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Ampco Pro Rent and Protone Provide Sound of ‘Africa Calling’ for Live8
Showcasing some of Africa’s finest musical talent, a last-minute but magical ‘Africa Calling’ concert was held on two stages at the Eden Project in Cornwall on 2nd July as part of the worldwide Live8 event. Sound for the main stage, Eden Project’s outdoor arena, was provided by Holland’s Ampco Pro Rent (APR) and backline by sister company Protone.
The concert, set amidst the unmistakable backdrop of the Eden Project’s Biomes, was presented in association with WOMAD and its co-founder Peter Gabriel, together with Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour. WOMAD’s involvement, and that of the African artists, had originally been suggested by Midge Ure, while Eden chief executive Tim Smit provided the venue and helped galvanise backing and financial support for the show.
Artists who dropped everything to perform included Youssou N’Dour – who flew in from Hyde Park to duet with Dido, the duo then flying on to Paris – Ayub Ogada & Uno, Mariza, Thomas Mapfumo, Coco Mbassi, Modou Diouf and O Fogum, Geoffrey Oryema, Angelique Kidjo, Tinariwen, Kanda Bongo man and Daara J.
Production came from Ampco Pro Rent (PA), Protone (backline), Neg Earth (lights) and Done & Dusted (TV and video), with production manager David Stallbaumer and stage managers Steve Field and Tony Morris. WOMAD’s artistic director Thomas Brooman worked with Peter Gabriel and Youssou N’Dour to assemble the lineup at remarkably short notice.
APR’s standard festival control setup stood them in good stead for this ultra-short-notice contract, which gave the team barely a week to prepare during the busiest time of the festival season. ‘Africa Calling’ had to be scheduled in between Europe’s largest festival, the Park Pop festival in Holland for 350,000 people on June 26, and Mojo’s new Dutch festival Rockin’ Park Nijmegen running at the same time with several stages.
Afterwards, all the kit headed from Cornwall directly to The Hague for the North Sea Jazz Festival where APR handles no less than 15 stages simultaneously, before heading overnight to Sicily for the WOMAD Festival at Taormina and then on to WOMAD in Reading with nine stages.
The main stage PA consisted of a Synco by Martin Audio W8LC Compact line array with Renkus-Heinz Synco Touring System STS215 Sub subwoofers flown in line with the compacts. Stage monitoring was via proprietary Synco floor monitors and Shure PSM700 radio systems. The PA was part ground-stacked and part-flown to minimise loading on the arena’s permanent cantilevered roof.
APR production manager Dieter van Denzel (who mixed FOH with fellow engineer Jeroen Ebskamp) explains: “A lot of outdoor stages, like this one, don’t have the loading to fly big, heavy line arrays. Here, faced with a roof capacity of just 2000kg, using the compact line array and our new Synco 15” subs – driven by our own design of processor – was a perfect solution as it’s very light but sounds fantastic.”
52 channel Midas Heritage 2000 and 3000 consoles at both front of house and monitors provided control. Says van Denzel: “I approached this show like a regular television show which APR does a lot. We mixed it from scratch without soundchecks and in that situation it’s vital to have all the channels to work on all the time. Most of the mics stayed basically on the same channel, eliminating the need to do a lot of channel swaps between acts, allowing quick changeovers and connection to OB mobiles.”
From the consoles, 48 channels of BSS mic splitters routed signals to two mobile trucks, one for radio and another for television.
Adds van Denzel: “A really positive point about this mid-size line array is that it performs like a big line array – it has the same number of HF units to create the line array effect as older brands which normally weigh twice as much, but you fly it like a really small line array. Everyone was raving about the way it sounded from the arena to the top of the hill, where we ensured it stopped, since Eden has sensitive neighbours and the environmental officer was very happy with our control of the sound. You can only do that with line arrays – angle them correctly and you can cover everywhere with no noise spill. It was incredibly short notice but everybody loves working with the WOMAD team – it’s a great atmosphere to work in.”
Protone, the oldest and largest backline company in the Benelux countries, provided a generic backline for all 12 bands along with appropriate instruments where required. The rest of the APR team comprised Steve Watson, Koen Benschop and backline specialist John ‘Cable’ Hessing.
WOMAD’s Thomas Brooman comments: “It was a very big production for WOMAD and it’s been a brilliant result – great evidence of the brilliant teamwork which always goes into a WOMAD festival. The team from Ampco did a great job, as did everyone else including Done & and Dusted on the television and DVD production, and the rest of the Real World group of companies.
12th July 2005
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