B’ESTFEST ROMANIA

In keeping with TPi’s tradition of visiting at least one ‘off piste’ summer festival every year, early July saw me in deepest Bucharest, the capital city of Romania, for B’EstFest, an urban event held over three days in a large outdoor area adjacent to the major Romexpo convention centre.

Topping the 2008 bill over the festival’s three stages were the Manic Street Preachers, Nelly Furtado, ex-Moloko singer Roisin Murphy, Unkle, Cypress Hill, the Stereophonics, Manu Chao and the Kaiser Chiefs, who greeted me in the lobby of the Sofitel upon arrival from the airport. Having only recently covered their homecoming show at Elland Road Stadium, there’s every chance they now consider me to be a stalker!

The total capacity for each of the three days was officially 25,000 (extended from 2007’s 15,000), and although it struggled to reach this target over much of the weekend, there was a very high turnout for the Kaisers’ typically boisterous performance.

B’estFest was conceptualised by Laura Coroianu and Guido Janssens, the husband-and-wife team behind top Romanian promoter EMAG!C Entertainment. Successfully launched last year as Bestival, with headliners Pink, Kasabian, Faithless, Marilyn Manson and Alice Cooper, its renaming was prompted by the existence of events with identical names in Spain and the Isle of Wight.

Contrary to the obvious first impression, the new title of B’estFest is not an arrogant claim of supremacy, but an abbreviation of Bucharest East Festival. I’m glad we’ve got that sorted!

EMAG!C’s rise in Romania began in 2004 as the talent booker (in co-operation with Mojo Concerts) for the Golden Stag Festival, a large televised event in Brasov, which expanded at one point to include a number of top drawer international acts. However, until last year, Romania had not made a significant contribution to the more traditional European rock’n’roll festival circuit.

As Janssens observed, plenty of small summer events had been organised over the years, many of them staged on beaches with mostly Romanian acts for audiences of no more than 2,000. B’estFest, therefore, marks a major step forward for what is now an emerging country.

Previously a record executive for EMI before moving into live event promotion, Janssens said: “The Golden Stag gave us a taste for major events and we did our first big show here in December 2005. We’re now very focused on bringing a modern, high quality festival environment to Romanian audiences, with a range of side-show attractions that have previously not been experienced here.

“We also have a pretty good line-up at B’estFest that not only stands up very well compared other current events in Romania, but is also on a similar level to what else is happening around Europe.

“By using this very central, concrete site we’ve made it as easy as possible for people to come and have a good time. Romanian audiences are not used to getting their shoes wet and muddy [they’re not even used to decent indoor venues!], so if we’d started with a green field site, even though we haven’t had much rain lately, there’s a risk that people might be put off.”

One thing that appeared difficult for the local audiences to fathom was the very Western concept of having two headlining bands playing at the same time on different stages. “It was a big problem for us when Unkle and Cypress Hill played simultaneously on the first day and we received complaints,” said Janssens, a native Belgian.

“This is something we’ll analyse and make a decision on for next year. It’s just symptomatic of an audience not being used to a Western-style formula, but ultimately we’re in the business of giving fans what they want.”

Fulfilling that aspiration is helped in no small way by the involvement of commercial sponsors like Heineken and internet provider ClickNet who, according to Janssens, are willing to pay up to 10 times more than they might in the West to gain branding at B’estFest and reach a progressive market. “Sponsors have much more of a say about this festival than they would in the UK,” said Janssens. “That’s why our marketing staff are probably more stressed than our production crew!”

After just one year in business, B’estFest became a member of Yourope, the European Festival Association. What advantages does this have for EMAG!C? “We’ve gained a lot of knowledge through the association, but we’re probably not using Yourope’s resources to the full extent because there are some very specific local issues to deal with, such as making the authorities understand what we’re trying to do.

“We have an 11.30pm curfew and last year, as soon as the music stopped, there were 500 police officers who were very unfriendly about the way they moved the audience off-site. So we’ve had discussions with the authorities about how to go a bit easier on the crowds — who tend to be very passive here — and convince them that our own security is geared up to deal with a safe and efficient exit. The co-operation is definitely getting better.”

To assist the security function, EMAG!C sourced four UK personnel from Showsec — through The Security Company — whose long experience of festival crowd movements informed the action plan for B’estFest. “This has become standard practice for us,” said Janssens. “We implement this procedure for all our big shows and this is one of the things that distinguishes us amongst other Romanian promoters, of whom only two are really credible. It’s one of the ways we are able to raise the quality of events.”

