The artist has performed the song “Alaska” on *The Late Show* and announced a new scholarship, a decade after her viral classroom moment.
It’s been ten years since a video of Maggie Rogers playing her song “Alaska” for Pharrell in an NYU classroom defined a career launch. To mark the anniversary, Rogers performed the track on *The Late Show with Stephen Colbert*.
She also used the occasion to establish the “Alaska” Scholarship Fund. It will support students at her alma mater, the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
The original 2016 session, where a visibly moved Pharrell called her artistry “singular,” became a modern music industry origin story. It propelled Rogers from student to signed artist almost overnight. Her performance and scholarship reframe that viral moment not as an endpoint, but as part of an ongoing narrative linking education, opportunity, and artistic development.
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ROMBO Editorial Staff
The collective voice behind ROMBO Magazine’s news, reviews, features, and cultural coverage.
