A wide range of events marking the sixtieth anniversary of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Second’s accession to the throne in 1952 took place across the long weekend of June 2nd-5th.
Being only the second time in history that a sovereign has reigned for six decades, the occasion prompted celebrations on a truly global scale – literally millions of people throughout the UK and the Commonwealth marked this extraordinary occasion with celebratory events of every imaginable kind.
London was the epicentre of the international party, with a 1000-vessel river pageant (an event not seen on the Thames for 350 years), many special exhibitions throughout the capital’s museums and galleries, a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral and a star-studded music concert.
The concert, organized by Gary Barlow, took place on Monday June 4th and featured rock royalty including Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Cliff Richard, Sir Tom Jones, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and Sir Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Dame Shirley Bassey, and many, many more. A unique temporary stage was constructed for the event on and around the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace.
Britannia Row Productions was engaged to handle the audio production, and deployed systems to cover not just the concert but also the full length of The Mall, St James’s Park, Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park (where an Outline GTO system was used on the Commonwealth Stage).
For the main concert area Britannia Row designed and deployed a main system comprising 96 Outline Butterfly enclosures with 48 Outline Subtech subwoofers for the audience of 20,000 invited guests standing in front of and seated in tribunes around the temporary stage.
Britannia Row’s MD Bryan Grant said, “Our brief was to provide an ‘invisible’ PA – no towers, no flown arrays, but of course it had to sound perfect! We therefore decided on a small, powerful, distributed system and our Outline Butterfly was the obvious choice.
“We provided six inner Butterfly arrays each stacked four high in the moat to stage height, with a further eight units arranged as infills on and under the forestage. The main delays consisted of eight stacks, each six high on platforms in front of the bleachers, with another sixteen Butterfly located as secondary delays in the entrance of The Mall.
“A ring of Subtechs around the outside of the moat and beneath each delay stack provided the low end, which I have to say was very impressive.
“We’ve had many compliments on the quality of the live sound so I’m pleased to say the plan worked!”.
