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Swiss Heidi Musical with HK Audio’s Cohedra Compact

From July 23rd through September 6th of this year (2005), the world premier of Heidi, the Musical took place against the idyllic backdrop of Lake Walensee, Switzerland. At the prompting of Marco Wyss, tourism director of the holiday area Heidiland, the musical was brought to life under the leadership of Swiss director Stefan Huber. Filling the lead roles in this production were the renowned Swiss musical-veterans Sue Mathys in the role of Johanna Spyri, Florian Schneider as Alpöhi, Sabine Schädler as Heidi and Patric Scott taking the part of Peter.

This production marked the first time that the world-famous story of Heidi was intertwined with the intriguing life story of its creator, the author Johanna Spyri, offering new perspectives into the life of the supremely successful Swiss author.

Audio design was handled by sound designer Thomas Strebel, Switzerland’s “Mr. Musical”. The extensive experience which he brought to the musical turned this show into an aural delight. As his main rig for the gig, Thomas selected the HK Audio Cohedra Compact sound reinforcement system, a system with which he had already grown familiar on several prior occasions.

Christian Kraska from Swiss HK Audio distributor, SDS Music Factory, lent his support to Swiss sound company Hyposound during the planning stage with the CAPS software as well as during installation of the system. In the process, there were several hurdles to overcome, as the very wide stage was located directly on the banks of Lake Walensee. Temperature fluctuations, high humidity, rain and wind had to be taken into consideration throughout the planning stages. As it turns out, this summer there were in fact several quite severe storms with winds of up to 118 km/hr and in fact subsequent flooding in parts of Switzerland, and some of the performances were forced to be canceled. The performers’ wardrobe and the complex stage hydraulics in particular took a strong hit from the severe weather.

All the same, while the Cohedra Compact system had been installed outdoors the whole time, fortunately it was somewhat protected in PA towers that were dressed in black transparent material and sheltered from the storms by a roof. The amplifiers—the amp racks had been positioned beneath the stage—ran for nearly 2,000 hours non-stop. During this whole time the system was also to be kept at operating temperature throughout the night as well as during the day whenever no performance was taking. (The soft soothing white noise blended perfectly with the waves washing upon the shore.)

As Christoph Müller of Hyposound commented: “We had to deal with all kinds of technical problems—lighting, intercom, at some point everything stopped working...with the exception of HK Audio Cohedra Compact which has now been officially storm-tested! We already knew that it provides outstanding speech intelligibility, but it’s really impressive when the quality of reproduction remains first-class even in the face of the roughest winds and weather.”

Cabinet configuration was as follows: ten CDR 108 C mid/high units and four CDR 210 C subwoofers were flown on each side of the stage in the light towers as the main PA. Four ground-stacked CDR 108 C were used in full-range mode as centerfills. Sound was to be provided for three steep sets of bleachers holding a total audience of about 2,000. Among the things that were important to achieve were the overall stereo imaging and the specific placement of the individual perfomers within the soundstage. The system was managed with HK AUDIO Digital Field Controllers operated via a notebook computer from the FOH mixing area.

SDS Pro Audio sales manager Christian Kraska had this to say about Heidi and COCO: “The Heidi musical was a successful baptism-by-fire for Cohedra Compact in Switzerland. Throughout the entire run, the system impressed us with its first-class sound, exceptional speech intelligibility and truly remarkable imperviousness to wind. Our customers, whom we had invited to several different performances, confirmed our impression in their comments to us. This first-rate musical production was also a perfect framework for a product presentation, and we hope that next year this same musical will show up on the program again—and then of course also with Cohedra”.

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Swiss Heidi Musical with HK Audio’s Cohedra Compact

25th November 2005

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