The very latest DAS Audio sound reinforcement system was specified for the European premier of the hit Broadway musical Songs For A New World. The new production, which had a nine-day run at The Old Fire Station Theatre during the recent ‘Oxford Festival of Theatre’, was sound designed by Giles Sutton, who specified the new DAS Compact 1 three-way, self powered cabs.

Sutton, who this year graduated from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts with a BA Honours in Sound Technology, previously sound designed the show in a highly successful student production at LIPA, where it played to packed houses for a week. He was therefore already familiar with the level of reinforcement he was going to need for the seven voices on stage and four-piece electric band in the pit.

Having worked with the DAS house system in LIPA’s Paul McCartney Auditorium, Giles contacted UK distributor Sennheiser to find out if there was anything in the DAS inventory that would provide a similar level of sound quality, that could be flown in the theatre with a minimum of fuss. As luck would have it, the very first production Compact 1s had just arrived in the country that week. Any scepticism that two of these cabs were sufficient to cover the auditorium was dispelled on power-up, as the diminutively sized, class-D switching bi-amped cabs output up to 133dB SPL.

The Joker79 production of Songs For A New World in association with LIPA, has already won a major award for Best Production at the 'Festival de Théâtre' in Lausanne, Switzerland, and plans are being made to present it at a theatre festival in Korea in 2002 and to also take the show on a UK educational tour in the Spring of 2002.


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