New York (May 3, 2012)—The Broadway musical Million Dollar Quartet is currently on tour in North American tour with an audio system based around Meyer Sound line array loudspeakers.
Inspired by a 1956 recording studio jam session by Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, Million Dollar Quartet captures a pivotal night in the history of rock ’n’ roll. On the MDQ tour, the lion’s share of the show’s energy is delivered by a split dual center array of 20 M’elodie loudspeakers and the upper and lower side arrays comprising a total of 20 Mica loudspeakers. A left-right configuration of 600-HP subwoofers and a 700-HP at center provide low end, while a total of 16 UPM-1P and UPJunior VariO loudspeakers supplies fill and delay systems as needed. A Galileo loudspeaker management system with four Galileo 616 processors provides drive and optimization.
“This is a rock ’n’ roll show, but it was my goal to preserve the dynamic between the book scenes, the songs, and the big finale,” said sound designer Kai Harada, who was nominated for a Tony Award this past Tuesday for his sound design work on Follies. “It’s important to hold a lot of punch in reserve, and this system certainly has it.”
Harada is also the sound designer for resident productions of MDQ at Chicago’s Apollo Theater and off-Broadway at New York’s New World Stages. The New York system is based around a Mina line array in the center with CQ-1 and CQ-2 loudspeakers on the sides, while the wide thrust staging in Chicago also employs CQ-1 loudspeakers with smaller UltraSeries models for delays and fills. PRG Audio supplied all three systems for the touring and resident productions.
Harada also specified Meyer Sound systems for MDQ’s well-received 2010-11 run on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre and in London at the Noël Coward Theatre in 2011-12. The book for Million Dollar Quartet was written by Floyd Mutrux and Colin Escott. The Broadway production was nominated for three 2010 Tony Awards, with Levi Kreis (Jerry Lee Lewis) winning Best Featured Actor in a musical.
Meyer Sound Laboratories, Inc.
www.meyersound.com
