Also included in the studio are a six-channel Sennheiser wireless system and a full Neumann monitoring set-up. Managing Director François Bou, who feels people have become overly concerned with the visual aspects of performance, sees the new system capturing the ears of his audiences, taking them on a deeper, immersive journey into the richness and variety of the music.
"For us, the fully digital mobile studio is like a new instrument in the orchestra. It allows completely new aesthetics in our work," explains François Bou. "We are playing classical music but this does not mean that we are an orchestra of yesteryear. Deeply rooted in both classical and contemporary music, the ONL rather is a high-tech orchestra that moves with the times and is present with its audiences in their specific environments and media."
An example in case are the ONL's successful "ciné-concerts" - film showings with live orchestra music - and the "concerts flash"; held between 12.30 to 13.15 these concerts attract (amongst others) Lille's city workers during their lunch hours. "The concerts flash are enjoying an unprecedented success - for the last lunchtime chamber music concert, we welcomed more than 1,000 guests."
Future ventures include a musical cooperation with a major video game company and an educational TV programme for children and families, "Piccolo Saxo", which is scheduled to start in April. "Our mobile studio will be a great asset in both recordings. There will be broadcasts on the France 3 regional channel, and also live streams of ONL concerts on digital platforms - this will increase the presence and reputation of the orchestra still further, and take their music to new audiences."
Stéphane Evrard, Technical Manager of the ONL, and his sound team are enthused by the new microphones: "Since we have the digital mics, we have had ensembles coming out of the Nouveau Siècle saying how thrilled they were and that they had never heard themselves in such a way."
Frédéric Blanc-Garin, who works as a freelance sound engineer in Stéphane Evrard's team, adds: "You really forget that there are microphones in between you and the orchestra. If I am asked to compare analogue with digital microphones I would say that using an analogue microphone is very much like using a magnifying glass. The instrument you look at gets bigger but at the edges, the image is slightly blurred, slightly out of focus. Digital microphones, on the other hand, take the whole audience closer to the orchestra.
Summing up, François Bou says, "The digital studio is a powerful tool for the orchestra, which also opens up new and powerful means of distribution. The sound is just amazing in its purity and directness, and workflow-wise, we can keep everything in the digital realm, from instrument pick-up to mastering."
(Jim Evans)
