Britannia Row supplies Josh Groban tour
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Demanding they might be, yet with Groban an established Clair Global client, Zito had reason to be assured. “Marlow ‘Mikey’ Beck is Josh’s mix engineer and prefers an L-Acoustic system,” says Zito. “The K2 and Kara combination proved a good choice.” Zito belongs to that exclusive group of production managers who are equally at home behind an FOH desk so that’s no idle opinion.
“When I spoke to Clair account manager, Todd Johnson, he assigned the tour contract to Britannia Row Productions who, I know from my own experience, have a long and deep association with L-Acoustic systems. From the moment we loaded into rehearsals back in October it became obvious that, while the concern was warranted, the crew was all over it.”
Lez Dwight, who managed the contract from Brit Row’s main office in London, selected the crew: “In the last 18 months we have done a lot of work in North America and recruited a significant number of excellent US techs. By happy coincidence I put in Michael Mordente as system tech’ who, as it turned out, was already highly rated by Mikey Beck.
“That sealed it for me,” continues Zito. “I judge the quality of a crew by how little I have to interreact with them! Lol. There is some truth to that. A great team knows what needs to be done and enacts the right plan. I literally never had to worry about the Brit Row crew, they got the gear in, got it up and got it done. I never got any calls to handle issues with audio, it was terrific from my standpoint.”
To maintain that satisfaction, Dwight decided from day one to fly Mordente over for the European leg. “We needed that consistency,” adds Zito. “We had limited rehearsals, so we had to get up and running quickly. That decision meant less pre-production and set-up days and was a general cost saving to the tour. Once we talked through everything on the first day of rehearsals, I never even thought about it again.”
(Jim Evans)
