The five days of production rehearsals at Sun City Superbowl was followed by one show there and another at Cape Town's Grand West Casino. The project was managed for Gearhouse by Michael Lewis, and their teams worked very closely with R Kelly's lighting designer Nook Schoenfeld and FOH sound engineer Rob 'Cubby' Colby.
Llewellyn Reinecke, Gearhouse Audio's systems engineer also looked after FOH. Colby specified a V-Dosc system, which was flown in Sun City as 12 elements a side for the main left and right hangs, complete with three dv-Doscs underneath for front down-fills. He also specified a 1:1 ratio for subs and V-Dosc, so the 24 subs were ground stacked three high and four wide on the floor of the Superbowl. Additional hangs of 6 V-Doscs a side formed out-fills for the 9,500 capacity arena.
These were all driven from a combination of LA8 and LA48 amps, and the system was processed with Lake Dolby run via a wireless remote tablet - a standard set up for Gearhouse.
Colby's FOH console, a Digico D5, was supplied along with a second one for monitor engineer John 'Elmo' Sheldon.
Onstage, Gearhouse Audio's Andy Furtner oversaw monitor world, which consisted of a row of L-Acoustics HiQ wedges powered by LA 24 amps running along the front line to provide some air movement, together with four Turbo 718s and four Floodlights for side-fills.
The eight- piece band and R Kelly were all on IEMs - they used their own moulds, with Gearhouse supplying Sennheiser belt packs.
R Kelly's LD Nook Schoenfeld sent his plot to Gearhouse Lighting where it was co-ordinated by Nasim Bismilla and Pete Currier in the office and George Majola on site. It consisted of four trusses, three flown over-stage in a triangulated arrow shape, with a straight truss at the front, and a white cyc at the back.
For moving lights, he used 30 Robe ColorWash 700E ATs, 16 Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs and six Martin Professional MAC 2K Profiles all rigged on the overstage trusses. These were used to provide all the standard basic show elements.
The cyc was up-lit from the floor by six MAC 2K Washes which provided a variety of colour and some texturing. The trusses were all toned with a total of 20 i-Pix satellite LED 'bricks'.
Gearhouse AV and Event Cam (also a GHSA company) supplied all the Sun City show's AV requirements, co-ordinated and engineered by Craig McGinn.
(Jim Evans)