PRODUCTION
The best of the Romanian and Dutch production expertise came together to service B’estFest’s production, with the partly-Dutch owned Paradigma Group providing the lion’s share of technology across the site.

Launched in 2006, the Paradigma Group is a joint venture between Ampco Flashlight Holding BV of Holland and AEI Broadcast Concept. Its principals are general manager Cristian Singer, MD Adrian Ionescu and executive director Fred Heuves of Ampco Flashlight.

Based at its purpose-built 3,500m2 headquarters, just a few miles from Bucharest’s Otopeni International Airport, the Romanian-Dutch company’s operation is divided into three business units: Paradigma Production — rental of audio, lighting and staging, and related services; Paradigma Vision — rental of video systems; and Paradigma Teknik — sales of professional audio and lighting systems, truss equipment and AV projects.

“I first met Fred about 15 years ago when I was touring with a band in Holland. We started renting some equipment from Ampco Flashlight and that was when our association started,” said Singer, who later formed his own rental company. In 2004, after seeing the new generation of Synco audio systems, Singer began discussions with Heuves, which eventually resulted in the Paradigma partnership.

Two years into its life as a genuine ‘one-stop shop’, Paradigma has brought new standards to the Romanian production market, especially through being a fully-fledged member of the growing Synco Network, a “partnership of convenience” between rental company owners of Synco equipment, and one that was originally brought to fruition by Heuves — a man for whom the phrase ‘fingers in many pies’ might have been invented!

“Artists who perform in Europe with Synco systems will find that when they come to Romania and work with us, the systems are identical,” said Singer, the technical production manager at B’estFest. “That is the basic principle of the Network — that consistency is maintained in every country where there’s a Synco partner.

“Between us we also agree to pool equipment, so that if one show is larger in one country, they can increase the size of the system by borrowing from another partner’s inventory.”

This principle came into play on the same weekend as B’estFest when the eastern city of Timisoara played host to Romania’s largest Christian event since the 1989 fall of its Communist government. Nearly 40.000 people gathered to hear American evangelist Franklin Graham preach each day from July 4-6.

But from an audio perspective, Paradigma’s key role would not have been possible without the back-up of new Synco Network member, Serbia’s Audio Konstruktor and Slovenia’s DB Team (thanks to Dejan Zvura), who supplied additional loudspeakers.

It was for the same reason that Paradigma also helped to establish a second Synco partner in Romania — Fives International — which supplied crew and assistance with equipment supply at B’estFest under the leadership of its production manager Andrei Popea and general manager Liviu Stanescu.

“Fives was looking at expanding, so I suggested that we both went in the same direction with the Synco equipment,” commented Singer. “That way, we could both benefit from each other’s investments and have even more of a profound presence in Romania.”

The standards that Paradigma has developed and helped to revolutionise the Romanian live industry were evident to one of B’estFest’s visiting monitoring engineers, Ilias Andrianatos from the Kaiser Chiefs.

Reviewing the band’s performance over a well-deserved post-show drink, Andrianatos told me: “I was really surprised by the level of professionalism shown by the crew at B’estFest, and also the quality of the sound systems which were as good as you’d get anywhere in Europe. For some reason, I didn’t expect this in Romania and it was very impressive.”

It has to be said that bringing production into Bucharest does not come without its myriad difficulties. One only has to drive around for half an hour to realise that the quality of the roads is mostly appalling. Therefore, to meet load-in deadlines, trucks moving equipment from neighbouring countries such as Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine or Serbia, are advised to add time to their schedules... unless, of course, touring production managers decide to put their trust in a local company with more than 20 years’ experience to deliver the goods.

B’ESTFEST SYSTEMS
With assistance from Martin Kuyper of Eurotruss, Paradigma built the physical infrastructure for the twinned Heineken and ClickNet main stages at B’estFest (totalling 74m wide), using a pair of Eurotruss ST50 19 x 14 roofs on on a ‘ballast-safe’ podium system with Nivtec decks and Layher scaffolding — the latter also being used for PA towers and video screens, with further assistance from the Escape Group.

The main PA, positioned across the full width of the Heineken and ClickNet stages, comprised a left/right hang (each) of 16 Synco-by-Martin Audio W8LC cabinets, a centre hang of 12 more W8LCs and four frontfill stacks of three Electro-Voice XLC 127+s.

In front of the stages were 18 of the newly-introduced Synco/Martin WS318X 3 x 18” sub-bass enclosures, which provided immense power. These were supported by 24 Synco Renkus-Heinz 18RR subs. Side fills were four W8LMs on top of two WMX subs, per side, and there were also two delay towers containing EV XLC 127+s, supplied by another local company, Concert Production.

