Blog Articles

Big Acts at Big Bridges

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

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.

SageChat: Favorite On-Campus Concerts

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 and Pamela Keene with Gordon Lightfoot

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

We’ll Do It Live! A Timeline of Some of Pomona’s Most Memorable Concerts

Big Bridges stage, Taylor Swift concert, 2012Kurt 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

Gwen Stefani

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

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

Taylor SwiftTouring 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!

Beethoven, Bach, Wagner—and Zappa? 50 Years Later, A Pomona Prank Remembered

A 13-foot sailboat effortlessly floats from the rafters of Frary Dining Hall.

One of two doors into the mathematics department magically disappears overnight, leaving only a seamless stretch of blank wall in its place.

A safe containing student grades literally vanishes from Holmes Hall, discovered weeks later underneath the building’s creaking floorboards.

Pranks have played a storied role over the years at Pomona. One of the most ambitious took place 50 years ago, with the pranksters only claiming credit 37 years later. The dossier they back-channeled to Pomona College Magazine resulted in a 2012 story finally solving one of Pomona’s most enduring mysteries: Who replaced Chopin with a bust of Frank Zappa in the frieze on the face of Big Bridges?

John Irvine ’76 works on the Zappa frieze

John Irvine ’76 works on the Zappa frieze

John Irvine ’76 and Greg Johnson ’76—juniors at the time of the prank—told PCM clandestinely that they “weren’t huge Zappa fans at the time,” even though he had lived in Claremont for a while. They dreamed up the prank when they learned the Mothers of Invention rocker was coming to play Bridges in April of 1975.

“We were looking up at the front of Big Bridges and said, ‘Well, gosh, he should have his name up there,’” Irvine recalled. They envisioned Zappa right alongside other greats—Bach, Beethoven, Wagner and Schubert—over the front entrance. Chopin, they decided, was dispensable. “I’m not big on the Romantics,” Irvine explained.

Pulling off the prank took two intensive weeks of preparation. Obstacle one: how to get onto the roof of Bridges Auditorium? Johnson calculated they could lay a ladder between (long gone) Renwick Gym and Big Bridges and, perched more than 30 feet above the ground, crawl four feet across from one roof to the other. “Being young college students, we were stupid enough to do that,” Irvine told PCM.

Zappa frieze close-upJohnson and Irvine measured the space they would need to fill: a whopping 15 feet in length and five feet in height. Which led to obstacle two: how to make a replacement frieze light enough to hoist into position, but heavy enough to stay in place. Their answer was Styrofoam in an aluminum frame, with a papier-mâché bust of Zappa anchoring one end and a marijuana leaf the other. (Zappa was against drugs, but, the pair admitted to PCM, “Hey, we know, but it was the ’70s.”) They built it in a dorm room and were putting it together late at night in the Wash—when it began to rain. A quick move to the Mudd-Blaisdell trash room was almost a disaster. The next morning was trash day.

To overcome obstacle three—getting caught—Irvine and Johnson recruited the help of the Statpack, a group of fellow math and statistics students. They modeled the movement of Campus Security patrols in the wee hours of the morning to find the optimal time for evasion. Sometime between 2 and 3 in the morning, the 60- to 70-pound frieze was installed on the front of the building. The statistical modeling must have been sound, because until they finally took credit via PCM in 2012, the prankers’ identities went (almost) undetected. As PCM noted, “Frank Zappa was now shoulder to shoulder with Beethoven and Bach on the campus’s most imposing edifice. Chopin had been shown up, and the two math majors had succeeded in pulling off a highly visible prank.”

Just one miscalculation: Zappa’s bust joined the roster of the greats a week after his concert at Big Bridges. “We kind of got an incomplete,” Johnson told PCM. “We weren’t quite ready in time.”

Bridges Auditorium Zappa Frieze

Top Three Annual Pomona Events (Past and Present)

Fun fact (via Rachel Paterno-Mahler ’07):
“Having a Smiley 2000s today would be the equivalent of having Smiley 80s when those of us that graduated in the 2000s were at Pomona.”

#1 Harwood Halloween

#2 Smiley 80s

#3 Ski-Beach Day

Other popular events include Death by Chocolate, Freshman Dance, Middle School Dance

Join the conversation on Facebook if you haven’t already.

3 Tips to Improve Your Golf Game

Gabby Herzig ’21

Gabby Herzig ’21

Take it from Gabby Herzig ’21, a former Sagehens golfer whose career orbits the best in the sport: a round of golf can be enjoyed without shooting a low score.

