The column where we talk to the flock on the Pomona College Alumni Facebook group and share a few responses. Make sure to join the group if you haven’t already.

What’s the best concert you ever saw at Pomona?

Jessica Sitton ’85 and Pamela Keene ’85 with Gordon Lightfoot (photo credit Diane Ung ’85)

“Gordon Lightfoot at Big Bridges in 1984!”

-Jessica Sitton ’85 (see photo on right)

“When Michael [Mahler ’74] asked me out for our first date, I said ‘yes’ before I even knew where we were going to go. We went to Big Bridges to see the J. Geils Band and the Eagles—and then saw the Eagles again for our anniversary in 2014. This year we are celebrating our 47th anniversary!”

—Vicki Paterno ’75

“The Ramones in 1979 at Garrison Theater [technically at Scripps]. The music scene was changing in good and exciting ways, at least for this Midwest boy. The punk and new wave scene was just busting out in a big way. KSPC was leading the way.”

—Paul Martin ’83

“I saw Maroon 5 opening for Guster in about 2001. Now Guster opens for them!”

—Stephanie Lawton ’03

“Seeing Ozomatli freshman year at Harwood Halloween was incredible, but it’s hard to beat 1999 with Digital Underground, which predictably got shut down, leading to their rapper Shock G leading a mob of us through Lyon [Residence Hall].”

—Adam Boardman ’01

“In 1992 Soundgarden performed in front of about 200 of us right before the release of Badmotorfinger [their first top-40 album]. They were about to go on tour with Guns N’ Roses. It was insanely good music!”

­—Ben Johns ’95

“At Scripps in 1998[ish] Michelle Malone played a small show at the Motley with a young opening act named John Mayer. I remember liking his songs ‘Neon’ and ‘Comfortable.’ A couple years later he played at Big Bridges with Norah Jones, before she’d won all her Grammys.”

—Brian Daniel Schwartz ’01

Kurt Vonnegut, 1986

OK, this one’s only tangentially music-related, but besides speaking at Big Bridges, Slaughterhouse-Five author Kurt Vonnegut has an unusual Pomona connection. In 1997 he was incorrectly attributed to be the author of one of the first pieces of viral content: a commencement speech sometimes referred to as “Wear Sunscreen,” which later became the “lyrics” of a top-40 hit released by Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann. The actual author? Mary Schmich ’75, who wrote its words for a Chicago Tribune column, and later turned it into a book.

No Doubt, 1990

2015 photo of Gwen Stefani by Lorie Shaull

Gwen Stefani’s ska-punk band played at least five shows at Pomona in their early gigging along the Southern California concert circuit, including a May 1990 show that pre-dated their signing with Interscope Records. Three decades later, the group has released six studio albums that sold 33 million copies globally, while Stefani became a popular solo artist (and voice judge) worth an estimated $160 million. ’90s alums, relive the glory with this fan-captured video from 1994.

Rage Against the Machine, 1992

When Mike Lin ’94 paid the newly formed four-piece rap-metal outfit $325 to play Harwood Courtyard, they hadn’t even released their debut album yet. Lin remembers lead singer Zack de la Rocha eagerly passing out cassette tapes beforehand, as well as receiving a thoughtful “thank you” note from guitarist Tom Morello afterward. They’ve since sold 16 million records and were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.

Bright Eyes, 2000

Indie band Bright Eyes playing Walker Lounge in 2000

When the campus radio station KSPC brought Conor Oberst and his Omaha indie-rock outfit to play a show in one of the Smith Campus Center’s social rooms, station advisor Erica Tyron said that she paid them $800 in cash. Just a few years later, the Associated Students of Pomona College tried to bring them back, but opted against after learning that their booking cost had ballooned to $50,000.

The White Stripes, 2001

Jack and Meg White—the mysterious red-and-white-adorned garage-rock duo who eventually filled stadiums with arena classics like “Seven Nation Army”—hadn’t yet exploded on the indie scene when they performed that spring on Walker Beach. KSPC still has the original flyer from that fateful concert in their office in Thatcher Music Building.

