Press Release 1

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON BOOKINGS AND PUBLICITY CONTACT:

Jana Millspaugh

Artist/Ensembles Representative

College of Fine Arts

School of Music

Ball State University

Muncie, IN 47306

PHONE: (765) 285-5501

FAX: (765) 285-5401

E-MAIL: univsingers@bsu.edu

MUNCIE, IN- The 2007-2008 concert season at Ball State University marks the 44th birthday of Indiana’s Official Goodwill Ambassadors. This year the critically acclaimed BALL STATE UNIVERSITY SINGERS are striking out in new directions as they celebrate their fifth decade of musical magic.

University Singers will perform at LOCATION on DAY, DATE, at TIME p.m.  Tickets are available at LOCATION (NUMBER).

Forty-four years ago the Indiana General Assembly elevated Ball State Teacher's College to the status of "University". In anticipation of the event the faculty of the Department of Music proposed a new musical organization to be named in honor of the University. Auditions were held, and a multi-talented choral ensemble began intensive rehearsals under founding director Don Neuen.

On the historic day, participants in a joint legislative/ academic ceremony in the newly completed Emens College-Community Auditorium were treated to the premier performance of the BALL STATE UNIVERSITY SINGERS. Accompanied by guitars and banjos, their lighthearted, enthusiastic musical variety show featured folk songs, Broadway hits, collegiate, vocal and instrumental solos, and specialty acts. The group made an immediate hit. Educators, statesmen, and leaders of business and industry clamored to host the amazing kids from Ball State, and the entire state of Indiana soon became their stage.

In 1967, Don Neuen left Ball State to pursue a career in education that led him to national prominence as Director of Choral Activities at the distinguished Eastman School of Music in New York and UCLA. Jacque Trussel, a Ball State graduate student who led the University Singers during the 1967-68 season, went on to achieve acclaim on opera stages around the world. A trio of founding University Singers cast members left school to tour America with Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians. One of them, baritone Tim Noble, has also carved a sizable niche in the international opera scene.

In 1968, Larry Boye arrived from Kansas to begin a seventeen-year career as Director of University Singers. In 1972, the dynamic student entertainment organization from Ball State was asked to create a special touring show for the USO.  The Indiana General Assembly named the University Singers to be "Indiana’s Official Goodwill Ambassadors," a title they have proudly carried to Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland, Iceland, Poland, Latvia, Greece, Cyprus, Great Britain, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, China, and twice to Romania and the USSR.

By the mid-seventies the ensemble had grown to nearly eighty singers, dancers, and instrumentalists. Their performance schedule topped an exhausting 140 appearances each year. In the span of a decade they performed in twenty states up and down America’s heartland, for both Nixon and Carter presidential inaugurals, and for World’s Fairs in Spokane, Washington.

The 1978 Bob Hope Collegiate Talent Search judged the Ball State University Singers to be the nation’s number-one student entertainment organization. Along the way the star-struck college students shared the stage with show business notables Red Skelton, Lawrence Welk, Rich Little, Lorne Green, Dionne Warwick, Jimmy Durante, Liza Minnelli, Olivia Newton-John, Judy Collins, the Smothers Brothers, Pat Boone, and Florence Henderson, and Kenny Rogers. 

During the 1980’s a select cast twice took off time from their academic studies to embark on extended promotional tours. One tour included 120 shows in 10 weeks, while the other totaled 107 shows in 61 cities.  Under the leadership of Fritz Mountford, University Singers continued to reach a worldwide audience through a series of instructional videotapes produced and distributed by the nation’s largest educational music publisher. Every year thousands of student entertainers study the University Singers taped performances of a philanthropic theme song called America Sings!

Recent local philanthropy included a live performance to benefit the historic Paramount Theatre in Anderson, Indiana and a recording and TV special which raised $56,000 for disadvantaged Indiana families. Income from the University Singers musical variety show called SPECTACULAR has allowed the School of Music to offer hundreds of student scholarships in the course of thirty-nine years. In December 2001 the group performed by invitation at the White House, and in 2004 they toured Southern California.  Their most recent tour--to the People's Republic of China in May 2005.

The current cast of University Singers, under the direction of Jeffrey Richard Carter, includes an ensemble of twenty singers/dancers, a ten piece orchestra, sound and lighting technicians, and a production team support staff.

The School of Music houses a University Singers Production Center which contains a mirror-lined rehearsal studio and administrative offices. In addition, thousands of vocal and instrumental arrangements are organized in a music library along side costumes and staging equipment. In another room, technicians maintain recording and amplification equipment and a "synthesizer graveyard" that represents a history of state-of-the-art electronic instruments and sound reinforcement equipment. A fascinating collection of photographs, recordings, scrapbooks, and other memorabilia reveal the highlights of all of our spectacular seasons.