A little Reich Music

Last weeks show is best described as old school ballet with a new school choreographic slant – an American ballet company from the big apple doing excerpts and small pieces (no big corps de ballet), mainly pas de duex, and mainly choreographed by ballet’s rising star – but also pieces from Sir Frederick Ashton and Jerome Robbins.

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No surprises here – black masking all round with a Cyc and full black alternating far upstage.

Lights were lots of side and top with our MAC500 doing some spots and Pirouettes doing back light alongside PAR64 pairs.

Sound was orchestral mostly – a couple of piano pieces. A pair of C414s served as a stereo pair, set to omni. C3000’s in the pianos and C1000’s on the harps. A little touch of reverb from an SPX990, and the orchestra were very happy with the sound through our Midas/MediaMatrix/EAW system.

And though video had been talked about, and tested, the only projection on the night was the titles on a downstage scrim before each piece

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American ballet companies are always a joy to work with and this company were no exception.

The company to follow them were also a joy to work with, this time a mostly Belgish company putting on an evening of Steve Reich music – these included Pendulum Music, Piano Phase, Four Organs, Eight Lines (playback), Drumming – Part 1, Music for Pieces of Wood, Nagaya Marimba, along with 100 Metronomes (which I believe the credit goes to György Ligeti).

Check Steve Reich’s entry on Wikipedia for more info

Of course, there was some dancing onstage (possibly in the audience also, I wasn’t watching them…) but the evening was as much about the music as the dancing (not that anyone really admitted to it)

So, onstage, we had two baby grands, two marimbas, four electric keyboards (Hammond organs in transit to New York as it happens), eight bongos, five pairs of tuned claves, 100 metronomes, and a bare stage.

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Yep a bare stage – the only soft masking was a full black downstage to hide a instrument change and a white cyc upstage, along with a white cyc with a discrete design upon it.

And yes, that meant we had to move a good portion of our equipment about. There does seem to be this thing that wanting to reveal the area behind the stage to the audience means not showing things that customarily live there. This company wasn’t as bad as some but we have had previous companies ask for exit lights to be switched off, colours on 3 phase distro painted black, stage braces hidden, scaff obscured and blinking lights (such as amps, and DMX nodes) covered over.

One day, someone will accept that these sorts of thing are found at every stage and not be bothered by them

One day.

Anyways, lighting was mostly overhead washes from PAR64 and fresnals with more PAR64 on bench bases or low flown up/down bars.

A trio of Robert Juliat HMI profiles lit a particular strip of dance floor and a Studio Colour dominated an LX bar to do an overhead wash …

Sound was driven from a DM2000 with a Lexicon 300 and A/DD/A unit linked via AES, as was the backup CD. Our EAW were replaced with d&b E12 – a pair for each audience level.

We do like these speakers – weighting only 16kg, they are easy to rig and strike and they sound great. The sound engineer for the company has been using the Q-series recently but he liked the sound of the E-12 units. The D6 amplifier is also very nice to work with.

I have two minor quibbles with them and both relate to the lightweight flying frame – because of it’s thin design, it’s uncomfortable to pick up and it doesn’t seem to lock the tilt movement properly.

I’d still love to have them permanently though …

Onstage speakers were our Max 12 on sidefill and piano monitor duty and a pair of Max 15’s upstage provided the zero point for the two playback pieces.

Each of the piano’s had a pair of C414 clamped just over the soundboard and the leader had a tiny camera focussed on his fingers and connected to a small LCD screen on the other piano on the other side of stage. The keys were four DX7 using a Yamaha sampler for the organ sound and connected to the system via BSS AR133 active DI’s. Each pair of claves had a DPA 4060 assigned to it, plugged into a Sk5012 radio transmitter. Two more 4060/5012 combos were on the marimbas and two more on the bongos.

Pendulum Music was slightly pared down from the original, only two SM58 swinging over a pair of cones powered from a little amp the company brought with them.

The metronomes weren’t miked, BTW

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I’m glad I was able to see this one – some of the pieces seemed more of a technical exercise (Pendulum Music I’m looking at you here) and I’ve never been overkeen on minimalist music but there were some nice pieces performed and the whole evening was well crafted by a choreographer who has a good connection with the composer.