Steel City Music Showcase (SCMS) returned Friday April 10 and Saturday April 11 to downtown Pueblo, inviting the community out for a night of music, dancing, and local food.
Like previous years, CSU Pueblo’s involvement in the showcase has been instrumental in providing students opportunities not just to go out and enjoy the music, but also in getting students involved in live production right outside their front door.
Brock Kilgore, a board member at SCMS, and a professor at CSU Pueblo teaches a class called Concerts, Festivals and Events. The class partners with the showcase to bring the La Bella Union stage, also known as the CSU Pueblo stage, to life. While students work on numerous stages around downtown, the CSU Pueblo stage is the central hub for students, alumni, and faculty to represent what has been being taught at the university’s Media & Entertainment department.
The class takes part in smaller events throughout the semester leading up to the showcase, preparing them for such a large scale event in a variety of ways. Students take on roles, such as artist liaison, sound, lights, and actually putting the physical stage together. While the class does receive days off during their normal class time to make up for the time they’re putting in after school, many noted simply being excited to be able to get hands-on, real world experience in the realm of live entertainment.
“I think this is a good class for people to get experience. If you don’t know the ins-and-outs of how a concert, let alone a festival, works then this is a good class for you to see how lighting works, how audio works, how a stage is built. All the nuances of things, it’s been really helpful,” AJ Maldanado said, a student working at the CSU Pueblo stage.
Large productions like SSMC are a key connection to providing experience that students can put in résumes, portfolios, and opening them up to future opportunities before and after graduation.
“I helped run sound for the stage last year, so I already had experience doing this while I was a student.” Taylor Souther said, a 2025 graduate and alumni of the Media & Entertainment program who was working in sound at SCMS.
Collaboration between the event and the college also comes in more diverse ways, with The Today working closely to cover the events of the night and speak with the community.
As Dakota Sandras, the faculty advisor of The Today, noted, “Honestly, this is an invaluable experience for our CSU Pueblo students. These are the kind of opportunities that come when you are in a small and tight-knit community. Being able to have this role in a music festival would not be possible or at least a lot more competitive in a larger area. For our students to be involved in such a hands-on experience is a tough experience to find anywhere else.”
A full article and video recap will be coming soon, delving into the full scale of what it takes to put on a music festival like Steel City Music Showcase.
