- CARDIFF, WALES-The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama used an Allen & Heath ML5000 live sound VCA console for a recent student project at Cardiff's Sherman Theatre. The students were tasked with producing and performing Stephen Sondheim's Grammy award winning musical, Company.
The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama students performed Stephen Sondheim's Company at the Sherman
"We produce around six shows a term at the college, sometimes these are internal, and sometimes we take them to professional venues," explained student Mark Cunningham."We do have a stock of equipment within the college but it soon became obvious we needed to source a console externally. With a fully radio-miked cast of 14, a medium-sized band and effects playback, we needed a sound console with a large number of inputs; moreover, we needed a lot of auxes and a big matrix to gain full control of the rig."
The college regularly uses an ML3000, a smaller model in the ML Series range, for its productions and lecturing.
"We're very impressed with the ML3000's intuitive design, so the ML5000 was the obvious choice-it fulfilled all our needs. Before rehearsals started we set the console up in a teaching room for those students who are interested in sound to play with. It's useful for budding sound engineers to have the opportunity to learn about large consoles, and how features such as the matrix, grouping, and the aux/group switch work," Cunningham continued.
With the aid of an experienced musical sound designer, who offered tips and advice throughout the production period, the show took place in March for a week-long run with the ML5000 managing front-of-house and monitor mixing.
