RG JONES AND MLA MIX THINGS UP AT WARWICK CASTLE
Production company, RG Jones Sound Engineering, needed to pull out all the stops when RG Live and Merlin Entertainment staged a mixed programme of four back-to-back concerts within the beautiful mediaeval setting of Warwick Castle. It was the perfect ‘picnic on the lawn’ scenario, and an occasion which challenged their award-winning Martin Audio MLA loudspeaker array to the maximum.
Opening with ‘The Music of Hans Zimmer vs John Williams’—an epic showdown between the legendary film composers—the programme journeyed via Ministry of Sound Classical to McFly, before soaring further into the atmosphere with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds as a finale. As a bonus for the audience, joining Gallagher were legendary Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr and The Waeve, featuring Blur’s Graham Coxon and ex-Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall.
All played out through Martin Audio’s flagship PA, which broke new ground when it was launched in 2010, and like a fine wine continues to get better with age. And for this type of event there are no more capable hands than RG Jones’ ‘Mr. Classical Spectacular’ maestro Simon Honywill, who has extensive experiencing of getting every last drop from the PA. He and Anthony Inglis, who conducted the London Concert Orchestra on the opening night concert, were reunited, having first worked together 33 years ago, while the lineage of RG Live can be traced back to Raymond Gubbay, for whom RG Jones (and Honywill in particular) have also enjoyed a working relationship extending over several decades. The same goes for their long association with production manager, Dick Tee.
Honywill co-managed the sound system design along with Martin Audio’s product support engineer, Ben Tucker (who doubled asde factosystem tech). The main PA comprised 16 MLA elements on each hang, underpinned with 24 MLX subwoofers, which were reconfigurable. The subs themselves started off in a broadside cardioid array but reverted to a staggered end fire configuration, since Noel Gallagher didn’t want subs placed in front of the stage. “But this also meant it was actually quieter on stage,” noted Honywill.
Everything was spot on.
The site itself was very long and narrow—260 metres from front to back, with a significant rise. To compensate for this and ensure system optimisation, the main hangs were complemented with eight L/R MLA Compact providing outfills, four further MLA Compact enclosures, stacked left and right, for infills, with a pair of TORUS T1230 as lipfills.
Delays were set at around 95-100 metres—slightly staggered and comprising two hangs of 12 Martin Audio WPL. These were boosted by another two hangs of staggered speakers, each comprising eight WPL.
This was the RG Jones’ team’s first visit to Warwick Castle. And although the venue is well accustomed to staging concerts, production levels have rarely been on this scale. RG Jones also had to be mindful that the Castle is situated right in the town centre. Therefore exacting offsite thresholds were set at 75dB(C) at one-minute Leq.
“These levels are generally unheard of, and we worried [the performances] were going to be quiet,” said Honywill. “But in actual fact it was absolutely fine.” This was due to careful tuning of the system and working some magic on the delays. We used the control technology to its full extent, particularly the ‘Hard Avoid’ [function] to make sure the system dropped off properly where it needed to. And that worked really well—in fact everyone was delighted.”
The other challenge facing RG Jones was that with diverse acts coming in each day, scheduling was tight, minimising the time they were actually able to run the system up. They were also needing to work around the Castle’s normal visitor attractions, with school trips and so on … “that whole mediaeval vibe, jousting and falconry, plague burials and witch hanging”, as Honywill puts it.
As with most concerts with a classical bent, the event culminated in a firework finale, which book-ended the spectacular in the time-honoured fashion.
In summary, Simon Honywill described the four-day event as a complete success. “I imagine we will see a lot more concerts featuring a mixed bag of artists in the future.
“Overall it was a great working environment in a really gorgeous setting. Everything was spot on … apart from the plague burials and witch hanging, of course.”
Photography by Sophie Hoult.