Birds in the Moon, a provocative new chamber opera with music by composer Mark Grey, has launched a national tour based on a revolutionary staging concept: the entire production is housed in a 20-foot shipping container that can be quickly set up for outdoor performances at essentially any location.
To simplify audio production while also offering an extended horizontal soundscape, the production utilises 12 Meyer Sound self-powered loudspeakers mounted on the container and on fold-out wings.
The show is mixed on an iPad with Meyer Sound’s Spacemap Go spatial sound design and live mixing software.
The mobile opera debuted at Domino Park in Brooklyn in early May as part of the New York Philharmonic’s free, city-wide Bandwagon 2 program.
Grey created Birds in the Moon with flexibility and portability in mind. The idea was to reach reasonably large, open-air audiences while still providing a dynamic and panoramic soundscape – and to do so with a streamlined system that supports both automated and live workflows.
An accomplished sound designer as well as a composer, Grey turned to Spacemap Go as the foundational tool for implementing his ambitious aural concepts.
“It’s been amazing working with Spacemap Go over the past year, exploring all that it can do,” he said.
“It has really outperformed my expectations, for example, in the way you can automate sonic trajectories over time, capture that scene, and then move on to the next. And recalling everything is simple, as Spacemap Go integrates effortlessly with other software programs.”