“As a competitive golfer, I’m always trying to play the best I can—it’s ingrained in me,” says Herzig, now a golf reporter for The Athletic, a sports website and now the sports department of The New York Times. “But ever since I graduated, I’ve been able to find more joy in playing recreationally with friends, co-workers and colleagues from the golf industry. I find I’m always happier and more present during the rounds when I’m not focusing on my score.”

Alternatively, for those on the course hunting birdies and low numbers, Herzig offers some advice to shave a few strokes off the scorecard.

1. Don’t overthink things
“Golf is such a mental game, but I feel some of the best rounds I’ve played came when my mind was really clear. You always hear the best professional golfers talk about their mentality: see ball, hit ball. Keep it as simple as that rather than trying to direct your body in the middle of your swing to do who knows what. You’re crowding your thoughts and distracting yourself from being an athlete and reacting to the target in front of you.”

2. Short game, short game, short game
“Emphasize your chipping and putting. Those are your scoring clubs so spend more time practicing around the greens than you do at the driving range. You’ll think back to some of the best full-swing shots you’ve hit—amazing drives, perfectly online approach shots—and remember you three-putted and bogeyed the hole. Amazing holes materialize if you’re sharp around the green. You don’t want to waste your great full shots on poor chipping and putting.”

3. Commit to your shot
“If there’s one thing you can do to increase your chances of success before hitting a shot, it’s to commit to a plan. Whether you’re deciding on the severity of a breaking putt or you’re in between clubs on a par-3, choose your path and then stick to it. Feeling committed over the ball will instantly make you more confident and comfortable, and therefore, more likely to make the swing you wanted to.”

Gabby Herzig playing golf

Stray Thoughts: The Art of Seeing Possibilities

Creativity is sometimes seen as the domain of the young—an innate, unfettered spark that dims as we get older. But the truth is, creativity is not bound by age, nor is it confined to the arts. This issue of PCM aims to explore different forms of creativity and uncover how we can cultivate it at every stage of life. Whether through professional innovation, interpersonal problem-solving, or even just the way we navigate daily routines, creativity remains an integral part of human experience.

One of the most common misconceptions about creativity is that it belongs exclusively to artists, musicians, and writers. This issue challenges that notion by highlighting creativity in disciplines like science, programming, and even political protest. We speak with Sagehens who have harnessed creative thinking to revolutionize industries, researchers whose inventive approaches have led to groundbreaking discoveries, and individuals who have reimagined their lives in inspiring ways. Creativity, at its core, is about seeing possibilities where others see limitations.

Nurturing creativity later in life requires intention and curiosity. Small changes in our routines—such as picking up a new hobby, engaging in stimulating conversations, or simply allowing ourselves to actually make space for non-doing—can reawaken our imagination. We also examine the role of lifelong learning, the power of collaboration, and the importance of staying open to new perspectives. Creativity flourishes when we give ourselves permission to experiment, to fail, and to view things with a greater sense of both purpose and wonder.

Adam Conner-Simons ’08, PCM Spring 2025 Guest Editor In this fast-paced, technology-driven era, we often feel pressured to be productive rather than imaginative. But creativity is not a luxury; it is a necessity. It fuels innovation, enriches our lives, and helps us adapt to an ever-changing world. I hope some of the topics posed in these pages invite you to explore, question, and reimagine the role of creativity in your own life. Let this issue be both a mirror and a catalyst, reflecting the creativity you already possess and inspiring new ways to express it. After all, creativity is not something we lose—it is something we continue to discover.

—Adam Conner-Simons ’08
Guest Editor

Letter Box

A Hello from Acting President Bob Gaines

Robert Gaines

Robert Gaines

Having been a faculty member here for more than 20 years, I’m deeply humbled by the opportunity to lead the College during President Starr’s sabbatical. I know the value of Pomona and the kinds of breakthroughs that are possible here, particularly as it applies to creativity—the theme of this issue of Pomona College Magazine.

The way I see it, Pomona has a unique combination of magical elements that make its educational experience pop—a delicate fusion of factors that include motivated students, intimate classes, broad resources and an emphasis on curiosity, interdisciplinarity and, yes, creativity.

I feel this dynamic deeply in my connections with peers. Our environment encourages engagement with others in how they see the world, sharing perspectives across disciplines with colleagues in art, music, history and beyond. I’ve had many thoughtful conversations with my colleagues about the vastness of time, understanding stories etched across giant landscapes, how we as humans sense and understand the world around us, and what it means to be alive on Earth. These kinds of dialogues have helped me shape, refine and better understand my own perspectives, as well as encouraging more out-of-the-box thinking about many of my own projects in geology.

