To bring the semester to a close, Vandal Entertainment wants to treat the University of Idaho community to the annual Finals Fest concert and give students a chance to relax and enjoy great music with friends. This year’s Finals Fest concert on April 26 will feature up-and-coming country artist Chayce Beckham.
Opening the concert will be the americana rock group The Brevet with the event starting at 7 p.m. in the ICCU Arena. The event is free for UI students and the Moscow community to enjoy and tickets can be found online.
Assistant Director of the Department of Student Involvement Britnee Christen explained that Finals Fest is Vandal Entertainment’s highlight event of the year and the culmination of months of planning.
“Finals Fest is the biggest thing that Vandal Entertainment does throughout the year, it’s a celebration of making it through the school year and an opportunity for students to have fun,” Christen said.
The DSI worked hard to choose artists and bands that the UI community will be interested in with the planning process happening months in advance. Student staff play a major role in decision making for events like Finals Fest.
“The really awesome thing about the Department of Student Involvement is that all of the programs that we run here are coordinated in tandem with our student staff,”: Christen said. “They really get to take the lead on projects and put their stamp on it and create events that they think students across campus would be interested in.”
The decision to bring Chayce Beckham to UI came after weeks of deliberation and debate. Ultimately, DSI student staff and directors chose Beckham because they felt like his music fit the interests of UI students. Since winning American Idol in 2021, Beckham has been working towards a successful career. His song ‘23’ has topped the charts and he has also opened for both Luke Combs and Luke Bryan in recent years.
“We sat down and dumped a bunch of different ideas on the table and listened to bands and just kind of figured out what kind of artists would make sense for our student population, who would be really fun to have and bring in,” Christen said. “Then Chayce rose up to the top when we were trying to decide who we were going to reach out to.”
The DSI team is confident that the artists chosen for this year’s Finals Fest will make an unforgettable performance for Vandals to enjoy at the end of a long semester.
“Chayce is kind of like a country rock vibe. And then The Brevet are Americana rock,” Christen said. “I think it’s going to build a really nice concert and experience.”
In addition to the Finals Fest concert, Vandal Entertainment has a full semester of events planned for the UI community, including an event every Thursday. Some upcoming activities include Sailesh the Hypnotist coming to Moscow on Feb. 7 and comedian Steve Solberg on March 23.
To increase student participation in events, different living groups will be able to compete to win a more exciting concert experience with the Finals Fest Cup competition. There will be a QR code at the weekly Vandal Entertainment events that students can scan to gain their living groups points for attending. At the time of the concert the group with the most points will win a VIP experience for Finals Fest.
“This is just a fun little competition that will hopefully encourage more people to attend events and build up the hype around Finals Fest,” DSI Marketing Coordinator Carson Shriver said.
Tickets will be available starting Feb. 1. More information on Vandal Entertainment events can be found online.
Grace Giger can be reached at [email protected]