Located in Northeast Oklahoma, the Pryor Public Schools has a long and rich tradition of academic excellence and student activities, offering a wide variety of courses, including a strong fine arts program. Each year, the school presents a major musical performance in the Herchel Avra Performing Arts Center. To ensure the best possible audio quality for these productions, earset microphones from Menlo Park-based Countryman Associates were used.
Jim Bryant Jr.
Jim Bryant Jr. is the manager of the Avra Performing Arts Center. In addition to his responsibilities with Pryor Public Schools for the past three years, Bryant is also the minister of music at First Baptist Church in Pryor. Together, he enjoys a very active role in the musical activities of the community. For his work at the Herchel Avra Performing Arts Center, Bryant routinely relies on the strong performance characteristics of a dozen Countryman E6 Earset microphones of both the omnidirectional and directional varieties. He discussed his experience with the Countryman microphones.
“Each spring, we perform a major musical presentation,” Bryant said. “In 2010, we presented Singing in the Rain, followed by Phantom of the Opera in 2011, Music Man in 2012, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in 2013, and in 2014, Oklahoma. For all of these presentations, we used our Countryman microphones to make these shows the very best in sound they could possibly be—and we have never been disappointed. We use our E6 Omni and Directional microphones with Shure SLX UHF series body packs and, together, they make an excellent wireless microphone system.”
When queried about those attributes that make the Countryman E6 Earset mics so well suited to these types of productions, Bryant offered the following thoughts: “We enjoy both the audio performance and the light weight of the Countryman mics,” he said. “These microphones sound wonderful! We never have issues with either speech intelligibility or the quality of vocal production. We are able to hear each student as they say their lines or sing their solos!
“We’ve also been very pleased with the way the E6 mics fit on our students’ faces,” Bryant continued. “We service elementary students—using the short boom E6S mics for them—and we can also fit our large high school men with the regular Countryman mics. The Countryman mics are very discreet, so they are never distracting.”
For the school’s 2011 production of Phantom of the Opera, Bryant was particularly impressed with the E6’s high gain before feedback. “Even though the Phantom was hidden from sight, we encountered no problem hearing his lines and solos, thanks to his Countryman microphone. With the E6, there was never a feedback issue—regardless of where he was in the house.”
