Tag: Bill Winn

Big City Concert Sound just down the road in Beverly

Posted on by Vickie & Peter
John Coretto (right) tuning the new system from Orchestra Center, Row F, seat 5. See the Meyer Arrays on either side of the stage
John Coretto (right) tuning the new system from Orchestra Center, Row F, seat 5. See the Meyer Arrays on either side of the stage
Meyer M'elodie curvilinear array up close
Meyer M’elodie curvilinear array up close
John Coretto from WHB Concert Production tuning the new system. He took that laptop all over the orchestra and balcony to make sure the sound is perfect in every seat!
John Coretto from WHB Concert Production tuning the new system. He took that laptop all over the orchestra and balcony to make sure the sound is perfect in every seat at The Larcom Theatre!
Our new digidesign SC-48 console
Our new digidesign SC-48 console
See how the Meyer 600-HP sub-woofers disappear next to the stairs. Still good seats left in the Balcony where this picture was taken.
See how the Meyer 600-HP sub-woofers disappear next to the stairs. Still good seats left in the Balcony where this picture was taken.  Get them here!

Since we discovered the Larcom Theatre and produced our first concert there a year ago this weekend, Gloucester’s singer/ songwriter / multi-instrumentalist and ace sound man, Will Hunt has brought in his gear and, together with Bradley Royds, they’ve mixed our shows to wide acclaim (see a review here).

But Will’s kinda busy and needs his gear for other concerts, like The Nines @ Gloucester’s UU Meetinghouse and The Toasters Concert Cruise.  So we realized it was time to get new gear appropriate for the 550 seat theatre that we don’t have to keep moving in and out.

And we figured, if we’re going do it, we might as well do it right.

On Wednesday, Jon Coretto and his crew from WHB Concert Production (the people who revamped the sound at Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom) installed the top of the line: Meyer M’elodie curvilinear array loudspeakers with 600-HP sub-woofers and Galileo system processor, Digidesign SC-48 console and 6 JBL VP 7212 MDP stage monitors.

Plus we have a 56 channel snake splitter for bands that want to make studio quality live recordings or simply MUST have their monitors mixed on stage.

Now if you don’t much care about all that techno-babble, just know this: IT SOUNDS AMAZING!

And you can hear it tomorrow night when Gracie Curran takes the stage with Roomful of Blues Horns and Lydia Warren Band opening.

Seats are still available.  The best ones are in the balcony.  Get them here.

Say “Hi” to Will, who will be working there tomorrow along with Bill Winn (who wrote the book on sound … literally).

Feel free to thank them for the excellent job they do making sure the sound is perfect in every seat!

A sneak peak behind the scenes

Posted on by Vickie & Peter

If you went to The Slide Brothers concert we presented on Saturday, you hopefully had a good time, but had no clue as to last-minute scrambling that went on.  That’s because everyone involved is a pro — and that’s the way it should be.  Today, we’d like to offer a special shout-out to some of the folks whose work made this event happen and let you peek behind the scenes just a bit.

The scrambling began a couple of days before the show when we learned The Slide Brothers were not going to be able to bring a drum kit.  Mike Doyle happened to be at the theatre when we heard this, so he scooted down to Nate’s The Drum Shop North Shore on Rantoul St. and arrived back at the theatre in less than half an hour with a very nice sounding Premier kit in gorgeous white pearl, which you can see in the photo.  Thanks MTD and Nate for making this happen so quickly.

Then, on the day of the show, we discover we need even more gear and everyone in the Michael Thomas Doyle band chipped in to lend The Slide Brothers all that was needed for their stellar performance.  Thanks guys.  You’re real pros.

That performance relied, in good measure, on the expert talents of our sound crew, led by Will Hunt, who spent half of Friday drilling through a brick wall in order to hide the snake.

And on the night of the show, Bill Winn and Bradley Royds gave us absolutely perfect sound — so good that we heard compliments from both performers and fans!

Perhaps the last person ever to get any credit for his hard work is the guy in the light booth, which for this concert — and for Allen Estes, was Inge Berge, whose artistic lighting enhanced both performances.  And when Calvin Cooke (the B.B. King of Slide Guitar) told Inge to raise the house lights for a gospel tune so it would feel more like a church, he obliged gracefully and then returned the theatre to a performance feel with class and style.

You’ll notice that most of these people are from Gloucester and all are from Boston’s North Shore.  We are terribly grateful to live in a place so full of talented professionals!

Why having a pro on stage and on sound makes a real difference to your concert experience

Posted on by Vickie & Peter
Chelsea Berry with her Parker Fly (Joe Cardoza at left on bass, Michael Thomas Doyle at right on guitar)

A bright red Parker Fly guitar rests comfortably on its wooden stand, like a Siren luring Chelsea Berry to the rocky coast we all know is behind the stage.

Chelsea enters alone and smiles at the audience, gracefully accepting the ovation she receives before singing a note.  Then she begins … a capella.  No mic, no amp, no guitar, nothing but her gorgeous, powerful, soaring voice carried with perfect clarity to the Shalin Liu’s very last row by the concert hall’s perfect acoustics.

Chelsea’s loving, dramatic, musically brilliant performance of Dave Sudbury’s King of Rome brings the story to life, sending chills up my spine.  If the concert had ended right then, I would have felt fulfilled.  Then I wonder, when’s she gonna play that red guitar?

Migrating to piano, acoustic guitar and finally, the red Parker Fly, Chelsea Berry sings and plays her hits, accompanied by her young, enthusiastic, well-rehearsed band with grace, humor and an enchanting professionalism that endears her to her audience.  This is a show.  It has a beginning, middle and end, like a good story — an arc, you might say.

All through this show, the sound remains nearly perfect — even when the band barrels in, full force on her rocker Lonely being Lonely, which she takes just a tad slower than she did at North Shore Music Theatre last summer, giving it even more ironic power and guts.

After a wonderful encore of crowd-pleasing favorites (Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and her own You Me And Mary) Chelsea invites the entire audience upstairs for a party and gathers the band for a Broadway style bow to a standing ovation.

Chelsea Berry & Band bow on Saturday at Shalin Liu ~ photo by Louise
BillWinn
Bill Winn

Lots of our friends are at the after-party, including T Max, who spies sound legend, Bill Winn, having seen him only in a tiny picture from this book review T Max published in the February issue of his Noise Magazine.  T Max introduces himself to Bill and then introduces me, at which point I’m thinking, what’s Bill Winn doing here?  This guy wrote the book, literally, on live concert sound (you can get it here) and has engineered for Whitney Houston, Joni Mitchell and Herbie Hancock, just to name a few.

Then Chelsea comes over and gives Bill a big hug, “Thank you, Bill.  The sound was great!”

We tend to bat the word “pro” around carelessly most of the time, but I don’t use it lightly, here, when I say that choosing Bill Winn as her sound guy was one of a string of highly professional musical and business choices Chelsea Berry has made of late, proving that she has earned the position of Headliner!