Celebrating the former Soviet leader's life from childhood through to high office, the reforms of Perestroika, his international peace efforts and the charitable work of the Gorbachev Foundation, the event relied on Midas' networking abilities to facilitate its smooth running. As well as numerous guest speakers and VT playback, many artists from East and West performed in an evening hosted by Sharon Stone and Kevin Spacey and attended by a long list of international high profile VIPs.
Artists included Bryan Ferry, Shirley Bassey, Katherine Jenkins, the Scorpions, Paul Anka, The London Symphony Orchestra, Maestro Valery, Gergiev Bolshoi and Mariinsky Soloists, the Igor Krutoi Turetsky Choir, Andrey Gavrilov and more. Richard Sharratt took care of the orchestra from the XL8 while Tom Howat set up show scenes for all the bands on the PRO6 and looked after their FOH engineers. The H3000 was supplied for the exclusive use of the Scorpions.
Sharratt and Howat created an AES50 network by linking the FOH and monitor XL8s, and connecting the XL8 and PRO6 at FOH with Cat 5 cables. This allowed audio from any input to be patched through to any console, and anywhere else in the network. A Midas DL451 modular I/O box was located next to the Heritage 3000, and outputs from the analogue console were patched into this for networking into the PA. There were two further DL451s at FOH for local connections to the XL8 and PRO6 respectively, while a fourth DL451 on stage provided orchestra stems to the broadcast trucks.
"I could pipe sound from any desk to any desk down the network, and we quite simply couldn't have done this particular show without it, as it was extremely busy, with lots of last minute requests from production and only one day of rehearsals," says Howat. "The Midas consoles worked brilliantly, and there were none of the occasional problems that one can come across with networking; it really came into its own and the network worked a treat."
Adds Britannia Row director Bryan Grant, who was in the audience on the night, "The Midas consoles performed flawlessly, networked beautifully and sounded fantastic as always; a great result."
All proceeds from the event will be shared between the Gorbachev Foundation and Macmillan Cancer Support.
(Jim Evans)
