Long a regional player in Western Canada, KiAN Concert Sound Services has stepped up to play ball by investing in a Meyer LEO system. This because nothing other than a Meyer system will do, according to company president Mark Reimann.
Heck, he didn’t even have to listen to LEO system before he bought it.
“I’ve been dealing with Meyer since the 1980s, and I trust those guys,” he says. “I never have a question about their quality. John Meyer believes that what goes into the speaker should be what comes out. Their speakers don’t have their ‘own sound’ like others do.” He likes also that their speakers are coming with built in amplifiers “which is the only way to go these days.”
But really — without even hearing it?
“Once you go to the Meyer factory, you see the quality control is unreal,” says GM Derek Mahaffey, who joined the organization in 2009. “When we took delivery of our LEO, we had less than four days to install it in a show. I would not have the confidence in any other manufacturer to take a system like this out of the box and put it immediately up in the air.” The maiden voyage of the system was a high profile event indeed: they used it first on the Winter Festival held on Dec. 26, 2012 in BC Place, which was the first electronic festival held at the BC, and was headlined by Deadmau5.
Then there’s that new speaker smell. “For our existing clients, those with the big festivals that we’ve been doing for four or five years, it’s nice to offer the newest and best thing,” Mahaffey adds. “For them, it’s enticing to promoters, and also they know that something like this can take their festival to the next level.”
» Ship to Shore Start
For more than a third of a century, Vancouver-based KiAN has been taking good care of the regional concert, touring artist, music festivals, special events, and corporate conventions that call on them. They have supported the Victoria Symphony Splash, an outdoor concert that typically attracts more than 40,000 people. Especially dear to KiAN’s heart is the Commodore Ballroom, the ballyhooed nightclub in Vancouver, which they’ve been servicing pretty much from the beginning.
KiAN does a fair amount of audio installations, too, most recently at Great Canadian Gaming’s River Rock Show Theatre in Richmond, BC, and their Red Robinson Show Theater in Coquitlam, BC.
KiAN company was founded in 1974 by Frank Jeltes. “He named the company after a boat he had, where he had placed some Altec A-7 Voice of the Theatre speakers,” says Reimann. “Someone asked to rent those speakers, and so this company literally started on a boat.” Reimann came on board in 1985 from another sound company. When Jeltes retired in 1999, Reimann became president and sole owner.
Also in 1985, the company started what would be a lifelong relationship with Meyer speakers. “I still have the original speakers!” he laughs. “They are still in service and still sound great.”
Jeltes had done well servicing the club scene, but that was dying out by the time Reimann joined, so there was some retooling that needed to happen. It worked, because by the next year, Vancouver hosted Expo 86, a four-and-a-half-month World’s Fair, and the company got involved with a variety of different installs.
In the years that followed, KiAN handled larger tours and they bought more Meyer gear. By 1995, they were supporting opera great Luciano Pavarotti, which they would do for eight years as his preferred supplier in North America. “We probably did 100 concerts with him and The Three Tenors,” he adds, referring to Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. Along the way, the company also served touring acts including k.d. lang, the Irish Rovers and Kenny Rogers.
Today KiAN handles it all with six full-time employees and many freelancers. “Our main events today are in the region, mostly in British Columbia,” explains Mahaffey. “Although our business has become a broad spectrum of services over the years, from festivals to large corporate one-offs, and now award shows.”
Recently, the company had one of its biggest: Regarded as the “Oscars of India,” the Times of India Film Awards (TOIFA) 2013 was staged in April at the BC Place in Vancouver. It was seen by a live audience of close to 40,000 plus millions more who watched it on TV around the world. (Because of the global popularity of Bollywood entertainment, the award show now moves to different locations around the world; this was its first trip outside of India.) The three-day extravaganza featured live music, movie screenings and the red carpet award show itself.
» Gear Old & New
Besides KiAN’s large inventory of Meyer rigs, they also have a large L-Acoustic V-DOSC system. Driving them they have Yamaha PM5Ds, an Avid Profile, and for “the analog world,” a Midas Heritage 3000,” Reimann says. The V-DOSC rig is powered via Crown and Dolby Lake products. “And we still have a full arena rig of old conventional gear.”
So in addition to the new LEO system, KiAN has a full MILO system, the 1100-LFC, plus they still have the 700 HPS and the MSL-3, MSL-5, and MSL-6. Mahaffey says of the older gear: “It’s amazing — we’ll be using some MSL-3s for an event and some of our techs will turn around and go, ‘wow — I forgot how good these sound!’ And some of these guys aren’t even old enough to remember when they came out,” he laughs.
For the LEO, the two worked closely with Bob Snelgrove of GerrAudio, the Canadian distributor for Meyer. “We were actually waiting for the new system to come out, and Bob was very helpful,” Reimann says. “He’s been a Meyer distributor for over 30 years and helped facilitate all that had to happen to make the deal work — it’s a lot of money, and that’s difficult to do for a small regional sound company.”
Another large event they just did with the LEO was supporting Great Big Sea, Celtic rock band from the eastern Canadian provinces. The system will be part of KiAN’s summer lineup of festivals including the Squamish Valley Music Festival. “It’ll be an active summer with the new LEO,” Mahaffey assures.
While they take their responsibility seriously, as they handle most of the market in British Columbia, now that they have the new system, KiAN is aiming to do more touring and arena shows, Reimann says. “With the touring, it’s not always coming down to the [lowest] dollar so much as it often does with one-offs. We’d like to get back into more of the larger-scale touring, and that’s why we buy the best.”
As for KiAN, the company continues to grow, both from the rental and installation sides. “I’ve noticed at one time it was feast or famine — there’d be tumbleweeds rolling through the shop on some months,” Mahaffey says. “Now it’s more consistency, keeping us working steadily through the year.”
KiAN Concert Sound Services
FOUNDED: 1974 by Frank Jeltes
LOCATION: Richmond, BC Canada (Vancouver area)
SERVICES: Touring, festivals, special events, installations
WEB: www.kiansound.com
