When I was in college at The University of Tulsa, spending countless hours in the damp, cramped and musty basement practice rooms of Tyrrel Hall (then the home of the School of Music); the dream of the department was the “new music building”. A mythical carrot held out in front of every prospective music student for decades. In the late ’90s and early ’00s it became an almost sarcastic joke. No one thought that a new building would ever be built. Well that eventually changed. The Lorton Performance Center was finally built and became the new home of the School of Music for The University of Tulsa when it opened in 2011. It is a wonderful and long deserved facility.

Because of reasons, the Tulsa Symphony had to move their annual December Holiday Concert from the Tulsa Performing Arts Center to the Lorton Performance Center at the University of Tulsa. And on December 2nd and 3rd, I had the opportunity to go with them and mix their show. I also recorded it for eventual broadcast on the Tulsa Public Radio station KWTU as part of their classical music program. As I write this blog post, I am in the final stages of that mix, which will be mastered and delivered to the radio station soon.

This program featured local jazz trumpeter and singer Jeff Shadley and his trio, as well as A Klezmer Nutcracker. Having mixed The Nutcracker for the Tulsa Ballet for the past 10 years, this Klezmer version was a refreshing take on the Holiday classic by Tchaikovsky.

Because I was unable to hang my normal recording mic set up; I approached this show in more of a pops orchestra fashion, with section micing on the chorus, strings, winds, percussion and close micing the Trumpet and vocals and Jeff Shadley’s jazz trio. 27 inputs total recorded from the Lorton’s Digidesign Venue D-Show console to their Protools HD system. I’m not a fan of the Digidesign/Avid live sound consoles. They are clunky, counter intuitive to operate, have a lot of wasted space, and have a difficult GUI to navigate. But I managed to get everything out of it that I needed and the show went off without a hitch.

Here are a couple of pics from the FOH console. I didn’t take any pictures of the orchestra mic set up. But they look like microphones in front of orchestra musicians.