timeline-projects

Bout du monde / End of the world

Liquid Penguin Ensemble

A play that was especially set up for a certain room. Optical as well as acoustic peculiarities of the performance room were to be an essential part of the play from the beginning.

Special challenges / difficulties:
The location the event was to take place was the former canteen of a rail wagon repair shop in Saarbrucken. It was divided in two rooms separated by a folding door. The first section could be entered directly from the main entrance. This part of the building had very strong reverberations. The room which joined directly behind the folding door was the total opposite acoustically. It had a very dry acoustic environment. We wanted to use these two aspects as creative means. One big challenge was the need of extremely high speech intelligibility, because the play was bilingual (German/French) partly with two languages in parallel action.

In summer, 2008 first preparations began for the rehearsal phase to the project "Bout du Monde" of the "Liquid Penguin Ensemble". The piece was primarily about new perceptions, so limiting and widening of ordinary views was topic. Nevertheless, these new perspectives should not be restricted to the optical points of view.
Both the optic of architecture and the acoustic state played an important role. Moreover, a tiny house approx. 200 m away from the canteen should also play a part. It had to be optically as well as acoustically integrated for end of the play.
In the middle of the play there was an improvised part. By drawing of lots the audience decided which of the performers had to play which solo. So every show had different improvisation parts. One of the parts, that could be drawn, was a real-time manipulated surround sound installation. Therefore 8 audio channels from a DAW were fed into a 6-loudspeaker setup.
Another interesting part was a scene in which 3 musicians were placed behind the old food serving counter in the kitchen. The audience could see and hear them playing through some half opened windows. At a certain point in the play the musicians froze, but the sound should go on if they went on playing. I realized that with multitrack recordings of the music, priorly made during the rehearsals at the positions of the loudspeakers.
Frequently both languages appeared simultaneously. The challenge in this case was to present the two languages in a way that every spectator could very clearly understand the language of his/her choice. No language should dominate or interfere with the other.
At the end of the play all the performers (actors and musicians) moved to a small house 200m away.
The spectators watched this scenery like a movie scene out of a wide window front at the end of the room. I had prepared this "holiday lodge" with two wireless microphones. With the arrival of the performers at the house the audience could follow all the dialogues and music in this virtual film scene.

Liquid Penguin Ensemble:
Cast:

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Links:

Lliquid Penguin Site

Liquid Penguin Ensemble at WIKIPEDIA

 

Liquid Penguin Ensemble

"Der Fall Sola" /("The case Sola") is speech-music-performance with a live-illustrator.

This performance is mainly about language in general, its development and use.
Language is expressed not only with words but also with musical and graphical elements during this performance. Although language is the topic, spoken words and all other elements are of equal importance in the play.

Special challenges / difficulties:
The actors on stage are: voice, viola, violoncello, double bass , piano , illustrator and a choir. One fact that had to be considered was that everybody on stage would change their positions very often. Because all movements on stage where important for the play almost everybody in the audience should be able to track that action acoustically. This was one of the big challenges for the sound design. Beside that the listeners should never have the impression that there was a sound reinforcement system in use. Another important detail in setting up the sound system and doing the mix was giving the audience the impression that all sounds came from its original position on stage and not from before or behind the stage at all times.

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End Client: WDR (West Deutscher Rundfunk)

Conception and realization of the FOH-mix for an open air event with a symphony orchestra and varying instrumental soloists.

Special challenges / difficulties:
A very big and open round arch stage, different instrumental soloists, very wide listener's surface, television production (as little as possible visible audio engineering), a camera railway directly in front of the stage.

After the great success of the EBU´s young talent competition in 2014, again the WDR hosted this classical music event in 2016 for a second time. And again I was chosen by the cologne based company PADCO to be responsible for the conception and the realization of the FOH-mix. At first glance, the framework conditions seemed to be the same as in 2014.

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End Client: WDR (West Deutscher Rundfunk)

Conception and realization of the FOH-mix for an open air event with a symphony orchestra and varying instrumental soloists.

