Maathai had a busy schedule before her when she arrived in Oslo, including a series of meetings, the formal awards ceremony and a torchlight parade through downtown Oslo. Proceedings culminated in the Nobel Peace Prize Concert. The concert, carried live in more than 100 countries to up to 450 million viewers, was held at Oslo Spektrum, where the 6,500-strong audience heard a stellar cast through a Meyer Sound system provided by Oslo's own AVAB CAC. Maathai was the guest of honour at the star-studded event, which was hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Tom Cruise and featured performances by Andrea Bocelli, Tony Bennett, Sondre Lerche, Diana Krall, Cindy Lauper, Joss Stone, Polyphonic Spree, Patti LaBelle and The Norwegian Radio Symphonic Orchestra conducted by Martin Yates.
Three separate stages were set up, positioned left, center and right across the 95 meter-wide arena. The artists performed alternately on the left and right stages, whilst the center stage was dedicated to the orchestra. AVAB filled the area by hanging 12 M3D line array loudspeakers on each side, with 16 M2D loudspeakers for sidefills and 8 M3D-Sub subwoofers. A center cluster of four M2Ds was supplemented by 12 M1D cabinets positioned under the stage for front fill. The system was driven by an LD-3 compensating line driver and tuned with a SIM® audio analyzer system. "The reaction of the audience was phenomenal," said Jan Terje Walmann of AVAB CAC. "The system did everything that was required of it with just a little EQ and time alignment."
(Lee Baldock)
