Clementine

Following a year-long renovation project, the former West Nashville United Methodist Church re-opened at the beginning of the summer as Clementine, a unique space for weddings as well as corporate, fundraising and music events. The venue offers a ‘blank canvas’ for hosting bespoke gatherings and that includes an expansive all-LED, all-ADJ lighting system which allows custom-coloured illumination of every part of the space.

Owners Dan and Brenda Cook are no strangers to projects that involve breathing new life into previously closed historic buildings. In 2011 they bought a shuttered church in the Hillsboro Village area of Nashville and lovingly restored it to create a boutique event venue they named Ruby. Since then the location has proved popular for a wide range of private functions, while Dan and Brenda have been on the look out for another suitable building to transform into a similar venue able to cater for larger events.

The venue is now comprised of two main areas. The former sanctuary has been named the ‘Adelaide Hall’ and features a large vaulted ceiling and two separate stage areas. Then behind it is a separate room, christened the ‘Little Bird Lounge’ in honor of Dan and Brenda’s daughter, which has a distinct feel and boasts a 20ft built-in black marble bar. In addition, there are no less than three dressing rooms available for performing artists as well as an intimate outdoor courtyard. The vision behind the facility is to provide a flexible space that can be easily adapted to events of all shapes and sizes.

This approach extends to the technical aspects of the venue, which have also been designed from the ground up to offer flexibility to the event organisers who will use the space.

The owners of Clementine brought in Corner Audio and Video, the same company they relied on to kit out Ruby. Headed up by Chief Systems Designer David Goon, it is the installation division of Corner Music, the retail company owned and founded by Larry Garris, which has been supplying the musicians of music city since 1976.

To deliver the level of complete flexibility that the owners wanted, Corner Audio and Video specified a grand total of 52 ADJ UB 9H one-metre linear LED wash fixtures to illuminate both the exposed brick walls and the vaulted ceiling of the Adelaide Hall. Each of these compact battens feature nine 6W HEX LEDs allowing for colour washing using an almost unlimited palette of colours.

In addition, six of ADJ’s potent COB Cannon Wash fixtures were mounted to the rafters in the ceiling angled to point down at the floor. These serve as house lights for the room, allowing clients to not only dim the lighting but also change its colour to achieve the exact look they require. Each COB Cannon Wash unit features a powerful 150W quad-colour COB LED and offers a wide 80º beam angle, meaning that the six of them together are more than capable of filling the whole space with a uniform wash of bright light.

To provide flexible illumination across the venue’s two stages, David specified a combination of ADJ’s 12P HEX and PAR Z100 3K fixtures. Each loaded with twelve 12W 6-in-1 HEX LEDs, the 12P HEX units fill the stage areas with vibrant colour washes. Meanwhile, the PAR Z100 3K units, with their 100W warm white COB LEDs, ensure that performers on stage can be clearly seen.

To visually link the main hall with the Little Bird Lounge behind it, Dan and Brenda decided to install a glass wall in the latter that provides a rear view of the organ. David then supplied a pair of ADJ’s 5P HEX LED par fixtures to sit inside this space and illuminate the vintage internal workings of the instrument. While installing the fixtures a member of the Corner Audio & Video team came across a ‘Recital Bulletin’ dated all the way back to 1924!

The combination of ingeniously-placed glass wall and ADJ LED illumination provides a unique feature to the Little Bird Lounge, while the organ itself serves as an impressive backdrop to one of the stages in the Adelaide Hall. However, the organ is more than an aesthetic feature of Clementine, it has been meticulously maintained – by the same company since the 1960s – and recently fully renovated so that it can still be played if an event requires authentic organ music.

Completing the impressive lighting installation, the Corner Audio & Video team fitted LED pixel tape, from ADJ’s sister company Acclaim Lighting, around the perimeter of a number of the venue’s steel gothic windows as well as the organ arch and coat closet. They also wired up the whole system using a pair of ADJ’s D6 Branch DMX splitters and set it up for control using ADJ’s myDMX 3 software.

The end result of the renovation project is a truly stunning venue that combines modern sensibilities with historic charm to provide a truly versatile venue that can be adapted to become the perfect venue for any event. The ADJ lighting system is a key part of this.