STAGETEC's cultural sponsorship in the Reformation Year
Berlin, November 2017: In the Luther Year, a spectacular show made guest appearances in 12 performance venues throughout Germany and thrilled more than 130,000 spectators. The highlight of the biggest musical event for the anniversary of the Reformation was the sold-out performance on Oct. 29 in Berlin's Mercedes-Benz Arena with more than 11,000 spectators and a choir with 4,000 singers. ZDF broadcast the recording of the pop oratorio Luther on Oct. 31, Reformation Day. The Berlin-based manufacturer STAGETEC was involved as a sponsor, as it had been throughout the tour, and provided three mixing consoles with full DSP equipment and a decentralized audio network with eleven stage boxes. "For us, the sponsorship was interesting because - similar to commercial musicals and theater performances - we were able to play to the strengths of our technology, notes Alexander Nemes, Head of Sales at STAGETEC. "And we did so under difficult conditions, because this production was anything but a standard project."
The challenge of the tour was the very tight schedule for the set-up. There was usually only a day and a half for set-up, sound checks and rehearsals. Six and a half semi-trucks of material for stage, lighting and sound had to be set up. Add to that the changes that each venue, usually large covered stadiums, entailed. And the spectacular element of the musical, the choir with up to 3,000 singers, which was formed anew for each performance from the amateur choirs of the region.
For STAGETEC's technology, the tight lead time was no problem. The NEXUS audio network with up to eleven Base Devices, connected via optical cables, was set up quickly. And the connection of the two consoles at the FOH position also went off without a hitch. A 32-fader AURUS platinum was used to mix all the music, i.e. choir, orchestra, effects, and band. The second FOH AURUS platinum with 16 faders mixed only the soloists. This division, which is very untypical for musicals, but which worked well, was also due to the tight schedule, which did not allow for snapshots. Most of the mixes had to be done live. So every performance was a small premiere. The third console, a compact AURATUS from Stage Tec with 16 faders, was used for choral monitoring.
"Not only due to the enormous demands of this project, I was extremely happy about STAGETEC's acceptance, but also because of the significantly increased quality of the overall result by using this technology," Carsten Kümmel, graduate sound engineer, sums up. "Since the setups in the choir varied greatly depending on the hall, we were able to be extremely variable and save time with the total of 11 NEXUS Base Devices and their easy-to-handle cabling. The connectivity with other devices, which was realized in this production with up to 16 Madi connections, was also far from any standard situation and would have been possible with other products only with severe restrictions or massive effort. The AURUS consoles, with their equipped DSP power, gave us more than enough power for the massive number of inputs and outputs without losing track of the high number of crosspoints and mixing channels. In addition to all these technical details, I would like to especially thank the entire STAGETEC team for the excellent support and not only technical, but also friendly accompaniment of this exciting project."
The choir at the finale in Berlin was the largest of the entire tour with 4,000 singers. To pick up the many voices, more than 60 microphones were needed in the choir on 76 mixing channels, which in turn required a larger mixing console. Therefore, an AURUS platinum with 48 faders was used for the finale.
