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Sound Designer Kai Harada Talks Latest Tony-Nominated Work

Kai Harada is nominated for a Best Sound Design of a Musical Tony Award this year for his work on New York, New York.

Kai Harada is nominated for a Best Sound Design of a Musical Tony Award this year for his work on New York, New York. PHOTO: Paul Kolnik.
Kai Harada is nominated for a Best Sound Design of a Musical Tony Award this year for his work on New York, New York. PHOTO: Paul Kolnik.

New York, NY (May 17, 2023)—When the 76th annual Tony Awards are broadcast on June 11, two Broadway shows that you’ll keep hearing about will be Kimberly Akimbo, which is up for eight awards, and New York, New York, which is up for nine. They’re both in the running for Best Musical, and as it happens, both feature sound design by Kai Harada—who in turn is nominated for Best Sound Design of a Musical, for the latter show.

It’s not Harada’s first nomination (he won in 2018 for A Band’s Visit) and he drew on experience when he put together the systems for the respective shows. The two musicals have similarities despite significant differences in both the venue sizes and the content of the productions; among them is the extensive use of Meyer Sound loudspeakers for both productions.

Kimberly Akimbo is playing at the Booth Theater, a relatively small Broadway house seating around 800, while New York, New York is at the larger St. James, with a capacity of over 1,700,” says Harada. “Kimberly is more of a chamber musical, with a smaller cast and smaller orchestra, but still the show’s score still requires a big dynamic range, so there are a lot of loudspeakers in the space. I scaled up the same approach for New York, New York, which is a bigger and brassier, dance-oriented show. Although the orchestra is in an uncovered pit — a rarity these days! — it was important to me to have a system that gave me a lot of dynamic range and complete coverage for all seating sections.”

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Sometimes a show’s sound is a given, and other times, there’s a process of discovery: “We had done Kimberly Akimbo off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theatre — also with a Meyer Sound system — so we knew what the show was, musically speaking, and had a sonic goal in mind. For New York, New York, we had done only one workshop of the show, so there were a lot more unknowns. In that case, I needed to know that the system I specified was going to sound good so that I could concentrate on all the other variables.”

Current Meyer Sound products used in both productions include the LINA very compact linear line array, ULTRA-X40 compact loudspeaker, and UPM-1P ultra-compact loudspeaker. Legacy loudspeakers used for both include M1D line arrays, UPQ-1P, UPA-2P, UPJ-1P, UPJunior, and MM-4 loudspeakers as well as the 500-HP subwoofer.

The system for Kimberly Akimbo encompasses a total of 77 full-range loudspeakers plus nine subwoofers. A total of 108 full-range loudspeakers and seven subwoofers are deployed for New York, New York. The complete audio systems for the two productions were supplied by Masque Sound of East Rutherford, New Jersey.

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