EVENT FOCUS: Montreux Jazz Festival
Opposite: Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga performed their jazz set at the Stravinsky Auditorium. Below: The outskirts of the festival offer entertainment areas for audiences even after the concerts have finished; This year Meyer Sound added the Leopard line array to MJF’s sound design.
James Gordon, DiGiCo MD agreed: “Montreux has a more relaxed environment in that engineers will come in for morning soundchecks, mix a show and can hang around for the evening. It’s very unusual for them to be rushed in and out in one day. That means they have more time to see our latest software for example, or even just catch up on a personal level because our industry is still very much about relationships and trust. We are a genuine part of that. “We originally partnered with Montreux because we had a new product line, the SD range. We wanted to get engineers familiar with the desks and because it’s run over a couple of weeks as opposed to just a long weekend, you get much more quality exposure to your products.” Perhaps one of the most significant progressions to have happened over the course of DiGiCo’s partnership with Montreux is that at the beginning of its involvement, there wasn’t a lot of DiGiCo on riders (the company is only 13 years old after all) but now a large percentage
of both FOH and monitor engineers already have DiGiCo on their everyday specs. The festival’s Head of Sound, David Weber of Studio des Forces Motrices, estimated that over half of the visiting consoles were also now DiGiCos. Continued Webby: “Most engineers are happy to use our products and there’s far less of a learning curve these days. Our own engineers are there to give tech support at each of the locations. An example of a situation which is easily rectified is when a desk is running at 48k and we’re running the system at 96k.” TonSpur AG, DiGiCo’s Swiss distributor has been “fantastic” too. “They’re here for global support and they bring their customers on site to show them how everything works,” said Webby. DiGiCo Product Specialist, Dave Bigg is one of two support staff alongside Fernando Delgado, Technical Sales Engineer who attends Montreux. Said Bigg: “My role on-site is to act as a support for the house engineers. So I liaise between David Weber and any bands coming in. Sometimes an engineer’s choice of console is
limited by production budgets but here they can play with what they like. “It’s very difficult in this day and age to get people in front of consoles and convince engineers to use a console for a one off show when they’re used to a certain desk. They have got to mix a show for an artist who is paying them, so they have got to be able to deliver what the artist is expecting and make them happy. “We had the new S21 console here this year, so a lot of people came to see that. It’s a new piece of equipment and they may not have had a chance to play with it before, or even look at in person.” Delgado agreed: “Engineers really appreciate that we supply any training needed in our dedicated office. There are always engineers who want to know some extra things about the new updates and methods on a specific product.” DiGiCo kit comes from various companies in Switzerland that have invested money into the equipment. “We pay them back by getting it
11