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Summit Steel Rigs Cliff’s RAH Run
Summit Steel has designed, coordinated and installed a versatile rigging scheme for Cliff Richard’s current month-long run at the Royal Albert Hall. In addition to the usual production rigging requirements for a large VDOSC PA and four lighting trusses, this also allows for the straightforward staging of a variety of other shows during the ‘dark’ slots in Cliff’s standard two-days-on and one-off schedule. The diverse selection of ‘other’ shows include a tribute to Ronnie Lane, an Islamic Relief event and shows for Classic FM and 19 Management as well as a gala dinner.
The Cliff Richard run – which sold out within hours of being announced - continues Summit MD Jon Bray’s long standing association with the artist, and his production team, which stretches back over 20 years to 1982 and includes the galvanising Cliff 40th Anniversary Tour, staged in-the-round at the same venue in 1998. This year sees him renew his acquaintance again with other long-term Cliff personnel, including production manager Roger Searle and FOH sound engineer Mike ‘Bunny’ Warren.
Jon Bray’s team at Summit worked closely for two months in advance with the RAH’s show management team, in particular Mark Newell, to ensure that the logistics stacked up, and that the finer details were all ironed out well in advance.
Many of the additional shows are also utilising Cliff’s PA and lighting - as it’s already installed in the venue - while others have decided to bring in their own productions from scratch. So whatever options they chose, it was vital that the rigging be versatile and adaptable for all possibilities.
Bray collaborated with Cliff’s lighting designer Derek Jones to produce an effective cable management system. This allows some of the house trusses used for this purpose to be freed up for use on the other shows.
The cable management system utilises trusses from the gallery, and the venue trusses to feed all cables to Cliff’s production trusses and PA system. On dark days, these cables are disconnected and stowed on top of the house trusses, allowing the permanent in-house acoustic canopies to be flown in unhindered for orchestral shows. The cables are easily reconnected for Cliff show days when the trusses and PA are flown back in.
Another major rigging challenge was to ensure that Cliff’s full lighting and sound production could be flown up out of the way and out of sight when not needed for choral shows, etc.
Summit constructed and flew a ‘mother’grid at 26 metres high for this purpose, allowing the PA to be lifted stack-by-stack out-of-view. The grid is a combination of one of thehouse trusses with an additional 16 metresection added to the downstage face. It’s lifted on 12 house motors, with Summit’s motors for the Cliff production sound and lighting sub-hung below.
The PA, supplied by Britannia Row, involves three hangs of VDOSC, two of bass and two infills per side. The production lighting rig comes from Lite Alternative, with four 16 metre trusses, three of which move supplied by Summit Steel.
The load in timescale was extremely tight. The first get in was 3 am. Saturday for a show that evening. Summit’s crew of six worked non-stop through the night, with two fresh ones coming on line in the morning.
In Picture: Summit’s Jon Bray (left) with the RAH’s Mark Newell
20th April 2004
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