ASPEN, Colo. — The theme at this year’s Aspen Music Festival and School was "Once Upon a Time…" but for the faculty and students at the Edgar Stanton Audio Recording Institute (ESARI) the event was no fairytale, but rather a dream come true. ESARI, which records the annual classical music festival as part of its immersive month-long audio engineering course, regularly uses Sennheiser microphones to capture the busy performance schedule. This year, they used Sennheiser MKH 800 Twin and MKH 8000 Series microphones.
ESARI chief engineer Chris Cecere was impressed with the MKH 8020, an omni-directional with a wide frequency response that, he reports, were used paired with Neumann KM 184 mics, as well as on their own, and with other 8000 Series microphones.
“The 8020s have been hands down the favorite mic of the summer. They were scarce around here because everybody always had them out on one thing or another. I would say that was the case with the entire 8000 Series. It’s so nice having tools that work together. We’ve done entire shows where there are just 8000 Series mics.”
The students and their mentors record performances at six venues around Aspen using a variety of microphone techniques. This year has seen an increased reliance on omni-directional microphones for the main pickup, according to Cecere. The MKH 800 TWIN shines in that application, he says. The mono mic houses two cardioid condenser capsules, each with separate outputs, allowing the pickup pattern to be manipulated in real-time or in post-production.
“In one of the halls, we put a pair up as general ambient mics,” he says. “In terms of using it as an ambient pickup, having the dual lobe output really let us hear what the hall was doing. We tried a lot of figure-eight patterns. Being able to dial that all the way into omni is pretty amazing. That we can do it after the fact makes it that much more interesting.”
Because the Aspen Music Festival is a non-profit organization, ESARI relies on the support of manufacturers such as Sennheiser to provide equipment and technical support, which this year was provided by Mike Pappas, Christopher Currier and Aaron Berg.
The principal use for the SKM 5200 handheld mics, SK 5212 belt-packs and EM 3732 receivers was actually not musical, he continues. “We share a campus with the Aspen Institute, who bring in a number of foreign dignitaries. We just had the Dalai Lama here, and this summer, we also had Condoleeza Rice visit, so we’ve been using the Sennheiser wireless for those applications.”
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