That rush of excitement and jolt of emotion that courses through your body when you lock eyes with the lead singer — or pause your dancing to take in a crowd of strangers singing together — is a feeling unique to live performances.
Pitzer College’s Kohoutek Music & Arts Festival, an annual student-led tradition dating back to the 1970s, returned on Saturday, March 28. From 3 p.m. to 1 a.m., organizers transformed Brant Field & Clock Tower Lawn into a 10-hour celebration of music, complete with food vendors, flea market stalls and students selling Kohoutek merchandise.
From the open-air lawn where students and guests chatted and danced together, to catering by the student-run Grovehouse, Kohoutek’s organizers took great care to cultivate an inclusive, welcoming environment.
“[Kohoutek] is historical,” L. Brock PZ ’25 said. “It leads us to some sort of community experience that transcends each year … It is also bigger than just Pitzer itself. It kind of connects all of Claremont.”
Brock emphasized the festival’s importance not only to Pitzer but to the entire 5C community. The tradition has remained alive and well since its founding in the 70s because it offers students more than just the typical experience — drinking and dancing to streamed music — that most 5C nightlife events provide.
“Kohoutek is named after a comet,” organizer Ashe West-Lewis PZ ’26 said, referring to the highly anticipated but ultimately disappointing comet, Kohoutek, which Pitzer students gathered to watch in 1973.
Despite the letdown, students still celebrated, and so on that day, this yearly celebration of music and community was born.
At 3:30 p.m., Sequoia Ariel, one of the featured artists and festival opener, walked onto the stage, looking down at a crowd of students strewn across the grassy lawn. As she kicked off the lineup, the crowd continued to grow, and students stood up and danced along to Sequoia’s selection of original songs and covers.
Later, a series of student bands took the stage, including The G Strings, Coast, Stuck in a Jam and Noah’s Ark. The festival also featured outside artists, such as Peter Harper, HAILE, Lottie’s Asha Imuno, Automatic and Ed Axel.
By 10 p.m., the atmosphere had shifted entirely. As the sky darkened, groups of people sitting on colorful picnic blankets slowly made their way to the front of the lawn. The calm swaying from side to side quickly turned into a typical mosh scene, with people crammed together, dancing and singing into the early hours of the next day.
While the performers at Kohoutek have varied throughout the years, this year’s organizers made a deliberate choice to return the spotlight to student bands.
“We put an audition sheet out there, and we got auditions from student musicians and bands throughout the 5Cs,” organizer and Noah’s Ark performer Noah Straus PZ ’26 said. “We chose three student bands [in addition to my own] to perform at the beginning of Kohoutek, because friends love to come and see them play, and who knows when they’ll have another opportunity to play at a music festival.”
These student performers set the tone for the festival, as their creativity and passion for playing carried into the audience experience. Many attendees described how for them, live music became something that was felt as much as it was heard.
“There are vibrations in the air,” attendee Lilly Hunter PZ ’27 said. “You’re experiencing and feeling the art as soon as it’s coming out of the instrument that creates it. I think it’s being a part of that, receiving that and spreading that energy [that creates] this beautiful space.”
Oliver Dean PZ ’26 echoed Hunter’s enthusiasm for Kohoutek’s live music, noting that the experience served to bring the community together in new ways.
“I think live music can be sort of spiritual,” Dean said. “It’s a great way to share emotion and a great way to feel emotion.”
For some attendees, the importance of live music lies in seeing the humanity of the performers themselves. Brock emphasized that being present — with both the music and the person creating it — makes for a more powerful listening experience.
“There’s opportunity for mistakes and abnormalities,” Brock said. “That makes it all the more special because it’s the only experience you can have in the present. That’s an even bigger sentiment of just being engaged with what’s presently in front of you is really powerful and worthwhile.”
That sense of presence points to a sharp contrast in how most people consume music today. Before the rise of streaming platforms and personal devices, live engagement with music was the default. Whether in restaurants, living rooms or informal sing-alongs, music was something shared in real time with performers and listeners.
With the advent of algorithmic platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, appreciating music has increasingly become a solitary activity. At its core, many feel that both playing and listening to music is about connection with others outside of yourself; Straus expressed that live performance is a space where that intimacy can be reclaimed.
“[Listening to music on streaming services] is harder for people to engage [with] on an intimate level,” Straus said. “When it comes to live music, that’s where artists really get to curate their work, and where [the audience] get to really be grounded with the music. As much as the world’s changing, live music is one of those things that’s always going to be important.”
While the impacts of this shift can feel overwhelming at times, it has prompted a growing collective desire to keep traditions alive and think critically about how to carve out these spaces in a digital world. For many, live performance spaces like Kohoutek serve as reminders of the value of shared human experiences.
“Now, in the world of AI usage and social media usage, I think the digital age has really made us reflect on what was important,” Dean said. “Pitzer does a really good job emphasizing the human experience, whether that’s academic or whether that’s social or, in this case, with music.”
As technology becomes increasingly addictive, many are starting to break free from this scroll-induced spell and appreciate the moments when we can put down our phones and live in the present. Straus described live music as one of the few environments where wanting to be present still feels natural.
“I think it’s always an experience to be able to look at something in front of you and feel your feet on the grass, on the mounds and feel the sonic experience of instruments and speakers, as opposed to just your phone,” Straus said. “I just think it’s always a different experience.”
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