Holiday On Ice is a part of Joop van den Ende's Stage Entertainment Group, Europe's leading live-entertainment production company and with five shows performing in over 20 countries each year. “Holiday On Ice” is by far the most international and long-running quality entertainment show around. Based in the Netherlands, Stage Entertainment attracts combined annual audiences of around ten million people to its ice shows, theatre productions, musicals and special events.
The latest Holiday on Ice show in production is ROMANZA, and this season's performances are scheduled in Germany, Korea and France. The central theme of the ROMANZA show are the world's most famous love stories; from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" to Puccini's "Madame Butterfly". Artistic director Frank Wentink, choreographer Jamie Isley and their creative team have put together a spectacular show about love and hate. Flying acts, acrobats, top-quality skaters, lighting by an award-winning designer, breathtaking costumes and a magnificent audio system, take you on an unforgettable journey into the world of passion and love.
The sound design for the show was in the hands of Leo van den Boogaard. With a 30 year track record of sound designs for international productions in European musicals such as Cats, the Sound of Motown and Black and Blue, Leo has a vast experience of sound design and is a regular in the creative team of Stage Entertainment.
"With this show we aimed for a centralized sound reinforcement concept, increasing the efficiency of the PA system by using a very compact high quality system". By selecting the Nexo Geo-S system, the transport volume was decreased to almost half of the conventional size and the set-up, and break-down times are reduced drastically, but most importantly the high audio quality required for these shows is maintained. In total 38 Geo S850, 6 Geo S830 and 8 CD-18 subs are used for the complete production, driven by twelve CAMCO Vortex 6 amplifiers. The tour lands in a wide variety of venues around the world and each time the speaker system has to be re-configured to meet the venue's acoustic characteristics. "Selecting the Geo-S system gave us the flexibility to meet that part of the challenge. The other big improvement was to go digital with the mixing console, and a lot of research landed on the Yamaha PM5D. The PM5D allowed us to drive the speaker system with the same flexibility using the PM5D's built in matrix, delays, EQ's and graphics. The absence of additional outboard routing and EQ systems had the same effect on set up times and transport logistics". The only equipment in the FOH rack is a Tascam MX2424 with MX view and increased HD capacity for playback of the music and effects tracks, a 360systems Instant Replay machine and the hardware for the Sennheiser 5000 series wireless microphone and 3000-series in-ear monitor systems used for announcements, live-music acts etc. All dynamics, PEQ's, GEQ's and effects used are internal to the PM5D. "The PM5D is perfect for this show, it takes all inputs from the Tascam and replay machines, actors, announcers with ample inputs and mix outputs to spare for the many cases when we have a guest performance or have to set up additional output locations. Most importantly: it's a Yamaha PM class console, which means that it has both the audio quality and the reliability level we need for these kind of international touring productions".
More info on www.holidayonice.com
