JULY 9 - Daytime

All aboard! Taking in the Swiss countryside on the Alpine tram: Tony Caporale, A/V Manager of Mandalay Bay Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, with wife Gina and Lloyd Kinkade, Meyer's Western US Regional Sales Manager.

Nightime

As the Program suggests, tonight was Hot, Hot, Hot! Never was it a better idea to clear the arranged seating from the floor and make room for festive dancing. If the Festival had not done it, the audience would have!

Three amazingly talented groups from around the world took the stage - Oscar D'Leon, Jovanotti, and Khaled - filling the scene with steamy Latino, Italian and Franco-Algerian sounds to bring the enthusiastic concert-goers to their feet. The Meyer system reinforced the artists transparently, throwing the gyrations of different musical flavors and effects. With every song the auditorium grew hotter; and the atmosphere, sweetly intense.

What better way then to kick off the evening than with Oscar D'Leon, the world renowned Venezuelan double-bass player and his 15-piece orchestra? D'Leon, often referred to as the "Lion of World Salsa," has released over 50 albums and his talent and energy seem never-ending . Tonight, D'Leon and his orchestra were in excellent form, bringing to Montreux the true heart of the Latin culture. The extensive brass section with their crisp trombone and sax solos together with the percussion group's hard-driving congos, never let up.

The band's electricity generated a contagiously uplifting mood throughout the Stravinski that lasted for the duration of the evening.

After the audience poured into the hallway for a much-needed cool off during set change, Jovanotti took the stage. The artist's background, working at DeeJay Radio and Deejay Television in Italy, is clear through his pulsating house sound. Jovanotti's music is essentially American rap with Italian melody, plus a mixture of musical styles from Africa and South America all fused together into one, hot World beat. No stranger to technology, the artist employed onstage the creative computing of Gianluca Camporesi and the turntable tricks of DJ Dino Di Chiano to drive in the heart thumping beat. Few people in the audience could resist moving to the beautiful ballads and contagious percussion solos.

Topping off the evening was the soulful singer Khaled. Recognized as the international pioneer of rai, the good-natured, Algerian-born performer brings music that is a blend of funk, reggae and Arabic music backed by a synthesizer and drum machine. Our own Dave Dennison, house FOH engineer said Khaled's lead mixer hardly used the EQ, showing that he really enjoyed the quality of the system "as is."

Dave said that almost 80% of the artists' own mixers have used little or no EQ...which is the best compliment we could have asked for.