Together with Ukraine, Poland is co-hosting the Euro2012 international football championships, so its authorities are aware that much attention will be focused on it throughout the year. Wroclaw always hosts a New Year's Eve (Sylwester in Polish) celebration in its Market Square, so this year there was an added incentive to show the country's celebrations at their very best.
Wroclaw's Sylwester event was hosted by TV presenters Gra?yna Torbicka and Hubert Urba?ski and featured over 15 different live bands from across Europe, who played in front of an enthusiastic crowd of over 220,000 and a televised audience of millions.
High profile Polish acts including Vavamuffin, Kayah, Zakopower, T. Love, LUC, Urszula Dudziak and the cast of the Polish language production of Hair were joined by Pako Sarr from Senegal, London's Dub Pistols, Oreka TX from the Basque and Las Balkanieras, a female singing trio originating from Croatia, Bosnia and Russia.
To mix the show Wojciech Lipczynski, owner of sound company Audio-Tech, specified six Yamaha digital consoles, two PM5D-RH and an LS9-32 at front of house and aPM1D and two M7CL-48s on monitors. Setting up the monitor system was aided by Yamaha's StageMix iPad app.
"There were two major challenges for us," says Wojciech. "The first was the very fast changeovers needed between acts and the second was that the consoles had to be extremely reliable. For every important show we do Yamaha is the only choice. That is for three reasons - reliability, reliability and reliability."
The system was set up so that the bands' front of house engineers flip-flopped between the PM5Ds for the main performances, allowing the other console to be readied for the next act while one was performing.
Meanwhile, the LS9 was used for all inputs not directly connected with the live bands -these included the presenters, local dignitaries, music for the midnight fireworks display, background music at the beginning/end of the event and returns from television Beta players.
"It was very important for Wroclaw's Sylwester celebrations to happen without any problems and the Yamaha mixing consoles played an important role in achieving that," says Pawel Zachanowicz, commercial audio application engineer at Yamaha Music Europe.
"It was a really successful event and a great way to start a year which will see much attention focused on Poland from throughout Europe."
(Jim Evans)
