Performances at the latest edition of the Woodstock of Brass Music (WoB), held annually since 2011 in the town of Ort, Austria and paying homage to the Woodstock Festival of 1969 as the largest open-air brass band festival in Europe, were captured by Austrian recording company tonzauber utilizing a mobile OB truck equipped with a Lawo mc²36 MkII mixing console with integrated processing.
Drawing inspiration from its American counterpart, the four-day event welcomes more than 80,000 music enthusiasts who enjoy performances by 130 bands, spanning traditional to contemporary brass music. Notably, since 2015, the festival’s highlight has been the “Ensemble Playing,” a spectacle that unites a staggering 20,000 musicians.
The mc²36 MkII console is the heart of the vehicle’s audio equipment, with its A__UHD core technology offering 256 processing channels available at both 48 and 96 kHz, making it well suited for large-scale orchestral productions. The mixer natively supports ST2110, AES67, RAVENNA and Ember+ protocols, and with an I/O capacity of up to 864 channels and its local connections, the mc²36 MkII offers extensive connectivity.
Georg Burdicek, sound engineer and founder of tonzauber, explains, “This year at the Woodstock of Brass Music, we recorded 35 bands over four production days, with 16 of these performances broadcast live on TV and radio by Austrian public broadcaster ORF.”
He also cites the logistical intricacies of the “twinned” main stage: “One of the stage’s two sections is always active, with just a five-minute break between concerts. As both stage units were served by a single OB truck, meticulous preparation was key.”
Efficiency was paramount during the festival, with a team of three helping to ensure that everything ran smoothly. One team member gathered information to enable quick adjustments to the lineup and channel assignments while two colleagues took turns at the mixing console.
The mixer configuration was designed to allow permanent fader assignments to each twin section of the stage, while all channels could be accessed independently from the main console via an extended mx GUI. This setup facilitated live mixing of one band while preparing the next, encompassing tasks from channel labeling to line checks using PFL2, with monitoring through a Merging Anubis at the second workstation.
“The Lawo mc²36 MkII handled more than 140 channels simultaneously without a hitch,” Burdicek says. “Signal transmission from the main stage relied on optical MADI, with one MADI stream per stage and, for some bands, a Dante stream. The stage-side frontend featured the Prodigy.MP from directout, complemented by two Lawo A__Mic8s for various additional atmospheric microphones and analog backup signals.
“The Lawo mc²36 MkII consistently proves itself as an indispensable tool, meeting the most demanding requirements for top-tier recordings and broadcasts of concerts and festivals, such as the Woodstock of Brass Music.”
