The Free Community Concert was hosted at Green Market Square on the 28 March and boasted the largest crowd to date. The concert is part of the build-up to the CTIJF and features some of the top headliners that also perform at the Jazz Festival. C&S Audio provided the full technical, where the biggest challenge, due to the event taking place in the centre of town, was to close off the streets to set up. In a mere 24 hours, C & S transformed the Green Market Square into a complete concert venue including stage, roof, screens, PA etc. They had six hours to return it back to its former state after the concert!
Around 15 000 people per night attended the Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF), hosted at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, which comprised of markets, workshops, galleries and five stages on which both local and international artists performed. The five performance stages included Bassline (outdoor), Kippies (main stage), Mannenbergs (outdoor), Moses Molelekwa (outdoor) and Rosies (indoor theatre).
A number of rental companies worked on the event including Gearhouse, C & S Audio, Strike Alliance / Eastern Accoustics and Hellfire Productions.
Gearhouse provided the full technical for the Corporate Hospitality Village and the Bassline, Kippies and Mannenberg stages including large screens, power and the likes. Project manager Theo van As, lighting designers Phillip Chames and George Gilfillan, as well as the crew are to be commended. Congratulations also to Alan Muller, who Gearhouse appointed as the LD for the Mannenberg stage.
According to Phillip Chames, the design brief for all three stages was to take the branding and use it in a new way, which he believes was achieved with great success.
"I love the Robin 600s, they are great, and I wish now that I had used them for keylight instead of the 5ks. They have awesome colour correction functions and are incredibly versatile. I had fun with the lights this year from a live point of view," Chames commented.
Lighting Designer for the Mannenberg stage, Alan Muller, said besides Cape Town being extremely busy with Sting, The Eagles, Cape Epic and K-Day (big KFM Family Concert), a very large and vicious cold front moved into Cape Town around midday on load day.
"Due to a storm on the first day of load in at the festival, fixtures had to stay covered until roughly an hour before the show commenced. Strong gale force winds saw set elements not being safe to install, nets and scrims being re arranged by nature. Focussing and rigging in rain usually leads to disaster, but with a determined well trained crew, focussing was completed," said Muller.
"Thanks to Avolites Tiger Touch Consoles at the outside stages it meant we had colour and gobo palettes. The first Act was the ideal time to create positions and start programming. In fact, the console only met FOH with the audience already in."
At the Mannenberg stage, some of the Robin 600s were rigged at FOH during band change overs. "The change over between artists was also used to programme," he said. "Thanks to the Avo Titan training, I used Pixel mapping as my colour shapes on the Robin 600s and Robe Wash 700s for variety and versatility."
Robe featured on all five stages and for architectural lighting. There was extensive usage of the Ledforce 18 RGBWs, Robe 250 Spots, Robe 575s, Robe 700 Spots and Washes , Robin 600s, some Mac 2ks and Clay Paky Stage Zooms. Consoles included three Avolite Tiger Touches, a Saphire 2000, a Pearl 2004 and a Grand MA 2.
C & S provided the full technical for the Moses Molelekwa stage at the festival, which was exceptionally popular. "It was, once again, a really enjoyable exper
