Installations

Modesto has a symphony? Who knew?

The Gallo Center for the Arts is a shiny gem in the Central Valley of California, satisfying a need for performing arts in the Modesto community. The center, which opened in September 2007, is home to four resident companies including the Central West Ballet, Modesto Community Concerts Association, Modesto Symphony Orchestra and Townsend Opera Players. With two performance spaces — the 1,250-seat Mary Stuart Rogers  theater and the intimate 444-seat Foster Family  theater — the center is also designed to accommodate a variety of performances, from touring Broadway productions to rock ‘n’ roll concerts. “We’ve seen everything from symphonic and acoustic performances all the way up to Broadway shows and pretty much everything in between. We’ve seen ballet, contemporary dance, even break dancing,” says Brian Svoboda, sound engineer at the Gallo Center for the Arts. “It really is an answer to a call for performing arts in Modesto.”

New install for prestigious music school had to be “beyond reliable.”

It’s hard to imagine a room that sees (and hears) as much music variety as Berklee College of Music’s Performance Center. The space, the largest of five performance centers on campus, is host to at least 200 events a year, which cover everything from classical to electronica, jazz to hard rock, bluegrass to hip-hop, and even delves into the world of avant guard.

IET takes on a rider-friendly install on a budget

When it comes to a mecca for the hottest nightlife, Winnipeg probably isn’t the first place that comes to mind. But with the debut of Blush Ultraclub, its reputation is quickly changing. The sexy and sophisticated nightclub, which holds up to 1,000 patrons in its 19,000-square-foot space, is the result of the city’s downtown revitalization program and a multimillion-dollar renovation. The venue had been vacant for the past 10 years and its renaissance serves as the center of the downtown’s west end transformation. Its ideal location across from the MTS Centre attracts a crowd of clientele after concerts and sporting events. As part of Blush’s massive inception, Integrated Entertainment Technologies (IET) was awarded the project to install a new sound system that could provide smooth transitions between the club’s live entertainment and DJ-mixed dance music.

“We need a world-class install. Oh, and you only have 18 months. Is that a problem?”

When the phone rings at IPR Services, the company’s Owner Bob Patrick expects to hear a challenge. After all, IPR has been at the helm for some of the most interesting install projects across the globe, including The Mirage in Las Vegas, Staples Center in Los Angeles and Makkah Mosque in Saudi Arabia. Still, he wasn’t quite prepared when he heard that he only had 18 months to get the design and install done for the brand new 7,100-seat Nokia Theatre L.A. Live in Los Angeles.

Getting the audio under control at Glendale, Ariz.’s Jobbing.com Arena

So, Neil Rosenbaum hears the phone ringing in his office one day last August and his boss is on the other side. The Jobbing.com Arena production manager picks up to hear the order to completely revamp the audio system. Good news. Bad news? It’s got to be done by Oct. 4 when the arena’s prime occupant, the Phoenix Coyotes of the NHL, opens its season.

La Fe en Jesucristo Church Embraces the Music

With an energetic congregation and 10-piece band, the La Fe en Jesucristo Church attracts international attention. Despite its location in a small Hispanic neighborhood of Kansas City, Kan., well-known Hispanic Christian bands regularly visit the church to perform during worship services. When the church moved into a larger facility (the church consolidated its worship facility from a previous two locations to one), Church Trustee Noe Aguilar wanted a state-of-the-art sound system to accommodate the array of culturally diverse music, which includes everything from heavy metal and rock to soulful tenors and traditional hymns. “We didn’t have the space and we didn’t have the sound system,” says Aguilar. “We had to rent auditorium space and equipment to accommodate the different styles of music. This time around, we wanted a concert-friendly church.”

The two-year renovation involved mixing modernization and preservation

Certainly any kind of installation work demands a high attention to detail, and everyone from architect to designer to installer to end user needs to be on the same page. The team that worked on the two-year renovation of the Mormon Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, took that pressure, doubled it and then doubled it again.

UMass’s Lipke Auditorium Needed a System That Was Not Too Small, But Not Too Big.

Over the past couple of years, the audio/visual team at the University of Massachusetts in Boston has been captaining updates of the school’s audi-toriums. First came the ballroom in the school’s Campus Center where a brand new $1 million audio system was installed. Then, in 2007,the Lipke Auditorium was finished; next will be Snowden Auditorium.

For a number of years, the name Oaks Christian has evoked exclamations from sports fans across Southern California and beyond. That will hap-pen when your teams dominate the local sports scene, your football team wins the California state championship and your starting quarterback goes to Notre Dame.

Last August, locals who had just seen the new 30,000-square-foot Bedrosian Pavilion, which includes one of the most technologically advanced performing arts centers and media production facilities in the area, uttered the name Oaks Christian in awe. Sports fans were especially pleased be-cause the performing arts center doubles as a gymnasium and will be used for the school’s basketball and volleyball teams. That these two venues are housed in the same two-story building on a 15,000-square-foot plot is equally amazing. 

When Does a Tour Turn into an Install?

The LaSalle Bank Theater in downtown Chicago is a grand old house in the Broadway tradition. It opened in 1906 as the Majestic Theater and, for many years, was a prime stop on the Orpheum circuit. The theater went dark during the Depression, but was taken over by the Shubert family fol-lowing World War II. For years, it housed Broadway shows, both on tour (Cats, A Chorus Line) and on their way to Broadway (Spamalot, Sweet Smell of Success). In 2005, the theatre closed for a multimillion-dollar restoration project and reopened in 2006 to great acclaim. This October, it became the home of the Chicago tour of Jersey Boys.

Smashing Pumpkins Install Their System into the Legendary Fillmore Auditorium for an Extended Run

As one of the most legendary venues in the land, The Fillmore in San Francisco has hosted many of yesterday and today’s music legends. Pick your era, pick its definitive band and the odds are they have performed on the hall’s hallowed stage. So, it made perfect sense for the Smashing Pumpkins to reintroduce themselves to fans during an 11-night run at The Fillmore.

The community’s response to the closing of the John Harms Center in 2003 was swift and not positive. In fact, citizens from around northern New Jersey joined to let the powers-that-be know that they wanted a local regional arts center to serve the cultural needs of the area.