Breaking barriers in 360°

The Paraorchestra was founded in 2011 by British conductor and musical polymath Charles Hazelwood to improve the integration of disabled people into music and the performing arts. He felt that while talented musicians with disabilities existed in abundance, including his own daughter, they lacked meaningful professional opportunities. Just a year after Hazelwood announced the formation of the Paraorchestra at a TED conference, it participated in the London 2012 Paralympics Games ceremonies, playing alongside Coldplay at the closing event. Since then, the orchestra has evolved into an ensemble which commissions original works and explores unconventional formats while breaking down barriers.

A defining piece in the Paraorchestra’s repertoire is The Nature of Why, composed by Goldfrapp’s Will Gregory. The composition draws inspiration from Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize-winning physicist whose interviews explored the deeper meaning of questioning itself. Gregory structured the work into nine movements, each responding to fragments of Feynman’s reflections on the nature of “why”. Front of house engineer Simon Honywill, who’s worked with the orchestra since 2018, has been advancing the sound design for The Nature of Why for each outing.

“Even though we might not have seen each other for several years, when everybody comes together it’s just joyous,” says Honywill. “I feel very much a part of the ensemble, and it was particularly exciting being involved from the start. I would sit with Will as he was literally composing it on the spot, while the choreographer was working with the musicians, and it evolved before my eyes. And I had a lightbulb moment when I was struggling with how I was going to come up with a sound design that worked, because almost all the performers were going to be mobile.”

Honywill’s idea was to present the performers in the round in the same space as the audience members, who would be free to move between musicians and interact with them or simply stand back to take in the ever-changing performance. However, this came with its own set of challenges, namely, how to reinforce singers and musicians who are constantly on the move and deliver a sense of direction to help the audience locate a soloist or singer. Early iterations of the show attempted to solve these using overhead microphone grids and zoned reinforcement, effectively creating an “acoustic bubble”. While functional, Honywill felt that the result lacked precision and clarity; the mix felt diffuse and performers struggled to hear their performances clearly via a monitoring system which was also the PA.

“As the show developed, it became apparent that it was very special as it was so connected to the audience, because they’re up close and personal to all the action,” he continues. “You might be standing there watching somebody dance and a massive marimba is suddenly wheeled past you, and Harriet Riley, who’s playing it, is lifted up in the air. The idea behind the sound system wasn’t necessarily to make it big and loud, it was about giving people directional clues as to where the action was.”

So, when the Paraorchestra was booked to play at Hong Kong’s No Limits festival in March, Honywill decided to up the ante by adopting TiMax spatial audio technology to track the performers as they moved around the space. Every year, from February to March, No Limits showcases music, dance, theatre and film programmes by international and local artists of different abilities. This was an ideal platform for showcasing the Paraorchestra’s mission of reimagining the relationship between artist and audience.

“Charlie Hazelwood was determined to give the show a bit more spatial information, so I went away and did some research, realising that the only way to go, really, was to use a TiMax immersive sound solution,” Honywill continues.

For the five performances of The Nature of Why, staged at Hong Kong’s Kwai Tsing Theatre in Kowloon, a 15m-diameter, circular performance area was surrounded by a ring of seven Martin Audio FP12 loudspeakers at a height of 2.5m, augmented by an SXCF118 cardioid subwoofer. Above, six TiMax Tracker D4 tracking sensors in the grid triangulated the real-time positions of performers and key instruments. Using the TiMax SoundHub alongside TiMax Tracker, the production team transformed the show’s sonic architecture. Around 20 mobile sound sources were fitted with trackers, with some performers equipped with multiple units; the marimba alone required three to reflect its physical scale. Signals from Honywill’s microphones of choice – DPA 4061 and 4099 miniatures – were routed individually to the TiMax system via Dante, bypassing conventional subgroup mixing. This was appreciated not just by the audience but by the musicians, who reported being able to hear themselves clearly within the ensemble despite constant movement, improving confidence and musical precision and enhancing performances.

“While the audience members were free to walk outside of the performance area, all the action took place within the circle,” explains Honywill. “Using TiMax to track the performers did one of several things: it provided really good directional information, but the musicians could hear themselves really clearly. Using a system like TiMax, every source has its own unique amplitude and phase relationship to the sound system. There’s no problematic phase interaction between sources, so the clarity is exceptional, and gives that positional information within the space. The show is an intense, emotional experience and the music is a very unusual combination of instruments.”

The ensemble encompasses an 11-piece string section, solo viola, upright bass, marimba, French horn, electric guitar, two percussionists, two singers, clarinet, keyboard and electric harp. The percussionists play an array of instruments from temple bells and chimes through to bongos and bass drums. Shure Axient radio microphone systems, together with additional infrastructure, were provided by the venue, with local crew adapting to unconventional deployment methods, including DPA 4061 microphones mounted on the wrists of percussionists to maintain proximity across multiple instruments.

The local crew did a good job of understanding the accuracy required in loudspeaker and microphone placement, providing all the radio equipment and managing the radio mics,” says Honywill.

A Yamaha Rivage PM5 console positioned outside the performance circle was used to mix the five shows. During rehearsals, Honywill made adjustments on an iPad from within the space itself. While the TiMax equipment travelled with the production, the Martin Audio loudspeaker system was supplied by the British manufacturer’s APAC sales agency, Generation AV. As well as providing the speakers, Generation AV also provided local expertise in the shape of technical manager Jeremiah Joseph. “Jeremiah acted as my system tech and TiMax engineer; he was a valuable addition to the team and very talented,” says Honywill.

“TiMax has given the performance a new dimension – it’s made the sound such an essential part of it, enabling me to elevate the whole thing sonically to a new level and giving it a bigger energy. It’s not devastatingly loud, but the difference between being within the loudspeaker system and outside it, from an energy point of view, is very marked. You’re either in the show or you’re out of it.

“It’s taught me a lot about spatial mixing – it just gives everything its own space in the mix. Having a unique phase and amplitude pathway from each source to the loudspeaker makes a huge difference to what actually comes out of the speakers. And, from an audience point of view, it’s actually a lot easier to listen to.”

This was borne out across the five shows spanning three days, plus an open dress rehearsal, where audience reactions were consistently intense, according to Honywill. Generation AV’s director David McKinney invited 15 regional clients to one of the shows. “I did a presentation afterwards and they were, to a person, completely blown away,” recalls Honywill. “One veteran consultant was actually moved to tears.”

Up to 250 audience members per performance inhabited the same 15m-diameter circular space as the performers, free to roam within the performance circle. Musicians moved continuously, wheeling instruments through the crowd, singers wove between listeners and instrumentalists stopped inches away from individual audience members. The crowd were free to move between musicians, dancing and interacting with them, or standing back to take in the ever-changing performance. Moments of spontaneous intimacy were common, including one when a young child followed viola player Siobhan Clough through the space, eventually becoming the sole audience for a personal rendition. In another, a visually impaired attendee explored a bass clarinet through touch while it was being played by Lloyd Coleman, experiencing its vibrations physically.

“Every show is different, and that is largely down to the way people react,” Honywill explains. “The audience don’t know what to expect but, when they realise what they’re involved in, it generates an amazing buzz.”

Ultimately, The Nature of Why demonstrates that when barriers fall away, something extraordinary becomes possible. It functions as a lesson in how technology can deepen human connection rather than distract from it by the seemingly simple method of removing barriers, whether between differently abled musicians or between performers and audiences.