THE EMPIRE THEATRE ON FRONT ST. IN BELLEVILLE, ON
MAIN ARRAY OF NINE ADAMSON IS10S BELOW ONE IS119
SUBWOOFER
on the market and Rashotte took ownership
in early 2002 with the goal of returning the
building to its former use – and former glory
– as a state-of-the-art live performance ven-
ue and cinema.
“It’s kind of funny; anyone that knows
anything about finances or the music busi-
ness was asking me if I was crazy,” says Ra-
shotte with a chuckle. “These kinds of venues
are usually municipally-owned for a reason,
but we thought, ‘Eh, we can make this thing
work and have some fun with it.’”
By the fall of 2002, renovations were un-
derway to both highlight and pay tribute to
some of The Empire’s classic architecture and
stylings while also modernizing the space
with an eye to the future.
On Sept. 13 th , 2003, The Empire Theatre
officially (re)opened its doors and its team
has been working hard to advance their
shared vision of how the space could en-
hance the community it serves ever since.
“I didn’t want it to just be a place for
rentals,” Rashotte emphasizes. “I wanted to
bring some of the best acts out there to
Belleville, and it’s worked out very well. The
by-product of it all is seeing all these great
things happen in this community. We try to
support local businesses and people when
we can and host community events, but
also try to bring top artists to our stage. I
think we’ve raised the bar for Belleville in
that regard.”
When the venue opened in 2003, the audio
system was built around an EAW MQ Series
PA with left, centre, and right clusters plus
deck fills and delays controlled by an analog
48-input Soundcraft MH3 console.
“It was a really nice install that was up
there for theatres at the time, but if we’d
opened six months later, we probably
would’ve put a line array system in there,”
says Rashotte with a bit of a laugh. “That
system served us very well for 15 years, and
there were maybe 15 or 20 times that we
brought in a bigger rig for louder shows,
but I mean The Tragically Hip used it and
were happy, so that’s a good testament right
there…”
As a musician himself, Rashotte says he
didn’t like the idea of asking a visiting act to
keep the volume in check, and recalls a few
instances where the band onstage would be
trying to blow the doors off the place and
he and his team would be standing around
the speakers and power amps with “fingers
crossed, hoping nothing would blow.”
Partway into 2018, the team started
planning for their 15 th anniversary event later
in the fall. “That ended up being the catalyst
for this rebuild on the audio side of things,”
offers Brandon Kull, technical director at The
Empire.
Kull, a Belleville native, graduated from
Sheridan College’s technical theatre program
in 2002, earning a few awards on his way out.
He took a job with a Toronto-based AV firm
for a few years before returning to Belleville
when a tech position opened at The Empire
in 2005. A few years later, he took over the
head lighting role and, in 2015, was appoint-
ed to his current post as TD.
The Empire invited several manufac-
turers to demo their array systems in the
main auditorium. Kyle Schroeyens, VP and
production manager with London, ON’s PA
Shop Productions, teamed up with Port Per-
ry, ON-based manufacturer Adamson Sys-
tems Engineering to audition the company’s
install-focused IS-Series.
For the past seven years, The PA Shop
has been the production supplier for Empire
Rockfest, the annual summer festival that the
Empire team hosts in their adjacent parking
lot. In recent years, the event has presented
artists including Weezer, Journey, Boston,
Billy Talent, and dozens more for an annual
crowd of about 3,500 patrons.
“They’re one of my favourite customers,”
Schroeyens tells Professional Sound about
The Empire Theatre. “They have a really
knowledgeable team and everyone’s on the
same page, working toward a common goal.
It’s just always vibed well with how our com-
pany works. They take really good care of us,
and we want to reciprocate that.”
“We knew that we wanted to be in line
with today’s tour riders,” Kull begins about
what they sought from the new system.
“From there, we test drove a bunch of op-
tions, looking for something that met our
needs in terms of both clarity and horsepow-
er – to have the Gordon Lightfoots of the
world in where you only want to hear the
artist and no PA, to the high-impact shows
where we’re more of a road house, with acts
like Steve Earle or The Tea Party or Theory of
a Deadman that demand high-SPL, tour-
calibre PAs.”
When learning about Adamson, Kull
says he was intrigued by the industry rec-
ognition they’d been garnering – “Not just
here, but especially in Europe, which is cool
considering you’ve got two big players in the
world of high-end sound reinforcement over
there in L-Acoustics and d&b [audiotechnik].
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