CTS Audio was chosen by Amy Grant to provide audio services for the Gala Opening of Nashville's Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the new home to the Nashville Symphony.

CTS chose Yamaha PM1D consoles to support the evening with Amy's Russ Long at FOH and Scott Heyniger mixing monitors on another PM1D.  Ninety-six inputs were also split to an HD broadcast truck parked outside.  Mike Taylor of CTS Audio was the Crew chief and also managed the patch for the evening. Rounding out the talented crew were Ed Crippen tuning the system, and Tim Olson handling the monitor tech duties.

With such a live room for the Symphony, CTS provided a combination of Sennheiser Wireless in-ear monitors and Shure hardwired systems for Amy's band, and for all of the solo artists except for Vince Gill, who selected a more traditional wedge.  Mixes were set up for various sections of the orchestra as well as the conductor, David Hamilton.

Shure UHF-R systems performed flawlessly with the new KSM9 capsules. Russ Long supplied some of the more esoteric mics to meet the show's needs.

Amy Grant has been a longtime symphony supporter. When the symphony was struggling to overcome a bankruptcy from the 1980s, Grant began pairing with the symphony and turning over net income. She was clearly surprised when, during the show, Symphony President and CEO, Alan Valentine came to the stage and announced that it was being named the Amy Grant Performance Platform, in recognition of her generosity.

Valentine said,"(Amy) single-handedly paid off the debt, which was about $1 million. If that hadn't happened, I would dare say we wouldn't be here today."

A round show's end, as Valentine enjoyed the new $123.5 million building, he commented that Amy's support laid the foundation for the symphony today, and that her contributions total about $2 million.

Among Amy's guests for the show were her husband, Vince Gill, country singer LeAnn Rimes and contemporary Christian artist Michael W. Smith. Gill came out during the last half of the show and sang three songs. The last was the title cut from his upcoming four-CD set These Days — a love song he wrote for Grant. "I haven't met a kinder soul," he said of his wife.

Journalist John Seigenthaler attended Sunday's gala opening. Seigenthaler, 79 and a Nashville native, is chairman emeritus of The Tennessean, founder of the First Amendment Center and a longtime observer of the Nashville cultural landscape. "There are moments in Nashville history that are seminal, and that was one of them," Seigenthaler said, speaking of the Saturday opening. "There are moments that put the city on a level that it's never been before. This is unlike any other moment."