Strobe lights illuminated Rush Gymnasium April 13 as three acts took the stage for the annual Springfest. This year the headliner was Indigo De Souza — an Indie Rock artist — and the show featured two student openers: Alyssa Player (senior), with her accompanying band, and the Indie band Spirit Foul.
De Souza performed an arrangement of songs from her albums “I Love My Mom” and “All of This Will End.” She also played two unreleased songs for the crowd of students.
Occidental Programming Board Co-Managers Sophie Weil (junior) and Teo Lennertz (junior) said that their team has been planning SpringFest since the early Fall semester. According to Programming Board’s club advisor Steve Eulenberg, the choice for this year’s headliner was made by the student community.
“I had the students reach out and do a survey of the community to find specific artists that they were looking for,” Eulenberg said. “With that data, I helped the students go through and identify both artists that were recommended and were requested while also looking at genres.”
With the survey information, Weil said the team landed on De Souza, the 26-year-old artist from North Carolina.
In addition to SpringFest, Lennertz said that Programming Board wanted to do something a little different this year, so they decided to create Spirit Week.
“This is our first Spirit Week ever,” Lennertz said. “Every day from Monday to Friday leading up to SpringFest we have partnered with a different organization or [have] hosted an event ourselves. We wanted to make SpringFest an even bigger event than it has been in previous years, especially since we haven’t had FallFest this year. We really wanted to make this whole week something special for the school.”
According to Eulenberg, Spirit Week included events such as a magic show, an open mic night and a DJ set of student artists. Eulenberg said that he hoped this week would contribute to the campus community.
“I am hoping to build school spirit and tradition, I think that is really important,” Eulenberg said. “And then working with the larger LA music scene and being able to provide students with an experience here on campus that’s kind of reflective of the robust music scene here in LA.”
Weil said that Occidental’s community comes together around music, and it was important to Programming Board that student artists open for De Souza.
“It is a really big deal for the student bands to open and have that opportunity,” Weil said. “They get really excited, and that also draws [in] a bunch of their friends who are excited. We really want to keep supporting the student musicians here as much as possible, especially since the music community here has grown so much recently.”
According to Weil, Programming Board chose the two openers, Alyssa Player and Spirit Foul, after receiving submissions from many student artists.
Spirit Foul guitarist Eli Kramer (junior) said that it was an amazing experience for the band to be able to open at SpringFest.
“It was fun because a lot of us hadn’t played on a pro set up before,” Kramer said. “So it was fun to get a chance to hear ourselves with professional sound. And we practiced a lot more than normal, so the couple of weeks before we were gearing up and that was a lot of fun.”
Weil said that Programming Board intended to host SpringFest in Remsen Bird Hillside Theater. Due to forecasted rain, however, the Programming Board announced via email April 11 that SpringFest would be moved to Rush Gymnasium. Rush Gymnasium was then quickly converted into a stage, complete with lighting and free refreshments provided by Yerba Mate.
“Honestly, the space was cool,” Kramer said. “I think they did a good job of making the gym feel like a different space.”
With the basketball nets lifted up to make room for the stage, Player opened up the night with originals from her album “Ice Cream Trucks,” supported by band members Lucas Donovan (junior), Matan Birnbaum (junior) and Luca Nisimblat (sophomore).
Following Player, Spirit Foul — a band made up of students Kramer, Lily Pesikoff (sophomore), Nate Pitroff (sophomore) and Soren Covell (sophomore) — played mostly originals, alternating between main vocalists.
After the student openers, headliner De Souza took the stage, playing many of her top hits. During her song “Younger & Dumber,” the audience took out their phone flashlights.
According to Weil, at the end of the day SpringFest is an event for the students, and the Programming Board wanted to create an event that reflected and uplifted the campus community.
“SpringFest is a super communal, fun and different event,” Weil said. “Every year we are able to make the choice of keeping it free for all the students. That’s a big thing that we will keep doing just to be able to give access to the community.”
Contact Nora Youngelson at youngelson@oxy.edu
