SCORE!
St Andrews Stadium, Birmingham, July 2010
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Sound By Design has worked with Music For Youth on many projects in the past, including the annual Schools Proms in the Royal Albert Hall every November, and in January were approached to tender for a rather unusual project to take place in St Andrews Stadium in Birmingham, home of Birmingham City Football Club. Thousands of young musicians from across the UK were invited to perform in a world premiere composition. The work, called SCORE!, was created by composer Tim Steiner and played to celebrate the 40th birthday of Music For Youth and the World Cup.
Essentially, the event called for a giant monitoring system as the musicians (some 5,000) would be sitting in the stands with only a selected audience of around 50 in the Directors enclosure. The performers would need to hear the conductor and presenters on the pitch as well as the core band (kit, bass, drums, keys and vocal) who were driving the composition. As the stadium’s power supply was not adequate for the show’s requirements, Sound By Design provided two generators for the event capable of driving a 63A 3-phase system. It was decided to cover the performance area with a zoned system, with each block of seating utilising a Meyer Sound UPA-1P on a stand, mounted in a flying frame to allow the required up-angle to cover the steep rake of the seating. Some 24 UPAs were used in total with four 700-HP subs near the pitch to add a low frequency element. The VIP audience area was covered with two ground-stacked Meyer Sound M1D curvilinear arrays on 700-HP subs. The delay times proved quite tricky to arrive at with a very long distance between the audience and the large performance area. Griff Hewis operated a DiGiCo D5, controlling some 60 inputs into two Meyer Sound Galileo 616 loudspeaker processors which controlled the zones. The presenter and conductor were free to roam around the pitch as each were wearing a Shure UHF-R radio microphone with a DPA headset. The premiere was recorded onto Pro Tools LE 2-track and Adobe Audition multitrack via an RME MADI to ADAT convertor and RME soundcard. The sound of 5000 children with instruments was quite something, after a few hours rehearsal the piece was ready for its world premiere and it was warmly received by the invited audience. The only thing that was underestimated was the amount of walking involved in a Premier League football stadium! Walking boots must be specified next time. Oh, and having to dodge the automated sprinkler system on the pitch attacking the speakers!! |
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