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Mathew Street Festival Moves Forward again for Liverpool

Liverpool’s renowned Mathew Street Festival – Europe’s largest free urban live music festival – was again moved forward again this year by organisers The Liverpool Culture Company, proving another massive success for the team.

The traditionally three day event running Saturday through Monday kicked off on the Friday night for the first time, with a classical concert on the main Pier Head stage by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and guests, conducted by Vasily Petrenko. The featured artists included local music scene stalwarts Garry Christian, Thomas Laing, Jennifer John, Pete Wylie and others.

The Pier Head site again ran two stages for all three days this year – after the huge success of introducing the second new bands stage last year.

The main stage featured performances from The Lightening Seeds, The Proclaimers, Shack, The Wonderstuff, and many others including arguably the best tribute band on the planet, Dios Salve A La Reina (God Save The Queen) from Argentina. They closed the day’s action on Sunday and Monday to packed, enthusiastic audiences.

The second stage was presented by Janis Long. It featured the very best of local up and coming talent and unsigned bands, with a consistently excellent array of artists for all three days.

On the Monday, the three additional city centre stages kicked in for non-stop musical performance in Dale Street, Derby Square and The Strand, attracting a record 80,000 people into downtown Liverpool to enjoy the party vibes.

The Culture Company was responsible for staging the event, coordinating and designing the complete technical infrastructure, booking and liaising with all artists and scheduling nearly 100 performances across five stages over the period.

LCC head of events, Lee Forde took control of artist bookings last year which provided the impetus for a change of direction in this area, “We’ve continued to broaden the appeal of the festival with a greater range of bands and more original artists playing across all stages” he says. “That strategy is having a very positive effect. We’re also getting massive interest from people all over the world wanting to get involved in the event.”

Liverpool Culture Company’s team was divided into three areas – operations managed by Susan Lees, site and traffic management managed by Alastair Stott and production/artist liaison managed by Kirstie Blakeman.

While Blakeman oversaw all production and artist liaison, senior stage manager Phil Murphy ran a team of six people ensuring everything kept to schedule and Neil Marcus from Red Man Events was brought in as production manager, overseeing a team of 15.

Staging

All five stages were supplied by SRC.

The main stage measured 12.6m wide by 13.6m deep, with a 2m thrust on the front. Because of the building work currently being undertaken on the Pier Head site, there was less available space than in previous years. Also because they had to vacate the site quickly at the end to minimise any hold up to the building work, the main stage this year was an Alpha Stage mobile truck. The 10m high PA towers were supplied by Upstaging from Nottingham.

The manic Sunday-at-Midnight get-in to build the downtown stages and rig the PAs in time for an 11 a.m. start was eased this year. Both Derby Square and The Strand stages were built on paved areas, so stages and audio could be rigged on the Sunday, leaving only Dale Street to be built overnight for the Monday.

Sounding out in Liverpool

Locally based ADLIB Audio – who has been associated with the festival for many years – supplied sound for all five stages. They are also the RLPO’s preferred supplier.

The main stage was run by Tony Szabo and featured a JBL VerTec 4889 line array system 12 elements a side, complete with eight VerTec subs a side and ADLIB FD speakers for front fills. FOH was driven by Lake processors and a Midas H3000 console resided at both ends of the mulitcore, together with a selection of standard outboard effects. Several bands brought their own engineers and Szabo mixed those who didn’t.

Onstage, Rob Coles ran monitor world – consisting of an ADLIB MP3 system, while Marc Peers looked after the stage.

For the orchestral performance, ADLIB moved the monitor desk to the FOH position to provide sufficient inputs, and also supplied plenty of specialist DPA and Schoeps orchestral mics.

The second stage was run by James Neale, Kenny Perrin and Tristan Bryant with another JBL VerTec system – five elements per side, complete with three ADLIB DF subs a side, all powered by Camco amps with Crowns on the subs. ADLIB supplied two Midas XL 3 consoles (FOH and Monitors) and an MP3 monitor system. They also rose to the challenge of mixing FOH from the side of the stage inside a 3.5 tonne truck! This was due to space restrictions in the front of stage area.

For the city centre stages ADLIB supplied three Nexo Alpha systems, complete with Soundcraft and Yamaha FOH and monitor consoles. The Derby Square system was flown.

The FOH mixing positions on the City stages were also all positioned at side-stage – to aid a quick breakdown after the conclusion of the event, allowing roads to be re-opened as soon as possible, ensuring the City’s traffic stayed moving.

Power

Site wide Power was supplied by Buffalo. A synched pair of 300KVA sets ran the main stage and a single 100 KVA set powered Stages 2 and 3. Stages 4 and 5 each had a 63A single phase supply to power sound and backline as none of them had any lighting.

Dotted around the site were approximately 14 other single phase gennies for site facilities, public address systems, back up supplies concessions, etc, along with a couple of spare portable sets. Buffalo supplied three engineers who shared the 24 hour call out duties in shifts.

Future Expansion for the future

Pulling record crowds on all 3 days and another very successful event under their belts, LCC plan to expand of Mathew Street in 2007 which also celebrates Liverpool’s 800th Birthday – on that actual weekend, this then leads into 2008, when the City becomes European Capital of Culture.

Lee Ford sums up, “As the event is already established and now in its 15th year, it’s important to keep it fresh, and not to be afraid to try new elements. The key to Mathew Street’s continuing success is to constantly be improving and varying the nature of the event. Starting with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and special guests’ concert added yet another dimension, broadening its appeal to a different audience.”

In picture: Record Crowds at the Pier Head

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Mathew Street Festival Moves Forward again for Liverpool

7th September 2006

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