Montreal, Canada (August 20, 2018)—The theme song to Fame goes “I’m gonna live forever,” and the theatrical musical based on the 1980 hit film might do that as well. Case in point—it was recently revived for a run at the 2,219-seat Saint Denis Theatre in Montreal, with audio provided by Montreal-based Solotech.
Front of house engineer Maxime Lambert oversaw a Yamaha Rivage PM7 digital audio console nightly for the show. “Solotech strongly suggested that we take a look at the PM7 as it fulfilled most of our requirements,” said Lambert. “After a moment of reflection, the show’s sound designer Colin Gagné and I decided that it could be the right fit for us. We used many Yamaha mixers before, mostly CL5, QL5 and M7CL, and Solotech provided us a day in their warehouse for training by Yamaha systems application specialist Kevin Kimmel.”
Lambert made use the new desk’s multi-user interface “Having the possibility for two operators on one control surface at the same time is really useful when you have 100-plus inputs to manage,” said Lambert. “Another great feature of the PM7 is to have the option of choosing the send point of each channel to any mix, which made mixing monitors from front of house a lot easier. We had the Rupert Neve Designs EQ810 and MBC4 multi-band compressor on all of our mix busses and mostly used the Yamaha SPX reverb for effects. The Rupert Neve Designs 5045 also came in handy when needed.”
A full two-dozen Sennheiser MKE1 lavaliere wireless mics with SK 5212 bodypack transmitters were used for the actors, resulting in 40 wireless inputs, along with more than 50 wired microphones for the band. Serge Rodrigue was hired as the wireless technician for the show to ride herd on all its RF needs.
Sometimes half the job of providing sound for a show is ensuring that audio never becomes an issue for another department. In that respect, Lambert found the console to be a boon: “During the creation of a musical production, you need to be able to react quickly to the demands of the director, the actors, and the band. We never had to stop during the rehearsal period because of anything to do with the sound and that’s mostly due to the reliability of the PM7. I never had a doubt that the PM7 would deliver.”
Solotech • www.solotech.com
Yamaha Corporation of America • www.yamahaca.com
