Beshore Performance Hall, a 400-capacity multifunctional proscenium theatre in the new $19-million, 37,000-square-foot Harry M. Cornell Arts & Entertainment Complex in Joplin, MO, is equipped with a sound reinforcement system installed by locally-based Total Electronics Contracting (TEC) that offers a DiGiCo Quantum225 console at front of house joined by a pair of DiGiCo A168 16-input/8-output I/O expanders used as stage boxes.
The hall has tiered seating that can be converted into a flat floor configuration as needed and it also includes a shared stage for both indoor and outdoor performances. In addition, the venue is home to Connect2Culture, Joplin’s community arts agency and performing arts presenter, and George A. Spiva Center for the Arts, the region’s visual arts destination. Connect2Culture manages and operates the hall inside the complex.
“There was originally another desk specified in the design of the venue by DLR Group, the architectural design lead on the entire Cornell Complex project, but once they looked at the specs of the Quantum225 console, they said, ‘Yes, please—we’ll take that one!’ in like three seconds,” says Hal Robertson, Connect2Culture’s technical director as well as the complex’s facilities director.
Robertson says he was “pressed into service” for Connect2Culture’s first show with the Quantum225, the Grammy Award-winning Okee Dokee Brothers, after a brief tutorial onsite by DiGiCo’s Dan Page. The system package also includes L-Acoustics A Series loudspeakers as mains.
“The Beshore Performance Hall is highly flexible, from the seating to the stage, and the performances will be, too, so the console and the engineer have to be able adapt easily,” Robertson explains. “Right from the start, we saw that was the case. That first show was supposed to be outdoors, but rain moved it inside. We accommodated that change instantly. It’s such a user-friendly console that just happens to also sound great and gives us a clear upgrade path. And we’re an all-Dante house, so the A168 stage boxes are seamless for our signal path.”
Phillip Shurtleff, AV project manager for TEC, says the Quantum225 fit the feature list that his team and the client’s assembled during the planning stage: “The flexibility of the routing options—the ability to natively run Dante signal flows everywhere—was very important to everyone. That’s because the way the hall was envisioned, it would be a concert hall one night and a corporate AV-presentation space the next day. What was especially attractive to them was that all of that routing could be done internally in the console, without having to repatch cabling or pull up a Dante controller.”
In addition, they wanted to be able to configure the fader layout for a number scenarios. For instance, have it one way for an experienced user on a complex music performance or set it up with just a few key faders for a volunteer to be able to run a simpler show. “That’s the kind of conversation you have to have with clients now,” says Shurtleff, “because every venue is a multi-purpose venue, so it’s great that there’s a multi-purpose console like the Q225 available. It fit every possible scenario they had envisioned perfectly.”