Special challenges / difficulties:
A very big and open round arch stage, different instrumental soloists, very wide listener's surface, television production (visible audio engineering as little as possible)

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Liquid Penguin Ensemble

Ickelsamers alphabet is a bilingual music performance in German and French. The performance has parts which are simultaneous in both languages.

Special challenges / difficulties:
For both languages I had to make sure to get a very high linguistic intelligibility. The second task was the acoustic realization of the small music ensemble consisting of viola, cello, contrabass, flutes and clarinets. On account of the special structure of the performance and the state of the performance rooms, the loudspeakers were placed behind the actors which complicated the electroacoustic conversion a lot.

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End customer: Kölner Männergesangsverein (Cologne men's choral society / stage play community Cäcilia Wolkenburg)

The "Divertissementchen" is a light opera in bigger dimensions (more than 100 persons on stage). More than 30 participants were equipped with wireless microphones to support them in their singing and speaking parts of the play. A big orchestra was responsible for the musical support together with a pop band. In addition there was a ballet on stage. All participants that appear on stage were recruited out of the Cologne men's choral society.

Special challenges / difficulties:
Traditionally the "Divertissementchen" is performed during the month before carnival at the opera house of Cologne. The opera was not available because of bigger rebuilding measures. The so called "Musicaldom" near the central station was selected as an alternative site. The "Musicaldom" was conceived as a performance venue for modern "pop musicals", this means that the acoustics have a very short reverberation time in the auditorium so it sounds very "dry". Moreover, there is no acoustically functioning orchestra pit. Also all acoustic activities which work out well at a "normal" theatrical stage did not. So there was some technical aid needed for the support around this stage.

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End customer: HAYASA Productions LTD

Planning and realization of the sound system and FOH-mix for a tour of an Armenian ensemble to select places in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil.

Special challenges / difficulties:
The wide range in musical style (Armenian music from folk songs up to the pop songs), length of the shows (3 hours), the size of the ensemble (more than 160 participants), the size of the stages (width of 26m) and the infrastructures of the venues.

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End Customer: Lycée classique d'Echternach

Planning and Realization of the sound system and Front of House mix of a ballad opera.

Special challenges / difficulties:
Bandwidth of the musical spectrum, structure of the venue, number of participants, scenes with high demands on speech intelligibility

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Liquid Penguin Ensemble

A play that was especially set up for a certain room. Optical as well as acoustic peculiarities of the performance room were to be an essential part of the play from the beginning.

Special challenges / difficulties:
The location the event was to take place was the former canteen of a rail wagon repair shop in Saarbrucken. It was divided in two rooms separated by a folding door. The first section could be entered directly from the main entrance. This part of the building had very strong reverberations. The room which joined directly behind the folding door was the total opposite acoustically. It had a very dry acoustic environment. We wanted to use these two aspects as creative means. One big challenge was the need of extremely high speech intelligibility, because the play was bilingual (German/French) partly with two languages in parallel action.

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pazzaCaglia/Liquid Penguin Ensemble

Crossover – opera - project of the "Liquid Penguin Ensemble" and "pazzaCaglia"

Special challenges / difficulties:
On the one hand this project offered the big musical range from the baroque-music up to the contemporary-music of our modern times. On the other hand, there was a tremendously wide dynamic range from soft whispering to almost unbearably loud noise, from very rough up to the most filigree sound structures, from natural voice up to "eavesdropped" telephone calls. All that was to be realized in a way that, over course of the play, the audience should forget there was any sound-reinforcement in use.

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End Customer: Lycée classique d'Echternach

Planning and Realization of the sound system and Front of House mix of a musical show in the tradition of a mystery play

Special challenges / difficulties:
Bandwidth of the musical spectrum, structure of the venue, number of participants, scenes with high demands on speech intelligibility

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End customer: Saarland Tour Team

Realization and planning of the stage activities for a show event at the square in front of the castle in Saarbruecken. The occasion was the arrival of the bicycle race "Deutschland Tour 2003".

