Calvin News

An upcoming concert at Calvin College will feature musicians who are on the spring 2007 compilation CD from Dialogue, the college's student-run literary and art magazine.

The concert will be held on campus on Wednesday, May 2 at 7 pm in the Fish House, the Calvin coffee shop, and is presented by Dialogue and Cave Cafe.

The compilation CD then will be distributed on Wednesday, May 9 on campus and that day Dialogue also will make available for download music from past year's compilations on the Dialogue website (note: website will be live on May 9).

The staff of Dialogue hosted auditions for the CD earlier this year and then narrowed the field to those artists whose songs ended up on the album.

It was, says Dialogue editor Rob Zandstra, an arduous process.

"Five of us, the Dialogue CD committee," he says, "we met in the FAC for seven, seven-and-a-half hours. We heard all of the auditions,heard all of the CDs, went to Q'doba and decided on who was going to be on the CD."

The selection process, he says, is intended to be more encouraging than critical.

"I'm pleasantly surprised by what people come up with," he says, noting that this year's CD includes both individual composers and full bands. "It tends to be very eclectic. But there is always more talent than we can put on the
CD."

All material on the CD is original material, not cover tunes.

"If your suitemate wrote it, and your band wants to perform it," says Zandstra, "that's cool. But Tim McGraw can't have written it."

The Dialogue CD is a tradition that dates back to the year 2000, when
then-editors Peter Le Grand, a 2000 Calvin graduate, and Peter Strooboscher, class of 2002, came up with the idea.

Zandstra is happy they did and happy to keep the tradition alive.

"Basically, seven years ago, there were some people who took some real
initiative here," he says.

The first Dialogue-sponsored foray into student musical production was
recorded and mixed by Le Grand and Stroobosscher's roommate, Jon Faber, who continues to produce the CD to this day.

"It started out as a low-fi recording project," remembers Faber, former
part-owner of Dynamite Sound Project and current owner of This Old House
studio, both of which have served as recording venues for the CD. "We kind of did it on our own time as students and happened to release the disc. It
slowly started to build some steam. Then Calvin started to carve out some funding to get students into a professional recording studio."

Faber believes the CD develops student musicians in a number of ways.

"The students really enjoy having an outlet for music. It gets them into a
studio off campus. For a lot of the younger students, getting off campus
means getting to know people. It's an important avenue for students to have," he says. "If you were a small-time musician, picking up the guitar or picking
up the piano and playing on your own time, this is a chance for you to have
an audience."

He still enjoys producing the CD.

"There's been tons of different bands, a lot of repeat bands, a lot of repeat musicians coming back. It's always got a diverse sound. And it's always fun to hear the musicians progress," Faber says. "And I think it's a really cool thing that Calvin has supported it and said, "Hey art's not just painting. It's not just print. It's not just photographs.' A lot of organizations, a lot of colleges wouldn't give that flexibility to the magazine."