Growing Intern to Manager
From the desk of: Caitlin Theall
This past Saturday, we kicked off our spring gala season with one of our favorite events, The Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra (BYSO) annual gala! BYSO is a nonprofit organization here in Boston that provides high quality orchestral training and performance opportunities to qualified musicians’ grades K-12. AE Events has been fortunate enough to partner with BYSO on this event for the last 10+ years and I have been lucky enough to be involved the last 4.
This event is very near and dear to me for several reasons but one being that this was my very first event with AE Events 4 years ago. I was interning as I finished up my last semester of college and this was not only the first event that I helped with on site, but also my first gala experience! And what an event it was. I remember being blown away at how this event came together in just a matter of 4.5 hours. Their past in-person galas have taken place at the Museum of Fine Arts and because the Museum is open to the public on the weekend, we don’t get the luxury of all day set up. Our team and vendors can start loading in at 2:00pm and by 6:15pm everything is ready to go for guests’ arrival at 6:30pm. It takes a lot of teamwork to pull off setting up an event for 200+ guests in 4 different events spaces in a matter of 4 hours!
Fast forward 4 years, and I am the manager this event. It has been such a cool experience to be able to work with an organization as I have learned and grown over the years starting as an intern and then being involved as an Event Assistant, Event Coordinator and finally Event Manager.
Of course, there were nerves and the typical pre-event jitters, but there was also so much excitement! Excitement to not only manage and execute my first gala but to also see BYSO as an organization gather again, both in-person and virtually.
This year’s gala was hybrid, so we had about 120 guests with us in the room and 100 guests tuning in virtually. The event took place once again at the Museum of Fine Arts; we had cocktail hour in the Upper Rotunda and Koch Gallery and then dinner and program in the Shapiro Courtyard. We had the perfect amount of space for our large stage and then room to space our tables out, so guests did not feel on top of each other. We then livestreamed the program so those tuning in virtually could (hopefully) feel like they were in the room with us. Here are some photos of the view for our virtual audience thanks to the wonderful team at AVFX!
It was so special to see BYSO’s community rally behind them in support of their organization. We saw supporters and board members meeting in-person for the first time and of course everyone’s favorite part - BYSO musicians - performing live! It was truly magical. You could feel the energy in the room throughout the entire event and it felt so good to be able to safely gather in-person again.
This year we had several performances starting with the ICP winds drum line which helped bring guests from cocktails in the Koch Gallery to the Shapiro Courtyard for dinner and program. I highly suggest using live entertainment to help move guests from one space to the next – it was a hit!
During the program we had performances from the Petit Ensemble and Boston Youth Symphony. The talent of BYSO’s musicians blows me away every year. It makes their gala program so unique, and it reminds guests why they support this wonderful organization. I mean who doesn’t love live music?! And some of the musicians are so young – it’s quite impressive.
I am so happy with how this event came together and it was the perfect way to kick-off the spring season! It was also such a surreal moment to remember where I was when I started working with this organization to now. The last 4 years have flown by but it has been a wonderful few years and I am so grateful to BYSO for their constant partnership!
To learn more about BYSO visit https://www.bysoweb.org
Photos by: Allegro Photography
