F1 rocks to Yasalam

UAE: There was more than the racing to entertain the crowds at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. A two-week festival featuring local and international acts was headlined by four concerts on each of the race days

The Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix at the end of last year was widely regarded as the highlight of the season, and set a new benchmark for those countries wishing to join this global circus. The brand new Yas Island track was spectacular, the day/night setting was breathtaking and the racing was memorable. Abu Dhabi certainly did things bigger and better than they had been done before.

This also went for the entertainment that went alongside the racing. Rather than focusing on the race weekend, the festivities kicked off two weeks beforehand with the previous race. ‘We took the Brazilian Grand Prix as a lead in to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and we had a series of events every day,’ says Lee Charteris, operations director at Flash Entertainment, the company behind the entertainment. These ranged from cultural events, such as falconry and traditional dancing, to car-related film screenings on the beach including Fast and Furious. ‘We had all sorts of things going on to wind up the city and entertain people.’

There were two main sites for events. The Corniche played host to the Beats on the Beach series of concerts which included international acts such as The Wailers and Timberland, as well as local performers including Mai Hariri and Ragheb Alma, the F1 Fan Zone, and an outdoor cinema, as well as showing the race live on a big screen. ‘For the two-weeks post the Brazilian race we built a stage and a big movie screen down at the sea front where we hosted a whole range of acts,’ says Mr Charteris. ‘It was so people would go home with some sort of flavour of what goes on in Abu Dhabi.’

Over the two weeks, 220,000 people attended the events on the Corniche. ‘Local band Abri and Timberland pulled just under 45,000 people down onto the beach, which was remarkable.’ Flash had previously run a Womad event at the site, so was confident it could work as a venue. ‘We programmed these two-weeks of movies and concerts and it was a massive success for the people of Abu Dhabi. It was really designed around people who could not attend the Formula One.’ Audio, video and lighting for this area came from Protec, with Al Laith providing the staging and Glaboal Bright supplying the LED screens.

The concerts for F1 ticket-holders were held at Ferrari World on Yas Island next door to the race track. This new open-air venue played host to the Yasalam concerts from Beyoncé, Jamiroquai, a Middle East debut for Kings of Leon and Aerosmith on consecutive nights over the race weekend to a combined crowd of more than 140,000 people.

 

The size of the venue presented its own challenges. ‘When we first looked at the premises it was apparent that your regular 60m x 40m concert stage would just get lost at one end of that space. So we then started to think about different designs.’ In co-ordination with production designer – Cleanedge Design’s Steve Shipman – Mr Charteris worked on a design for a very open 120m-wide stage. ‘The stage had two very large wings that came out from left to right and mirrored the shape of the building. We built big prongs out into the audience so that the performers could interact with them as much as they wanted to. We had a clean-sheet for this, within reason and budgetary constraints we could just go mad with it, and thankfully it worked really well.’

A scaffold wall was constructed around the back of the stage which was lined with vertical columns of low-res LED. Either side of the stage, bird-shaped wings of low-res LED were built. ‘The back wall of the stage was a mass of par cans, LED pars and Pixelline, and we had a huge central screen that was a regular LED screen,’ explains Mr Charteris. ‘On the ground support towers that hung the PA, we had a whole plethora of lights too.’ The equipment was all sourced from local companies ? the lighting came from Protec, Creative Technology provided the LED and the low-res LED came from Techno Pro. ‘There’s a lot of good people and a lot of good stuff in the UAE, and that resource and pool of equipment grows every day.’

Delta Sound was approached to handle the audio for the event: ‘We supplied a system that fitted into the stage design as well as delivering the audio solution that we wanted,’ says Delta Sound’s Andy Jackson. Mr Jackson decided on an L-Acoustic V-Dosc system for the concerts. This comprised of 46 tops, 18 dV-Doscs used as front fills and out fills, and 40 218 subs. The main LR PA was made up of 15 V-Dosc boxes a side with eight subs flown next to that on either side. ‘There were also two blocks of nine subs ground-stacked left and right which were moved further out to avoid some of the central lobes that you can get,’ explains Mr Jackson. There was also a centre fill of another six subs.

Also in use were four L-Acoustic Arcs, 12 XT112s and 14 Audio Analyst 12FR monitors. 80 L-Acoustic LA48a amps, four LA4 amps and 12 Crown 1202 Macro-Tech amps powered the speakers. Processing was handled by two XTA DP448s and eight DPA226s. Mixing desks included Yamaha’s M7CL V2, PM4D RH and 01V powered by four Yamaha PW8000 power supply units. Also in use were two Denon CD players, four BSS Blu-160 Soundweb units, a JBL Smaart system with dbx analyser and Digidesign Profile and Pro Tools 8. ‘It was quite a hefty system, but we were basically catering for a space of 40,000 plus,’ says Mr Jackson.

The unusual shape of the venue could have thrown up a number of potential issues for the audio system, but ‘because there was a lot of space-frame there, there was enough break-up for there not to be a problem,’ says Mr Jackson. ‘What you ended up getting was a bit of room reflection, which actually was quite good. But because there was no roof and no back wall, we weren’t dealing with the problems of an indoor arena. It was almost the best of both worlds really, on one hand it’s good to have a bit of room as part of a venue, and coupled with the fact that there was no roof worked quite well. It was a great site from a visual point of view, it was very impressive.’

‘Most of the artists had their own control and monitors, so most of it was just plug-and-go,’ says Mr Jackson. ‘We had a very good response from the engineers from all the bands; everybody was happy with the system and nobody made any changes. It was a very good gig to work on.’ Mr Jackson also feels the system worked well across the four nights: ‘The system was run well by the guest engineers, everyone did a very good job mixing their respective bands and it was a good event. It was high-profile so there was a bit of pressure there, but I think if you put the right teams on a job like that it makes life a lot easier.’

The concerts had a captive audience of race-goers on the island, and in the case of Beyoncé actually boosted the attendance. ‘I think it’s true to say the pit walk day, because of the Beyoncé concert was the best attended pit walk that they’ve ever had at Formula One,’ says Mr Charteris. ‘Beyoncé is a hot act right now and it was a challenge to start with her. She was the first act we secured for Formula One and I wish that the order could have been different, but ultimately, she was the one we booked first and that was the date she could play.’

This added a further challenge for the organisers: ‘It meant we had to get everything ready, there was no lead-up, we were straight in with our big attendance.’ Indeed, at around 46,000, it was the highest attended concert ever in Abu Dhabi.

Having four acts of such magnitude could have resulted in a whole ream of technical riders, but according to Mr Charteris, this was not the case: ‘I thought it would potentially be quite hard to impress on them the festival attitude, in that this is the show we want to present, we want you to perform in this space. And we were very lucky. Most of the acts brought their own control, they brought their stage set, but in reality, 95 per cent of what was on stage every day was provided locally. I’m proud of the fact that we could pull this off with local knowledge and local equipment.’ He puts the reason for this down to the strength of the event design: ‘People bought into it as a show rather than saying “no we’re coming and we’re doing exactly what we want to do”. The design element of the show was so strong and fitted the space of the show so well that people were happy to just come on stage and perform.’

The end result was a thrilling climax to the Formula One season and a celebration that Abu Dhabi can be rightly proud of.

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