playing live with an ochestra

Not sure if I can be of much help to your question, but I have to say that it's very nice to know that pianoteq will be played together with a orchestra.

Remamber to get a friend with a cancorder and record the whole thing .   

Abou the speakers direction, I sugest to you make a test with the orchestra, during rehearsal, with also someone in the audience to check if the sound reach well there.

Give priority to the audience.

Hello Luc

I would say that a set of speakers pointing your way and a set facing the rest of the musicians should be enough?
Do you have a layout of the orchestral and piano placement on stage?
That might help some?

cheers
Hans

is the orchestra itself going to be amplified as well? i that case you could try to get a mix of that plugged in to your speakers? hmm but your piano sound would 'bleed' into that as well possibly with some delay....

a bit tricky huh?

on the other hand - wouldn't you face the same problems with a real piano?
so if you'd place all speakers near your keyboard and make that sound as close to how 'normal sound radiation' from the piano would be, you would have the same basic principle to follow as 'any' concert pianist with an orchestra right?

And for the audience the speakers would be to the left and right of the stage facing the audience like with any 'rock-concert' - you would hear those yourself less so your play would be in response to the direct sound just like the orchestra would?

Hans

I was just asking about the orchestra's ampllfication, but didn't expect it depending on the size of the venue.....

Ah yes - a church - I know how the natural reverb can work against you...
a long time ago I made music for a WorldPressPhoto presentation in a big church in Amsterdam and had put a gunshot in the mix.... it 'echoed' through the whole church leaving quite an impression on all guests....

Ya I was thinking sort of a dome of speakers as well - the 360 degrees approach...
can't you think of such a solution to fit under your keyboard?...

I only play in a 'rock- environment' myself - all amplified so that's a different game all together

cheers
Hans

well, as I wrote, the acoustic of the church is not a very big problem, it's reverberant, but not that much: in fact a real piano would do the job just fine! Except it's not a big church, so there would be a problem of place for the orchestra, and it's also not a big budget - to say the least...! So renting a piano was out of question.

But I would not consider sending the sound to the ceiling and waiting for it to bounce back , it's not organ I have to play it's piano! ;-)

Yes, a "dome", like the dome tweeters of monitors, but then with more power: a true piano played fortissimo goes largely above the 100 dB. That's a lot for studio monitors... Albeit? I'll try...

And for the visual, of course the laptop would be out of sight, the audience should only see a simple keyboard... Placing an array of 4 speakers just behind it and not too high seems a not-too-bad solution.

Just to make a modified echo of Shumas ... in a reverberant building (like many 'cathedral-style' churches) you DON'T want to add echos off the ceiling by pointing any speakers upward ... just makes the sound muddier.

The Bose Model I or Model II would do great ... every one, audience and performers, can hear clearly.

One could try a pair of Bose Compact L1's ($1K ea, rather than $2-3K for the bigger models) and probably do well for a quiet attentive audience as a soloist, but I'd be concerned about matching a 25-piece string ensemble -- but I know they (the Compact L1) would do well as monitors -- just probably not enough "oomph" to solo against the strings.

BTW:  You'll be pleased with the PianoTeq sounds through a Bose L1 -- clean & accurate & can get plenty loud without distorting or 'coloring' the sound.

And so I played... And it was all right except for my search of the "acoustic feel" of the amplification. Due to other considerations (other pieces with other soloists), I was finally placed front right of the audience, and I ended up using a pair of DB Technologies bi-amped speakers, model Opera Live 208D. Small but lot of power (200 W each, very efficient), and, believe me, you NEED that kind of power when you have to play with a saxophonist and a 25 piece string orchestra (plus a choir!). All the studio monitors I tried  where simply not able to deliver the needed level. Regarding the placement, they were placed on a stand behind me (yes, rather unconventional but effective), near a pilar of the church, pointing more or less to the audience and the orchestra respectively, with an angle of about 90° between them, I was in the middle so I heard more or less the same as everybody.
Convincing but I'm still in search of a better way to emulate the "acoustic" feeling of a piano...

http://www.imageupload.org/?d=C0046EEF1

here is a picture, I have a video but the sound is very poor - as so often ! And I really had no time to verify it all by myself, I prefered concentrating on the score!

By the way, you'll see that I had to put 4 pages together in front of me, so there was not a lot of place left to put an extra monitor. But I might consider this next time: a pair of very little speakers both sides of the keyboard, yes, good idea.