A dynamic new production on Broadway, Buena Vista Social Club chronicles the story of musicians pre- and post-Cuban Revolution. It’s a play with musical performances that often directly correlate with the experiences of the characters. Inspired by the real-life group and its Oscar-nominated documentary of the same name, the show examines Cuban musicians first in the mid-1950s who find their lives torn asunder by the Revolution, during which many separate, and then what happens when they reunite in 1996 to record their music. Buena Vista switches back and forth in the timeline for dramatic effect and focuses on a fictionalized story about two successful singing sisters whose lives are ripped apart by Castro’s chaos. As one character states during the show, there were two types of Cubans — those who stayed and those who left.
A Big, Musical Cast
Jonathan Deans, who recently worked on the Idina Menzel musical Redwood, designed the sound for this show which includes 10 musicians along with nearly 20 cast members. He created a crisp mix for a production in which the instruments offer a wide range of tonalities, and he also created a monitor system on stage that allowed the musicians to be tracked and their mixes to follow them as they moved. As far as he and his collaborators know, this is the first time that anyone has done something like this.
“The dance and the choreography is so beautifully done and supports the book,” Deans tells FRONT of HOUSE. “It’s just fantastic. I love watching the performers and the choreographers. This is their culture. Every single breath resonates with them because they’ve grown up with Cuban music since they were born, and their families and their family’s family. It’s just incredible.”
As an outsider, as a British citizen who has no connection to the soulful group’s world, Deans felt privileged to learn about Cuban music through the Buena Vista Social Club players. He also became aware that he needed to take a different approach to his mixes. A new challenge necessitated an interesting idea. While the actors generally have specified marks for their book scenes, during the different songs the lead musician often changes. Deans explains that within such Cuban songs, the whole band takes their cues from whoever takes up the mantle next.
“It’s not just improvisation and it’s not just tempo, it’s all of that,” Deans explains. “It’s everything and what they need to hear. It changes from one instrument to another within a song, of what they want to hear and who’s connecting with who and how. So it became really, really complicated.”
A Busy Stage
Before arriving at the Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway, Buena Vista Social Club was performed at the Atlantic Theater in Lower Manhattan where Deans and his team hashed out the sound design. Four members of the band roam the stage — two guitarists, the reed player, and the pianist, whose upright instrument is rolled around. So, for example, one of the guitarists might need to hear himself over the timbale player, and then if he moves might be catching the sound of another player or some of the actors. It’s a busy stage.
“Timothy Jarrell, who is the amazing mixer on the show, was having to take multiple cues within a song, depending on where a musician stood in order for them to hear,” Deans recalls, of the Atlantic run. “This was crazy because he was not able to fully mix what we needed as an audience because he was mixing what they needed blindly. We weren’t able to have a person backstage mixing for several reasons — the space, the cost of the gear, and the cost of the person. So I thought, ‘I’m going to track them.’”
To handle this sonic dilemma, Deans has placed 27 d&b E5 speakers in the floor of the stage, and he had the four musicians wear TiMax Trackers with their audio being fed into Meyer Sound’s Spacemap Go.
“When people talk about tracking, they’re usually on a proscenium left/right with levels and whatever they want there,” Deans continues. “So it’s just laying down and following them around the stage. It works really, really well. There are a few amazing, surprising things that come from that as well, because you create directionality. When the musicians are standing in a place, they’re a little hotter where they are than anywhere else in the stage, which creates focus. Without doing anything on the proscenium, we’re creating focus in the floor where they’re standing because of where they are, and as they move around it follows them around. We are mixing our sound system with what they’re hearing, with what they need, which is also helping the directionality and everything else. It has this very, very clean, very precise sound and gives them space.”
Deans and his team tracked the musicians but not the actors. There were some difficulties in terms of staging, positioning, where the moving band platform was, and where people entered the stage. The band platform includes the percussion, and he would change “the timing of the music system relevant to where the timing was for the percussion, so that we didn’t smear or flam the sound system with the live sound. A lot of live sound comes up the stage from a cowbell to a timbale to congas to bongos, and some of those guys can really dig into those. ‘Can you take it down a bit?’ — it’s very difficult to say that, because that’s the way that that is. That’s how that has to be in this section of the show to do this and build around it. So I had conversations with the musicians for them to understand what I had to do for the audience, and for what they needed and what needs to be heard. It was very hard work.”
The sound designer also set up fixed monitor zones for the actors. “It created the space and air for us as the audience to be able to focus in and really enjoy it,” Deans says. “It created a super cool dynamic which worked both upstairs in the mez and downstairs in the orchestra.”
