President Abela is the patron of the charity, the largest on the island - and with an enthusiastic audience of 12,000 packing into the Malta Conference and Convention Centre (MFCC), this was one of the largest ever indoor events to date on the island.
The concert, under the music direction of Sigmund Mifsud included specially orchestrated versions of rock classics by Queen, the Beach Boys, the Eagles, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple plus instrumental pieces performed by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra. Also appearing onstage were several local artists including rockers The Riffs, Pawlu Borg Bonaci, Neville Refalo, Daniel Cauchi, Jotham Saliba of Scream Daisy and more.Says Ashton, "It was a great honour to be asked back to Malta to work on this show - I mean I couldn't really say 'no' to the President. With so many musical genres and eras encompassed in the concert, it was also a really exciting and fun challenge to produce the two hours worth of projection artwork."
E/T/C London also supplied all the equipment and crew to make the projections happen, which were beamed in 16:9 aspect ratio onto a 20 x 16 metre upstage white screen behind the orchestra.
Two front-projected Christie 18K machines were mounted on a 4ft tower - stacked on top of each other to ensure the brightest image, complete with E/T/C's flexible OnlyView control system. All the video content was stored on the OnlyView Servers, and programmed in OnlyView and After Effects by Richard Porter and Karen Monid, with Monid running the show.Ashton said: "The Roadster HD18K's were the logical choice for a production of this scale. We were able to project an enormous image, using the projectors' 1.4-1.8:1 short throw HD zoom lens."
(Jim Evans)
