A veteran sound designer for Cirque du Soleil, Jonathan Deans listened to the songs and watched the images to bring the experience of Michael Jackson’s music videos to the stage for Michael Jackson ONE™ at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
“The show is Michael’s music and dance moves, with Cirque du Soleil elements to add a twist to it,” says Deans, who went to numerous concerts to refresh himself with concert sound, as his goal was to “recreate the feeling of going to a concert, not a showroom or a theatre. Most people remember seeing Michael on video or if they were lucky enough to see him in concert.”
Having designed The Beatles Love for Cirque du Soleil, Deans notes that was like being “in the studio with The Beatles or inside their heads, but for Michael Jackson, it’s as if you were on stage with him. Even in the studio, he performed on a raised platform while he was recording. For his solo tracks, you hear his energy, as if he were live on stage. The saving grace of Michael Jackson was Michael Jackson,” adds Deans, who set out to capture that energy. “It’s as if the audience captures it as well and as if they had a live Michael Jackson experience, as close to a concert as you can get without him being there.”
Deans recalls seeing Jackson perform in Australia. “He was so captivating,” he says. “It was mesmerizing—his energy, his style. I have massive respect for that kind of performer, the music, the legacy.” In recreating Jackson’s signature sound, Deans had to respect the demographics of the audience, from five to 95 years old. “I had to be careful of the sound levels. How loud is too loud? From Cirque’s side, too loud; from the rock side, not loud enough—it’s a delicate balance.”
Yet the show is in a theatre, not a stadium or an arena, so Deans found “there has to be theatrical dynamics for an audience that is captive for 90 minutes and the proper environment level-wise, and we have to respect how much a person can take physically and legally. You want them to leave on a high, not as if they spent 90 minutes in the ring with Mike Tyson pounding on their ears.”
In Love, Deans had George Martin to approve the finite mix, and the remaining band members to confirm its accuracy. Yet he notes, “With this show, we could carry on playing with it forever—so many more multi-tracks. The only limitation was that Michael wasn’t there to say, ‘Yes, that’s how it should be.’”
Deans placed three speakers in each seat—5,412 custom left-center-right speakers divided into 24 zones—like he did at Love, but this time, his goal was “to help create an arena kind of feel, rather than an in-your-head sound. In addition to speakers in the seats, there is a very large surround system on the walls of the theatre,” he notes.
A total of 175 Meyer Sound loudspeakers include 16 Galileo 616 processors for system control, 24 Micas for left-right array, 38 JM-1Ps for the center cluster, and 12 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements. The FOH console is a Meyer Sound D-Mitri digital audio platform, with 120 inputs and 120 outputs at 96kHz, all connected digitally on a fiber-optic Optocore backbone. Solotech provided the gear and installation, and the system is cared for by Cirque du Soleil’s audio head Aaron Beck and his crew.
The Meyer Constellation system with 41 microphones and 144 speakers is used to create 17 user presets with maximum room reverb time of 4.5 seconds. “Constellation is used very heavily to create the concert feel, and the space and depth and dynamics of the music and the room itself,” explains Deans. “When the audience applauds and cheers, it sounds as if they are in an arena. This is a concert-style performance, so you believe that’s where you are. We wanted to enhance the concert experience, recreate a concert atmosphere in a theatre, which is more complicated than concert sound. In my world, I don’t want to make sound simply loud enough to be heard. There has to be other motivation for it.”
Playback is via MOTU Digital Performer 8 on dual Apple Mac Pros with RME HDSPe MADI FX PCI Express cards running 64 channels each. “Musical director Kevin Antunes would make a mix in the control room and bring it into the theatre, and we would collectively listen to it,” says Deans, who worked closely with playback engineer Glenn Erwin and associate sound designer Brian Hsieh. “Most of the mix elements and movement were done in DP, then fed to the Meyer LCS system to take over and extend it further.”
Everything is playback, with just two live performers, a female singer and a female guitarist. “The singer is generally flying in the air; she never sings on the deck,” explains Deans. “The guitarist is on stage. Both are incredible. The guitarist worked with Michael Jackson’s guitarist for an authentic sound. In fact, she is so good that people thought she was miming, so she changes a few things to let people know she’s live.”
{ SOURCE: LiveDesign | http://goo.gl/8v8Vpl }
