Keith Morris, under the auspices of CSS Productions, managed the event, reassembling the team he used so successfully for the British Gas, Maritime Museum New Millennium’s Eve event (strange how little we hear of the Millennial events that succeeded). Being November and rather nippy around the towers, this dinner and music show was staged on the pitch, but under cover. Serious Structures provided its Space Building, a giant derivative of the classic Orbit roof, being a curved ‘tunnel’ 92 metres long, 40m wide, with a max height at centre of 15m. The main feature of the Space Building is the totally transparent side fabric, which meant a lavish lighting display could be staged against the backdrop of the famous Twin Towers.
"This event was always going to be very tight on time," commented Morris. "The window for the build and de-rig was only 10 days (seven-day build, three-day de-rig). Scheduling was therefore of prime importance and a lot of time was spent with suppliers and site manager William (Pitso) Pirrie going through this process.
All audio was in the hands of Capital Sound, project managed by Martin Connolly. All Martin Wavefront 8, nine cabinets were flown each side of the stage as main system, plus two sets of delays down the length of the structure to avoid high sound levels for a largely gentrified audience, hung as three cabinet left/centre/right rigs. Front-of-house desks were by Midas and Yamaha, with Gary Bradshaw and Andy May at the controls, while just a single Soundcraft Series Five was used for all monitor duties by John Ormisher and Mick Brown.
Summit Steel handled all the rigging, sound, lights, and some interesting flown decorative elements; not least, two speedway motorcycles and a three-metre tall replica FA cup. The total of 98 of Summit’s Lodestar motors underlines the extent of drapes, provided by John Dipple’s new company, Softgoods Co, used to convert the interior into a plush club-like setting. The pièce de résistance was the company’s new LED star cloth; rated as fives times brighter than standard Pea bulbs, the LED cloth was 25m by 10m, run as four circuits, DMX-controlled and all fully fadeable.
Lighting was a two-handed affair, LSD and Morris’s own Riverside Productions providing a range of Coemar Panoramas and various coloured Halide floods for the architectural lighting of the Stadium proper, designed by Martin Nicholas. The show lighting (all LSD) comprised over 300 moving lights, including 60 LSD Icons, 72 Mac 500s and 20 Cyberlights. Mark Cunniffe programmed and ran the stage show, with collaborative input from Dipple (a respected LD in his own right), Cunniffe being obliged to use two Icon Consoles to handle the huge number of moving lights. Interestingly, the actual physical rig design was by Morris, a double box truss, so too the theme of the exterior lighting - a patriotic red, white and blue. Nocturne Europe provided a five-camera Digital PPU feeding two Barco ELMs at the sides of the proscenium; another four screens were projected onto by smaller Barcos.
"At the end of dinner the show stepped up a gear," said Morris, describing the lead up to the finale. "Following a pre-recorded introduction from the PM, Elton John took to the stage for a 40-minute set. As the applause died down, a regimental band entered from the rear of the structure and marched down to form up on the dance-floor where they were joined by soprano Lesley Garret to sing Abide with Me for the last time. "As the music died, attention was drawn to the outside of the structure where the world’s greatest footballer, Pele, took the last ever kick which cued a magnificent firework display [supplied by Fantastik Fireworks]."
Consid
