Picture a fraternity. What do you see?

A trombonist riffing on Chappell Roan’s “Hot to Go?” A bow drawing across a violin’s strings during Katy Perry’s “California Gurls?” Maybe a singer recreating the dance to LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem?”

Likely, none of those scenarios came to mind, yet each happened at Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia’s jam session.

The aim of Sinfonia, like any other fraternity, is to nurture a sense of brotherhood. Instead of parties or intramurals, Sinfonia bonds through the shared passion of music. Its final event of rush week Sept. 21, drew in brass, percussion and string instruments to the Center of the Arts to jam out to popular songs.

“The biggest thing with our fraternity that’s different from other fraternities is that the core of our fraternity is music,” senior Ian Curless said, president of Phi Mu Alpha. “We all have a shared love of music, and so as a group, we’re doing a jam session, which I haven’t seen other fraternities do, mainly because almost everyone who joins our group is a musician or has a love of music, and so just doing events where we get to make music is always super fun.”

After around a decade of hiatus, Sinfonia returned to campus last year. As such, the fraternity still sought out new members. The jam session and its other rush week events aimed not only to draw in interest, but also to remind musicians that like-minded people are on campus.

“I want them to be able to see, for our people who are coming here for the first time, is that there is a drive and a passion for this, but also that there is a group on campus of guys like them,” Curless said. “One thing that Greek life all tries to do is help you find your people, and so I’m hoping that we can give these musicians who are looking for someone, these guys can get another strong group of people to run with.”

Freshman Beren Dusick’s interest in the jam session closely aligned with Curless’s hope for the night.

“The main reason [I came] is because they don’t let me play drums anywhere at the Center of the Arts because I’m not a music major/minor,” Dusick said. “So I haven’t gotten a chance to play, and I really want to play. And also, I love playing with people and jamming, improvising.”

In a traditional performance setting, playing a piece for an audience comes after weeks of slowly refining bits of the composition. For an environment like the jam session, the traditional rules of practice no longer apply. Instead, it is more casual, where responses to each other define the play.

Sophomore violinist Seth Deming compared his experience with the two environments.

“It’s not as… strict, and it’s not as hard — like not hard music,” Deming said. “It’s just not the same — a lot less people. More just jamming together, instead of ‘you have to practice your part, and then you show up, and you have to match perfectly with everyone.’ This is kind of just more to have fun.”

Dancing, singing and even drumsticks flying out of hands, the final song of the night, “Party Rock Anthem,” captured the spirit of Sinfonia: chaos that transformed into connection.