LONDON —Brian Eno celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing with the first of two live performances of his 1983 composition Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks in the IMAX Cinema at London’s Science Museum. The Science Museum asked Headtec’s Mark Hornsby to provide the sound, and Icebreaker’s FOH sound engineer Alexander Bossew used a Soundcraft Vi6 digital console for the show.
“I specified this, because it is so easy to produce a warm sound without having to EQ like mad,” Bossew said. “Also the few compressors that I used were working very discreetly.”
Bossew admitted that with only time for a quick run through ahead of the performance rather than full rehearsal, there had been little time to purpose-configure the desk, which was plugged straight into the cinema PA. However, this hardly concerned him as the musicians were so experienced. “They were all aware of their own dynamics and so there was little for me to correct at the desk end.”
However, the composition, adapted by Jun Lee, required the use of a lot of reverb. “The IMAX is completely dry, and I had to use six different internal Lexicon reverbs, which sounded excellent,” Bossew said, noting that task alone consumed most of the one-hour desk programming time that was allocated.
Unsure up to the last minute whether the Soundcraft Vi6 desk would be made available, Alexander didn’t order a MADI soundcard — something he deeply regretted.
“It would have been great to multitrack the show. I have had great recording experiences using the Vi6 in the past — particularly during a music and performing arts festival in Austria (Donaufestival, Krems) in 2007; the stereo recording turned out to be of amazingly good quality.”
Even so, Bossew appreciated the opportunity to use the Vi6 for the show, including the ability it gave him to work quickly on the surface “even when setting up more sophisticated patches that would be almost impossible to realize on analog (and many digital) desks.”
He added that he felt privileged to have mixed the sound for this landmark event. “Usually my colleague Ernst Zettl mixes their sound, and for the performance at the IMAX I was only substituting for him. But I hope it won’t have been the last opportunity I get to collaborate with this astounding collective of excellent musicians.”
Soundcraft is a unit of Harman International Industries, Inc. For more information, please visit www.harman.com.
