Marc Anthony recently capped off a series of engagements at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall, the Mohegan Sun Arena and Prudential Center with a Valentine’s Day weekend performance in the round at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
After successfully providing audio for the first three venues, 3G Productions (Los Angeles, Las Vegas) was faced with the task of ensuring even coverage for Anthony and his 15-piece orchestra performing in the round from a revolving stage in the arena.
“The biggest was taking the tour from a typical end stage configuration with 70 boxes to over 128 enclosures in the round,” explains 3G crew chief Will Taylor, adding that, as with the rest of the tour, d&b audiotechnik J-Series served as the main loudspeakers.
At Barclays, four hangs of 14 modules handled the longer throws at the ends of the arena while four hangs of 18 modules for the sides attained the vertical coverage required because the building is so tall—over 110 feet to the top seats. There were also 16 d&b J-sub and 8 J-Infra subwoofers that were combined with the barricades because the concert was sold out and there simply wasn’t enough real estate to put them where they normally would be located.
“The show sounded great,” Taylor continues, “but we had so many amps for the 360-degree coverage, we needed about 150 feet of cable bridge to get from one end of the arena to the other with upwards of 400-foot cable runs per cluster. But even with all of the musicians, background singers, boxes, cable, inputs and additional techs, the client was very happy with the coverage and how the show turned out.”
In this case, the client was production supervisor Roly Garbalosa, who oversaw the tour for Marc Anthony and CMN (Cardenas Marketing Network) and notes, “This was Marc’s first U.S. performance in the round with an orchestra that included three trombones, three trumpets, three percussionists, three background vocalists, keyboard, bass, guitar and piano rotating 360 degrees back and forth all night. Besides the eight J-Series hangs, we had eight side fill points hung with three d&b Q10s each because Marc relies heavily on those, especially for this situation.”
“I’ve known 3G Productions for a long time and typically they do a great show and are very professional,” adds Garbalosa. “The key to this concert was the advance planning which we needed because we were hanging over 100 points on the same day. We came in at 5 am, marked the floors, started working a six and were still polishing details at doors.
“As it turned out, the show sounded amazing and everyone really enjoyed it, including Marc. He brought us in after the show––which is rare––and gave us all high fives. He loved the sound and had a lot of fun.”
The overall system also included “racks and racks” of d&b D12 and D80 amps for house and monitors; d&b M2, M4 and Q1 loudspeakers and B2 subwoofers for monitors; a DiGiCo SD7 console for front of house and an SD10 for monitors; Shure PSM 900 and Sennheiser G2 in-ear monitors; Shure, Sennheiser and Audix wired microphones, and Shure Axient and Sennheiser 5200 wireless mics.
In addition to Anthony’s front of house/band engineer Jose Rivera and monitor engineer Eric “Pyle” Ramey; the 3G Productions crew included the aforementioned system engineer/crew chief Will Taylor as well as assistant engineer Jon Daly, monitor systems tech Joe “Big Joe” Ramos, and stage technicians Kevin Fuller, Robert “Boy” Valdez, and Jimmy Ibanez.
Rivera states: “It sounded a lot better than I expected. I’ve worked the room different times—never in the round—and it’s challenging from a coverage standpoint because it’s very high and steep. We wanted to make sure everyone who pays for a ticket enjoys the show. We went in with a very large rig and 3G made sure their pre-design work was done and we had the right amount of boxes to cover the room correctly.
“I had the opportunity to walk the room and the coverage sounded really good. Before we selected a vendor, we narrowed it down to two speaker systems and we’re happy we chose d&b.
“Marc was ecstatic,” Rivera concludes. “There aren’t too many shows where he has the opportunity to listen to the band during soundcheck from the audience. For this show, he came in early to familiarize himself with the stage because he hadn’t done one in 360. And when I turned on the PA he was blown away and really impressed with the sound. He was comfortable and happy knowing the people were going to enjoy the show because the reinforcement represented what he and the band were going to do on stage.”
