Frost Productions recently provided audio, stage and lighting for a short concert featuring highlights from a new Broadway musical that marked the unveiling of a major New York department store’s holiday window displays.
To achieve maximum results, Frost deployed Martin Audio MLA Mini arrays to ensure a high level of audio quality and smooth, consistent coverage.
The show featured “Dear Evan Hansen,” an emotional coming of age story starring Ben Platt, Jennifer Laura Thompson and Rachel Bay Jones that combines social media with the attempts of a painfully shy young man to communicate with his high school classmates.
According to Frost’s system engineer, Jose Lima, “We had a crowd of about 1,200 people that we wanted to keep totally involved until it was time for them to gather in front of the windows.”
The system itself consisted of an MLA Mini hang per side, each with two MSX subs and eight Mini enclosures flown from the outriggers of a Stage Line SL100, which, according to Lima, “is a challenge because the load limit is only 800 lbs. The Mini is perfect because it’s so lightweight and we were able to fly each hang 18 feet up in the air with no problems to ensure maximum coverage and reach.”
Frost also had two stacks of two MLA Mini cabinets on stage for front fills powered by an MSX sub that was muted and hidden under the stage while two WS218X subs a side were positioned directly under the hangs for added low end impact.
“We did have one challenge when we got there,” Lima adds. The person in charge of the stage actually set up the roof two feet below what we had in the calculations, but MLA made it so easy to go to Display and just reset the trim height two feet lower, recalculate EQs and reload them into the system. All of which didn’t even take five minutes and we were good to go.”
Asked how the system performed, Lima says, “MLA worked out brilliantly. It sounded crisp and intelligible with a lot of presence, plus the bass was really smooth and natural.
“Our client couldn’t be happier––they immediately noticed the improvement in audio quality from the past years. The audio production team from ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ was incredibly pleased as well.”
