St. Thomas’ student record label, the 480 Collective, set up an “unplugged” concert with several student artists performing to kick off on-campus music in the 2024-25 school year on Thursday, Nov. 14 in the Schoenecker Center’s new recording studio.
The 480 Collective provides young artists with a community that helps them in producing, recording and launching their own music.
“The collective started as a capstone project that I participated in,” said founding member junior Ben Barrett. “Now we have 23 artists in a range of genres.”
They have also already released “The Collection Vol. 1,” and, as the title implies, it is a collection of music from ten student artists who signed and worked with the label. Barrett envisions the group becoming ever-bigger as time goes on, with ambitions of moving more events up to North Campus to attain a larger audience.
As a first step toward this goal, the group showed off this year’s artists in an acoustic manner. Marking the first event in the new recording studio, the showcase featured dim lamps emitting a warm-white light, creating a cozy atmosphere that welcomed the audience in to where they would sit down — just a few feet away from the artists.
The talents of nine artists were shown off: Arianajane, Seamus Healy, Thankujonah, Slyda, C_rson, Barrett, Dane Raarup, Alex Leary and Alexis Schulke. All performed songs with pure vocals, enthralling the audience.
During the unplugged show, one artist plugged in. C_rson used their computer to manipulate and create unique harmonies that formed a sound exclusively their own. Other artists like Slyda produced purely vocal music.
Another artist who performed was Jonah Pfosor, a first-year student who had his first live performance at the event. He said he joined the collective in search of other people to accompany him.
“I’ve been making music for years and writing my own stuff,” Pfosor said. “It’s cool that I’m able to hang out with other artists and be given opportunities to grow and perform.”
While he said he normally sings with a lot more production, the 480 Collective has allowed Pfosor to step into a genre outside his comfort zone and helped him on the technical side of things when it came to changing one of his songs to fit the event’s acoustic theme.
From solo vocalists to computerized distortion of sound, Barrett said the concert allowed aspiring artists to not only have a chance to perform live to an audience, but also have a chance to work with the others in their field to grow in their musical talent.
“The more stuff we do, what I envisioned gets bigger and bigger, ” Barrett said. “… The goal is making live music a core part of the St. Thomas community.”
Giovanni Mariani can be reached at mari6061@stthomas.edu.