College Hill will be buzzing with music this Sunday at its fifth annual PorchFest, and you just might see some friendly faces perched on the porches.
For the first time ever, PorchFest, an event wherein musicians perform in front of houses around the College Hill neighborhood, will feature acts from student and faculty music groups, including the Lafayette College Pep Band and Cadence, Lafayette’s treble voices a cappella group.
According to Kim Kmetz, a College Hill resident and member of the PorchFest planning committee, due to the timing of the event, Lafayette groups have been difficult to book.
“It always seemed that it was too early in the year to have groups sort of up and running and have enough of a repertoire to share with the public,” Kmetz said. “So we’ve been turned down in the past.”
Katie Lansing ’24, Cadence’s music director, believes that performing at PorchFest will help set the group up for a successful semester.
“We had to think it over, but we were very excited,” Lansing said. “It drove us to want to participate and get our act ready to give out a good performance.”
Cadence will be performing from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. outside of the Williams Center for the Arts. Though the group only has three songs prepared, the members are excited to test out new performance methods.
“We’re hoping to rotate [the songs] out and maybe take some breaks and interact with the crowd a bit more than we usually would,” Lansing said.
Kmetz hopes that having student groups perform this year will encourage members of the college to come out to PorchFest and get to know the Easton community.
“People who live in Easton love living in Easton, and things like PorchFest are one of the reasons,” Kmetz said. “I hope that students, by participating, will see that there’s a reason people love Easton the way they do.”
She also hopes the event will have the reverse effect – that community members will engage more with the college.
“I think that there are a lot of people who live on College Hill and the surrounding areas that don’t have necessarily any connection to the college even though we are a college town,” Kmetz said.
PorchFest will also welcome performances from faculty, such as a Rio Bassa group including music professor Jorge Torres, a drum circle led by former music department head Larry Stockton and a harp ensemble featuring Beck Rosenbauer of the engineering division.
In addition to securing student groups for the first time, this is PorchFest’s biggest year yet with nearly 30 porches and over 50 musical acts.
Though Kmetz ultimately wants to keep PorchFest a local event, she is excited to put the Easton community on display this year on a bigger scale than ever before.
“We are happy to engage more community members through local musicians, people who own properties and porches in College Hill and more community groups in Easton,” Kmetz said.
“Performing at PorchFest will be a great opportunity to reach a broader audience that we don’t usually perform for,” Lansing said.
Kmetz and Lansing hope that students, as well as their parents, stick around for the event to round out Family Weekend.
“I’m looking forward to seeing not just students out there [but] maybe some families, especially,” Lansing said. “Hopefully we can put on a good show for them, too.”
A full map of porches and musicians can be found on collegehillporchfest.org.
