The unique musical composition was created and arranged by students from three Northumberland High Schools, and one special school working with 13 musicians, and The Sage Gateshead trainees. It was performed live by Northern Sinfonia and many young musicians at The Sage.
Operating under the aegis of the Arts Council's Creative Partnerships Northumberland, the enterprise was backed by musician, producer and orchestrator Nitin Sawnhey, who provided artistic direction. This is the latest of a number of creative workshops supported by Nitin on behalf of the Arts Council.
"We wanted to mix and record this digitally because the show would require a monstrous number of inputs," expained Steve Watson, who shared production duties with FOH engineer, David McEwan. "And since Nitin uses Digidesign's Pro Tools wherever possible, the Venue digital console (which seamlessly integrates with Pro Tools) became our first choice." Watson, having worked closely with leading rental company RG Jones, chose them to supply a D-Show desk for McEwan, along with the Stage Pack system and mics. The show also benefited from the support not only of Digidesign's Andreas Rimroth and Nitin Sawnhey's studio engineer, Dean Barrett, but also RG Jones' Mark Edwards. The system tech was fresh off the recent Chris Rea tour, where all dates had been recorded on the Digidesign console by him and FOH engineer Simon Honywill (using Pro Tools HD).
With Marquee Audio supplying one of their demonstration consoles, RG Jones were able to provide Venues at both The Sage's FOH and the stage position, where Watson himself took ten monitor mixes from the stage console.
However, a Pro Tools record facility was still required, and once again Marquee Audio's Andy Huffer was able to respond, supplying the company's Pro Tools HD rig through RG Jones. David McEwan recorded the Friday rehearsal, saving the 64-minute show to a USB key for use two days later. "It was a real bonus to have a technical run through on Friday which we were able to record," says Watson. "The day in between allowed us to play it back through the Venue in another room and clean it up, before reinstalling the production back in Hall 1 for the show on Sunday. This was a real asset of the Venue/Pro Tools package."
The combined forces of the Northern Sinfonia, a 40-piece school choir and Nitin Sawnhey's musicians resulted in up to 130 mic heads and DIs, and over 120 instruments and voices being in use at any one time - which provided a huge demand on the recording set-up. But the FOH engineer was equal to the task and later undertook a mix of the recorded show at his studio in Battersea.
."We had to combine a lot of the strings and percussion, to fit 130 instruments into the 96 inputs," summarised Watson, "but we were delighted with the results.
"We hope we have now set this as a standard for the Arts Council for future projects. We really stuck our necks out, and it was thanks to Digidesign, Marquee Audio - and Creative Partnerships for sanctioning our requirements - that enabled us to pull this off."
(Chris Henry)
