The opening of the arena coincided with George Benson and Al Jarreau's South African leg of their Giving It Up tour, so it was decided to host the Durban show at the new venue as part of the opening ceremony. The launch also featured a speciality show, The Power of Durban, devised and produced by Durban ICC's technical production manager John Bevan. This featured a host of local artist including Malaika and the Afro Tenors.
Separate FOH and monitor set-ups were used for each show. For the George Benson and Al Jarreau show, 56 channel Midas Heritage 3000s were used for both front of house and stage monitoring. For FOH processing Klark Teknik DN514 Plus multi gates, DN504 Plus quad compressors and Square ONE Dynamics were used, with all stage EQ provided by Klark Teknik DN360 and DN370 graphic EQs. Extensive use was also made of Klark Teknik DN100 DI boxes on stage.
For The Power of Durban a 56 channel Midas Legend 3000 console was at front of house with a Midas Venice 32 channel as sub-mixer, and a Midas Verona for monitors. A host of Klark Teknik equipment was used for processing, including DN514 Plus gates, DN500 Plus dual compressor/limiter/expanders and DN504 Plus compressors, DN6000 analyser, Square ONE Dynamics and Helix DN9340E dual EQ and DN3600 digital EQs.
"Feedback from George Benson and Al Jarreau's sound engineer was very good, and extremely complimentary with regards to audio set-up, specifically with working on internationally recognised products such as Klark Teknik and Midas, thus making his job a lot easier," says Donovan Calvert, technical manager of Prosound. "With this being the first large-scale event in the new venue, from a technical point of view everything simply had to run smoothly, and using the KT and Midas gear took a lot of the pressure off the team as they knew that things would simply work. A positive response was received from the organisers and the venue, with a show that sounded absolutely great."
(Jim Evans)
