Entec has experience of working with several leading Russian artists, and for this show, their crew co-ordinated in advance with Kirkorov's touring crew to ensure the busy show day ran smoothly.
Lighting designer Boris Volkov design involved three upstage trussing triangles, constructed from mini-beam and hung off nine points from two rigging trusses, plus two straight A-type front and mid lighting trusses.
His operating style was based on 'beam technology' with lots of dramatic beam and gobo looks from lighting fixtures spread across all of the trussing elements. These included 26 Vari*Lite VL 2000 Spots, 39 Martin MAC 600s, four Martin Atomic 3000 strobes, four 8-lite Molefeys, two Jem ZR 24/7 hazers and two Pani follow spots, together with six VLs on the floor.
Volkov brought along his own lighting control desk - the PC based Martin Light Jockey system. Entec supplied 80 ways of power distro via two of their custom systems.
Al Beechey led the crew of 5 - John Lahiffe, Cathy Stewart. Mark Pritchard and Urko Arruza. Although the get in and show were the same day, receiving the plot well in advance, getting any queries answered and thorough prepping helped everything go very smoothly.
Entec's Stef Serpagli took care of all things audio and babysat FOH, while Mark "Magic" Ellis did the same for monitors. Serpagli explains that Hammersmith Apollo is effectively Entec's 'local' venue, and they work there so often that they have honed the sound installation needed to cater for all types of performance down to a fine art.
Using the d&b Q1 line array system, they flew eight tops and two Q-SUBs a side and ground stacked one B2 cabinet and four Q-SUBs per side on the ground, with Q7s for in and out fills each side, and four E3s along the front lip of the stage. The whole system was driven by d&b's D12 amplifiers. "The Q-Series is really excellent for any show - its dynamics and clarity are really impressive," says Serpagli.
There was a Midas XL3 at both ends of the multicore for FOH engineer Vasily Zarichny and monitor engineer Igor Rychenkov, who were extremely pleased with the results. "The XL3 is a real favourite for shows like this" says Serpagli "Everyone is familiar with it and it's rock solid reliable."
The system was processed using d&b's Rope C software. Serpagli has a selection of pre-saved templates for specific rooms and styles of music which he uses as his starting point, which also speeds up the process in one off situations.
The FOH effects rack included a Lexicon PCM 91, two SPX 990s, a TC D2 delay and a single KT dual graphic inserted into the masters. Entec also supplied three Drawmer 201 gates, two TLA100A tube compressors, dbx 160 and 1066 dual compressors plus CD and mini disk.
Onstage, Magic worked with Entec's Owen McAuley. They ran a Sennheiser IEM system with five ways of radio for Kirkorov and his various guest artists including Anastasia Stotskaya. The band were on wired IEMs, plus three pairs of Entec APW wedges and d&b C7 side fills.
Entec supplied a selection of mics, mostly Shure SM 57s with a Beta 52 in the kick drum and some AKG 414s. The guitars, bass and keyboards all went through BSS DI boxes and the grand piano was mic'd up with an AKG 414.
In the monitor rack, a dbx compressor went across the main vocals, and there was an SPX 990 for reverb and a Roland SDE3000 for delay. Entec also co-ordinated supply of video and pyro kit for the gig, sourced from Arcstream AV and LeMaitre respectively.
Martin Kapp oversaw the video elements for Arcstream AV. He and his crew Dan Carling and Nico Dejonon set everything up for Kirkorov's video director Roman Rodin. Either sid
