The concert hall is home to exciting events like Chamber Music performances, our Concerto Competition and Chamber Ensemble Competition. 

Going on nearly a decade now, the School of Music hosts an annual New Music Festival which brings together music students with renowned artists from throughout the world for three days of performing and collaboration. 

The School of Music produces opera productions twice per year (opera scenes in the fall and a staged performance in the spring), often in collaboration with artists from the NIU School of Theatre and Dance.

As you enter Boutell Hall, you are faced with the impressive view of the organ, located on a balcony above the orchestra stage. 

Built by world-renown pipe organ builder Martin Ott, the organ was dedicated in 1983, and is used for rehearsals or performances every week by music students.

The organ benefits many students who do not actually play the instrument. Not only does it accompany singers in our various choirs – Chamber Choir, Concert Choir, and University Chorus – but it is also in demand for works with the NIU Philharmonic and Wind Ensemble, as well as with the Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The organ has often been used for very large events, such as the annual Holiday Concert featuring several hundred students, and for graduation ceremonies. Trumpet students particularly enjoy performing with the organ. Two years ago, the organ was heard at the opening of the NIU Contemporary Music Festival featuring students performing works by the great twentieth century composer Olivier Messiaen. 

In 2019, NIU produced a sold-out performance of Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin, the signature concert of The Defiant Requiem Foundation. The Defiant Requiem concert-drama tells the story of the courageous Jewish prisoners in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp (Terezín) during World War II who performed Verdi’s Requiem while experiencing the depths of human degradation. With only a single smuggled score, they performed the celebrated oratorio sixteen times, including one performance before senior SS officials from Berlin and an International Red Cross delegation. Conductor Rafael Schächter told the choir, “We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.”