The Venice Jazz Festival is one of the most important festivals in Italy, combining a rich and exclusive program with the unique beauty of its location.
Hosted in a city where every event is transformed into a memorable experience, the programm’s pinnacle was an impressive series of concerts in San Marco Square, where Hollywood Service srl was engaged for the second consecutive year to provide audio production services with its inventory of Turbosound loudspeaker systems.
Among the performers this year were the Italian Navy, James Taylor, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Venice La Fenice, and the well-know Italian singer Biagio Antonacci.
But the highlight of this year’s event was the appearance of Sting on July 29th in Piazza San Marco. This was just one date of his worldwide Symphonicity Tour, and was one of the 20 best events of the year in Europe, which has seen Sting and his band accompanied by the 50-piece Philharmonic Orchestra La Fenice.
The Symphonicity Tour included Sting’s biggest hits presented with symphonic arrangements, as well as those from The Police, such as “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, “Roxanne”, “Every Breath You Take”, and of course the most famous songs from his solo career like “Englishman in New York”, “Fragile”, “Russians”, “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You”, “Fields of Gold”, and “Desert Rose”.
As always Sting’s band was composed of great musicians: Dominic Miller, who has been Sting’s regular guitarist for many years, multi-genre percussionist Rhani Krija, Ira Coleman on bass, and vocalist Jo Lawry.
The festival organiser’s intention was to highlight as much as possible the stunning architectural values of San Marco square, and this meant that the stage had to appear less invasive than the previous year. Consequently the sound system was also required to create a lesser visual impact, and to be constructed without the dominant PA tower structures that are typically placed on the sides of the stage.
Indeed, many were the challenges that needed to be solved in a concert venue that already has perhaps the largest number of restrictions in the world. There were several specific requirements in the planning phase: the main speaker hangs had to be spaced quite far apart for scenic and photographic requirements; no obtrusive scaffolding PA towers were permitted; no flown subwoofers; no bass frequencies on the stage (which would have been a big problem for the orchestra and its conductor); and a requirement for a maximum sound pressure level of 89dB on the Basilica of San Marco, and a maximum SPL of 91dB at the fronts of all the buildings around the square.
In addition, due to the ever-present risk of flooding all the equipment had to be raised at least 30cm from the ground. As it happened there was a small flood during the Sting concert, luckily less than 1 inch in depth, which necessitated about 50 people in the audience having to temporarily lift their feet. But Venetians are used to that.
Transportation also presented huge difficulties. All the equipment was brought in on canal boats and then moved on to the square on small electric trolleys, because in traffic-free Venice it is impossible to get trucks anywhere near San Marco, far less the stage.
All in all no easy task for Hollywood Service’s owner Nikita Renato Canè and the audio technical staff of FOH sound engineer Giulio Albamonte, stage sound engineer Francesco Penolazzi, systems engineer Luca Stefani, and assistant systems engineer Federico Maule.
“Easy processing and equalization were the prerogatives of this audio system,” explains Luca Stefani, who designed, implemented and tuned the audio system. “We had to combine the restrictions of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage with the organiser’s needs and the many requirements dictated by the different hosted productions – of which, last but not least, was the Sting production.
“Our starting point was accurate sizing and aiming through the use of EASE Focus 2 software. And then after that, we required an appropriate acoustic and electronic setup to meet the needs of all parties involved.”
The main system was composed of 32 Flex Array loudspeakers on two single mast tower lifts, aimed to cover the whole audience area of the square from as close as 5 metres out to 80 metres distant. Because of the need to keep the level of low frequencies down, both on stage and in the surrounding area, and the need to produce a wavefront directed exclusively toward the public, the ground-stacked subwoofers were arranged in an end-fire configuration, made up of three rows per side.
Two delay towers of 16 Flex Array modules were introduced specifically to maintain tonal and level stability for the rear half of audience. Each delay was also composed of five TFA-600L 18” subwoofers in cardioid mode so to reduce as much as possible the destructive interference of low frequencies concentrated in the first half area between stage and delays, so to have only a positive sum of these frequencies in the relevant audience area.
The excessive spacing of the main system was well compensated for by the introduction of four point-source Aspect TA-500t in-fills to cover the centre of the first 10 metres of audience area – a system that was closely allied sonically to the main PA, and really in perfect balance with both the main system and the mini-speakers of the front fill.
All the engineers agreed that Turbosound’s Flex Array showed an incredible ability to adapt to every musical genre, from rock to classical music, from opera to electronic music – and without the characterisations that can favour one musical genre above another genre or instrument.
Sting’s FOH engineer Howard Page found an effective and unusual tonal quality and presence on the mid frequencies. “It was very easy to manage, from electric guitar to soprano voices,” he said, “This is an important feature where you have the diverse characteristics of rock bands, symphony orchestras, and pop sounds all co-existing in the live musical performances.”
It was interesting to note that Page was able to boost low frequencies on the subs without causing any discomfort to the conductor and his orchestra – this observation being relevant because the technical rider clearly called for no presence of subs or the facility to switch them off or on. Luca Stefani came up with the useful idea to provide Howard Page and Sting’s systems engineer Markus Meyer with dedicated channel sends for the subs, and also complete wi-fi access to the Lake audio processor for Routing and main EQ.
In spite of these not inconsiderable challenges, the general management of the project by owner Nikita Renato Canè, and the choice of technicians, their coordination of the stage and backstage constructions, the global logistic plan, transport coordination and the difficult handling of the equipment into the square, all confirmed the continuing excellent reputation of Hollywood Service.