Entec's system engineer James 'Kedge' Kerridge worked alongside John Grant's own engineers Gabriel Nicotra (FOH) and Matt Pengelly (Monitors) and Matt Grounds who mixed the 29 piece orchestra. Also onstage was a regular electronic band comprising drums, guitar, bass and keyboards / synthesisers.
Gabriel has a long-standing working relationship with Entec and so returned to the west London based company again for more excellent service.
He specified a d&b V-Series system with flown V-SUBS and Q-Series as fills. The standard system configuration for most venues was eight V8s a side with two V12s at the bottom of each array, plus four additional ground stacked V-SUBS and a cardioid-mode stack of three B2s each side.
Four Q10-s were utilised for front-fills and four Y7s deployed to fill other spaces as needed.
For the London gig at the Royal Festival Hall, two side-hangs, each of six d&b Q1s, were added. The system was powered via d&b's proprietary D12 amplifiers throughout.
The two FOH consoles were both Yamaha CL5s, one running the orchestra and the other mixing the band, both running over Dante. The monitor desk was a Soundcraft Vi6 with no outboards.
Onstage for monitors, Entec provided a pair of M4 wedges and 12 sets of Shure PSM1000 IEMs.
Apart from the conductor, Christopher George, and one cellist who had hard-wired IEMs, none of the orchestra had monitors. However they were wired up with a series of close-mics, mainly DPA 4099s for the strings, 4061s for the woodwind and brass and an eclectic mix of Schertlers, contact and condenser mics - amounting to a total of 96 inputs to the monitor desk.
Entec also supplied a lighting 'specials' package designed by Nico De Rooj, and looked after on tour by Entec's Ammir Riaz.
This comprised six Robe LEDWash 600 moving lights, used for back-lighting the orchestra, plus eight Skypans which were mounted on individual stands and deployed around the stage each day as and where they could be fitted according to stage size and layout. These were run on an Avo Tiger Touch console by Aamir.
(Jim Evans)
