Music Guild Readies For Its Biggest Weekend

“As long as the musicians come ready to perform, it’ll be a success.”

The semester is coming to a close, the weather’s warming up, and Boston College bands and performers are gearing up for the weekend of their lives. While campus comes alive with the annual Arts Festival, the Music Guild will be bringing the party to Faneuil Hall with its annual student music festival, this year named “Break the Bubble.” Following Thursday’s BC’s Best—the Battle of the Bands and the Singer-Songwriter finale—the Music Guild will bring its legions to the heart of downtown Boston Saturday afternoon.

Consisting of 27 performances from student bands and singers, Break the Bubble provides BC performers an opportunity to be recognized by both the BC community and the general public.

Break the Bubble is an unprecedented collective effort by BC artists to reach beyond Chestnut Hill. Although BC artists have performed at Faneuil Hall in the spring for the past three years, John Guzzi, president of the Music Guild and A&S ’15, has directed his efforts into hopefully making this year’s show a bubble bursting experience both for the artists and the audience.

Sean Seaver, a member of Small Talk and next year’s Music Guild president and A&S ’16, praises John’s approach to marketing this year’s festival. Guzzi’s posters can be seen all across campus highlighting the amount of performers contributing to Saturday’s festival.

“The ingenuity of this year’s show is billing it as a festival,” Seaver said. “BC bands going to Faneuil Hall is something that John went all in on, designing a poster that looks like a Coachella’s or Lollapalooza type concert festival.”

While Break the Bubble provides performers a means of getting their names publicized outside of the BC music scene, the Music Guild is also trying to promote a more inclusive attitude towards BC artists on campus, as well.

“If you’re not a part of the Music Guild or the BC music community, you might know like one band on campus,” Guzzi said. “If you hear about a band, you should be able to associate that band with the people that are a part of it on campus and that isn’t the case right now.”

Gathering together 27 acts, Break the Bubble offers prospective audience members a comprehensive take on BC’s musical talent, not just a narrow look at students’ current favorite bands.

“There are 27 acts, and that is astounding,” Guild member Katharine Callahan, A&S ‘17, said. “If you asked someone sitting here how many bands or singers there are here at BC, they’d say maybe five.”

This year’s Faneuil Hall performance will also feature a different stage orientation than the shows of the past three years. In previous arrangements, BC bands have performed exclusively in front of Faneuil Hall, but this year, Break the Bubble will offer a second stage. Breaking the Bubble is set like Boston Calling, with two main performance spaces in close proximity.

“The way John has organized it, there will be bands on one stage and singers and songwriters on the other so that viewers can bounce between the two,” Callahan said. “There’s also more people playing then there was the year before.”

While some of BC’s more recognizable bands like Juice and Small Talk will be performing at Break the Bubble, the festival also highlights lesser known, up-and-coming underclassmen. Callahan will be performing with her band, Crisco Disco.

Callahan describes Crisco Disco as “a hodge-podge of Jammin’ Toast members.”

“Jammin’ Toast is a club that meets every other Saturday where we just play music together in a very casual setting and where we just play covers,” Callahan said.

This will be Crisco Disco’s first performance and the band is extremely excited to be able to get its name out among the other BC bands at Faneuil Hall.

Crisco Disco is just one example of the recent boom in talent here at BC. Emmanuel Laguerre, a hip-hop artist promoting his latest mixtape Believe In and WCAS ’18, is proud to share Saturday’s stage with the BC music community.

“It’s an opportunity to show what I’ve been working on for the last year, express how I’ve grown as an artist, and to get to meet other artists,” Laguerre said. “There are great musical minds and it’s nice to see what else is happening in the Boston music scene.”

Break the Bubble will give lesser-known BC artists a moment in the spotlight, performing in one of the busiest areas of downtown Boston.

BC musicians will be a central feature of Thursday and Friday’s Arts Fest, but Saturday will be the day to show the broader Boston community what being a BC musician means.

“As long as the musicians come ready to perform, it’ll be a success,” Guzzi said. “Unless, of course, there’s a hurricane that day.”

Featured Image by Breck Wills / Heights Graphics