Racing start
Published: MEA
With 64 artists performing over four days, the concerts that surrounded the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend kept a number of sound companies busy. James Ling reports
There was entertainment both on and off the track as Formula One returned to Abu Dhabi for the championship-deciding final race of the 2010 season. As Sebastian Vettel took the chequered flag, and with it the championship, spectators were treated to performances across the city from a number of local and international acts. While these events saw a number of firsts in the region, most notably the debut of L-Acoustics K1 system, they also required the skills of a number of live sound companies.
Having put down the benchmark with Beyoncé, Jamiroquai, Kings of Leon and Aerosmith at Ferrari World for the 2009 concerts, not to mention the host of names performing at the Corniche, events organiser Flash Entertainment had set a high standard for the 2010 concerts. Flash had announced the 2010 event would be bigger and better than the previous year, and the promoter lived up to that promise with new venues and some major acts performing.
There were four main venues set up across the city. As with the 2009 concerts, the Corniche was used for the ‘Beats on the Beach’ series of free concerts, including performances from Kelis, Sean Paul, The Beat and a selection of leading Middle East acts, attracting up to 45,000 people each night. The main three concerts were again staged at Ferrari World, with headline acts Kanye West, Linkin Park and Prince providing the entertainment. The first of the new venues was The Longitude rooftop pool bar at The Yas Marina Hotel which hosted intimate concerts from Gabriele, The Sugarbabes and Corrine Bailey Rae. Also providing a new venue was the Flash Forum structure, located about a kilometre down the road from Ferrari World. It was run as a 1,500 capacity premium lounge/nightclub for the duration of the F1 festivities by the Skybar nightclub from Beirut and featured a secret gig by Prince.
To cover these various locations, Flash decided to award the contracts to different companies for each venue. Production Technology (Protec) provided the sound and lighting for The Longitude bar and lighting for main arena, Eclipse were on hand for the Skybar, Gearhouse Staging Connections covered audio, video and lighting on the Corniche and Delta Sound provided the sound equipment for the main arena at Ferrari World. Only two companies provided services for all of the venues over the weekend, staging company Al Laith and portacabin contractors Byrne.
‘I chose to geographically separate this work so that all the companies got a good chunk of work but also geographically we weren’t stretching companies over a great distance so that they could concentrate their efforts in one place,’ says Flash Entertainment’s operations director Lee Charteris. ‘Hopefully then you get the best teams everywhere from each company.’
Ferrari World
The main arena for the festivities was once again Yas Island’s Ferrari World. Delta Sound provided the audio equipment for this venue and used the opportunity to give a Middle East debut to L-Acoustics’ K1 system. ‘It was the first time that we had really used the system,’ says Delta Sound’s Andy Jackson. ‘Like any new system it was nice to have it for more than one day, and to use it with three different genres of music was really interesting to see how it works.’
Due to the different styles of music, the company used different K1 configurations for the three different acts. ‘The three configurations weren’t too drastic, they were just in terms of DSP and the processing side of it and how it was run,’ says Mr Jackson. ‘Kanye West was the first act and they pretty much used the system as we set it up with a few system EQ tweaks that you would expect with a guest engineer. For Linkin Park, the only thing that we really changed was the sub configuration,’ he continues. ‘We ran a cardioid sub platform for them. What it did do was open up the debate for us as Delta engineers about the whole sub cardioid argument and what works and what doesn’t. To my mind it’s still the most interesting debate that you can have, I find it fascinating.’
Interestingly, Prince’s engineer was one of the pioneers of the K1, and he ran the system quite differently from the other engineers. ‘He knew the system well and was doing things that I wouldn’t have expected in terms of time referencing. He used a combination of cardioid and also standard left and right sub,’ explains Mr Jackson. ‘I can’t say which system was better, they were three very different sounds and that is the beauty of the system – you can interpret it and put your own personality on it depending on the act.’
The speaker setup Delta used for the venue had a left-right PA flown with 12 K1 cabinets, three dV-Dosc downfills, four K1 subs and nine SB28 subs per side. These were powered by five LA8 amps with processing coming from an XTA DP448. V-Dosc were also in use for delays and left and right fills while dV-Dosc provided front fill.
The reaction to the system has been entirely positive, and Mr Charteris is pleased he was persuaded to try it. ‘All the engineers have come and said they love the K1, it’s a great system. Andy pushed it with me, and I’m glad he did because ultimately it’s worked out really well. In my position you have to trust the people who are providing it to say this is great and it will work.
‘We had done a deal on the V-Dosc and Andy said he was going to have enough K1 to do the shows, and asked if we wanted to use it,’ continues Mr Charteris. ‘I called out to a few engineer friends around the world and to ask if they had used K1 and they said it was amazing. I called him and we did a deal based on the K1 and I’m happy that it all really worked out, because it is a great system.’
Away from the speaker setup, the concerts also provided Delta with the opportunity to use its DiGiCo SD7 console for the first time in the UAE. ‘They used it on Kanye West, then used it as a drive desk for the system after that,’ says Mr Jackson. ‘Linkin Park had their own desk and so did Prince, but it was nice to get it out on its first gig in the UAE.’
The company also provided DiGiCo SD9 and Digidesign Venue consoles, Audio Analyst 12FR monitors, mics from Shure, Sennheiser, AKG and Electro-Voice, DJ support from Pioneer as well as various equipment from Avalon, BSS, Crown, Denon, Lexicon, Motorola, Tascam and TC Electronic.