Special challenges / difficulties:
The planned spot of the stage brought some challenges in the planning phase of the project. There was a construction area in the neighborhood of the stage, moreover, stage and cloakrooms and the whole backstage area were separated from the stage by a public street.

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End-Customer: ENSEMBLE VOCAL BERDORF
(since 2011 "Ambitus")

A children's musical based on the texts of the Luxembourg children's book author Guy Rewenig. A collaboration of the "Ensemble Vocal Berdorf" and the "TNL"(Théâtre National du Luxembourg) with compositions by Jean Marie Kieffer under the musical direction of Roby Schiltz.

Special challenges / difficulties:
A combination of singing and acting with a scenically performing choir, interaction between school children and musically skilled adult's, played in three acoustically very different venues.

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End customer: Saarland Tour Team

3 days of events with different concerts for the arrival on 7.July 2002 of the "Tour de France" in Saarbruecken

Special challenges / difficulties:
Beside the realization of live-concerts of different bands, several radio- and tv-broadcasts had to be integrated into the stage events. The spectrum of the appearing band had a big variety. Due to product-sponsorship demands specific items had to be considered in the planning of the sound reinforcement system.

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End customer: City of Grevenmacher/Luxembourg

For the of 750 year jubilee of the town charter a musical show was produced at the marketplace in Grevenmacher. The show included a big orchestra, a pop band, a clarinet ensemble, a percussion group, a church organ (not on the stage), three choirs, several vocal soloists and two narrators.

Special challenges / difficulties:
One special difficulty was the place the performance should be given. The housing which surrounded the place, reached very close to the spectators' area. Another challenge was the fact that a lot of performers had to find their place on stage simultaneously. Three choirs were to appear on stage. I had to find a solution that made it possible for choirs to enter the stage during the ongoing show. A quite special task was the fact that time pressure allowed only one single rehearsal on stage to take place.

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End Customer: Lycée classique d'Echternach

Planning, Realization of the sound system and the recording and Front of House Mix for a Musical show to celebrate 1300 years of the city of Echternach with more than 150 performers

Special challenges / difficulties:
The bandwidth of the musical spectrum, the structure of the venue, the number of participants.

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End - Customer: Saarländischer Rundfunk

Open Air event on the grounds of the "Saarländischer Rundfunk" with recording and partly direct live broadcast on tv and/or radio.

Special challenges / difficulties:
Big Number of artists, program changes due to late arrival of artists, infrastructure, extremely short change over times.

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19.06.1983 my first gig with the band

"Sioux" was a 3-man band (guitar, bass, and drums) that could not be pigeonholed. Funk, rock, latin, they sometimes played all together in one title. Three absolute virtuosi and unconventional musical characters who back then played more than 100 Gigs per year.

Special challenges / difficulties:
The very high musical standard of the band set the bar pretty high and cheered me on at the same time. The big number of appearances throughout Germany and the neighboring countries offered me the possibility to collect a lot of experience.

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6.3.1982 my first gig for the company

The company "Stamer" was founded in 1981, constructing and manufacturing loudspeakers for instrumental- and reinforcement- systems. Later they opened the first sound system rental in the south/west of Germany. In 1982 I started my work as a live sound engineer for them.

Special challenges / difficulties:
With the big range in event forms I found a great variety in new experiences in the live sound field.

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29.09.1981 my first gig with the band

"Double You" was a Funk/Soul-formation around the US-American singer Bob Mency which appeared nationwide during the time when I joined the band.

Special challenges / difficulties:
Back then, having had very little experience with formations that size before. Working at more and more complex mixes broadened my horizon.

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my first gig 29.10.1977

 The first gig with a teenage rock band who out started out played mainly cover songs; later progressed to composing more and more own tiles.

 Special challenges / difficulties:

The time in which the band was founded, meant a very small budget and not a lot available equipment. At this time very little information existed about all the technical – especially sound- topics concerning live music, in German there was nothing at all.

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