The Soundtrack of Campus

From local acts to mega stars, the campus music scene has boosted student life for decades

By Benjamin Kirk (’22)

The lights go down, and immediately there is a palpable shift in the atmosphere. The chatter and laughter quiets and is replaced by building anticipation, clapping and cheers. Electricity dances over the skin as expectation sweeps the crowd in mass camaraderie.

“I feel like fluttering is the right word,” says Alexandra Cota, a music performance major, about what it’s like to be on stage. “I have to go into a different mental place and take a really deep breath.”

In this moment, the mundane fades away, and the extraordinary is about to unfold.

For Sean McElhinney, assistant general manager and director of booking at the Save Mart Center, it’s a moment he tries to catch at every concert.

“I’m out there when the lights go out for the headliner. You know, that’s just magical,” McElhinney says.

Arthur G. Wahlberg, middle row far right, with 1913 Glee Club.

Music has been part of academics and campus life since the Fresno State Normal School first opened its doors in 1911. Faculty member Arthur G. Wahlberg organized the Glee Club, a female choral group that performed for the first time in the spring of 1912. In 1935, Fresno State awarded its first bachelor’s degree in music.

When Fresno State moved from its original campus in 1954, where Fresno City College now sits, a music building was one of the first buildings constructed and included the Wahlberg Recital Hall, paying tribute to founding faculty.

In 1991, the new Music Building opened and featured a rehearsal hall large enough for a full orchestra and choir to practice together. A short time later, permanent seats and a pipe organ were added to create an intimate 270-seat concert hall, which still serves as the department’s main venue today. In spring 2024, Fresno State revealed plans for a new 1,000-seat concert hall that is currently in
the architectural design phase.

Jose ElaGarza, the performing arts technician for the Department of Music, said there are 150 to 185 public concerts in the Wahlberg Recital Hall and the Concert Hall every year. These events range from solo senior recitals for students to large festivals that invite local K-12 students to major collaborative productions, such as the recent “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff, which included a full orchestra, two pianos, combined choirs and several soloists to perform the powerful piece in a relatively small concert hall.

The 200-seat Wahlberg Recital Hall and 270-seat Concert Hall host over 150 events per year, ranging from senior recitals to large festivals and productions, such as the recent “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff, which included a full orchestra, two pianos, combined choirs and several soloists.

“You’re talking one-third of the capacity of the seating was on stage, which is unusual for a venue,” ElaGarza says.

The Music Department’s faculty is well-connected and often brings top-level guest artists to perform for students – and sometimes alongside them – including the Grammy-nominated jazz quartet “Kneebody” and Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Dan Rosenboom and bass-baritone Gerald Finley.

Fresno State venues have also rented to other organizations for community concerts. In 1972, Fresno State music professor Philip Lorenz created a keyboard concert series in Fresno. After the Concert Hall opened in 1992, the Philip Lorenz International Keyboard Concerts used it as its primary venue. It’s not unusual for these artists to play a date in Fresno in between major international venues.

There is also a thriving music scene beyond Fresno State’s Music Department. For many students, music is a hobby, something they do for fun in their free time.

Vintage Days Music Scene

Chemistry major Alex Cha is part of local band “Rock On!” which has performed classic rock covers at Vintage Days since 2019. He also serves as a concert coordinator for the festival, working through the Student Involvement Center at Fresno State. This year, 33 bands performed.

Alex Cha is a chemistry major who is part of the local band “Rock On!” which performs classic rock cover tunes along with a few original songs. He played his first Vintage Days concert in 2019, then returned after the pandemic to play in 2022, 2023 and this year during the 50th anniversary of the springtime campus festival.

“Compared to other stages, Vintage Days is a pretty big stage. Both physically, it’s a big stage, and also just performing to a wide amount of people. It’s pretty big because it’s a public event,” Cha says. “It is sometimes a little intimidating just seeing how many people there are, but it’s fun regardless.”

