Switzerland - For the third year running, AudioRent Clair has provided 360° production services to Basel Tattoo, a celebration of music entertainment featuring classical and traditional musicians performing around the city's 400-year-old cultural centre, Kaserne Basel.
The multifaceted event is a major supra-regional spectacle, with the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS) recognising it as the official tattoo of Switzerland. This year, talent from Europe, Asia, North America, Africa and Australia played for live audiences of up to 72,000 and were broadcast across national TV and radio stations in Switzerland for 450,000 viewers.
AudioRent's head of production, Reinhard Hoehn, begins: "The pressure to deliver a high-end production such as this in the Swiss market requires a 360° approach; streamlining complicated technical elements through a singular vendor helps the client to focus on producing the show."
Working on behalf of Basel Tattoo CEO, Erik Julliard of Julliard Events, Hoehn continues: "We plan this event meticulously, remaining in constant communication with local government, subcontractors and the customer. Our main goal is to reduce any stress, and to do that, we listen to our customer to understand exactly what they want to achieve."
Acts including the International Massed Pipes and Drum, the United States Army Field Band, the Australian Army Band, the One Voice Children's Choir, Big Bike Orchestra, and the Swiss Armed Forces Brass Band, showed spectators military-style drumming, wind instruments, bagpipes and equestrian choreography cascading over the city's historic backdrop. The Basel Kaserne presents challenges due to its age (it was built in the mid-late 1800s) and central location in the heart of the city. Careful handling of the buildings must be maintained when installing entertainment technology for live events.
Andreas Kern, head of sales at AudioRent Clair adds: "Switzerland operates differently to most other live entertainment markets, and to the rest of the Clair Global brands. We primarily deliver a 360 operation, which in this case includes a lot of complicated IT services, audio, lighting and rigging."
IT infrastructure, lighting designs (utilising 174 moving lights), ambient and decorative lighting, site logistics, stage building – with help from the Swiss military – and technical personnel also came under AudioRent Clair's remit.
Reinhard continues: "Rigging and lighting is a gigantic job at Basel Tattoo; we have several days of rigging points, and hundreds of fixtures, which need to be fitted with great care and skill, onto some very delicate parts of old buildings. Our lighting designs are very creative and that means finding positions which are not easily reachable . . . but we always accept the challenge."
AudioRent Clair also created a fitting sound design which incorporated TiMax into a Cohesion PA deployment. A total of 42 x CP6+ self-powered loudspeakers, 18 x CO8s – ideal for architecturally sensitive applications requiring precision control and concert-level SPL – and 14 x CP218 II+ ultra-high output subwoofers were used in conjunction with two DiGiCo SD5 consoles and 60 x channels of Shure Axient digital wireless RF.
"Audio wise, we try to be as quiet as possible for the residents and as loud as needed for the production,” says Reinhard. “Our audio designer is very specific, and his preference is Cohesion. He also uses a sophisticated TiMax system, which is interesting because you have the possibility to track the musicians on site. There is a lot happening in these shows and I'm very proud of the achievements and the work our team is capable of, engineering wise, because this event does get very complicated."
Basel Tattoo CEO, Erik Julliard, comments: “Basel Tattoo has become famous worldwide for delivering good sound. Due to the size of our outdoor show, we need very good audio support; we enhance the performers and carefully balance marching bands and instrumentation in a 65m-long arena. It’s unique live music over a busy marching show and the audio must be fine-tuned by an expert partner. In AudioRent, we have that.”
Onstage, 1,000 participants took part in the event, adding another crucial layer of live production expertise, as Reinhard elaborates: "Our team not only has to play in the top league technically, but also has to exude high-level social skills. We pride ourselves on welcoming people from many different cultures and countries to Switzerland, and because there is so much pressure on the performers, we want them to feel at ease."