Sound Gear Choices
Buena Vista Social Club is being run on a DiGiCo Quantum 7T console. Actors and musicians are miked with a mixture of DPA, Fishman, Neumann, and Shure mics. There are 41 Shure ADX1M Micro Bodypack transmitters being used in the show. Most of the musicians wear four transmitters. For example, one guitarist wears a DPA microphone on the guitar, a mic for their pickup, and a mic for singing along with a backup. That requires four transmitters. The piano and pianist only need three transmitters after they tested what sounds better on that particular piano, where it should go, the style of music that is being heard, and how it’s being played. The goal was to find what works best for the musicians and audience. Most of this audio gear is not discernible to the eyes of audience members.
“The stage gets very loud because of the percussion instruments and everything else, and they have to hear themselves above that,” Deans says. “There’s no way that one could do it without pickups. So on stage, the pianos and all the acoustic instruments are using pickups.”
The sound system is mainly comprised of Meyer Ultra-X40s at front of house, along with some Ultra, UM, and UP models for stalls and fills. “The main system downstairs is two X40s, left/right X40 speakers,” Deans remarks. “If you’re right up close, you’re going to hear the slims and the front fills. They’re all tuned and timed to work with the performer, to focus on the stage.”
There are Lina line arrays to disperse sound in the balcony. There is a center line array to create a center image for the front. “It’s a mixture of that and UPA-2Ps which are on the proscenium cutting in to the very front five rows,” Deans elaborates. “There’s a lot of energy that comes off that stage for those first four to five rows, so there has to be something that cuts in and be able to do that. That’s between the center array, the Linas, and the UPA-2Ps because they’re a very narrow horn so I can point exactly where I need it. In the front of the stage, we have UP-4slims.” There are subs built under the side aisles but not the center aisle. They are located in the boxes as well. The Meyer Sound speakers are also complemented by d&b e4, e5, e6 and Anchor AN-1000X enclosures.
For the set’s balcony on stage, Dean time aligned the vocal system to the people upstage as well. “It’s putting the source where it belongs, which is to the focus point on the actors, or as we talked about, musicians, but on the actors and the band platform moving up and down,” he says. “There are all these different time delays on levels and tracking everything going on just to do a song. As soon as all the musicians understood that, and then the actors understood that, it all started clicking and everyone started understanding what we were doing.”
For Deans, it is imperative to view music and sound for a show as one department. That allows for a mutually beneficial relationship. “We can’t do it without musicians,” he stresses. “Musicians can’t do it without us. We can’t do it without actors. Actors can’t do it without us. So music and sound have to be together. If not, then it breaks, it fractures, and the audience can tell.”
Buena Vista Social Club sounds great, with the different voices and instruments clear in the mix. It was a passionate labor of love for Deans. “I’m very, very happy and thrilled to have worked with this production,” he declares. “Buena Vista is just a powerhouse, it’s so good.”
Buena Vista Social Club
- Sound Company: PRG
Crew
- Sound Designer: Jonathan Deans
- A1: Timothy Jarrell
- A2: Darren Shaw
- Head House Electrics/Sound: Sandy Paradise
- Sound Programming: Daniel Lundberg, Thomas Ford
- Production Sound: Mike Tracey, Daniel Lundberg
- Assistant Sound Design: Tate Abdullah
Gear
- Console: DiGiCo Quantum 7T w/(2) DiGiCo SD-Rack, (1) SD-Mini Rack
- Speakers: Meyer Sound Ultra-X40, Ultra-X23, Ultra-X20, Lina, UM-1P, UP-4slim, UPA-2P, UP Junior, UPQ-D1, USW-210P, 900-LFC; d&b audiotechnik e4, e5, e6; Anchor AN-1000X
- Amps: d&b D6
- Processing: Meyer Sound Galaxy 816; Waves SoundGrid Server, DiGiGrid MGB; TC Electronic System 6000, Reverb 4000; Rupert Neve 5045 Primary Source Enhancer; SSL MADI to Coax Converter, Tascam CDR200; TiMax Tracker tags and sensors; dbx compressor/limiter; MIDI Solutions Quadra; JL Cooper MLA-XLR
- Wireless: (2) Shure ADX2/B58A handheld transmitters, (4) AD3 Axient Digital Wireless mic transmitters, (14) AD4Q digital wireless receivers, (52) ADX1M Micro bodypack transmitters, (8) P10R IEM receivers, (4) P10T Dual IEM transmitters
- PMs: (10) Sony MDR-7506 headphones, (4) Whirlwind PA-1 headphone amplifiers
- Mics: Shure SM57-LC, SM58-LC, SM58S, 514B; DPA 4007, 4011A, 4099; Fishman BP-100; Neumann KM 184 MT; AKG C747; Audix D2; Helpinstall 240, 280 Pickups; Yamahiko SR, M8; Radial Engineering JDI Mk3 DI, ProRMP, PZ-DI; Countryman direct box
- Comms: Clear-Comm
