Held on the evening of the first day in the Londesborough Room, the evening included both the ABTT Theatre Awards and the SMA National Stage Management Awards, presented by the ABTT's chairman Louise Jeffreys, the Barbican's director of arts.
In making the award, the ABTT jury commented, "The S21 sound desk has the sound quality DiGiCo are renowned for, but at a price that makes it achievable for small and medium scale theatres and tours. The intuitive user interface makes the desk easy to use, and the built in MADI USB interface makes connection to recording and complex show playback systems exceptionally easy to set up. The desk works well by itself, but easily bolts on to existing DiGiCo systems."
Autograph's Duncan Bell said, "The long collaboration between Autograph and DiGiCo has had a major impact on audio for musical theatre in the West End, on Broadway and globally - the combination of our experience and DiGiCo's willingness to listen and work with us has resulted in a range of products that have expanded the creative horizons of theatrical sound designers and operators in ways that were unthinkable little more than ten years ago. S21 brings much of that know-how and technical excellence to a much wider audience, in a package that is both space and cost-effective - ABTT's recognition of S21 is great testament to that."
DiGiCo's managing director James Gordon said, "S21 getting this recognition from the ABTT jury is fantastic recognition for all the hard work the team back at DiGiCo have put into making this console."
In related news, Autograph are hosting a DiGiCo S21 Open Day at their premises in London N19 on Friday 10 July. It is already heavily subscribed but if you'd like to attend please contact Autograph's Peppe Mallozzi on peppe@autograph.co.uk. Details of further S21 open days will be published in due course.
(Jim Evans)