This kind of cultivation of creativity allows faculty and students alike to adapt and approach challenges from new angles—where some of the most exciting and unexpected outcomes lie. Whether in science, engineering, humanities or the arts, thinking creatively is crucial for new innovation and making a meaningful impact on larger societal forces.

Indeed, creativity and its capacity for “transformative knowledge” is one of the three central pillars of our strategic vision, and a major point of emphasis for several of our future projects, like the new Center for Global Engagement that we hope to break ground on in the coming years.

My experience at Pomona is that creativity is not a finite resource, but something that begets more of itself when cultivated. In my mind it is the most important and essential of human traits—without it, we would be forever repeating the same patterns, rather than finding new paths of inquiry and exploration.

—Robert Gaines

Acting President
Edwin F. and Martha Hahn Professor of Geology

Write to Us at PCM

Pomona College Magazine welcomes brief letters to the editor about the magazine and issues related to the College from the extended Pomona community—alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff, donors and others with a strong connection to the College. Write to us at pcm@pomona.edu or mail a letter to Pomona College Magazine, 550 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Letters should include the writer’s name, city and state of residence, class year for alumni and contact information. With rare exceptions, letters should be no more than 400 words in length. Letters are selected for publication based on relevance and available space and are subject to being edited for brevity and clarity.

The Failures of Facebook

Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets by Jeff Horwitz ’03.

To understand exactly what has happened at Meta with its lineup of products such as Facebook and Instagram, ask Jeff Horwitz ’03. The investigative journalist for The Wall Street Journal has been on the Meta beat for more than four years with the goal of revealing the inner workings—and management failures—within Facebook’s Silicon Valley walls.

Horwitz tracked how often Facebook chose growth over quality by ignoring misinformation on the site and by lack of moderation, resulting in the investigative series The Facebook Files for the WSJ in 2021. He added additional reporting for his newly released book, Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets. In it, Horwitz also looks at how Instagram managers ignored warning signs that the platform seriously damaged body image perceptions for teen girls around the world.

Journalist David Silverberg spoke to Horwitz for Pomona College Magazine to learn more about his yearslong process in investigating Meta, his view on Mark Zuckerberg’s role in the company’s missteps, and why he warns parents to be extremely careful about how their children use social media.

Headshot of Jeff Horwitz ’03

PCM: Technology reporters have been writing that those who run Facebook haven’t learned from the mistakes they made in 2016 and beyond. What’s your take on that?

Horwitz: One of the really fascinating things that came out of the book is that there was a period of time where Facebook invested really heavily in safety and in understanding its product. Then those people made recommendations on how to change the product in ways that would certainly mitigate a lot of the harms from its product, such as misinformation, the formation of massive groups like QAnon, conspiracy movements. There were approaches to fixing this that these folks developed but the problem was they came at the cost of engagement and usage of a platform. Meta and in particular Mark Zuckerberg were not willing to accept that. So the company has actually laid off a lot of the people who are doing this, partly because they aren’t interested in pursuing the work, and partly because they view these people as a fifth column inside the company that is more loyal to their sense of public good than to their sense of what is good for Meta.

The problems of 2016 and 2020 have by and large not been addressed. The ease with which any motivated entity can trick the algorithm into spewing out spam or political content hasn’t fundamentally changed.

PCM: Your book found that Zuckerberg’s role in how his company chose growth over content moderation was a stark contrast to how some other CEOs and founders run their companies. How so?

Horwitz: Everything flows from Mark, and that’s why he’s kind of an anomaly in the tech space at this point. The other big founders tend to step back or work on side hobbies such as Twitter—look at Elon Musk—and with Google and Microsoft, those founders have moved along in their lives and Mark hasn’t. And I think one of the things that’s really striking is he is often describing the open internet where anyone can write what they want but he neglects to discuss what Facebook became, which is an extremely powerful content recommendation engine that will recommend literally anything that will keep people on the platform more often.

No one understood that introducing a reshare button was going to actually produce higher levels of misinformation on the platform because the more times a thing gets shared, it turns out based on the company’s internal research, the less likely it’s going to be true and more likely it’s going to be sensationalist.

PCM: What I also found compelling about the book, and The Facebook Files, was how you established a relationship with Frances Haugen, the famous whistleblower and ex-manager from Facebook who ended up testifying to the U.S. Senate about how the company knew about the potential harm they were causing to both adults and children. What did you think about what she did for you and the investigation?

