Held for the past few years at the Bercy in Paris, this year the Nuit de la Saint-Patrick show moved to the Musikhall in Rennes. The5000-capacity venue witnessed performances by over 100 artists in a show that lasted for over three hours, the concert being so popular that the Saturday evening show was repeated the following afternoon.
Combining traditional and contemporary performers, both amateur and professional, changeovers between them had to be fast and seamless, with all returning to perform together for the show's climax. This made for a complex audio set-up, which was supplied by Pleuven-based audio company Siwa - founded in 1985 byJose Nédélec, a high profile French sound engineer who is also closely involved with the audio for many Breton festivals.
Nédélec 's extensive festival experience made Siwa the ideal choice of audio provider and he specified two Yamaha PM5Ds on monitors, which engineer Mathieu Briand 'flip-flopped' between for alternate artists, the mix being loaded and tweaked for the next artist while the current one was performing.
At front of house, an M7CL-48 console worked alongside the 96 channel main console,again alternating between artists, mixing to an L-Acoustics PA system. Meanwhile, because the show was also being broadcast, a DM2000 was used to sub-mix the production for both a 48 track ADAT recording and to an outside broadcast truck.
Becauseof the show's complexity, all the Yamaha consoles were programmed in advance."It was a tremendous advantage to be able to work offline with Studio Manager, it saved an enormous amount of time," says Cédric Huet, chief technical officer at Siwa.
(Jim Evans)
