By Ball State Marketing and Communications—
MUNCIE, IN – Ball State University will hold a grand opening on Sept. 19 for the Brown Family Amphitheater—a new outdoor performance and gathering space on campus that the entire community can enjoy.
Located between Park and Pruis halls and between Noyer and Woodworth complexes, this grand lawn venue is an impressive performance facility for artists and audiences.
Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony will be a free jazz concert featuring the Ball State Jazz Ensemble with vocalist and 2021 Ball State graduate Tatum Langley.
Tatum Langley
Dinner can be ordered from food trucks, and sweet treats will be available in the Hershey’s Ice Cream Shop in the nearby Multicultural Center. Attendees should plan to bring their own lawn chair or a blanket. Free parking will be available in the nearby New York Parking Garage.
Here is the schedule of events:
6 p.m.—Food trucks open
6-6:30 p.m.—Backstage tours
7 p.m.—Ribbon-cutting ceremony
7:30 p.m.—Jazz concert
About the Brown Family Amphitheater
The Brown Family Amphitheater is an outdoor performance and gathering space for a variety of events and performances. The amphitheater is located between Park and Pruis halls and between Noyer and Woodworth complexes. It adds to an already vibrant environment while enhancing the sense of place in an area of campus that contains several of the University’s housing facilities.
The amphitheater offers artists and audiences an impressive performance facility. In addition to a stage, the facility features dressing rooms, a green room, storage space, a control room, and a loading dock. The facility features a booth/mix station with a lightboard, soundboard, and more with a line of sight to the stage. There are elevated spotlights, distributed power throughout the venue, motors and truss lighting over the stage, and more.
About the Brown Family
The new facility was made possible thanks to the generosity of businessman and philanthropist Charles W. Brown ’71 and his wife, Dr. Louise Tetrick. Mr. Brown, who earned his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, has received several awards from the University’s Miller College of Business, including a Hall of Fame Award in 2016. Mr. Brown has served on the Cardinal Varsity Club, Miller College of Business Executive Advisory Board, and the Indianapolis CEO Group.
A longtime donor to Ball State, Mr. Brown and Dr. Tetrick generously supported the University and its students with the Charlie Brown BOLD Celebration Scholarship. They were also the lead donor for the Charles W. Brown Planetarium—the largest planetarium in Indiana—which opened in 2014. Together Mr. Brown and Dr. Tetrick have four children, Sarah Brown Smiley, Paul Brown, Lee Anne Tetrick Charleston, and Katie Tetrick Tasci.
About Ball State Jazz Band I
Jazz Ensemble 1 is the flagship jazz ensemble of the Ball State jazz program and enjoys the reputation of being one of the best collegiate bands in the country. The band has performed at the National Theatre in Costa Rica (2019), Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland (2017), toured Poland, Prague, and Berlin (2014), as well as China (2012). Jazz 1 has received numerous awards from over 20 appearances at the Elmhurst Jazz Festival in Chicago, the Kansas City Jazz Fest, and the National Collegiate Jazz Fest in Mobile, Alabama. The band presented an invited two-set performance at Dizzy’s Club in New York City in 2022.
About Tatum Langley, ’21
An amalgamation of musical influences, Tatum Langley is a Chicago-born, raised, and based vocalist and performer specializing in big band jazz and Broadway styles. With mesmerizing vocal agility, captivating stage presence, and a voice that is certainly larger than her small build may suggest, Tatum has charmed the audiences of cozy jazz clubs and intimate cabaret venues, as well as shook the rafters of performance halls and regional theaters across North America. She just finished her first leg of tour of the U.S. and Canada with internationally-renowned musical sensation Postmodern Jukebox (whose viral YouTube channel features Tatum’s cover of Green Day’s “Basket Case,” currently surpassing 600k views), and sings regularly with Chicago’s own Shout Section Big Band, who have an album coming out soon. She believes that telling a story, connecting with an audience, and constantly seeking discoveries while performing is the closest thing to magic in the world. And as always… Chirp! Chirp!
