Nevin Steinberg enjoying the sights of Sydney!
The Tony, Grammy, Olivier and Pulitzer Prize winning musical Hamilton is now playing at the Sydney Lyric Theatre.
Featuring a score that blends hip-hop, jazz, R&B and Broadway, Hamilton has taken the story of American founding father Alexander Hamilton and created a revolutionary moment in theatre – a musical that has had a profound impact on culture, politics and education.
Sound designer Nevin Steinberg has overseen all productions of Hamilton including five American companies (on Broadway, in Los Angeles, in San Francisco and two U.S. tours) and one in London. With the Sydney show now the only one playing in the world, all eyes were on Australia.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton’s creator, says that they have the “loudest AND the quietest show on Broadway” and Nevin adds that the sound design is very dynamic, muscular and very connected to the live experience.
According to Nevin, the differences between the Sydney show and the original Broadway show are almost imperceptible.
“The creative team made a few tiny changes to the lyrics to remove a few VERY specific American place names, and one other change to make a joke work better for non-American audiences, but its DNA is 99.9% Broadway Hamilton,” he said. “From a sound design perspective, the approach conforms very closely to the New York production while borrowing some ideas from the subsequent sit-down productions in London and Chicago/LA. Those systems were scaled up for larger venues, but still very specific and high-resolution.”
Nevin is thrilled with the Lyric Theatre as a venue saying it’s bigger than many of the Broadway musical venues but acoustically well-behaved with great rigging positions for the PA and extensive wiring and support infrastructure for surrounds and backstage systems.
“I also think it just feels good in there,” he stated. “The theatre design is comfortable, with good sight-lines and angles, and one of the nicest house lighting systems I’ve seen!”
The PA for Sydney is very similar to the specifications for the other sit down productions around the US and in London. The main system is d&b V-series line array and point sources with Meyer subwoofers, Alcons delays and front fills. In Sydney, they are using L-acoustics for some fills and all of the surrounds as well. The audio supplier is JPJ Audio.
The gear list is eight Alcons SR-9, 20 x Alcons x VR-5, 30 x Alcons VR-8, 12 x d&b x V-Sub, two d&b V7P, 48 x d&b x V8, ten L-Acoustics 108P, 96 x L-Acoustics 5XT and four Meyer Sound 1100-LFC.
“We have a DiGiCo SD7-T for control,” commented Nevin. “It is still the state of the art theatre control console and software and is on all my large-scale musicals. No other system has its input/output capability and its theatre-specific software features. The loudspeaker processing is handled by a network of Meyer Sound Galaxy 816-AES units. There is minimal outboard gear, but it includes TC Electronic System 6000 and TC Helicon Voicelive processors.”
The performers are all on Sennheiser SK-5212 wireless transmitters paired with EM-3732 receivers. They wear DPA 6062 and Point Source Audio mic elements on custom head-worn or boom-style rigs. The handhelds mics in the show are Shure Axient Digital with Shure SM58 heads. The band use a wide variety of microphones and direct boxes, from Audix, Beyer Dynamic, BSS, DPA, Radial, Shure, and Solomon.
“I always find that the biggest challenge with Hamilton is low-frequency management,” added Nevin. “We try to generate some pretty heavy bass at times during the show and just keeping it all tight and under control is a pretty big lift, especially in light of the complexity of the score and lyrics. But it’s very satisfying to make it all work.”
Assisting with the sound design is Michael Waters who Nevin describes as eleven on a scale of one to ten!
“I am so lucky to have Michael on the Hamilton team,” he said. “He is so accomplished and experienced in his own right, and I am reassured and grateful for his attention to our show.
“I think that the results at the Lyric are really satisfying. It looks and sounds just like Hamilton should! It’s such a great show – well written, well-orchestrated, well-choreographed, well designed and well-directed. Everyone did such great work and I feel very lucky to be a part of it. And the local crew have been amazing and deserve special mention: PSE: Andrew Poppleton, A1: Brendon Gardner, A2: Isaac Olgilvie, A3: Haley Thor and Audio Dep: Jamie Martin.”
Photos: Daniel Boud
