Meyer Sound News : Newport Jazz Festival

Newport Jazz Festival

"The focus was not to be in peoples faces; we were more interested in reinforcing. I went with the UPMs. They're a small speaker, you don't necessarily know they're there. They don't get very, very loud, just enough to reinforce in a very transparent way."

- Dave Andrews
Andrews Audio

Meyer Sound took to the high seas of summer, cruising the Atlantic aboard the venerable luxury liner QE2 as it set sail for the third annual Newport Jazz Festival at Sea. The event took place August 10 through August 17.

"I've been out on all three QE2 jazz cruises and used Meyer on all of them," says Dave Andrews of Andrews Audio, a longtime New York City Meyer dealer. "This year we had about 1,100 passengers."

The floating jazz fest traveled north to Bar Harbor, Maine and Halifax, then weighed anchored at Newport, Rhode Island (where passengers were tendered in by ferry and treated to the on-land Jazz Festival at Fort Adams State Park) before returning to New York.

"On land and at sea, the Meyer system accomplished the task," Andrews says. "We got a lot of comments from patrons who told us how much they enjoyed listening to the music."

In designing Jazz at Sea sound, Andrews worked with five sizable public spaces aboard the ship, including the Yacht Club, where three UPAs were set up on pipe and base speakers stands and strapped to structural columns. In the Crystal Bar, a bowling-alley of a room, he says, Andrews had an array of UPMs, placed at stage and down the room on delay. In the intimate SRO Lions Pub, 4 - Upm1s were put on MS25 mic stands with four more used as monitors on two mixes with a Yamaha Promix 01V.

"There are performances going on at the same time, with staggered sets and a jam session each night. We had a zydeco band, (pianist) Sir Roland Hanna, and Ron Carter," Andrews says. "The focus was not to be in peoples faces; we were more interested in reinforcing. We wanted them to sit back without us being obvious, except for monitors."

"I went with the UPMs," says Andrews. "They're a small speaker, you don't necessarily know they're there. They don't get very, very loud, just enough to reinforce in a very transparent way."

Jazz at Sea Gear List (by venue):
QE2 rooms
Queen's Room: 4 - UM1Cs on 2 mixes (with the existing system already in the room)
Yacht Room: 3 - UPAs. 7 - UPMs: 2 as audience sidefill, 5 for monitors on three mixes, with a Yamaha Promix 01V board.
Grand Lounge: 5 - UM1Cs on 4 mixes (with the existing system already in the room)
Lions Pub: 4 - UPM1s, 4 more as monitors on two mixes
Crystal bar: 7 - UPMs, five speakers and two UPMs for monitors

September, 1998