Written and directed by Toby Gough, the Grandfathers of Cuban Music brings together three masters of Cuban music to celebrate the rich heritage of Havana's Buena Vista neighbourhood. The cast is headed by the venerable 94 year-old Reynaldo Creagh who ignited the flame that started the whole Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon. Probably the world's oldest working singer, he is considered a living legend in his native Cuba. He is accompanied by the 86 year-old guitarist and composer, Maracaibo, and the 85 year-old piano legend, the 'Hands of Gold' Maestro Rubalcaba. The cast also includes Cuba's original diva, Siomara Avilla Valdes Lescay and dancer Eric Turro with his troupe of dancers.
Alexander Lewin is the system engineer for the tour. His role is to adapt the system configuration according to the requirements of each venue in order to achieve optimum results. The full system comprises 12 x UL210 line array speakers, six UL115B bass speakers, six TB118 subs and two SMX15s for front-fill.
"Uniline has proved to be an excellent choice for this tour," reports Lewin. "The modular nature of the system makes it easy to adapt to the different requirements of each venue, and it's very quick and easy to hang which is a great advantage because we are often in different city each night. Some of the venues have quite difficult acoustics, so the directivity of Uniline has been a great help to achieve even coverage with virtually no reflections.
"Some of the shows take place in traditional concert halls where the artists would probably play without any amplification at all given the chance," continues Lewin. "However, there is so little distortion with the Uniline system that they feel as if they are playing acoustically, even though the show is in fact very loud. My FoH engineer loves the system - I think he'd take it away with him if he could."
(Jim Evans)
