LOS ANGELES – McCune Audio recently provided sound reinforcement for the 30th year at the 2008 Playboy Jazz Festival held June 14-15 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Over the past 30 years at the Playboy Jazz Festival, McCune has had the opportunity to work with such talent as Etta James, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King, Boz Skaggs and Jamie Cullum. This year’s lineup was equally impressive: Herbie Hancock, Al Jarreau, Guitars & Saxes, Keb’Mo, Poncho Sanchez, Tower of Power and James Moody.
McCune Audio purchased 26 new McCauley FM850 low profile, lightweight, 2-way monitor systems.
On purchasing the new monitors, Mike Neal, vice president of McCune Audio, said, “We hadn’t purchased new monitors for a while, and knew it was getting to be about that time. McCune Audio had always used monitors we built ourselves. I’m not sure when they were developed, but I think we’ve been using them since the 1970s. Our in-house monitors worked beautifully and were quite serviceable, but we felt it was time to replace them.”
When the search for replacement monitors began, McCauley’s new FM850 was considered because they were significantly lighter than other monitors on the market; also they had a similar sound quality to what McCune was already familiar with. “We purchased so many,” continued Neal, “because we wanted to be prepared for two stages. For instance, the Hollywood Bowl uses a revolving stage, so the audience doesn’t have to wait as long for acts throughout the day. We plan to use all of the McCauley monitors for the upcoming Monterey Jazz Festival in September.”
Bill Knight and Matt Chavez from McCune ran the monitor boards for each of the stages at the Hollywood Bowl. When asked about the performance of the monitoring systems, Chavez explained, “We received no complaints. And if there are no complaints, then everything is good. Although nothing specific was mentioned, we did receive a few complements that everything sounded great. That’s about the best to be expected from a large festival.”
Knight highlighted the few complications with the show that were relative to space dimensions rather than the equipment itself. “The FM850 is a fantastic monitor, and in comparison to what we’re used to using, it has different throw dimensions. It was a bit challenging because the stage for the Hollywood Bowl isn’t as big because it’s cut in half essentially. Since most of the jazz musicians get really close to the wedges, we set the monitor’s to their high angle… and then it was smooth sailing.”
The Playboy Jazz Festival was held on June 14 and 15, and the line up included jazz musicians who were well established as well as some new players. Since he started hosting in 1995, Bill Cosby has presented the “Cos of Good Music” where he handpicks musicians to play together for this special segment of the program. This year not only did Cosby direct the musicians, but he jumped on a drum set to jam for a bit.
The Playboy Jazz Festival started in 1959 at Chicago Stadium as a onetime event to celebrate the magazine’s first five years of publication. Twenty years later, Hugh Hefner brought the festival back to the world famous Hollywood Bowl to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Playboy Magazine and since then the event has become annual.
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