SAN MARCOS — Every Thursday at 1 p.m. on the main campus, the Palomar Performance Lab comes alive with Concert Hour, a free “music enrichment series” that offers something for everyone.
In Room D-10, Concert Hour features a wide range of musicians and musical genres. Recent performers have included jazz group The Soto Six, accordionist Henry Doktorski and the North County harp collective HarpWaves.
Palomar theater tech coordinator Erik Montierth and instructional support specialist Thomas Daily manage the technical details, ensuring that Concert Hour runs smoothly.
According to Montierth, the point of Concert Hour is “to expose [students] to things that they won’t expose themselves to. Get them outside of their comfort zone and get them into different styles of music.”
Both Montierth and Daily emphasized how deeply music is woven into society.
“[Music] becomes such a huge part of people’s lives that, especially for community members that perhaps aren’t in a position where they can be making music. They want to hear music,” Daily said. “And they don’t want to hear it as much on a radio, or TV, they want to hear it live.”
According to Daily, community members take full advantage of the opportunity, often attending week after week.
“That is why Concert Hour is such a great program — for 14 weeks during the spring and fall semesters, they can come here for free concerts,” Daily said.
Cellist Peter Ko, Dec. 15 Concert Hour performer, recognized a similar value in the program, highlighting its specific appeal to student audiences.
“The thing about being a student … it’s the time in life where you have the most amount of freedom, energy, and wherewithal to explore and to be exposed to all sorts of things,” Ko said. “And your budget is not infinite, either. So it really does help to have something like [Concert Hour] that’s open to the community, that’s open to many different kinds of music.”
Concert Hour was originally formed and funded by revenue from the Palomar bookstore, according to performing arts patrons services coordinator Heather Murray. Eventually, however, the Performing Arts Department took over the series.
It has been a consistent, long-standing program, with performances dating back as far as the 1970s. Even through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Performing Arts Department was dedicated to continuing the program. Performances were held through Zoom, which allowed for a wider scope of musicians and musical genres to be featured.
“We were able to bring in performances from all over the country and even Brazil,” Murray said.
Information about upcoming performances can be found on the Palomar Performing Arts website.
