Registration

Conference participants should return the following registration form along with the conference fee. Checks should be made payable to K-State Music.

Registration Form

Please mail form and payment to:

Craig Weston

KSU Music

109 McCain Auditorium

Manhattan, KS 66506

A public forum has begun to discuss travel, collaboration, and other details related to the conference. Click the link below to access this page. (This site is accessible to anyone, but the URL has not been published anywhere except on the conference web site.)

Forum

Forum

All of the conference concerts will take place in All-Faiths Chapel auditorium. Registration and a few other non-concert events will be in the annex of McCain Auditorium (home of the music department). These two buildings are not connected, but are a very small distance apart. When you first arrive for the conference, come to the McCain Auditorium annex for registration.

 

Here is an interactive map of campus. McCain Auditorium is the largest building on the south side of campus. (On this map, north is in the upper right corner.) The Holiday Inn is visible on the southeast corner of 17th Street and Anderson Avenue.

Walking Directions from the Holiday Inn:

Walk out of the front door of the hotel and turn right (east) on Anderson Avenue. Walk about two blocks, past the building that looks like a castle (Nichols Hall) across the street and the Anderson Village strip mall on the south side of Anderson. When you come to the stoplight at the crosswalk (no intersection, just a crosswalk), cross Anderson and enter the campus. McCain Auditorium is the large, ugly blocky building that you are now walking straight toward, about 100 yards away. Aim for the non-descript entrance to the short part of the building (the annex), which is near the enormous satellite dish. Follow the signs to registration (and to All-Faiths Chapel Auditorium).

 

Directions by Car:

Enter the southeast corner of campus either from 14th Street or Vattier Street. Park in one of the large lots located there. (NOTE: these lots tend to fill up by around 8:30 a.m.) If you are in the southernmost lot (lot A1), walk through the tunnel in the Beach Art Museum and up a slight hill toward McCain Auditorium. If you are in lot A2 or A3, just follow the walkway west toward McCain Auditorium. You will come between McCain (on your left) and All-Faiths Chapel (on your right). Enter McCain in the northeast corner of the building and follow the signs to registration.

If you can’t find parking in lot A1, A2, or A3, go to the parking garage directly across the street from the Holiday Inn.

Detailed Directions to McCain Auditorium and All-Faiths Chapel Auditorium

On Campus

The local Sigma Alpha Iota chapter will be selling donuts and coffee in the atrium of McCain (the music building) the mornings of the conference. Free coffee for  SCI members with conference nametag.

The K-State Union is very close to all conference events. There is a food court with quick-service chain food (Panda Express, Chick-Fil-A, Taco Bell, BBQ, Pizza, etc), a Caribou Coffee, Salsa Ritas (Mexican) and a sit-down buffet-style meal at the Bluemont Café (which has excellent desserts). More information on eating at the K-State Union can be found at this link.

The Call Hall Dairy Bar is about a five to ten minute walk north from the music building, and has the best ice cream in the solar system, made on premises.

Aggieville

The Aggieville restaurant/bar/shopping is about two blocks from the music building and about 4 blocks from the Holiday Inn. In addition to several chain restaurants, here are some of my favorite locally-owned eateries in Aggieville:

Coco Bolos: Southwest/Caribbean fusion. Arguably the best restaurant in Manhattan. Sit down; the service is usually fairly prompt for lunch.

Rock-a-Belly Deli: Excellent sandwiches. This place is small, but they have semi-outdoor tables if the weather is good.

Radina’s Coffeehouse: coffee roasted on premises in small batches, soup, sandwiches, etc.

Bluestem Bistro: Good coffee, sandwiches, salads, etc: a little larger food selection than Radinas

Pats Blue Ribbon BBQ: A basic bar with really good BBQ and burgers.

AJ’s NY Pizza: A satellite of their main restaurant downtown. This location doesn’t seem to be open very often.

Hibachi Hut: Excellent Creole and Cajun food. I love this place but the service is slow—don’t go for lunch if you’re in a hurry.

More information on Aggieville, including information on restaurants, bars, shopping, and an interactive map of Aggieville businesses can be found at this link.

