latest news headlines
Ampco Pro Rent Sounds Out Womad’s New UK Home
As the World of Music, Arts and Dance (WOMAD) prepares to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its first UK festival, with co-founder Peter Gabriel among this year’s headliners, its long-standing audio supplier Ampco Pro Rent is gearing up to provide the sound for all nine venues at WOMAD’s new UK home.
This year’s UK WOMAD Festival, on 27-29 July, will be the first to be staged in the glorious setting of Charlton Park, near Malmesbury in Wiltshire, and marks the first UK festival for WOMAD’s new Events Director Chris Smith. The sweeping, landscaped grounds of this stately home will provide a peaceful and spacious setting for the annual celebration of world music, dance, arts and crafts.
WOMAD co-founder Peter Gabriel will headline the Friday night lineup as part of the anniversary celebrations. Other artists on the all-star bill include Baba Maal, Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, Bill Cobham, Chota Divana, Clube Do Balanço, Daara J, Kronos Quartet, Mariza, Steel Pulse and Tools & The Maytals.
Ampco Pro Rent, founder member of the Synco Europe Network, has provided sound for WOMAD festivals world-wide for over a decade and the expertise of its team, led by production manager Dieter van Denzel, has become an intrinsic part of the ‘WOMAD experience’ for the event’s global performers.
The various venues are served by Synco by Martin Audio line array systems, Renkus-Heinz STS systems, exclusive Synco stage monitor systems and an array of consoles headed by the Midas Heritage series.
WOMAD Artistic Director Thomas Brooman says: “We believe our festival audience will be as enthusiastic about the new, much more rural location as we are, even though there’s a huge technical challenge for us to make a festival of this size work completely successfully in a new place.
“It’s a momentous step after 25 years but we’re going forward on this new road with Ampco in the absolute belief that in five years’ time and more we’ll still be working together. This is a dynamic partnership, not just a contract for the supply of audio systems. Time and time again artists tell us how special WOMAD shows are, and the service supplied by Ampco and the attitude of their team helps to make it that way.”
He adds: “It’s really important that artists feel comfortable and relaxed on stage so that their relationship with the audience is a totally positive one. We take it to our heart and Ampco are crucial to the success of it.”
Festival-goers will find a much more spacious layout than at Reading’s Rivermead, with easier campsite access and new features, while the WOMAD team is using the park’s wooded area to create a brand new Arboretum outdoor performance space, joining the other eight outdoor and tented venues. Although there’s space for 35,000 this year’s audience is planned to be around 20,000, and children aged 13 and under are admitted free.
Brooman concludes: “We’re relishing using the space and the beautiful countryside to make the most of the things that make a WOMAD festival special.”
30th April 2007
HEADLINES
news archive
search stories
FOOTNOTE: Select the news type you require in the red band above; this will enable you to see the current news stories from that section
© 1999 - 2012 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories
