LONDON – The Proms are an annual eight-week summer season of classical music concerts held in Royal Albert Hall. On the last night, usually September's second Saturday, an accompanying outdoor concert is held across the street in London's Hyde Park – a 15-year tradition.
Prom is short for promenade concert, originally referring to outdoor concerts in London's pleasure gardens, where audience members can stroll around while the orchestra plays. Today, "promming" refers to reduced day-of-show standing room tickets in RAH.
To accommodate high demand for Last Night Proms, the Proms in the Park concerts began in 1996 and have since grown. In recent years, simultaneous Last Night Proms in the Park performances have also been held in other U.K. cities, including Belfast, Glasgow, Swansea and Manchester. Extensive picnic accoutrements and various national and regional British flags are standard fare for patrons.
Simon Biddulph, managing director of London-based System Sound, which provides the PA and broadcast splits, has been running the Hyde Park extravaganza since its inception in 1996. At Front of House every year is mix engineer Richard Sharratt, assisted by Alison Dale. Much of the sound system was rented from Britannia Row, Hyde Park concert event specialists for many years, who have supported events ranging from the Prince's Trust Party in the Park to Live 8.
This year Sharratt mixed The Proms In The Park on a pair of DiGiCo SD7 consoles, with one used just for symphony inputs. Audio stage manager Mark Isbister reported a total of 240 inputs from stage (five MaDiRacks) for the event, with the 320 microphones including 96 DPA 4060 string mics, dozens of Neumann KM 184 mics for brass and reeds and a pair of DPA 4023 compact cardioids used for Chinese pianist Lang Lang. Band inputs consisted largely of standard premium Shure models, though the opening Taiko drums were miked with AKG C-414s.
This year's pre-symphony lineup in the park included Scotland's Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers, doo-wop vocal group The Overtones, 1980s Glasgow pop group Deacon Blue and a performance by the U.K. cast of Rock of Ages between their matinee and evening performances at London's Shaftesbury Theatre. A second SD7 was used at FOH for these pre-symphony band performances. Backstage, a third SD-7 used for monitors was dedicated to the symphony, while an SD-Ten mixed monitors for the opening bands.
Performing with the symphony was Russell Watson ("The People's Tenor"), singing on a Sennheiser SKM5200 transmitter with a Neumann 105 capsule, Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins using a bedazzled Audio-Technica AEW-T5400 and Irish boy band Westlife closing the show on four Shure UR2 handhelds with KSM9 capsules.
A Yamaha LS9-16 was used at FOH for playback, including pre-recorded announcements played from a 360 Systems Instant Replay. A pair of Yamaha DME64N "Mix Engine" processors were used to matrix the system's multiple console inputs and various zone outputs.
The second half of Albert Hall's Final Night Proms concert followed the Hyde Park concert. It was presented live on 30-foot screens flanking the park stage and ending with sing-alongs including "You'll Never Walk Alone," "Rule Britannia" and "God Save the Queen." The sight of Union Jacks waving and other shows of patriotism are common.
The main system consisted of dual L-Acoustics K-1 arrays for the third year, with 14 K-1 flown below six K1-SB and three dV-DOSC downfills underneath. Outfills to each side included flown 4-box arrays of KUDOs and a center cluster employs four d&b Q-series enclosures. The mains were supplemented with a pair of SB28 subs, and a dozen d&b Q-10 enclosures were used as front-fills.
The system techs for the show included Ali Viles and Josh Lloyd, who employed a Lake LM 26 using Dante to feed three more LM 26 on each side of the stage which, in turn, fed AES to the systems LA-RAKs, with an analog failover backup.
The sound design employed two "rings" of 30-foot delay towers. The first set of three delay towers, at about 100 meters, each used an LM 26, an LA-RAK and four K1 enclosures. The second set of five delay towers, at about 150 meters and offset from the first ring, each employed six V-DOSC enclosures. Music lovers making the trip across the pond for next year's PLASA will find the evening in Hyde Park a suitable warm-up.
