 This May the University Symphony Orchestra will be going on an 11-day concert tour of Spain performing in the four cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Granada for audiences upwards of 2,000 people. Today I get to join the orchestra during their rehearsal and talk to some of the members who will be performing later this year. This is Pauli Aging and you're watching CalTV News. What made you want to join the orchestra in the first place? I've played violin for many years now and actually didn't start my first couple years here in the orchestra and I guess ended up through playing other music gigs here and there becoming friends with a number of people in the orchestra and so kind of was convinced by them to come along and I'm very happy I did. What are you most excited about for this upcoming tour? I'm really happy that we get to go together as a group to far away places. We get to represent UC Berkeley and make really great music for new audiences who may have never heard of us before. We did one European tour already in 2014 and we went to Eastern Europe and we had a blast. We ran over to the orchestra and said, where do you want to go this time? Our Dean said, you know, we should go to China and the orchestra said, no, we want to go to Spain. So we're going to Spain. We also asked four Berkeley composers to write new pieces for us that we're playing here and then we're going to take them overseas and show our Berkeley product. How do you hope this tour will bring awareness to music education, especially in a time when arts programs are always threatened with budget cuts? People should be aware that this is something cool and something that should stay. To find out more about the orchestra's upcoming events and support their tour, visit their website at orchestra.berkeley.edu or their Facebook page. Polia Jing reporting for CalTV News.