On Friday, September 20, Grinnell Concerts welcomed electronic pop artist Empress Of to campus for the first concert of the school year. The event included two student opening acts—DJ Phillip and P.&.n!K. (prounounced “panic”). It was organized by Liv Larsen `26, the current Concerts Coordinator, and it brought over a hundred students to Gardner Lounge to dance, sing and blow off some steam.
Empress Of is the project of Lorely Rodriguez, a Los Angeles-based Honduran American singer, songwriter, and producer. Her discography is an experimental collection of electronica, synth pop, dance, and alternative R&B genres, accumulating nearly one million monthly listeners on Spotify. She recently released her fourth studio album, For Your Consideration, on March 22, 2024. She was able to come through Grinnell as part of a jam-packed international tour.
“I really love her music,” said Larsen. “I loved going into the crowd and it being so packed, and people were almost like moshing, just dancing a ton. So that was super, super fun.”
At one moment during the highly energized set, Empress Of interacted with a student in the crowd, inviting them up onto the stage and dancing with them briefly. The student was Angel Arroyo `26, the current president of Queer People of Color (QPOC) on campus. “She just like reaches her hand towards me and just drags me up,” said Arroyo. “She was performing a song that was more ‘vogue-y,’ so I started doing hand movements, and I think she caught that. I’m not new to performing; I performed in the drag shows and stuff, so I think she also caught that.”
Arroyo said that, as a Mexican immigrant and a queer person of color, they felt a special connection with Rodriguez and her music. “She’s a Honduran American, and you know, her music is very sexy and like illustrious and erotic, just overall. I think there was an energy she was looking for, and she saw that I could, like, bring that. So that’s exactly what I did.”
The first opener of the night was DJ Phillip, the moniker of choice for Eli Brotman `25, who has been quite active spinning on and off campus this year, coming off a recent performance at Grinnell College Birding Club’s recent “Brat Gardner” party. He said that the prospect of opening up for a big artist was a new experience and was nerve-wracking, at first, but also very rewarding. “I met Lorely – Empress Of – and we chatted for a little bit. She was super cool, and we got along. I felt good, I felt happy to be a part of the night, because it was a great night,” said Brotman. “It was cool to be able to open up for a big artist like that.”
The second student act was P.&.n!K., a newly debuted name for a familiar duo: Phukao Prommolmard `24.5 on keyboard and Keely Yeager `27 on drums. The two have a great deal of experience jamming out together, and they performed earlier this year on August 29 at “Student Night @ The Museum” at the Grinnell College Museum of Art.
The duo cited a shared musical influence, young jazz savants DOMi & JD BECK, as the inspiration for their concept: everything from their new name to the way they set up to perform. “DOMi & JD BECK are our big inspiration, and when they perform, they don’t face the audience, but they face each other so that communication between musical ideas is easier,” Prommolmard said. Thus, P.&.n!K. followed suit, opting creatively to play their set from the middle of the floor in Gardner Lounge instead of on the stage, with students surrounding them on three sides.
“We usually prepare very little,” added Yeager. “Most of the stuff we do is improvised, and if it’s not improvised, we start with an idea we know we’re going to start with and then we kind of just build on that.”
Larsen said the idea of having students open for concerts came to her last fall when Grinnell Concerts, due to budgetary concerns, became more involved in the student music scene. “Doing that stuff just showed me how interested students are and the fact that there is a lot of music on campus,” she said. Larsen said that when student band South of Tama opened for Creeping Charlie last Spring, it was the best of both worlds.
Larsen reached out to Brotman, Prommolmard and Yeager, asking if they would be interested in opening for Empress Of.
“For me, it was a pretty big deal,” said Yeager. “I’ve never technically opened for a real band or an artist before.” The other student performers agreed, hoping this tradition of students opening for concerts lives on, citing new perspectives gained through the valuable experience. “It just really tells me that there are actual, real people who work on their art and their craft,” said Prommolmard, reflecting on a conversation with Rodriguez about music gear.
The sentiment was echoed by Brotman—“It was really nice for me to just meet Lorely and have a conversation with her, because it humanized the whole artist process,” he said. “I would love to see this continue on campus—student openers for bigger ticket names. I just think for me it was really inspirational.”
Grinnell Concerts scheduled a second concert of the semester for the following week, with NYC-based punk band 95 Bulls coming to campus on Friday, September 27.
As Larsen looks forward, she hopes to continue hosting fun concerts on campus for students. She said one of her biggest goals is to get back to finalizing and releasing lineups for the upcoming semester, a Concerts convention that ended with the COVID-19 shutdown, so that students can know what to artists they can expect to perform that semester, with the idea that they can get excited and start listening to these artists ahead of time.
Larsen also urged any students who have questions, are interested in getting involved with or joining the concerts committee, or any students who might want to open for an upcoming concert, to reach out by emailing concerts@grinnell.edu. You can also follow @grinnellconcerts on Instagram to keep up to date.
