This year we were back at Radio City Music Hall for the Garden of Dreams Talent Show, the eighth time Varto Technologies has been part of this event. It is one we look forward to every year.
The show is produced and directed by Dutch Productions. Stephen De Groot and his team work directly with MSG, direct the program, and build the creative and visual elements that make the night feel as big as it does. Varto comes in through Dutch Productions and supplies and operates the equipment for the live stream and the screens in the house: we capture the performances, feed the LED wall and side screens, and run the stream going out to everyone watching from home.
The Talent Show took the Great Stage on May 26, 2026, with more than 150 young people from across the Tri-State area performing, according to MSG Entertainment’s announcement. The Garden of Dreams Foundation works with kids who are facing serious challenges and gives them a stage most performers never get near. On a night like that, the technology has one job, which is to stay out of the way so nobody in the room or at home is thinking about it. Pulling that off takes a lot of planning.
What we ran
Seven cameras into a live switch, feeding a large LED wall and two side screens in the house. Two Vizrt TriCaster 2 Elite systems at the core, one primary and one backup, with an AJA KUMO router handling signal routing and HyperDeck recorders capturing the program. A Stream Deck drove our production macros so the cues stayed fast and consistent. For streaming we used a LiveU LU300S as the final encoder into Restream, sending the show to Facebook and YouTube at the same time. A Peplink unit handled bonded cellular for connectivity, and a NETGEAR M4250 AV switch carried NDI and Dante across the production network.
The gear is not the point on its own. What matters is that all of it has to hold together live, in a full house, with no second take. That is the work we do whether the room is Radio City Music Hall, a house of worship, a corporate stage, or a school auditorium.
Thanks to Stephen De Groot and Dutch Productions for bringing us back again, and to the Garden of Dreams Foundation for the work they do all year. Eight shows in, it still means something to be part of it.
Watch the 2026 Talent Show on YouTube or on Facebook.
Related: Projects · Vizrt TriCaster · LiveU · Live streaming