Taylor Swift, 2012

Touring behind her fourth album Red, Swift launched an online voting competition promising to perform at the college that got the most votes proportional to their size—spurring some crafty Harvey Mudd kids to organize on social media to get Claremont Colleges students to vote for Swift to come to the smallest of the 5Cs (though she ultimately performed at Big Bridges). For the record, Mudd’s student body president claimed that they didn’t engage in any “illegitimate activity” like bot voting. We plead the fifth!

Since its ribbon-cutting in 1931, Bridges Auditorium—also known as “Big Bridges,” to distinguish it from Bridges Hall of Music (“Little Bridges”)—has been home to hundreds of concerts, speeches and events. Here’s our unofficial tally of the musicians who’ve performed most frequently at the 2,200-seat venue.*

Ella Fitzgerald performing at Downbeat, New York in 1947 (Dizzy Gillespie looking on). Photo by William Gottlieb.

Six Times:
Singer-songwriter Ben Harper

Five Times:
Folk singer Judy Collins
Folk group the Irish Rovers

Four Times:
Singer-songwriter Johnny Cash
Violinist Isaac Stern

Three Times:
Country singer Willie Nelson
Pianist Arthur Rubinstein
Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald
Pop/standards singer Johnny Mathis
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Other return performers include jazz legends Nat “King” Cole, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, as well as folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Mime Marcel Marceau also performed here six times!

Big Bridges has been the home to 90 performances from Inland Pacific Ballet, 86 performances by the L.A. Philharmonic, and at least 50 Claremont High School commencements.

Others who’ve spoken here: Bono, Amelia Earhart, Winston Churchill and the Dalai Lama.

*based on records taken from the Bridges Auditorium archive, in conjunction with the crowd-sourced concert repository website setlist.fm.

Here’s one mailing list you might want to be on: Professor of Art Mark Allen turns personal cards and letters into things of beauty, embellishing the outer envelopes with all manner of designs and decorative flourishes. His exhibit From the Desk Of last fall in the Chan Gallery at Pomona’s Studio Art Hall featured prints, posters, zines, pop-ups and a wall of envelopes that once held missives to various friends, faculty, staff, students and alumni. Take a look.

While visiting Canada the summer before his first year of high school, Hudson Colletti ’27 sat down at a piano one day and began tickling the ivories.

In town with family for the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Pennsylvania teen wasn’t on stage playing for a capacity crowd inside a palatial concert hall or cozy auditorium.

He was on a street corner.

Within minutes, the sounds echoing through the neighborhood drew passersby, many quick to record the young pianist’s impromptu performance.

“I loved that,” Colletti says. “I thought [playing in public] was a really cool way for me to share something I love. I thought, ‘Why not bring that opportunity back home?’”

Colletti—a first-year student who plans to study economics and computer science, founded Free the Music at 14, not long after returning from Canada. In the years since, he has collected unwanted pianos and provided them to local visual artists as canvases. These customized pianos have found second homes in restaurants and apartment buildings, as well as on various street corners, around Colletti’s hometown of Sewickley, Pennsylvania—population 3,900.

“A lot of people want to learn how to play piano,” he says, “or know how to play but don’t have access to a piano because of how much space they take up or how hard they are to move into a house.”

By placing pianos in public, Free the Music is giving others a chance to fall in love too.

“One of the pianos we placed in town,” he says, “was originally given with nothing inside of the bench, and after four or five months over summer, the bench was filled with books and sheet music from people learning how to play and having lessons there.”

As successful as Free the Music’s initiative has been in his home state, Colletti sees no reason he can’t continue his work elsewhere.

“Music brings people together and brightens our mood,” he says. “It’s a great reminder after finishing a song when people gather around because they have a love of music.”

To see—and hear—Colletti playing one of the painted pianos, check out the video at pomona.edu/hudson-colletti-piano.