Solace Ministries was established in 1996 to help provide comfort to widows and orphans of the 1994 atrocities through counselling, childcare and development support, healthcare, farming associations and supportive programmes.
"Music is a fundamental part of Rwandan life, and for many people it is one of the few comforts they have left," explains Marshall.
Marshall decided to offer his expertise to provide a recording space for the charity's music development programme, which includes a full choir. He raised funds in the UK to buy all the necessary equipment, personally installed it, and trained the venue's staff.
In a space once used for food storage, Marshall established a new 30sq.m live room and adjoining control room, acoustically treating and kitting out the new facilities with Shure mics, KRK monitors, an eight-core Mac Zeon computer running Logic 8 and a host of high-end plug-ins, based around two Allen & Heath ZED-R16 Firewire recording mixers.
"Generally, recording mixers are large and expensive, so I was thrilled to discover Allen & Heath's ZED-R16. It's compact, has a versatile and contemporary feature set, offers both an analogue and digital interface, and is remarkably affordable," explains Marshall. "It's the heart of the studio, and has given so much joy to the musicians and budding engineers who are involved with the facility."
The ZED-R16s were used to record the Studio's first album, The Songs of Solace, featuring the 14-piece Solace Choir and various studio musicians, which has been released through a new record label, Rafiki Records. The Solace Studio is now the leading recording facility in Rwanda, providing a steady income stream for the charity and the engineers who work there, as well as enabling people whose lives have been shattered by genocide to cement their music in recordings they might otherwise never have realised.
(Claire Beeson)
