The annual the Jazz Aspen Snowmass (JAS) June Experience features four nights of headline concerts at the Benedict Music Tent in Aspen, Colorado. As the 2,050-capacity venue has proven consistently difficult for amplified music, production company Alchemy Concert Systems looked to an Alcons Audio system for the solution.

A not-for-profit event that aims to present and preserve jazz and related forms of music through events, performances and education, the 2017 event featured Earth, Wind & Fire, Michael McDonald, Tower of Power, Lisa Fischer & Grand Baton, Paa Kow and the Arthur Lee Band.

Situated on the campus of the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Benedict Music Tent is an open-sided structure with a curving roof made of Teflon-coated fibreglass. The combination of its design and an ageing PA designed only for vocal reinforcement prompted Alchemy Concert Systems and JAS and Alchemy to seek amplified sound quality that would surpass all previous years.

‘It’s a unique venue, a symphonic amphitheatre which was never designed to host amplified rock-and-roll type shows,’ says Alchemy co-owner John Czechowicz. ‘The house PA was installed back in 2006 and it has always been inadequate to properly cover the venue. For the past five or six years it has been augmented for amplified shows, but we’ve always been kind of piecemealing a system together. This year we wanted something better.’

Czechowicz contacted production company Rainbow Production Services, who suggested using the Alcons LR18 system. The set-up comprised nine-per-side LR hangs of LR18 compact mid-size line-array modules, with three floor-mounted BC543 very high-output cardioid subwoofers per side. Front fill comprised four LR7 micro line-array modules, arranged as two stacks, each two high, with two RR12 point source array modules per side for out fill.

This was Czechowicz’s first experience of an Alcons system, but it impressed him from the outset: ‘The immediate advantage was that the boxes were smaller and provided more elements in each, which really helped with coverage,’ he says. ‘Previously we had only been able to have front fill that were one unit high, because of their size. This really limited their effectiveness. Stacking the smaller LR7s two high meant they were able to penetrate much further into the ground tier of the audience area.

‘Using the RR12s as out fill really helped with covering the slope of the amphitheatre bowl, while the BC543s outperformed any sub we’ve had in the venue, the custom carbon fibre 5.3-inch voice coil woofers making a real difference. Before we’d had to use four or even six subs each side. It was also the first time we’d used cardioid subwoofer arrays in there, which definitely helped, including reducing the amount of low frequency energy onstage.’

Another aspect of the Alcons system that impressed Czechowicz was the flexibility of a BC332 cardioid subwoofer and QR24 modular line-source array column on each side of the stage: ‘For some bands we used them as monitor side fill, for others we turned them through 90º and used them as audience in fill,’ he says. ‘The vertical coverage is amazing – you can bend your knees and literally dip in and out of the soundfield.’

David Rahn from Alcons US flew in for a day to help rig and tune the system, demonstrating that it really is an ‘out-of-the-box’ system: ‘David was really under the gun time-wise, but we got the system up and tuned very quickly,’ Czechowicz says. ‘We only needed the software in the Alcons Sentinel amplified loudspeaker controllers - Rainbow had provided a third-party loudspeaker processing package but we didn’t use it. Very little EQ and no amplitude shading at all was needed to tune the system. With the old vocal reinforcement system significant amplitude shading was needed to even out the coverage, so this was another big advantage.

‘I was slightly concerned about rider-friendliness,’ Czechowicz adds ‘None of the acts had heard of Alcons and touring engineers tend to like what they like, be wary of what they don’t know and quick to criticise what they don’t like. But there were no issues at all and everyone was very positive about the Alcons rig.

‘We had let JAS know that we were bringing the Alcons system in and Chad Fuller from Rainbow was very enthusiastic, taking the time to explain its many benefits. They were really happy and stated that the sound at the June Experience was a big improvement over previous events.’

After many years of trying, the Benedict Music Tent has finally been tamed.