|
contents | jazz | |||||||||||||
| Best Equipment for Detroit International Jazz Festival Over its 27-year history, the annual Detroit International Jazz Festival has built a reputation as one of the biggest and best jazz festivals in the world. To ensure the consistent level of sonic excellence that is a prerequisite for an event of this caliber, Aerial Enterprises of Whitmore Lake Michigan deployed EV loudspeakers on each of the festival's ten stages, complete with a full complement of Dynacord, Midas and Klark Teknik equipment. Amazing Audio and Corporate Sound helped Aerial deliver another year of stellar sound for the festival, which saw record attendance numbers in 2006. A top-shelf lineup of Jazz, Blues and Soul stars-including headliners Sergio Mendes, Diane Schuur, Taj Mahal, Dr John, CJ Chenier, Buckwheat Zydeco, Richie Havens, Mose Allison and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band-performed on the festival's main stages. To kick off the festival in a proper fashion, The Temptations Revue (starring Dennis Edwards) performed Motown classics on the Friday night, and other local luminaries, including pianist Kirk Lightsey's Detroit Four, performed jazz and blues Detroit-style, helping the festival maintain a hometown flavor throughout the weekend. "Over 120 artists performed on ten stages, mixed by over 20 engineers, " reported Jim Lillie of Aerial Enterprises. "This is a foundation-run festival that attracts big sponsors and big names, and we make sure the sound is up to the job." Lillie added that, "besides the larger stages, there were smaller performance areas, such as the Detroit Princess jazz cruise riverboat, which featured the region's best collegiate jazz bands, and the Jazz Talk Tent, where audiences could meet the musicians and participate in discussions. On every sized stage for every performance, the quality level was assured by EV, Dynacord, Midas and KT equipment. The visiting engineers all enjoyed mixing on familiar, high quality equipment such as Midas consoles and KT EQs, and the wide range of EV speakers used, from compact Sx250s on the Family Jazz Stage to X-Array and XLC systems on the largest stages, meant the whole festival sounded consistently excellent. Over the entire weekend, I don't think I spoke to an artist, engineer or organizer who wasn't extremely happy with either the sound equipment or service they received." Lillie also described some of the finer points of making the festival sound superb, "We use a lot of vintage microphones for the wide array of acoustic instruments used at the festival, and find that a high quality, flat-sounding speaker--an Xi-1183, for example--at the other end of the signal path minimizes the need for tweaking in between, " Lillie continued. "The true character of a grand piano or vintage instrument is best left as pure as possible, so we let high quality transducers do the work. The additional ingredient, of course, is the expertise of the engineer putting all those clean signals together with the genre style and artistic expression intact. Many of these jazz groups don't tour with an engineer, which means they may be at the mercy of a mix engineer who doesn't know their work, or what the (jazz) genre is supposed to sound like. For example, a jazz drummer might be keeping time on the ride cymbal and high hat while playing accents on the kick and snare drum (the opposite of rock music). Then the next act might have rap kick drum and bass (in the case of Sergio Mendes whose newer material is hip hop influenced). Understanding these differences is critical, as is having the right equipment to allow the engineers to work at their best." "Most of the personnel working with us have worked over 25 years as audio engineers (we like the term vintage engineers). So for all of them mixing a stage at a festival with such a diverse line up of performers isn't a problem-especially with sound systems designed for the specific needs of each stage, from small two-way boxes to line arrays. To cite one example: The FOH engineer at the waterfront stage, Al Hurschman, learned his craft while interning with the Cleveland Symphony later he was the recording engineer behind some of Ted Nugent and Grand Funk Railroad's biggest hits. With Al, you know the mix (at his stage) is going to be dialed in to bring out the best in whatever act happens to be on that stage. Couple chops like Al's with Midas preamps, KT EQs and EV mains and monitors, and you're going to hear a memorable concert." As well as the plethora of talent on the bill and behind the mixing boards, the festival was a showcase for "application-specific" sound solutions. The close proximity of the larger Amphitheater and Pyramid stages was a potential problem, so Aerial spec'd shorter-throw, high output Xi trap boxes for both to prevent bleed-over. The Waterfront and Campus Martius stages had a lot more breathing space, which allowed for line arrays. In addition, Aerial deployed recent offerings from EV and Dynacord, including the EV X-Line Very Compact (XLD281) and a 'plug and play' Dynacord Xa-2 system. "The XLD281 is a tremendous new piece, " Lillie says, "offering tremendous power for the amount of space it occupies-tons of headroom. It also requires very little tweaking to run nice and flat for corporate applications and concerts alike. This makes it very flexible and easy to use. We recently ran the XLD rig at a corporate event for General Motors: it sounded great for that lav mic gig, and it sounded just as good with Jaco Pastorius and Zappa tribute groups. Likewise, the Dynacord Xa-2 delivered a lot of compact power on the Ford Spirit of Detroit Stage, offering tremendously transparent low/mid punch and controlled coverage for the bluesier artists on the bill." write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Jazz News :: home page |