Kent-based production company, Avenue Services, was appointed by The Salvation Army as one of the two production companies to provide technical production for its 150th International Anniversary celebrations in London’s O2 Arena, selecting Allen & Heath mixers for all the venues that they covered.
Entitled Boundless 2015, the 5 day event was staged across all of the O2’s venues and attracted 20,000 visitors from around the world.
Avenue Services provided full technical production for three of the venues and some support for the main arena too.
Over a dozen different musical and dance groups took part in 18 performances across 4 venues – the main O2 arena, the Cineworld Sky Super Screen, Cineworld Screen 2, and Building 6.
“We provided a site wide implementation of Allen & Heath digital and analogue mixers for simple ease of use, quick turn arounds and flexible setups,” explains Avenue Services’ owner, John-Marc Swansbury.
Avenue Services selected its iLive-T112 control surface and iDR-48 MixRack to support one of the Salvation Army’s leading gospel choirs from Sweden. All 48 choir mics went through the iLive as a sub mix into the main arena PA system, which was being handled under the main production company for the arena, Corporate Magic.
A GLD-80 with AR2412 and AR84 IO racks was installed to manage the 800-capacity Sky Super Screen venue, which mixed a varied programme of artists including brass bands, Hawaiian dancers, Indian Youth Singers, New Zealand Mauri dancers, and 60-strong choirs. Fitted with a Dante network card, the mixer provided live splits to another setup for live multitrack recording for a DVD production of the event.
“This setup needed quick changes between performing groups. The speed of the GLD for programming and ‘out of the box’ use for a digital desk made these swift changes quick and effective, whilst keeping a system base line running for mix outputs for the main PA and onstage monitor mixes,” commented Swansbury. “The cinema being what it is – a very dry audio environment – means that the GLD’s onboard FX came into their own with the use of reverb and delays to enhance the vocal and brass performances, providing rich natural sounding reverb in an environment not used to live acoustic performances.”
A QU-16 rackmount mixer and AR2412 rack were installed in the Screen 2 venue, which also featured an eclectic mix of performers and presentations.
Finally, in Building 6, the compact ZED-10FX was used to mix and route audio signals for the use of production show comms, and on stage, IEM mixes for the bands’ MD.