11 minute read
SYMPHONY UNDER THE STARS
ALULA’S ARCH ROCK SERVES AS A STUNNING NATURAL THEATRE FOR A SPECIAL PERFORMANCE FROM ITALIAN SONGWRITER AND PIANIST, DARDUST.
An ancient city full of natural wonders deep in the desert of northwest Saudi Arabia, AlUla is hardly the first place that springs to mind when it comes to hosting world-class concerts. However, since the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) announced its vision to responsibly develop the historic location as a world heritage destination centred around conservation and culture back in 2017, the area has played host to several high-profile productions, concerts and art installations.
The latest show to grace the historical site was Symphony Under The Stars; a combination of classical and electronic music, lighting and special effects, performed by Italian songwriter and pianist, Dardust – along with his two musicians and 22-piece orchestra, Ensemble Testori – under the spectacular backdrop of Arch Rock. The RCU engaged Balich Wonder Studio (BWS KSA) to produce the show, which in turn brought in Creative and Show Director, Marco Boarino to the project. “The brief was extremely simple and very open,” he told TPMEA.
“We were to host a show that combined classical and electronic music in a beautiful location somewhere in the AlUla desert.”
The first task was scouting of the location. “Considering the site-specific show that I wanted to make, the location was the most important thing for me,” Boarino added, noting that the scouting process began around October 2021, going through many options before finally hitting upon Arch Rock. “For me, it was perfect,” he said. “It was a dream location for a show like this.”
The majestic rock formation served as a natural theatre for the concert, creating a seamless connection between the environment and the performance. As is often the way on unusual projects like this, the location came with its own set of unique challenges.
“The site is absolutely beautiful, but it is basically lost in the desert, reachable only by a one-hour bus ride followed by a 30-minute off-road journey from the nearest small town,” Boarino revealed. “It was a huge logistical challenge, but everyone understood what we were trying to achieve and knew it would be worth the effort. The client loved the idea, so they built some roads leading up to the site to make the project possible.”
With such an impressive natural landmark to build the show around, Boarino was keen to ensure that nothing upstaged the natural beauty of Arch Rock. “When I’m working on a
site-specific project like this, I always work with respect to the location,” he said.
“There were some initial thoughts to have a big stage and a grandstand for a large audience, but this would not have fitted with the aesthetic we were trying to achieve. We decided to take the challenge to go in a different direction, with the orchestra spread out around 12 different small platforms, and the audience seated low down on pouffes to give that authentic desert experience.” The Creative and Show Director took his inspiration from the natural architecture of the arch-shaped rock, as well as the incredible stargazing on offer in the remote dark-skied desert location.
“The idea was to avoid any large structures wherever possible,” he recalled. “My brief to the set designers [Matteo Oioli and Dario Bruno of design collective, MAR+IO] was to imagine that stars from thousands of years ago had fallen in this spot and tonight they would come to life.”
‘BRUTE FORCE WAS NOT NECESSARY’ Lighting was handled by ACT Lighting Design, with Lighting Designer, Koert Vermeulen, and Lighting Programmer, Luc De Climmer, heading up the project. “I have worked with Koert many
Koert Vermeulen, ACT Lighting Design.
times,” Boarino shared. “We work very well together and have the same feeling about how a show should be created. We are both very passionate about the visual side of the show and we often inspire each other.”
Vermeulen shared Boarino’s vision of keeping infrastructure to a minimum, opting instead to use a heavily floor-based lighting design. “We wanted nothing in the air, but in the end, it was essential for the audio department to have left and right towers to accommodate the PA, so we made a compromise,” he shared.
“Apart from a few fixtures on those towers, everything else was on the floor, which meant it was an unusual setup, with positions that are not used that often in shows of this type.”
A key part of the brief was to maintain the dark skies that make for such impressive stargazing in the area. “We decided to position all the fixtures at a less than 25° angle, which meant that nothing was firing directly up into the sky,” he noted. “I committed myself to only have anything above that 25° angle for a maximum of seven minutes per hour. It meant that the audience could enjoy the lightshow and the stargazing at the same time.”
The lighting inventory included Claypaky Sharpy and Mythos, Robe Spiider and BMFL, as well as SGM P5 and P10, GLP impression X4 Bar 20 and EK ORB 300 fixtures, all controlled using an MA Lighting grandMA2 full size console. “Brute force was not necessary here,” Vermeulen said of his fixture choices.
“We weren’t looking for the brightest or most powerful fixtures – we were really focused on producing clarity through the right positioning.”
In fact, the lighting element that Vermeulen most impressed with from this show was a fixture that rarely grabs the headlines: the Lucenti BlackWave. A 20mm pitch RGBW pixel-controlled LED bar, the BlackWave was integral to the overall design, with the fixture forming the diamondshaped backdrop to the stage platforms.
