The annual exodus of professional and aspiring classical musicians and technical personnel from around the world to the mountains of Colorado results in an eight-week summer retreat at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Here, at the Aspen Opera Theater Center (AOTC), a festival showcases more than 300 performances and hosts music education events.

This year, the AOTC used onDPA’s d:dicate 4006C Omnidirectional, 4011A cardioid and 4015C wide cardioid mics, and the d:vote 4099 Classic Touring Kit to record and broadcast AOTC’s Saturday morning opera masterclasses as well as its fully productions of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Bizet’s Carmen.

‘We were looking for a clean and accurate sound,’ says Aspen Music Festival & School Head Audio Engineer, Scott Burgess. ‘The DPA mics are spotless and precise, and could handle the dynamic range of an operatic performance.’

Since the event is a training programme for professional singers, the music was not amplified for the live audience. However, the broadcast and recording, and guests in the green rooms needed the performaces relayed to them. Burgess used the d:dicate 4006s to pick up the vocals from across the front of the stage, a pair of d:dicate 4015s for the main orchestra, a further pair of d:dicate 4011s for the wind section and the d:vote 4099s to the orchestra strings.

‘Another appeal of the d:dicates and the d:votes was their small size,’ Burgess says. ‘We could put them where we wanted without having visual distractions, as we needed to stay out of the way of the performances.’

Burgess also arranged d:votes inside the piano to relay sound to the students during the master classes: ‘The flexibility and sound of the d:votes proved invaluable for the Saturday classes, especially since the piano was constantly being moved in and out of the pit,’ he explains. ‘DPA’s magnetic clip design saved us a lot of time as the mics can easily be placed in and out of the piano.’

In addition to the traditional uses, Burgess also called on his d:dicate 4011s to amplify the percussion section for performances of Lowell Liebermann’s The Picture of Dorian Gray into the theatre through a pair of powered speakers. ‘We weren’t able to record Dorian Gray, for contractual reasons, but we still needed mics during these performances,’ he says. ‘Since the show had an especially large orchestra, we were unable to fit the percussion in the theatre. Instead, they had to perform from a side room where we set up an ORTF pair of DPA 4011s, which allowed us to amplify the sound of the percussion back into the theatre using a standard PA speaker system. It was an astoundingly convincing method as audiences could scarcely tell that the percussionists were not in the theatre. The conductor was happy with it and it worked really well for everyone.’

The AOTC had not used the newer DPA mics before: ‘The space can be a little challenging and usually I have to make some modifications, but the DPA mics worked right off the bat,’ Burgess says. ‘We only had to make very minor adjustments to get a really good sound.

‘Our staff comes from all around the country, from some of the biggest recording programmes where they are taught on a variety of equipment,’ he adds. ‘Having companies like DPA Microphones as one of the sponsors is a great way for our students, and even our professionals, to work with the best professional audio equipment on the market, which is a really important part of our programme.’

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