Since 1973, Young Nak Church of Los Angeles has been a guiding light for thousands of Koreans and Korean-Americans in the city’s downtown neighborhood. Offering services in both Korean and English, it has, over its past five-plus decades, become one of the most prominent Korean churches in the US.
Earlier this year, Young Nak Church took on a new kind of illumination, in the form of nearly three dozen new elektraLite lighting fixtures in the church’s sanctuary. These were installed by the church’s longtime systems integrator, Orange County-based Solid Sound Solution. The company had recently added lighting system design and installation to its services in a serendipitous move that saw the company, which specializes in live sound systems for church clients, becoming fully proficient in lighting just as YNC needed new radiance in its sanctuary.
“Ironically, I think the main challenge of this project was in communicating to the church leaders that Solid Sound Solution would be able to provide lighting services for them at the same level that we have done for them with audio for years,” says Troy Choi, the company’s founder and president. “As a company long recognized as an audio specialist, we’ve enjoyed an excellent reputation in that field. But in lighting, we had to build credibility from the ground up, one installation at a time. Through consistency and sincerity, we gradually earned trust in this new area. What also helped tremendously was having elektraLite as a partner, not only for this project, but for helping us create our lighting division and providing credibility.”
In addition to his lead crewmembers Sung Kim and Sky Kang, and freelance lighting designer Emma Boisselle, Choi also credits elektraLite’s Norman Wright and Brandon Tsaptsinos, plus Steve McNeil at elektraLite rep firm Mac West Group, as huge helps in that endeavor. “elektraLite has been an invaluable partner,” he says. “From the time when I knew almost nothing about lighting, Norm patiently taught me and guided me. His ideas, support, and encouragement have been essential to my journey, and one of the biggest reasons I chose elektraLite.”
In fact, elektraLite makes up 80 percent of the entire lighting installation for the Young Nak Church project, which features five new Aero moving head fixtures, 15 Stingray Profile Cast RGBW, 10 Stingray Fresnel RGBW, and five Stingray Fresnel VW ("Variable White"). These were chosen to achieve the church’s mandate to create a single lighting solution that could best illuminate all three of the celebration types in its 1,400-seat, 30-foot-high sanctuary: one a conventional Mass, another a contemporary service with drums and electric instruments, and a third a hybrid of both types.
“They go from very traditional to rock concert every week,” says Choi, who for two decades previously did tour sound for artists and events including Herbie Hancock, Toto, La La Land in Concert, Coachella, and the LA Philharmonic. “Plus, they have a lot of events, and also rent the space out, so they really needed a lot of flexibility,” he says. He further adds that since the completion of the YNC project last April, which also saw the renovation of the sound system’s console, wireless microphones, and monitors, the sanctuary has already hosted three major concerts, all of which received excellent feedback on color consistency, clarity, and operational reliability.
Choi says each fixture brings its particular capabilities to the lighting design. “The Aero has a very smooth and warm color, and the gobo is especially good—we can use it as a spot or a wash in one—and the Stingray profile RGBW produces extremely accurate colors,” he says. “The elektraLite fixtures gave us everything we needed.”
Also, he points out, the brand does that in a way that’s more cost-effective than any other. “As great as elektraLite’s fixtures are, I think it’s how they deliver so much effect so relatively inexpensively that really sets them apart from other brands,” he states. “And on top of that, the support is fantastic. elektraLite really is the whole package.”
For more details on Young Nak Church, visit www.youngnak.com/home. Solid Sound Solution can be found online at www.solidsoundsolution.com.