“When you look at that incredible rock, it looks almost like a diamond shape that has been cut off at the bottom, so I imagined how the rock would be if it continued in the same shape under the ground. I took that shape and multiplied it to give that precise, mathematically correct feel,” Vermeulen said, explaining his design inspiration.
“We 3D printed our own Hexagon connectors so we could position the BlackWaves in the angles we wanted. They are very small and light, and they allow you to make architecturally strong designs without the need for a substructure.”
ACT Lighting Design hired Amsterdam-based Live Legends to produce The BlackWaves content.
The Symphony Under The Stars team, including Koert Vermeulen, Dardust and Marco Boarino; Creative and Show Directer, Marco Boarino.
“There were around 230 BlackWaves looks, all designed completely from scratch,” Boarino noted. “We were very demanding in what we asked for and the Live Legends team were extremely professional and enthusiastic to make this project live up to the creative brief.”
The visual spectacle was rounded off with lasers, designed and supplied by Super FX. “We put nine 30W lasers out there, which was more than powerful enough,” Vermeulen noted. “I didn’t want a volumetric EDM style for the lasers,” Boarino added. “I wanted to take a very graphic and mirrored approach.”
‘A TRULY MAGIC MOMENT’ All the equipment – apart from the BlackWaves and lasers – was supplied by MediaPro International. The PA comprised 18 L-Acoustics KARA, six KS28 and eight KIVA, with DiGiCo Quantum 7 at FOH and monitors. “We also created a network redundancy loop to avoid single point failures, using Luminex systems,” stated Jose Fali, MediaPro Saudi Arabia Sales Manager, noting that all the systems were linked using single mode fibre. “A pre-visualisation suite with an MA Lighting grandMA2 light was also provided with WYSIWYG.”
Unsurprisingly for a concert taking place in the middle of the desert, the weather played its part, with swirling sandstorms eating into valuable setup and rehearsal time. “The health and safety team from BWS KSA monitored the weather constantly and our entire setup schedule was modified daily to ensure completion,” reported
Marco Boarino, Creative and Show Director.
Fali. “The entire team was on high alert, and we had stagehands on standby who could quickly secure and cover equipment in case of a storm. It was incredibly satisfying to pull off a spectacular event with BWS KSA after all the days of hard work in such a spectacular location.”
For the creative team, thankfully much of the hard work had been done prior to arrival on site. “Marco had already spent a week with us in Belgium when we went through all the pre-programming and visualised everything in Syncronorm Depence²,” said Vermeulen. “By the time we arrived on site, everything was cued on timecode and ready to go.” Of course, this wasn’t much consolation for the musicians, who weren’t able to get on stage for a rehearsal and sound check until 3am on the day of the show.
“The musicians were frustrated with the sandstorm, but they really wanted to do everything properly and the fact that they came in at 3am to rehearse with the show taking place at 8pm that evening speaks volumes about their professionalism. Everybody pulled together and they knew it was the only way to do it,” Boarino praised, looking back on his favourite moment of the project. “By sunrise on the morning of the show, we had everything perfect, and the musicians were playing in this incredible setting with the sun rising behind them – it was a truly magic moment.
“The music of Dardust was perfect,” Boarino added. “He is very famous in Italy, but certainly not known in Saudi Arabia. However, I picked him for this project because his style fit the brief perfectly. He comes from a classical piano background, but he has always been fascinated with electronic music. His style is a mixture between classical and electronic, but not in the sense of an EDM remix of Beethoven or Mozart
– he has a symphonic approach to the composition.” Much to the Creative and Show Director’s pleasure, the AlUla audience seemed to agree with his assessment.
“I have worked in Saudi Arabia for a few years now and I know how the audiences generally react. They are still relatively new to live music, and they would certainly not have attended a concert like this before. The biggest satisfaction for me was that everybody was stood up and dancing by the end.”
Boarino’s overall aim is always the same when it comes to working with music or performing arts. “The most important thing for me is to tell a story with the show,” he said, reflecting on the creative process. “To create something that is nice but has no point to it doesn’t make sense. It’s all about telling the story – there is storytelling in everything I do, and I feel we achieved this again with Symphony Under The Stars.”
For Vermeulen, the project was one to look back on fondly. “We put on a show in a remote location in the middle of the desert, with sandstorms leading right up until the day of the show, but with the right systems in place and the right team of people, it really didn’t feel like that much of a challenge,” he concluded. “Even with the crazy weather, everything worked out well. Photos: LUCA PARISSE @ RISK4SPORT & 7200 COLLECTIVESTUDIO www.experiencealula.com www.balichwonderstudio.com www.marcoboarino.com www.actld.com www.mediaproav.com
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