The concert was presented in association with WOMAD and its co-founder Peter Gabriel, together with Senegalese superstar Youssou N'Dour. WOMAD's involvement, and that of the African artists, had originally been suggested by Midge Ure, while Eden chief executive Tim Smit provided the venue and helped galvanise backing and financial support for the show.
Featured artists included Youssou N'Dour, Ayub Ogada & Uno, Mariza, Thomas Mapfumo, Coco Mbassi, Modou Diouf and O Fogum, Geoffrey Oryema, Angelique Kidjo, Tinariwen, Kanda Bongo man and Daara J.
Production came from Ampco Pro Rent (PA), Protone (backline), Neg Earth (lights) and Done & Dusted (TV and video), with production manager David Stallbaumer and stage managers Steve Field and Tony Morris. WOMAD's artistic director Thomas Brooman worked with Peter Gabriel and Youssou N'Dour to assemble the lineup at remarkably short notice.
APR's standard festival control setup stood them in good stead for this ultra-short-notice contract, which gave the team barely a week to prepare during the busiest time of the festival season. After the Eden event, all the kit headed from Cornwall directly to The Hague for the North Sea Jazz Festival where APR handles fifteen stages simultaneously, before heading overnight to Sicily for the WOMAD Festival at Taormina and then on to WOMAD in Reading with nine stages.
The main stage PA consisted of a Synco by Martin Audio W8LC Compact line array with Renkus-Heinz Synco Touring System STS215 Sub subwoofers flown in line with the compacts. Stage monitoring was via proprietary Synco floor monitors and Shure PSM700 radio systems. The PA was part ground-stacked and part-flown to minimise loading on the arena's permanent cantilevered roof.
APR production manager Dieter van Denzel (who mixed FOH with fellow engineer Jeroen Ebskamp) explains: "A lot of outdoor stages, like this one, don't have the loading to fly big, heavy line arrays. Here, faced with a roof capacity of just 2000kg, using the compact line array and our new Synco 15" subs - driven by our own design of processor - was a perfect solution as it's very light but sounds fantastic."
52 channel Midas Heritage 2000 and 3000 consoles at both front of house and monitors provided control. Says van Denzel: "I approached this show like a regular television show which APR does a lot. We mixed it from scratch without soundchecks and in that situation it's vital to have all the channels to work on all the time. Most of the mics stayed basically on the same channel, eliminating the need to do a lot of channel swaps between acts, allowing quick changeovers and connection to OB mobiles."
From the consoles, 48 channels of BSS mic splitters routed signals to two mobile trucks, one for radio and another for television.
Protone, the oldest and largest backline company in the Benelux countries, provided a generic backline for all twelve bands along with appropriate instruments where required. The rest of the APR team comprised Steve Watson, Koen Benschop and backline specialist John 'Cable' Hessing.
(Jim Evans)
