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While they were Syracuse University students, Grace Krichbaum and Dan Harris met in a class and immediately fostered a friendship over their love for music. Spending time together outside of the classroom exploring their passions was like “falling in love, platonically,” Krichbaum said. With the support of their other friends at SU, the duo ultimately formed their folk music band, Shallow Alcove. This weekend, the group will return to Syracuse for a live performance at Spring Madhouse.

“Playing for SU students and the community means everything,” Harris said. “We started our first shows playing for our friends in basements, so it means a lot that kids that are at the age when we started are listening to our music and are showing up to see it live.”

On Friday, the Bandier Program is hosting Spring Madhouse, an entirely student-run performance at The Song & Dance to celebrate the school year’s end. The show will open with two student DJs, followed by performances from Shallow Alcove and Picture Us Tiny. All of the event’s proceeds will go to a scholarship fund for Bandier students, which will help underprivileged students in the program gain full access to all the tools the program has to offer.

This year is the event’s debut. Sophomore Bandier student and Spring Madhouse organizer Romy VanAlmen said Professor of Practice Michelle Santosuosso instructed her Bandier 245 class to execute a live show for their final project. The task applied their lessons from the course, which focuses on touring and branding in the music industry.

Zach Broitman, another sophomore Bandier student, shared that Santosuosso asked each student what part of planning they were most interested in. She then separated them based on their responses and what she felt was the best place for them. Teams included production, sound, brand partnerships, content, digital marketing and grassroots promotion.

While Santosuosso booked the event’s headliners, students enrolled in the required Bandier 245 class took on the bulk of the project. Bandier sophomore Claudia Rivera said people don’t often realize how much work goes into putting on a full live show. While the show is smaller, people can still see the students’ efforts, Rivera said.

“This has been a six-week rollout of just constantly promoting from partnerships to the production team to grassroots,” Bria Lewis, a sophomore Bandier student and event organizer said. “We’re all kind of split up doing our own tasks, trying to sell as many tickets as possible and get different parts of the community active in the show.”

Jackson Velli, stage name Picture Us Tiny, will also perform this weekend. He graduated from the Bandier program last year and said SU was instrumental in developing Picture Us Tiny. For him, the community was great because it was like a support system that helped host shows and circulate his music.

“It’s very full circle to come back,” he said. “I haven’t been back since I graduated, so it’s going to be awesome seeing everyone.”

Bandier is a small major, so other people don’t always know much about what the students in the program do, VanAlmen said. She and her peers want to show that Bandier is a hands-on experience, and Spring Madhouse is an opportunity to show what they do with their studies..

The show is open to anyone, so the students hope to bring more of the Syracuse music scene outside of the campus and into the city’s broader community. Anjali Engstrom, a sophomore Bandier student and event organizer, said it’s good that the organizers are introducing some of the younger Bandier students to Shallow Alcove because many of them have never seen the group perform. Seeing SU alumni perform can inspire current undergraduates to imagine themselves in the future, Engstrom said.

“They just felt like a natural fit to be the headliners of the show,” she said.

Krichbaum grew up in Syracuse, but her group doesn’t always perform in the city, so coming back to play a show that her grandma can attend, along with all the people in the community who raised her, is special.

She is looking forward to inviting her chorus teacher from high school, her middle school band teacher and all the people who helped place the building blocks for her to be able to perform as a full-time career.

“I’m very excited to play for the Syracuse community because we’d be nowhere without it,” Krichbaum said. “We wouldn’t have any of the friends that we do. We wouldn’t have any of the inspiration that we do. To this day, it is just the most beautiful community.”

Published on May 1, 2024 at 9:27 pm