Elsewhere around town:

Fine dining at Harry’s (downtown), Della Voce (downtown) or Four Olives (Anderson and Seth Child, west side of town.)

The Little Grill is about 7 miles outside of Manhattan across the Big Blue River. Great Jamaican food in a low-key atmosphere. Try the jerk chicken.

AJ’s NY Pizza (downtown): The best pizza in a college town surprisingly bereft of interesting pizza options.

Little Apple Brewing Company: Good craft beers brewed on premises. Good basic cuisine: it isn’t swanky, but LABC has excellent steaks. This is a big place so it’s a good place to go with a group if you have cars. (Anderson and Seth Child, west side of town.)

Early Edition (west side of town) and Bob’s Diner (east of campus) are great for breakfast. Early edition is uptown; Bob’s is distinctly not.

Eating in Manhattan

If this site doesn’t answer your questions, email Craig Weston (conference host) at cweston@ksu.edu 

Questions?

As on most large campuses, parking at K-State is a hassle. On weekdays, the only options are to have a visitors permit (we can do that for you—more info to come), or to park in the new parking garage (close to the music building) for $4 per day. However, having a permit doesn’t guarantee finding a spot: spots in the garage and the lots near the music building tend to fill up by around 8:00 a.m. on weekdays. (Did I mention that staying at the Holiday Inn and walking is a great option?)

Parking

We have a block of rooms reserved at the Holiday Inn at the Campus for about $100. Be sure to tell them you are with the SCI conference. There are cheaper rooms in town, but I would strongly encourage you to stay at the Holiday Inn because of its location: it is 2-3 blocks from all conference activities, and also about 3 blocks from Aggieville (one eventually learns to say that with a straight face): the campus restaurant/shopping/bar district. If you stay here, you literally will not need to drive at all, and parking on campus is a big enough hassle that this would be a big plus. (If you could fly into Manhattan and stay at the Holiday Inn, you’d have it made.) Also, it was recently renovated (2007) and is quite nice. None of the other hotels in town are within reasonable walking distance of the campus. 

Please don’t wait to reserve a room at the Holiday Inn if you plan to do so. The largest block they will initially hold is 25 rooms, but if we use those up before February 25, they will allocate more rooms. You can always cancel or change your reservation if your travel plans change.

Lodging

Manhattan has a small commercial airport, and the most convenient option by far would be to fly into Manhattan, but the schedules are fairly limited and it will cost more, unless you are coming from Dallas, Denver or Kansas City, the cities from which Manhattan is served by direct flights. You can learn more about Manhattan flight schedules at the FlyMHK website. If you can get to the Manhattan airport, you can definitely do this conference without a car—more on this below.

If you can’t drive or fly directly to Manhattan, you’ll fly to Kansas City, from which it is a two-hour drive. If you don’t want to rent a car, another option is van shuttle service offered by KCI Roadrunner. I wouldn’t really recommend that option, though: if you are trying to stretch your dollar, I’d suggest trying to “go halvsies” with one or more other SCI composers on a rental car—the shuttle ride is slow and not that much cheaper than a rental car, anyway. (You won’t need a car much, or at all, when you’re actually at the conference.) 

If you are thinking about driving, here are some driving times:

Kansas City: 2 hours

Wichita: 2.5 hours

Lincoln: 3 hours

Oklahoma City: 5 hours.

St. Louis: 5.5 hours

Denver: 7 hours

Travel

Kansas State is a large land-grant university with an enrollment of about 23,000 students, located in Manhattan, Kansas. K-State was the first college to be officially designated as a land-grant college in 1863. Manhattan is a fairly sleepy college town of about 55,000 people, located approximately 100 miles west of Kansas City, in the scenic (really!) Flint Hills region of Kansas. (Manhattan is also a military town: Fort Riley is about 10 miles to the west.)

The campus is quite lovely and hopefully you’ll find a few minutes to stroll through it. The architectural theme is limestone block, a building material that was much more widely available here on the prairie than timber was. All but one or two buildings on campus offer interesting variations on this theme. (Unfortunately, the music building is one of the exceptions—it is a big, ugly block.)

Kansas State University

The works performed on the conference will be recorded by Kyle Arnold Sound.

To obtain recordings, utilize this form.

Recordings