Gig Report "City of Asylum" Pittsburgh

[bjornson]

Hi everybody!
It's been a long time since I shared any of my audio adventures, so I thought I'd post.
Some background:
For the Last 4 years I've been the A/V provider for The annual Jazz poetry concert sponsered by the Henry Reese and his org. "City of Asylum". His non-profit has purchased several run down houses on the Northside of Pittsburgh, and turns them into homes for exiled writers from around the world. My job has been to transform the alley outside the houses into a performance venue, complete with stage, roof, backline, sound, lighting and projection, and document the event for fundraising purposes.
In 07 Oliver Lake brought his "World Saxophone Quartet" and the concert was voted Best Jazz concert of the year by the local media.
Thanks to hurricane Hanna the prospects of an outdoor gig Sat. were bleak.
On Friday we decided to forge ahead load the truck and make the call at 7am sat. morning.
At 9am the weather reports and my Viking intuition told me to fold and go with the rain plan. This involved REPACKING the truck, driving to the venue, UNPACKING, and hanging an entire sound lighting and projection package in the Hazlett Theater, also on the north side...... In 5 hours.........
The weather started to improve causing the crew to question my decision (sanity).....Mutiny!
By show time it was blowing and storming with some lightning, so I got the last laugh!
Oliver Lake was back with a quintet this time, and the string quartet Flux was also along for the ride.
The system included:
Rigging:
30' box of global truss
6 x 1 ton rigstar motors
Sound:
DDA Arena FOH console 40x8 with VCA's/mutegroups/matrix
12 flown Meyer UPA's with 650r2 subs/KT eqs, Smaart rig, Dolby Lake system processor.
Rack of old school dbx166, tc2000/rev 7/pcm70
6 monitor mixes. We dumped the monitor console last minute and I ran FOH and MON from FOH.
Recording:
2x Tascam mx2424
24 channels of focusrite micpre/converter/lightpipe
56x3 W4 splitsnake with Jenson trannies
Lighting:
ETC express 250
30 Source 4 pars and 26/36 degree
4 Martin 500
Hog IPC/widget/laptop
Projection:
4 Panasonic HD cameras
2 powerpoint laptops (for translations)
Christie Roadster 10K
Panasonic MX70
Comm:
14 stations on 4 channels
Once we committed to being inside the mic options opened up.
I went with 414's on the horns, D6 on kik, sm 98's on sn/toms, MKH20 on overheads, kmi84's on strings.
Neumann U87 on Leslie bottom and 57's on the top, countrymans on the DJ (ambience/FX stuff)
I did 6 room mics, 2 shure VP88 and two shotguns from the stage.
The poets got a beta 87 with 87 backup.
The event usually draws almost a thousand people, and our little theater max's at 500... So... we threw a 5K and screen in the lobby and started throwing chairs.
Audio feeds from FOH were many. LCR, side balc LR, backstage, lobby, booth, and safety stereo to Video. Thank goodness for the ol' DDA's matrix outputs!
Because we dropped the monitor desk we had no way to monitor the mx2424 output. I have a CS2000 in the basement with a PT rig, but my in bldg cabling isn't done yet. I thought about disconnecting my Apogee conversion rig, but time was too short. We went with the pretested option. All we could do was record a brief sound check, and run the drive downstairs for a quick fact check on the PT/Euphonix rig. Luckily everything sounded great.
I resisted the temptation to start hauling high end pres and comps up from the studio... there just wasn't time to muck with a proven rig.
Just goes to show that with a great crew and proper planning, you can react quickly to any challenges that come up.
The crew was like a well oiled machine: focusing lighting via radios during a 1hr rehearsal, Changing Macadonian/Cantonese translations for the powerpoint, changing mic placement, tweeking preamp levels, coordinating entrances and exits, swapping out a finicky leslie amp,
I couldn't of been prouder. Why can't government agencies cooperate like this!
While we didn't have the "Vibe of the street", we had much more control, and I wasn't pulling my truss/roof/stage down at 3am!!!

[bjornson]

FOH shot 1

[bjornson]

Rehearsal

[bjornson]

Shitte! caught from above red handed doing 1 handed VCA mixing!
No shower, red Berkley fishing cap...... NICE

[bjornson]

View from tech rail above FOH
3/4 thrust stage with balconies. Very intimate, but hard to cover the audience equally.
The key is a lot of zones, with the dolby lake doing levels post Meyer processing.

[bjornson]

Recorder land/ wireless world...
and yes, those really are vhf telex lavs.....
for the last minute "poets enter from another planet" segment.

[bjornson]

Video/lighting claustroworld. Threw an event 20/20 in there for foldback.
Got a little hot and noisy with the 10K blowing DESERT wind in there!
We took turns letting it dry our socks.... Really.

[bjornson]

pre event Lobby overflow

[bjornson]

FOH 2, Split snake, and my personal favorite,
Security Officer Broski, (AKA SOB)
after a LONG day at the office!!!

[bjornson]

Studio in basement
ALMOST DONE!!!!!
Next time!

[bjornson]

2nd studio image
The idea behind this rack is that pieces of gear can be removed for remotes as needed, leaving the i/o and IEC cables behind.
Cases within a rack if you will. It's rare to have everything in one place at the same time, but no more screw guns!

[matyas]

Cool gig report, Dave. I was actually going to go to that show, but something came up at the last minute and I couldn't make it. Wish I had been there - sounds like a good time! (And the Hazlett rocks!)

[Remoteness]

Dave, Very cool my man.

Keep up the great work.