WASHINGTON, DC – The sound design team for a six-week revival of the 1971 musical, Follies, at Kennedy Center, included theatrical sound designer Kai Harada, engineer Patrick Pummill and assistant designer Jana Hoglund. Harada chose a Stagetec Aurus digital console and Nexus digital router to achieve a "natural" sound image. Follies garnered seven Tony Awards when it originally opened on Broadway.
The six-week run for Follies, long considered a standout among the musical collaborations between James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim, was from May 7-June 19 at the Kennedy Center's 1,100-seat Eisenhower Theater.
"The show sounds exactly the way I want it to sound- natural- and I know that part of the reason is due to the Aurus console and the Nexus mic preamps, said Harada, who also noted that "there are 28 musicians in the orchestra pit, which translates into 46 orchestra inputs, plus a star-studded cast of 37, and every little nuance and detail is delivered beautifully through the system.
"Based on my experiences with Stagetec equipment – the Nexus on Wicked and the Nexus and Aurus on Zorro Moscow and Hinterm Horizont in Berlin – I knew the system was extraordinarily powerful, reliable, and most importantly, sounded good," Harada added.
Pummill, who is in Washington mixing the show, used Stagetec's new office in New York for Aurus training before load-in. He said he was able to get the system installed and set up in record time.
"The truck was unloaded on Monday morning, and the console was passing audio by Monday afternoon," Pummill noted. "We had the first day of cast on stage on Saturday whereupon they did a complete stumble-through of the show. We were through 80% of our total work by that point; normally we'd be 50% or 60% by that point. This allowed us to spend the next several weeks of Tech and Previews dealing with the most difficult remaining 20%. We weren't playing catch up with other departments."
"There's been a lot of positive feedback about the sound of the show, which is a great testament to Kai's team and our equipment" said Rusty Waite, president of Stagetec USA. "Seeing all three of them take to the system so quickly and, at times, working all together on the surface, really was impressive, and definitely made for a more efficient workflow."
For more information, please visit www.usa.stagetec.com.
