National Youth Music Organisations Festival
Birmingham Town Hall, July 2009
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As part of Music For Youth’s national festival, and also to celebrate Youth Music’s 10th birthday, the NYMOs put on a first ever concert at Birmingham’s Town Hall. Following a long-standing relationship with Music For Youth, working on the School’s Proms and Primary Proms, Sound By Design were asked to supply the reinforcement system. Engineer, Darren Rose, took on the project. The event itself would consist of rehearsal time that was open to the public, as well as a lunchtime concert by the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain and then a matinee performance by The National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain, The National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain, Youth Music Theatre UK, The National Youth Choir of Great Britain, The National Youth Jazz Collective and The “Encounters Ensemble” (made up of musicians from all the groups.)
The compere for the event was Youth Music Ambassador and musician, Goldie. The Town Hall itself did not have a system suitable for music reinforcement, so Darren had to design one. Due to the event being completely free to attend, there were budget constraints that had to be taken into consideration and because of this, flying a system was not an option. This presented another problem; sight lines. With two of the performing groups consisting of 70+ musicians, the PA “stacks” on stage had to be as compact as possible, whilst still being able to fill in the front few rows of the circle before the circle delays took over. Darren decided on a Meyer Sound system comprising of CQ-1s for front-fill and some circle coverage, UPM-1Ps for front-fill, UPA-2Ps for balcony coverage, UPA-1Ps for circle coverage and M1D subwoofers to provide the minimal low-end. As the open rehearsals were due to start at 9am, the decision was taken to rig the night before to allow enough time to set up the system. Rehearsals then ran all day, right through until half-an-hour before the show, stopping only for the 45-minute lunchtime concert. Darren made good use of the specified Digico D1 console, running a total of just over 40 channels, with a mixture of ‘generic’ and dedicated channels, ‘snapshotting’ each group’s rehearsal for recall during the show. Also specified were 8-channels of Shure UHF-R body-packs, run with DPA 4088 head-worn mics for the Youth Music Theatre. By far the most challenging part of the day was to amplify the “Encounters Ensemble”. This group consisted of some musicians from six of the NYMOs who only met on the day of the show under the guidance of conductor Brian Irvine. Brian had written a piece and then worked with the group on the day to develop it and give the world premiere of it at the end of the show. The group consisted of violins, cellos, vocals, flutes, saxes, trumpets, clarinets, electric guitars, Indian violins, tablas, taiko drums, steel pans, a drum kit, marimba and keyboards. Simple enough, you might think, but with only 15 minutes to sound check and balance the group at the end of the rehearsal schedule, it proved quite a challenge! The National Youth Music Organisations (NYMOs) are made up of the following organisations:
“From initial discussions it was clear that whatever PA requirements the NYMOs had they would need to be able to rely on a good sound company able to deal with any requirements that came up on the day. Music for Youth has worked a lot with Sound By Design in the past and felt the whole event would be in very safe hands with them. On the day, the Sound By Design team were very professional, helpful and a pleasure to work with.” Samantha Weitzel, Music For Youth |
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