The Brown Concert Agency is selling 3,000 additional Spring Weekend tickets because clear weather is forecast for Friday and Saturday, Stephen Hazeltine '09, the group's administrative chair, said Wednesday.
The new tickets, 1,500 for each of the two concerts, will be offered first to Brown students. About 250 of those tickets were sold Wednesday, said Daniel Ain '09, BCA's booking chair.
The remaining tickets will be on sale at the Faunce House box office today from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. exclusively to Brown students, and from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. to Brown and Rhode Island School of Design students. Any tickets that remain after those sales will be made available to the public Friday and Saturday at a ticket booth on the corner of Brown and George streets.
BCA was able to release the additional tickets because it was confident the concerts could be held on the Main Green, which has a larger capacity than Meehan Auditorium, the rain location. The group announced that both concerts would be held outside in an e-mail to students Wednesday.
"We wanted to make sure everyone has a chance to hear about it," Ain said.
The group sold a total of 6,000 tickets to Brown students online last month. The new tickets will boost the total number of available passes by 50 percent.
"We're very pleased," Hazeltine said. "There is absolutely no rain in the forecast."
Ain said he thought the reason only a fraction of the available tickets were sold Wednesday was that word of the additional offerings had not spread quickly enough among students. "A lot of the student body wasn't aware," he said.
BCA consulted with the Student Activities Office and Facilities Management's grounds department before making the final decision to hold both concerts outside, Hazeltine said.
"This is the second year we've intended to have both shows outside," he said. "We thought we were due, and it seems that we were."
Spring Weekend will be headlined on Friday night by hip-hop star Nas and on Saturday by indie-pop band Of Montreal.
Hazeltine said in an interview last month that each headliner will be paid between $40,000 and $70,000 for the gigs. In previous years, the top performers were paid between $30,000 and $50,000, he said.
"If anything, artists have gotten more expensive," Hazeltine said.
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Santigold, local rock band Deer Tick and world-fusion quintet Toubab Krewe will also perform. A student band, Doss the Artist and PGA Tour, will open for Of Montreal after winning a battle of the bands competition this past weekend.
Tickets will be sold for $15 each to Brown students, with a maximum of two per person. Students must present a Brown ID. The price for RISD students will also be $15, while members of the public will be able to purchase any remaining tickets this weekend for $25.