Horwitz: Frances is an extremely unusual human being in the sense that most whistleblowers burn out first and then they quit in a huff or they get laid off and then they decide they want to talk. I think it’s very unusual for someone to begin at square one and that she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t do her best to bring [Facebook’s issues] to the world’s attention.

This is somebody who was breaching the confidence of their employer for a very valid purpose and I think she had a lot on the line.

PCM: Before you delved into writing about Meta, you also wrote about other businesses for The Associated Press when you worked there between 2014 and 2019. How did your stint at AP help you with your career?

Horwitz: I was hired for their Washington investigative team and Donald Trump’s candidacy sort of ate my career there. I think because I had a business focus, I was originally put onto it in 2015 as, oh, hey, here’s another flash-in-the-pan candidate. We’ve seen many of them like that. Every cycle has some sort of Herman Cain-type figure who appears briefly on the horizon and then disappears. And I think that was originally the assumption about Donald Trump’s candidacy as well. Obviously that never happened.

So it was a really interesting time in terms of the work. But at the same time—I get into this a little bit in the book—it was kind of a depressing time because it really became apparent in 2016 that the only way news could get traction was if it appealed to partisans on either side and, in particular, if it appealed to partisans on Twitter.

I think one of the ways I ended up covering Facebook for The Wall Street Journal is I wanted to figure out that if the news and information ecosystem is permanently broken, then what’s going to replace it? And maybe I should be writing about that. So that’s how I ended up covering Meta.

PCM: How would you characterize the time you spent at Pomona?

Horwitz: One of the best things that happened at Pomona College for me was I got David Foster Wallace when he was teaching creative writing.

I also got into journalism via the student newspaper, and my first ever story for them was covering Professional Bull Riders Association events in Anaheim. It’s not like bull riding is a thing that I am deeply passionate about, but to have my press seat next to ESPN’s was pretty fun.

I began to feel more like an investigative reporter when I wrote on issues at the school, such as when I broke a story about grade inflation at Pomona while I was there. In 2000, The Student Life also reported on a very nasty fight over dining hall unionization and what we saw as some of the labor-busting tactics that the school undertook. I’m grateful to Pomona for a lot of things, but one of them is it kind of turned me on to questioning institutions.

Editor’s note: Pomona’s dining hall workers have been unionized since 2013, and the most recent collective-bargaining agreement provides a minimum wage of $25 an hour for all dining and catering workers by July 1, 2024.

PCM: Lastly, what’s your social media usage like these days? I assume you’re more careful than most considering everything you know about Facebook and Instagram.

Horwitz: I like cat videos as much as the next guy, but I’ve never been a super-heavy user.

So while I don’t have kids, I will say that I have been pretty damn strenuous in telling friends that it’s a good idea to be, shall we say, conservative with how much social media children use for a whole bunch of reasons. [Editor’s note: Since the interview, Horwitz has reported on Meta’s struggle to prevent pedophiles from using Facebook and Instagram in violation of its policies against child exploitation.] An interesting part of the book was revealing how the company really did define what was good for users and whatever made them use the product more. In other words, they must like it if they’re using it more, right? Not so fast.

Books and More Books

Books and More Books

Several readers wrote to note that the tradition of a common book for first-year students to read together began before 2003 (“The Full Stack: 2003-2023,” Fall 2023). Among earlier selections were Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Julia Alvarez’s Yo, Gregory Williams’ Life on the Color Line, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Naguib Mahfouz’s The Palace Walk.

Ann Quinley, Pomona’s dean of students from 1992 to 2007 and an emerita professor of politics, led the first-year book selection for some time with a committee of students and faculty, often reading 20-plus books a year and planning accompanying talks.

“It was my favorite project that I looked forward to every year,” Quinley says, noting that the effort was once the victim of a prank.

“One year, a student—I don’t remember who it was and I don’t think I’d tell you if I did—managed to get hold of the list and add another book. It was one of those bodice-rippers, and then I began to get calls. Students, they are just so creative.”

As for future nominations, Elizabeth Pyle ’84 writes to suggest H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald, The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal and a classic, Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion.

Incoming first-year Sophie Park ’28 is excited to find out what her class might read. “I’d like to suggest A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace as my class’s orientation book,” she writes, calling the title essay “one of the most profound yet accessible pieces I know.” She adds: “Even if the essay collection isn’t chosen as the orientation book, ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again’ is short and an incredible standalone and I would cry if I came to school with all my classmates having read it.”