Dion's world tour kicked off in South Africa on Valentine's Day 2008 and is due to run until the end of January 2009. Audio for the tour is being supplied by Canadian PA company Solotech, which has had a long relationship with Celine Dion; in fact, most of the tour's key personnel have worked with Dion for nearly 20 years, including tour manager Denis Savage, front-of-house engineer Frankie Desjardins and monitor engineer Charles Ethier.
Frankie Desjardins took over front-of-house duties last year, replacing Denis Savage who has stepped up to become tour/production manager. Together with Charles Ethier, they began the search for the tour's control systems while Celine Dion was performing in Las Vegas, determined to find one model that could be used for both front-of-house and for monitoring.
"The priority was to find a small desk," says Desjardins. "We needed something compact to carry all over the world, which would work in testing environments like the humidity of an outdoor show in Kuala Lumpur. And we wanted the same console on monitors. This makes it much easier to train people, especially our support techs, and it means that if we want to switch engineers, there is no problem."
(Jim Evans)
