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Gand Concert Sound Uses NEXO Speaker Line At Summer Events

The 2015 Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago

Gand Concert Sound (GCS) of Elk Grove Village, Illinois, reports that it recently completed a record summer month as well as its single largest day, by cabinet count, in the 39-year company’s history. “July has become the month to beat after last year’s record month for GCS,” states Gary Gand, president of GCS.

GCS handled sound reinforcement for Chicago’s annual Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park on the Red and Green stages. Headliners included Wilco, Sleater-Kinney, and Chance The Rapper. “We had 450 NEXO cabinets in use on one day in mid-July,” says Tim Swan, vice president of Pitchfork.   

Chance The Rapper’s tour/production manager and monitor engineer, Aaron Patkin, says, “Pitchfork was our big hometown show for Chance this year, so it was super important for us to knock it out of the park in front of a hometown crowd. We brought in a ton of additional production, from 8-foot-tall risers to background singers, a custom built logo, to a huge lighting package. We even maxed out the I/O on the monitor desk. Gand’s crew went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that not only did we have everything we needed, but that the groundwork was laid for us to succeed at having our best show of the year. The whole team killed it, and I couldn’t be more thankful for everyone at GCS making sure that Chance The Rapper and The Social Experiment was heard loud and clear not only by the crowd, but by each other.”

On the same day, Mile of Music, held in downtown Chicago, featured two stages and one mile of speakers pumping music out to runners along a path near Lake Michigan. Rivers Edge Park in Aurora, Illinois, features a large GCS NEXO house system that hangs all summer for a variety of national acts. Shows in July 2015 included Smash Mouth, Toad the Wet Sprocket, REO Speedwagon, Little River Band, and Hall & Oates.

The Tri-Annual ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) festival in Detroit

The Tri-Annual ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) festival was also held in July in Detroit at Ford Field, home of the NFL’s Detroit Lions. Gand has been handling this event for its last five sessions, which include stops at the Alamo Dome in San Antonio, Texas, and two festivals at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.

“We thought this would be a great opportunity to test out the newer NEXO STM rig, which I heard outdoors at the NEXO factory in France,” Gand says. Yamaha team members assisted GCS in setting up the rig. The STM configuration comprised 36x STM M46 Mains, 36x STM B112 Bass, 28x STM M28 Side and downfills, 36x STM S118 Subs, and 38x NX4x4 amps. Thunder Audio of Livonia, Mich., provided 24x Geo-T speakers for delays.  

The front end featured 4x Yamaha CL5 consoles; a CL1 with Lake MY16 cards for summing all consoles; 4x RIO3224-D; and a RIO1608-D, creating a large Dante network.

For more information on NEXO and Yamaha products, visit www.yamahaca.com.

Visit Gand Concert Sound at www.gandconcertsound.com.

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