NEW YORK – Matilda The Musical, Pippin and Kinky Boots (with Kinky Boots sound designer John Shivers pictured here) have two things in common: multiple 2013 Tony Awards and DiGiCo’s SD7T systems. The SD7T builds on the DiGiCo D5T, which is still being used on such shows as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.
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For a decade, DiGiCo has been working with sound designer Andrew Bruce (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita, Cats, and Starlight Express) to develop a software package that provides the tools needed to accomplish the demanding job of live theatrical reinforcement. Using a DiGiCo SD7T, several new Broadway productions took home the coveted 2013 TONY awards.
The Broadway productions using the DiGiCo SD7T that won 2013 TONY awards are:
Kinky Boots – Best Musical: Best performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical (Billy Porter); Best Choreography (Jerry Mitchell); Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics, Cyndi Lauper); Best Sound Design of a Musical (John Shivers); Best Orchestrations (Stephen Oremus).
Pippin – Best Revival of a Musical; Best Performance by an Actress in a leading Role in a Musical (Patina Miller); Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical (Andrea Martin); Best Direction of a Musical (Diane Paulus).
Matilda The Musical – Best Book of a Musical; Best Scenic Design of a Musical (Rob Howell); Best Lighting Design of a Musical (Hugh Vanstone); Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical (Gabriel Ebert).
Since his involvement designing The Lion King for Singapore in 2010, John Shivers has been using DiGiCo SD7Ts on just about every show since. The award-winning sound designer says the console offers a lot of flexibility, especially with the new “T” software, which he says brings features and functionality specific to their needs on theatrical productions as well as a solid sounding foundation in a very compact package.
“The SD7T software has added these very beneficial features thanks to (award-winning sound designer) Andrew Bruce’s involvement in the development. Having onboard compression, gating and delay – along with the programmability and recall ability of those parameters on every channel – opens up possibilities that you just can’t have with an analog console. It’s definitely been an upgrade for us from that standpoint. A positive byproduct has definitely been the size of the console, which allows you to get into smaller spaces and require fewer seats to be removed which had served as a large financial windfall for producers. For me, from a purely creative and design standpoint, it’s about the capabilities of the console. I’m not one to follow the crown necessarily, but the SD7T has become a standard of our industry and the reason everybody’s using them seems clear. It has proven itself to be a very capable and reliable console” said John Shivers.
Additionally, Rogers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, which utilized DiGiCo’s 5DT, was awarded Best Costume Design of a Musical (William Ivey Long).
