By Olivia Turner | Arts & Life Editor
Since its construction in Jan. 2024, the Foster Pavilion has hosted the likes of the Baylor men’s and women’s basketball teams on its green and gold court. While basketball will continue as the pavilion’s main form of entertainment in this new semester, the center will soon open its doors to music, comedy and entertainment fans for a series of ten professional, affordable entertainment performances over the next two years.
According to Jason Cook, Baylor’s Vice President for Marketing and Communications, the tickets for these performances will be offered to Baylor students and Waco residents alike to bring “vibrancy” to the downtown Waco scene. In the search for a partner to help bring in suitable artists and performers for these shows, Cook discovered Noise New Media, a marketing agency based out of Nashville, he said.
“What Noise New Media brought to the table is they do a lot of music festivals around the country and a lot of those festivals or in cities and locations very similar to Waco,” Cook said. “We want to search for entertainment options that would be attractive to Baylor students … but also entertainment acts that would be of interest to the city of citizens of Waco and people across Central Texas as well.”
Steve Richo, a founder of Noise New Media, said the company’s role in the partnership involves analyzing and evaluating Baylor and Waco trends via streaming apps like Spotify, YouTube and Shazam and social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. From here, Noise New Media can determine ideal performers for the venue and market ticket prices accordingly, Richo said.
“I think our goal here is to try and get artists that are on that upward trend,” Richo said. “We have 6,000 seats to sell roughly inside of the Foster Pavilion, which is which is remarkably smaller than, you know, the Moody Center down in Austin, or other large venues up in Dallas or even in Houston. So we’ve got to try and find artists that are the right size for the room.”
Another method for seeking out shows desired specifically by Baylor students involved a survey of several student leaders at the university, Cook said.
The student behind this survey, Gove, Kan. senior Baylie Holthus, has served as the Marketing Chair for Pi Phi and has helped to procure artists for their annual Howdy celebration.
Holthus said the survey was sent out last semester to student government, academic organizations, multicultural organizations and Greek life organizations and explored desires regarding artist selection, music genres and ticket prices.
“We’re looking at those middle-tier artists because we want students to still be able to go,” Holthus said. “As you know, the more sought-after artists, when they’re selling out huge football stadiums, those ticket prices are going to be astronomically high. So that’s obviously not what we’re wanting when we want Baylor students to be able to go.”
Although she can’t yet say which performers will be featured in this series, Holthus said the country and Christian music genres seem to be most requested regarding music performances according to the results of the survey.
Holthus said that proximity is a factor in these performances that many students will likely appreciate.
“I think Baylor working to bring the music industry to our town would be so great for the people living here because we’re not having to plan out a whole weekend just to travel to go see someone,” she said. “It’s like our favorite artists can come and be a two-minute drive from us.”
