1990s rave culture, the noise in our heads and the things we can learn from silence
are among the influences that recently inspired Front of House sound engineer Dan
Bora to re-think his approach to mic’ing a performance by the internationally
acclaimed Philip Glass Ensemble (PGE).

With PGE set to perform at the Click Festival in Elsinore, Denmark, Bora decided to
’flip the script’ to give the festival audience a new way of hearing Glass’s ground-
breaking work. Part of this process involved mic’ing the Ensemble’s three woodwind
players (doubling on piccolo, flutes and saxophones) with d:vote™ Instrument
Microphones rather than relying on small diaphragm condenser microphones on
stands.

The genesis for these changes came last December when PGE played a rare show in
a warehouse festival in the USA. Along with die-hard PGE fans, the concert also
attracted a new generation of listeners, many of whom weren’t even born when
some of Philip Glass’s music was written.

“Philip was surprised by the number of young people at the show,’ Dan Bora
explains. “We know the influence his work has had on Western classical, pop and
electronic music, but after that experience we realised there was scope to share it
with an even wider audience of young listeners.’

However, playing the kind of venues younger audiences frequent, in particular
festivals, presented technical challenges that PGE wouldn’t normally encounter in
places like Carnegie Hall in New York, the Sydney Opera House and London’s Queen
Elizabeth Hall.

The opportunity to try something new came at Click where PGE was scheduled to
perform Music in 12 Parts, a piece that Glass wrote for his Ensemble in the early
1970’s.

After some research and testing, Bora put together a new set of tools consisting of
Digico SD boards, Shure 535 earpieces and d:vote™ 4099 Instrument Microphones
on saxophones.

“If you do the physics, it’s pretty obvious – the distances between the transducers
and what they’re pointing at is significantly smaller,’ Bora says. “Microphones and
speakers are no longer on the same plane. The d:vote™ 4099’s are by far the best-
sounding and most practically built microphones for this type of filigree work.
Replacing small diaphragm condensers on stands with d:vote™ made this core
element of the Ensemble as crystal-clear as our synths. Our rebalanced image was
complete.’

PGE’s success at Click has resulted in the Ensemble investing in its own stock of
d:vote™ Microphones so they can be used for all future performances.

“Initially we rented the microphones because we were trying them out, but now we
don’t want to part with them,’ Bora says. “I was surprised by the overwhelming
approval from the other Ensemble members: our venerated Music Director, Michael
Riesman said “there’s no turning back!’. I saw Philip after the performance. Smiling,
he exclaimed “I could hear things in the music that I haven’t heard before.’