The Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center is home to the UNI School of Music and the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra (WCFSO). The primary performance space--the Great Hall--is a three-tiered, multi-use hall with a full stagehouse than can accommodate both touring productions and grand opera. Two stage extension lifts provide additional audience seating. They also lower to form an orchestra pit or rise to stage level to form a large stage extension that allows ensembles to perform in front of the proscenium within the same space as the audience. Additionally, ten "concert towers" permit flexible configurations that work for ensembles ranging from soloists to full orchestra with chorus.

The design incorporates three cascading balcony fronts which wrap fully around the hall and into the concert towers. The soffits of these balconies provide the early lateral reflections required for concert uses while the balcony fronts and columns provide the edge-diffracted sound waves needed for opera. The towers and concert ceiling allow the theatre’s successful conversion to a concert hall. The room, a combination of a classic narrow rectangle shaping with reverse-fan shaping at the rear, is unusually high, measuring 65 feet from stage level to ceiling. All walls may be covered with sound-absorbing curtains that allow for adjustment of liveness to suit a broad range of programming.

The audio systems support speech, classical music and the contemporary music of stage productions. To accommodate this broad range of programming, the side clusters were given the ability to be mechanically lowered for amplified music or raised out of sight for acoustic music.