Music fans enjoyed two days of entertainment. The pop themed Friday night was headlined by Little Mix, The Lovable Rogues, Heather Small and others, followed by the best of the eighties on the Saturday - Tony Hadley, Rick Astley, Howard Jones, Midge Ure, Hazel O'Connor and Carol Decker.
All of this was delivered complete with the very highest in production values by UEP who supplied sound, lighting and video equipment and design.
UEP's Steve Butcher - who came up with the ambitious idea to celebrate the Tring based company's 15th birthday - was "completely blown away" with the response and the outcome.
"We set out to do something special to celebrate an important company landmark and simultaneously bring something back to the local community," stated Butcher.
The low rise 15m wide Orbit stage supplied by Trust Events tucked neatly into the corner of the Pendley Meadow site inconspicuously hugging the tree line.
UEP supplied all lighting equipment and visuals - LED screen and cameras - and asked HPSS from Hull on board to look after the PA system.
Ben Cash and Dave Amos of Flare Lighting - a London based visual design duo - were commissioned by Butcher to create an overall production design based on being flexible and dynamic to cover the range of acts playing.
They sub hung two trusses from the Orbit which were shaped to the roof to maximise all the available height and ensure it looked super-neat, with a further upstage truss used to fly five columns of UEP's Glux 12 LED screen.
Cash ran lighting using a moving light rig primarily comprising Robe products including 12 new Robe Robin Pointe fixtures just bought by UEP, which arrived just in time for the show!
In addition to these, six Clay Paky Shot Lights were used on the floor as fillers down both sides of the stage; 24 x Showtech Sunstrips framed the LED columns and outlined the front truss; two Novalight High Grounds were placed at the downstage edges for big bold effects, and a couple of six lamp PAR bars were used for basic stage washes on the front truss. Four Robert Juliat Korrigan follow spots were stationed at FOH.
Flare lighting provided the control package. A grandMA full size ran the lighting and a grandMA light triggered their Catalyst media server storing all the video content, which was compiled for the show by Dave Amos and appeared on the onstage screens creating a vibrant backdrop for all the acts, most of which took the stage in daylight.
The sound system was designed and specified by a combination of stage manager Andy Nurse, who is one of UEPs regular sound engineers, Steve Bull who looked after FOH for the event and Steve Butcher.
It was an L-Acoustics system which filled the gently racked auditorium perfectly. The main hangs were 12 boxes of dv-DOSC a side compete with seven SB28 and four dv subs a side with four ARCS for in-fills.
The FOH Yamaha PM5D console was spec'd by Saturday's house band, Blueprint, who backed up all the main performers. Some had their own engineers and all the rest were mixed by Steve Bull. Howard Jones brought in a full monitor system and video package.
(Jim Evans)
