Page 31 - Guildhall School Coverage Book 2020/21

Key to the School’s musical curricula is its annual award for The Gold Medal – a
performance competition that began in 1915 and had taken place uninterrupted through
2019. Of course, because of the global pandemic in 2020, the annual May performance had
to be put on hold as teaching moved online during the summer term.

“Because of COVID we needed to be swift in our response to ensure things like The Gold
Medal could occur and, very importantly, that in-person classes could still take place with
full-scale participation,” said Julian Hepple, Head of Recording and Audio Visual at Guildhall
School. “To make that happen we quickly turned to Dante and Dante Domain Manager. And,
in September, as we returned to in-person teaching, we were able to hold The Gold Medal
and broadcast the performance online.”

For Guildhall School, Dante enabled them to solve COVID-related challenges both with their
analog acoustic live performances and their virtual learning environment.

Acoustic Meets Digital Over Dante

To adhere to social distancing requirements, The Gold Medal performances were
constructed across four separate rooms. The largest space was populated by those on string
instruments and the piano, with each participant located two meters apart. Woodwind and
brass instruments were split up each into their own rooms, with three meters of space
allocated between performers. Finally, the conductor was located in a fourth room. The
challenge of this setup, of course, was collaboration among the multiple rooms.

“We had 90 musicians in total across the different rooms and building,” Hepple said. “We
needed to manage a number of inputs and outputs across the space and have them be as
latency-free as possible. They needed to be able to perform synchronously with one
another.”

To do this, 40 Neumann, Rupert Neve Designs, Schoeps, and DBA directional microphones
were strategically placed across the space to capture instrument audio. These feeds are
brought into SSL, Yamaha and Neutrik preamplifiers where they’re translated into Dante-
native channels. These Dante feeds then head to Cisco and Dell switch infrastructure across
two buildings, and then routed to a Solid State Logic System T mixer that allows for
broadcast specific processing. The audio feeds are then delivered out to two locations: to the
broadcast mix for live playout via a live production system, and to the other performers via
headphones.

“With Dante we were able to deliver the correct mix to the different rooms with an
imperceptible level of latency,” Hepple said. “Our conductor went into rehearsals on day one,
and within 20 bars he said he was ready to go. This is someone who has decades of
experience in the classical performance space, and it was an immediate acceptance of the
new setup.”

Despite the unique visual – the setup across four different rooms – the production is a
seamless performance.

“There was a time when we were worried this could be cancelled,” Hepple said. “However,
with Dante we were able to keep it alive. And that’s a big deal right now because our rooms,
which are normally alive and vibrant, had been silent for six months. Bringing the music back
was important for everyone.”