This past Tuesday, Jake Parsky ’19 became the first performer in Program Board’s new Tiny Classroom Concert series. Parsky’s 15-minute set included four original compositions, with his voice and acoustic guitar accompanied by Jack Henry Lickerman ’21 on drums.

As the name suggests, Parsky played in a room of his choice in front of a small crowd. “We were just in a classroom. It was very chill, very intimate. [I] could see everyone, they could see me,” Parsky said.
“It was [in] a classroom because… it’s nice to change what those spaces can be,” Program Board organizer Ellie Rudner ’19 said. “The tiny box you’re in makes it feel like an intimate performance.”

For some, this concert represented a new kind of space for Macalester’s performing arts.

“It was very cool to help premier this new thing that I think is really, really awesome,” Parsky said. “I really hope that Program Board at Macalester continues to do things like this, promote local musicians, because there is a lot of talent here, but not a lot of opportunities for those people to perform and show their talent in a non-classical setting.”

Alya Ansari ’19, who attended the concert, also felt that the series is unique at Macalester. “There are very few opportunities for people who are producing their own music on campus to actually exhibit their music or at least receive feedback in a low stakes environment… we don’t have spaces like that if you’re not in a music class,” Ansari said.

For Parsky, the classroom was a low-stakes setting for him to express himself. “I didn’t expect pretty much all of the desks to be filled,” Parsky said. “I have a lot of really supportive friends who came out and a few people I had never seen before, so that was really exciting. I was very happy with the turnout.”