With more money left to spend in spring semester on Performing Arts and Concert Series, Campus Involvement Center asks for input from students. No plan has been made yet for Convo concert.
So far this academic year, a third of the $94,000 budget for the Performing Arts and Concert Series was used, which would leave students’ money left over for a concert during the Spring Semester.
But, Ohio University Student Senate isn’t planning a spring concert, said Zainab Kandeh, senate treasurer, in an email.
Previous spring performances, held in The Convo, included B.o.B. in 2011 and Wiz Khalifa in 2012. In 2013, unexpected funds from the General Fee sponsored a comedy night.
In the past, the Spring Convo shows were partly organized by the Campus Involvement Center, said Andrew Holzaepfel, associate director of the center.
Students said they preferred concerts in Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium over The Convo in a survey during the 2012-2013 academic year.
“I think The Convo isn’t quite as warm and inviting (as MemAud) but we still could see everything and hear everything,” said Kody Seeger, a junior studying accounting who attended Convo Comedy Night in 2013.
There were 15 performances in the Performing Arts and Concert Series during Fall Semester 2014 and 33 total events were produced or sponsored, including classes with visiting musicians.
“Now we know we have a little more Performing Art (and Concert) Series budget so hopefully we can maybe do one or two extra shows in there for the students (in the spring),” Holzaepfel said.
The Involvement Center just released a survey to see which artist students would be interested in seeing during Spring Semester. While they use the Fall Semester expenses to gauge interest for the spring, the budget for the Performing Arts and Concert Series is not comparable to previous years.
“There is no correlation at all,” Holzaepfel said. “You can’t say you spent more on (one show) than (another) because they are totally different shows. It’s apples to oranges.”
This semester, nearly $250,000 was spent on artist contracts, but ticket sales and sponsorships helped foot the bill.
“We rely a lot of ticket income to do as much programming as we do,” Holzaepfel said. “If we rely only on the $94,000, we would probably only do five shows a year. If we gave away all the shows for free, we would probably do somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five instead of 30.”
Based on income, shows such as Scotty McCreery and Billy Gardell did very well along with Second City and the Golden Dragon Acrobats. Other shows, such as Ingrid Michaelson, did well and met the projections but did not sell out, Holzaepfel said.
“You base it on research and you base it on numbers but until the shows over, you don’t know for certain how well it is going to do,” Holzaepfel said. “Now we’re in the part where we are going to start booking Spring Semester based on this picture.”
Marketing strategies also change depending on the show. If the show is of smaller scale or if ticket sales are doing well, less money will be allotted for the marketing and promotions expense. Holzaepfel said.
“I feel like if you’re going to spend a lot of money bringing these performers to campus and nobody knows that they’re happening, that’s a problem,” Holzaepfel said.
As always, the goal of the Performing Arts and Concert Series is to entertain but also to educate, Holzaepfel said.
Third Coast Percussion, a quartet focused on percussion repertoire, spent an entire day individually with the percussion students in the School of Music the day after a concert and master-class, said Seth Alexander, a junior studying percussion performance. The students were able to play a piece or solo they have been working on and be critiqued.
“It was very personable experience because you get to know them and they get to know you as a player and what you’re specifically working on because usually they don’t,” Alexander said. “During the master class, they had no idea who we were or what we were working on but by the end (of my individual session), they knew me by name.”
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