Nickelback and Nexo kick start the ski season

Austria The Top of the Mountain Opening Concert marks the start of the ski season in Ischgl, in the south Tyrol. Set in an impressive location in the mountains, the biggest open-air arena in the snow attracts big names to what has long been regarded as the party highlight of the season. World stars such as Elton John, Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys and Rihanna have already performed on the Top of the Mountain Opening stage.

This year, it was the turn of brothers Chad and Mike Kroeger, Ryan Peake and Daniel Adair, collectively known as Nickelback. The Canadian rock quartet, with five Grammy nominations and over 50m album sales, filled the outdoor arena with a crowd of about 18,000.

Front-of-house PA was a Nexo STM modular line array system, provided by Fantasy Event Engineering of Austria. Under the supervision of Fantasy's Hannes Knapp, a multi-national engineering team set up the audio; Jonas Telesch and Norbert Bund joined Nexo tech support engineer Ville Kauhanen. On the riser were regular Nickelback front-of-house engineer Orris Henry III and system tech David Quigley, currently on a Greatest Hits world tour with the band.

(Jim Evans)

*Pic Nexo 6

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