CMU announces second show with astrophysicist | Western Colorado

Tickets for a November lecture by famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at Colorado Mesa University sold out in less than 24 hours.

And then the calls and emails started coming in from people who didn’t know about advance ticket sales for the event at the Asteria Theater.

“It was just a shock,” Kelsey Coleman said of the fact that the university’s anticipated demand for such an event actually came to fruition.

Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and a bestselling author whose books include Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and Starry Messenger.

Demand for tickets to Tyson’s talk was so great that CMU contacted Tyson to see if he could come a day early and give another talk.

Luckily, Tyson could and would do it. Tyson will present “An Astrophysicist Goes to the Movies – Part 1” as part of CMU’s “Reaching for the Stars” speaker series on November 10 at 4 p.m. at Asteria.

Tickets go on sale to the public at 10 a.m. today at CMUstages.com/tickets.

As with Tyson’s sold-out performance on November 11th, there was also a presale for the lecture on November 10th; However, this one was intended exclusively for CMU faculty, staff and students, “with an emphasis on students,” Coleman said.

Half of the tickets in each Asteria section – the theater has 860 seats – were made available for purchase to those groups on Tuesday “to make sure they had access,” she said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, those tickets were nearly sold out, she said.

The other half of the tickets and any unclaimed advance tickets will be sold to the community today, and likely quickly, she said.

“If you look at it that way, we could have even had more shows. And we would still be sold out,” Coleman said. “The response is still positive and really overwhelming considering how many people want to come in and hear (Tyson) talk.”

“We were just grateful that he was willing to show up a day early,” she said. Unlike the Front Range, “we’re not just a regular spot on his regular tour. It’s special what he does.”

“I think Western Slope and Grand Junction are often overlooked for this type of talent. It’s really great to have someone like that,” she said. “He’s probably the best-known astrophysicist in the world.”

Long before a date was set for Asteria’s grand opening, CMU contacted Tyson through his publicist: “It’s not easy to find a publicist for this caliber of person. So it took a lot of effort,” Coleman said – and began talking about the university’s values ​​and mission of serving first-generation students.

“Two-thirds of the student body is first-generation, low-income,” Coleman said. “You don’t necessarily have the ability to go to the Front Range and spend $300 to $500. … For these families, this is simply not an option.”

With persistence, CMU eventually caught Tyson’s attention and was then able to get him to agree to a second date after the first sold out so quickly.

“There wasn’t a lot of clarity the first time,” Coleman said.

Advance sales for major events are a “standard for the industry,” she said.

OVG360, which manages both Asteria and city-owned venues, often conducts pre-sales for events by emailing customers with event information and pre-sale codes and sometimes offering that information on social media.

However, some potential customers did not expect advance sales, as they discovered that Tyson’s talk was largely sold out just minutes after the public sale began.

There is also some conjecture as to how this happened, Coleman acknowledged.

CMU President John Marshall purchased a number of tickets that he gave to high school teachers and students in school districts he visited during his CMU Promise Tour, she said.

But as far as CMU donors receiving tickets, “that’s not the case,” she said. “It was more of a, ‘Here’s a pre-sale code.’ Let’s do what the industry does and then make it available to the public.”

Anyone can sign up to receive emails about Asteria and CMU Stages events at cmustages.com/join-our-mailing-list.html or by email at [email protected], she said.

“In western Colorado, we’re not necessarily used to shows selling out right away,” Coleman said. “We’re finding that that’s not really the case anymore. There is definitely a demand for art here in western Colorado, and we see it firsthand.”

That’s one of the reasons CMU built Asteria and why it responded to frustrated calls and emails by contacting Tyson about another gig, she said.

“I think we learned a lot from the first launch of the first show,” she said. “We expected people to be excited. … I don’t think we realized the extent of the excitement.”