When it comes to music and innovation, most think of prominent performance universities like Juilliard or New York University, not a dorm room at St. Olaf College. However, a group of students in Mellby Hall is proving otherwise. Each week starting in January, around twenty St. Olaf students cram into every crevice of a dorm room resembling a summer camp cabin, fitted with wooden bunk beds and desks, photos and art posters covering the walls. Professional stage lights and four cameramen surround a sofa, creating a makeshift staging area where a keyboardist sits, and a couple of musicians warm up. On the outside of the door hangs a whiteboard with the words “Ole Tiny Dorm recording in progress.”

Despite being known for its prestigious music programs and ensembles, St. Olaf College lacks spaces and opportunities for non-music majors to perform and hone their art without being part of a college-affiliated ensemble. Seeing this gap, Isaac Kitange ’27, Herman Hjorthaug ’27, Moritz Dunbar ’27, and Moises Duarte V ’27 got together to create Ole Tiny Dorm.

“There are a lot of talented musicians on campus that just don’t have a place to perform,” Kitange said in an interview with The Olaf Messenger. “We really wanted to create an intimate space where people could come and perform their own music.”

Ole Tiny Dorm started in January as a platform for smaller and newer campus musicians. The quartet drew inspiration from NPR’s Tiny Desk with the intention of creating a low-stakes environment for campus musicians to gain performance experience and professional recordings to add to their portfolios.

“We aspire to offer professional recordings in a casual way,” Hjorthaug said in an interview with The Olaf Messenger.

Ole Tiny Dorm piloted with immediate friends as the project’s first performers. Ole Tiny Dorm takes place in Hjorthaug and Duarte’s dorm — a small, intimate space for a large operation. Utilizing staging and camera equipment rented from the St. Olaf Libraries, the group produces weekly long and short-form content as well as photos for each recording session.

“Honestly, it felt as produced as Irish State Television or TPT [Twin Cities Public Television],” Owen Larsen ’28, an on-campus folk musician, said in an interview with The Olaf Messenger. Larsen is an example of the type of artist Ole Tiny Dorm aims to reach — a non-music major in an under-performed genre on campus.

While the project is still in its beginning stages, a lot has been accomplished. Several recording sessions with student musicians such as Larsen and the barbershop quartet The Bonafide Four took place in January. The project’s first video, a performance by student performers Meredith Ivory ’27 and Leif Olsen ’27, was published on Feb. 12.

The project continues with an audition-based application that opened on Feb. 17 to get more artists involved with their recording sessions, as they are looking to expand to different performance spaces. Most importantly, however, the group is focused on creating a long-term structure for the project to continue beyond their time here on the Hill.

“We’re definitely thinking about longevity and making this cross-generational or cross-class,” Dunbar said in an interview with The Olaf Messenger. “A new institution at Olaf.”