are no longer part of that either.
Too bad Disney doesn’t hire college student musicians. It sounds like it would have been fun. I wonder if the economy has changed things (more professionals filling jobs)?
The audition season is over for this year for most summer theme parks but here are links to two parks that I know through S have hired musicians in the last several years. Perhaps they no longer do so? Worth checking though.
The kids S know were usually marching band members. Seems like those skills transfer readily to the theme part world. S’s friend worked at Kings Dominion as a band member summer 2012 and 2013. She loved it though I think her parents may have helped her financially as the pay may not have been sustainable.
https://www.kingsdominion.com/live-auditions/video-auditions
Another possibility.
http://www.dollywood.com/auditions/Overview.aspx
I’d encourage your student to check with his/her college’s career office. Sometimes employers like to hire from certain colleges as they has a relationship with someone in the office. Some, like a number of festivals, schedule visits to campuses with big music programs.
Disney hires a LOT of MT and VP grads- those are all full time positions, and for the most part, if you look at the instrumentalists, they are older, and have taken the job as a supplemental gig.My daughter has quite a number of friends performing on their cruise ships and she avoids the shows and “face characters” in the parks because she knows that she’ll see someone familiar!
The reason that Disney doesn’t hire “summer” help is that everyone, from the lowest to the highest, goes through “Disney College”, which is intensive training that takes several weeks before they ever have any contact with the public. It’s just not cost efficient to do that for kids who will only be there for the summer- they do have full year “Internship for Credit” programs with certain colleges, but those jobs are limited to the hospitality/hotel sector and don’t extend into the entertainment area.