In addition to performing during Vintage Days, Cha is one of the concert coordinators this year. Working through the Student Involvement Center, Cha manages the bands before and during the festival. He said Fresno State students are in many of the 33 bands that performed this year during Vintage Days, including local bands “Iwanaga,” “Dying Suns” and “Near Avenue.”

Looking back over the 50 years of Vintage Days, many reflect on a time when the Fresno State campus looked different. Over the years, the large outdoor amphitheater where the Resnick Student Union now sits hosted many popular bands. But it was the air guitar contest that became one of the most memorable annual events at Vintage Days.

“It was a huge event, and student ‘bands’ would have to audition to be part of the competition,” said Julie Logan Lindahl, Fresno State Radio general manager. “It was treated like a live concert, and the crowd would pick the winner of the competition. It was crazy-popular and absolutely hilarious to watch.”

Logan Lindahl, who earned her chops on 90.7 KFSR, Fresno State Radio, went to work for KKDJ, the local rock station at the time, while she was still a student at Fresno State. The station was one of the driving forces behind the air guitar competition, which allowed anyone to get that rock star feeling as long as they passed the audition.

Being part of KFSR on campus and the KKDJ off campus while she was a student, Logan Lindahl was often promoting music events across Fresno State. The amphitheater hosted many big-name acts over the years, including Tom Petty, Los Lobos, Radiohead, Soul Asylum, Tool, Hootie and the Blowfish, The Offspring, Bush, Incubus, Green Day, NOFX and Weezer.

“It really was a wonderful place to see a concert, and just about every adult in Central California has a story about a show they saw at the amphitheater,” Logan Lindahl says.

The final concert at the amphitheater was country star Travis Tritt in 2002.

Logan Lindahl also recalls concerts at another venue still operating on campus, the Satellite Student Union. As a smaller venue that holds about 800 people without chairs, it hosted bands such as Sublime, the Replacements, School of Fish, the Del Fuegos and Beck.

Micheal Bonner, program production supervisor for the student unions and a Fresno State music alumnus (2012), runs the Satellite Student Union and is also involved with The Pit, the Leon S. Peters Event Plaza mini amphitheater and The Ruiz hall at the Resnick Student Union. These areas regularly host musical performances during homecoming week and throughout the academic year. Bonner says his favorite event is the live band karaoke.

“They know about 200 charts and you just flip through it like you were a regular person going to sing at the bar. But you’re singing now with the band,” Bonner says. “If you think karaoke is fun, it is more fun with a live band.”

Attracting the Biggest Acts to Campus

Fresno State students get a unique opportunity to see some of the world’s major acts with a large, on-campus arena hosting performers like Madonna (pictured), Elton John, Metallica, Garth Brooks, Drake, Jay-Z, Britney Spears and many more.
Photo by Joey McCoy

Campus life got a boost beginning Nov. 7, 2003, when opera tenor Andrea Bocelli took the stage at the Save Mart Center, marking a major shift in the music scene on the Fresno State campus and the community beyond. With the Save Mart Center and a seating capacity of up to 16,000, the campus now enjoys more concerts and even bigger bands and tours than ever before.

“They no longer had to travel if they wanted to go see their favorite artists. They didn’t have to go to LA. They didn’t have to go to Sacramento. We were bringing the artist to them so that they didn’t have to get a hotel room,” says McElhinney, who started at the Save Mart Center in 2006.

Some acts who have come to campus in the past two decades include Madonna, Elton John, Metallica, Garth Brooks, Drake, Jay-Z, Britney Spears, Incubus, Kiss, Shania Twain, Tool, Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam, just to name a few. Recently, the Latino community has come out in droves to see artists such as Grupo Firme, Luis Miguel, Pepe Aguilar and Christian Nodal.

“Paul McCartney has been the top,” McElhinney says. “We were in a freeze frame because the crowd got to their seats, and they didn’t leave their seats, so the staff got to watch it. We still talk about that one. It was magical.”

From local acts to mega stars to quirky competitions like air guitar, these types of magical moments have helped shape the on-campus music scene for generations of Fresno State alumni and students.

– Benjamin Kirk is a communications specialist in the College of Arts and Humanties at Fresno State.