Southern California’s Grand Performances Powered by Allen & Heath

James Robertson

6 years ago

Grand Performances turns to Allen & Heath digital mixers as a key part of their highly successful mix. With the mission to “inspire the community, celebrate diversity, and unite Los Angeles through free access to global performing arts,” Grand Performances has grown to become one of Southern California’s largest presenters of free performing arts programs and an important summer destination in the Grand Avenue Arts District of downtown Los Angeles.

Most recently utilized as part of GRAND AVE ARTS: ALL ACCESS, the Allen & Heath Qu-16 covered front-of-house, monitors and recording duties for the all-day community cultural event. “I really love this board,” said Grand Performances’ Audio Engineer Erin Parisi. “The built-in reverb was nice and really added a lot to the vibe of the show. I also love the ProFactory EQ library presets, which are great to set a starting point to get things going and save a lot of time. Being able to easily record multitrack of the show right to USB with Qu-Drive was icing on the cake.”

The 32nd Annual Summer Series line-up of free outdoor concerts at California Plaza included acts ranging from funk to family fun, from rock opera and spoken word to sing-alongs. “I’ve been with Grand Performances for over 2 years now and we certainly put audio gear through its paces,” noted Parisi. “We might mix classical acoustic acts like we had today and then follow-up with ska tomorrow and a puppet show the next day. I like knowing I can make it all happen on the Qu, I’m a big fan.”

In addition to presenting dozens of concerts and interactive, family-friendly activities across multiple genres in the downtown LA area, Grand Performances has also partnered up with LAX Presents (Los Angeles World Airports) to offer a diverse array of performances across 6 different LAX airport terminals. “We knew that the production environment inside various secured and confined LAX locations would require a compact and streamlined audio footprint,” noted Gilberto “Mago” Morales, Grand Performances’ Technical Manager. “The Allen & Heath stuff is rock solid and the little Qu-16 was able to handle whatever we threw at it.”