Internship with 1akord Community Gospel Choir

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    This semester, I had the privilege of serving my internship with my community gospel choir, 1akord, under the direction of my friend and mentor Joshua Cooper. This group has been a part of the Central Illinois community for over 15 years and has ministered throughout the area through music and community engagement.

My role during this internship was Assistant Director and Media Coordinator. As Assistant Director, I was responsible for helping choose songs alongside the director for performances and ministering opportunities, teaching voice parts, running sectional and full group rehearsals, and directing portions of performances. During rehearsals, I tracked attendance, led warm ups, recorded rehearsal sessions, and distributed those recordings to group members to help them continue practicing outside of rehearsal. After rehearsals, I listened back to recordings with the director and discussed areas that needed improvement.

During performances, I acted as a liaison between the choir and director by delivering messages, helping with warm ups, and making sure our engagements ran smoothly. In some instances, I also assisted with stage setup and sound checks. Most of our ministering opportunities took place in churches, and every church had a different microphone and sound system setup. Making sure the choir and microphones were positioned correctly to achieve the best sound possible during performances became a major priority. I also had the opportunity to direct the choir for at least one song during most performances, which helped me grow more comfortable leading a group in a live setting.

As Media Coordinator, I stayed in contact with venues and sent promotional pictures and videos to help create both digital and physical flyers for events. This semester, the group was also working on its first recording project. Along with receiving payment from some performances, the team and I helped organize fundraising efforts through pop up shops and programs such as Double Good to help raise money for the project.

Overall, this experience taught me a lot about what it truly takes to run and maintain a successful music organization. I was able to see the amount of preparation, communication, leadership, and teamwork required behind the scenes to make rehearsals, performances, and projects come together successfully. This internship also helped strengthen my confidence as both a leader and musician, while giving me hands on experience that I know will benefit me in my future career within the music industry.

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