Delta’s team of four for the concerts was led by Robert Eatock who project managed the shows. ‘We ran it jointly last year, and this year he took hold of the whole thing and I think he did a great job,’ says Mr Jackson.
Al Laith built a 35m wide by 30m deep stage from Serious Stages Space Truss. One of the initial criteria for the roof was to hang a 16m by 10m Lighthouse R7 LED screen upstage, weighing just over 11 tonnes. The stage included 32m wide wings each side to accommodate two Lighthouse L7 side IMAG screens, plus three columns a side of low res Martin LC Plus LED, and lighting including 8-way Moles, PixelLine LED battens, PARs and LED moving lights.
The stage featured large technical areas both sides for monitors, dimmers and power distribution. Al Laith’s crew of 30 including a team of roof specialists started the site build 12 days ahead of the first show, with the actual stage build commencing further five days later. They were joined by six riggers from UK-based Serious Stages for the main stage construction.
The Longitude rooftop pool bar
Providing a very different environment was The Longitude rooftop pool bar at the Yas Marina Hotel. Three concerts over the weekend, titled ‘An Intimate Evening with...’ saw acoustic performances from Gabriele, The Sugarbabes and Corrine Bailey Rae to a crowd limited to just 200. For this venue, the sound and lighting were provided by Protec.
The audio rig in use at the newly refurbished bar for FOH consisted of four L-Acoustics SB218, 10 dV-Dosc, LA48 ampracks, two XTA 448 processors, two Nexo PS15 front fill with Camco amps and Nexo processing, a Digidesign Profile mixing desk with local rack (used to mix FOH and monitors), 48 send 24 return Digidesign stage rack, a Lexicon PCM96 FX unit and an Avalon SP747 dual compressor.
For monitors, Protec supplied 10 Turbosound 230 monitors with two MC squared ampracks (XTA 448 processing), two Nexo PS15 with two Nexo CD12 subs for side fills, Camco amps and Nexo processing, eight channels of Sennheiser G2 in ear monitors with Shure E5 in ears, a VDC stage snake system and mic packages to suit riders.
‘Gabrielle and the Sugababes brought their own engineers, both of whom expressed their happiness with the system,’ says Protec senior audio technician John Parkhouse. ‘The system held up well to what were two quite different performances; Gabrielle with a full band and The Sugababes playback with live vocal.’
On a personal level, the most exciting evening for Mr Parkhouse was the Corrine Bailey Rae show. ‘She didn't travel with an engineer and so I got to mix her set. I've been a big fan of Corrine Bailey Rae for a few years now, I pretty much always using her debut CD to test my PA systems, so it was a real treat,’ he says. ‘During sound-checks and the show everything went really well and I was very happy with all aspects of the system. I was also especially happy that I got a thank-you note from Corrine after the show.
‘As described by the event name, it was intended to be intimate with a relatively small audience but we applied the same dedication to pulling off a flawless event as always, and everybody was very happy with the outcome,’ concludes Mr Parkhouse.
Skybar
The second new venue for the Formula One weekend was the Skybar at the Flash Forum – a purpose built permanent party space situated next to the Yas Plaza opposite the South Marina. The venue was set up in partnership with Skybar Beirut and featured a mix of live performances from the likes of Kelis and Sean Paul, Basement Jaxx and Flo Rida as well as numerous DJ sets.
Covering this venue for sound, video and lighting was Eclipse. The audio setup for the venue was a 24 L-Acoustics dV-Dosc system supplemented on the low end by 12 SB218 subs. The company also supplied lighting, lasers, circular and main trusses and Martin Lc2140 plus and Unitek V9 video screens. The internal staging and decking came from Al Laith.
The particular highlight of the shows for Eclipse chairman Mark Brown was the two hour secret gig by Prince on the Friday night: ‘Seeing prince up close and personal with an audience of only 5000 pax was a fantastic experience, it was great to see him perform in such an intimate venue.’
The Corniche
Abu Dhabi’s Corniche was once again home to the Beats on the Beach concerts which saw 120,000 music lovers take to the sands for four nights of performances. Playing from an 18m Orbit stage supplied by Al Laith were artists such as Kelis, Sean Paul, Fares Karam and Cyrine Abdel-Nour.
The audio, video and lighting needs for these concerts were met by Gearhouse Staging Connections, which also did all video, audio and lighting for the cinema by the sea and Brazilian Parade events on the Corniche for Yasalam prior to Beats on the Beach. It also provided the lighting and audio for the F1 Fan Zone on the Corniche East Plaza.
The audio system in use for the concerts consisted of two hangs of L-Acoustics V-Dosc, with dV-Dosc down and centre fills and two delay hangs of dV-Dosc. These were supplemented on the low-end by SB218 subs and powered by L-Acoustic LA48 amps. Two Yamaha PM5D desks were also in use.
For the lighting, Gearhouse opted for Clay Paky Alpha Spots and washes, Pixelline 1044 LED battens and Martin Atomic 3000 strobes. The company also supplied two Lighthouse LED screens and live feed cameras for the shows.
For Gearhouse project manager Phil Smith, the main highlights were the performances by Sean Paul and Kelly Rowland which both attracted crowds of 40,000.
Flash gave itself an ambitious aim of bettering the 2009 Yasalam, but ultimately achieved this. The scale of the production was daunting, but through the good work of all the companies involved the events were successful and Mr Charteris is clearly pleased with all the work that went into the festivities. ‘Everybody did a great job. All the events were amazing and looked after very well, all the companies did a great job.’