At Last, It’s Summer!

Autograph’s Events Team Deliver Complex Audio Support And Recording Facilities For Charity Musical

London, April 16th 2023:

Staged at the London Palladium, a one-off production of a new musical, ‘At Last, It’s Summer!’ was performed in aid of Parkinson’s UK.

Written by Clive Richard Davis, produced by SMART Entertainment and directed by Ian Talbot, the show featured choreography by Jordan Langford, orchestrations by Larry Blank, musical direction by Jack Bennett and casting by Richard Johnston. An ensemble of 28 was backed by a 35-piece orchestra and the show was recorded for future release (once mixed and mastered at Abbey Road Studios), also to benefit the charity.

Autograph’s reputation in sound for theatre is well established, having been the pre-eminent supplier of equipment and sound design services to the industry for five decades. The key to this project, however, was the ability of their Events department to deploy a sophisticated audio reinforcement and recording infrastructure very quickly, using a ready-configured mobile system. Access to one of the largest inventories of specialist microphones in Europe was also a major boon in creating the finished recording.

The company’s Events team, led by division head Andrew Hedges, were tasked with providing and operating a full stage microphone package, digital audio mixing system and recording infrastructure. Adam Taylor handled sound design duties for Autograph while the rest of the crew comprised Lead Production Sound Engineer Shane Kavanagh, Fellipe Baldauf on FOH & Recording with Tristan Richards, Dan Hobbs, and James Hassett as Production Sound Engineers.

Adam comments, “Beyond supplying and deploying the stage and audio mixing equipment, we also secured a 128-channel multitrack recording at 96k using a dual-redundant recording solution while providing sync clocking and LTC SMPTE to Steam Motion & Sound, making sure the multi-camera setup and audio system were sync’d correctly.”

The orchestra was close-mic’d throughout, using mostly DPA 4099s and 4011s plus some classics like AKG C414s while the cast wore 4066s connected to Shure Axient Digital ADX1M miniature transmitters. A Yamaha Rivage PM5 was at FOH to mix the live sound for the show itself, while also sending per-channel feeds out to the recording system.

‘In one sense this was a point where worlds collided” explains Adam. “It was very definitely a musical theatre event, at the heart of Autograph’s expertise, but with the added facilities of the Events team – as a combined force we can turn full-scale musical audio and live event productions into reality within a very tight schedule, complete with a comprehensive HD recording solution where required.”

Find out more about Parkinson’s UK and their work HERE

Photo Credits: Danny Kaan for the production stills / Robert Taylor for everything else