The members of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra have had to deal with inefficient incandescent lights in their music stands for years, a struggle when sight-reading in the dimly lit pit, especially as players age. A recent project to change that has put the symphony’s performers in much better light.
“The ability to read music with good lighting is essential to their job,” said Ian Harwood, Vice President and COO of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. “If they can’t read the music, they can’t read the notes, and can’t perform the concert. So lighting is critical for us.”
The MSO switched to LED lighting for the music stands and turned to LEDtronics, Torrance, Calif., for the solution. After some testing, the symphony chose the company’s dimmable right-angle LED T-10 lamps.
The decision wasn’t exactly a quick one. “We have literally been talking about better stand lights in the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for 15 years,” said Harwood. The Orchestra first tried out just a few LEDtronics LED lamps. The lamps worked so well that they replaced their entire inventory of incandescent bulbs with the LEDtronics LED lamps, using the existing fixtures. “We were able to replace all of the lamps for about a twentieth of the expense,” he said. “It was incredibly effective and incredibly cost efficient. They just substituted perfectly.”
The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra is the largest performing arts organization in the state of Wisconsin, and presents over 140 different concerts every year. They travel all over the state of Milwaukee and sometimes into neighboring states. The orchestra has been around since 1959, and is considered one of the top orchestras in the United States.