Held in Egypt’s El Sawy Culturewheel cultural center, which shares its walls with the 15th May Bridge across the River Nile, the recent five-day Cairo Jazz Festival featured sound reinforcement headed by Meyer Sound MICA line array loudspeakers.
“The MICA arrays were used because we wanted the power, not so much to simply make it loud but to give us dynamics,” states FOH engineer Hameed Sabry. “We hosted a number of bands with diverse styles that the MICA supported very well.”
Performing artists at this year’s event included America’s Royal Crown Revue, Dutch band Tarhana, Japanese pianist Makoto Kuriya, and Spain’s Carles Benavent Quartet, representing styles from swing jazz and electronic progressive jazz fusion to Balkan and oriental-flavored jazz.
With equipment supply from Cairo-based Modern Touch and Jet Audio, main arrays of five MICA loudspeakers each were augmented by two UPQ-1P loudspeakers for delay. Bass power was supplied by four 700-HP subwoofers in front of the stage. Signal drive and processing was provided by a Galileo loudspeaker management system.
“With MICA arrays we have excellent, uniform sound from the front to the last row, which is amazing,” says Taher El Sayed, owner of Jet Audio. “With other speakers we would get too much wash off the bottom of the bridge, so we’d have to turn it down for the back. That’s not nearly as much a concern with the MICA arrays.”
