RG Jones has been providing the sound for Raymond Gubbay’s Classical Spectacular concerts for over a decade, and if there’s one thing that’s constant, said RG Jones’ FOH engineer Simon Hodge, “it’s that the audience’s expectations for a loud, exciting and high quality experience keep on rising, year after year. And they do like it loud.”
With over 200 musicians on stage for the recent Royal Albert Hall show, including a string section 50 per cent larger than that of the average orchestra, together with a large choir, military band and numerous soloists, the crew faced a phenomenal task long before a note was struck. Load-in at 3am was followed immediately by flying the PA – 16 cabinets per side of Synco by Martin Audio W8LC line array – to allow cabling and lighting rigging to follow. By 9am the stage was set. “Just as well,” observed Hodge, “that our crew works like a well oiled machine.”
Room coverage from the main PA hangs was sufficiently comprehensive to require just ten cabinets a side of Synco by Martin Audio W8LM boxes, complemented by L’Acoustics cabinets for choir fills.
The massive orchestra – in its natural home – required no monitoring other than Sennheiser in-ears for a number of soloists. The microphone complement was mostly wired, with the soloists on Shure wireless systems. Davey Williamson was system engineer, with stage technicians Owen Relfe and Matt Sussex.
The programme was in true Classical Spectacular style, kicking off with Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, taking in Bizet’s March of the Toreadors, the Swan Lake finale, Greig’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the Prelude from Lohengrin, Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus and Elgar’s Nimrod, bowing out with Land of Hope and Glory.
“Classical Spectacular can be quite challenging, both to rig and mix,” added Hodge. “We have to work quickly after load-in to get it set up because the orchestra want to know how it’s all going to sound so that they can settle into rehearsals.
“In the mix, you have to work with the natural, reverberant acoustic rather than try to fight it, to get a level which fits perfectly with what’s around you. We used DPA heads on all the strings, which meant we had plenty of gain before feedback – although the converse issue is that you then have to add multiple reverbs to make them sound natural in the context of the hall’s acoustics.”
As for the organ, it requires no amplification: “We don’t mic it; it’s louder than we are. But we communicate with John Bird, the organist, on how loud our relative levels are so that we’re complementing each other through the evening.”
Photo credit: Marc Henry
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