As well as eight Shure PSM700 in-ear systems, the monitoring featured 24 Synco CW 152A 15”/2” wedges, eight Martin LE 1500s and a drum fill of LEM tops and subs. All the Synco/Martin equipment was powered by their dedicated, matched amp racks.

The consoles for FOH and monitors were divided into five neatly-matched sets — a Digidesign D-Show with sidecar (FOH) and D-Show Profile (mons); Yamaha PM5D-RH (FOH) and PM5D (mons); Midas Heritage 2000 (FOH) and H3000 (mons); Yamaha M7CL-48s (in both positions); and a Midas Legend (FOH) and Siena (mons).

Outboard racks featured ‘usual suspects’ including Klark Teknik EQs and comps, dbx comps, and t.c. electronic, Yamaha, Lexicon and Aphex effects. System control was provided by XTA DP226s, and mics were sourced from Paradigma’s large inventory of Shure, AKG and Sennheiser models.

On the third stage — the Dacia Stage, whose round steel roof was provided by GD Total — the Lab.gruppen-powered PA consisted of 20 Adamson Y10 line array cabinets, 10 Adamson T21 subs and eight Spectrix boxes, with eight Renkus-Heinz TRX81s for frontfill, and pairings of Zeck tops and subs for sidefill. Monitors included d&b M2 and MAXs, plus Synco CW121 wedges. [Paradigma sub-rented some of the Dacia stage PA systems from Omnitech, including the Adamson rig.]

A Yamaha PM3500 console shared FOH space with a 48-channel Soundcraft Series Five and K3, while another Series Five, plus a DDA Forum, were to be found on monitors. Mics on the Dacia Stage were exclusively Shure-branded.

Lighting fixtures were a mix of Martin MAC 2000 Performance Washes and Profiles, MAC 500s and 600s, four-cell Molephays, 1kW/2kW Fresnels, ACLs and PAR 64s — all controlled Avolites Sapphire and Martin ProCaseII consoles.

Video services were provided by Paradigma Vision, who deployed left-right configurations of Barco S-Lite 10 LED screens, with broadcaster UTV handling the cameras and manning the OB unit.

Controlled variously by grandMA, Hog III iPC and Avolites Pearl Tiger consoles, the ClickNet Stage’s lighting rig saw 11 Vari*Lite VL2500s and 22 VL2000s in action alongside 42 High End Studio Color 575s, 15 LED PAR 64s, five 8-lite Molephays, Atomic strobes and Pulsar ChromaStrips. The rear truss was left empty for the Kaiser Chiefs’ Richard Larkum to use for the band’s travelling production.

Using the same pool of consoles, the Heineken Stage rig had 15 VL3000 spots, 12 Martin MAC 300s and 600s, 11 High End Studio Command 1200s and 12 700s, Strand Fresnels, Atomic strobes, 8-lite Molephays and 24 Showtec LED Octostrips. Site-wide power was provided by Kasper Events.

Poring over the lighting spec, Singer noted: “I was a very big Genesis fan in the ’70s and ’80s, which is how I discovered Vari*Lites very early on in their evolution. So I’m very proud that we are the only rental company in Romania to stock VLs, because others tend to stick with Martin Professional or Robe. But, of course, we have a lot of lighting designers to please, so we also invested in High End equipment, among others. It’s a good mix.”

Before Paradigma got underway, Singer would often sub-rent video systems from XL Video and Masstechnik for various events. Once the partnership with Fred Heuves and Ampco Flashlight was sealed, the decision was made to forge ties with Barco’s distribution chain to enable Paradigma Vision to co-invest with two other companies — under the brand Rent-a-Screen — in a large pool of screens, including 130 tiles of Barco S-Lite 10.

“For this market, it was too expensive for one company to make such an investment,” said Singer, “so rather like the Synco situation, all three of us have access to this equipment. It makes a lot of sense. We also remain quite close to XL Video and Masstechnik, so we can sub-rent additional screens when they are needed.”

These video systems have been deployed by Paradigma Vision on events like the Romania selection for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest and the MTV Music Awards.

CREWING
Paradigma has recently added yet another string to its bow, with the creation of a local crew pool for all its projects. At B’estFest, for example, there were around 150 crew spread across all departments.

Said Singer: “As productions get bigger here, it’s important to generate a team of people who can be called upon for general loading in and out, as well as supporting sound, lighting, staging, rigging and video. So far, they’ve worked on shows like Kylie Minogue, the Rolling Stones and Depeche Mode, and I think it’s wonderful to give local people that opportunity to develop skills that will become essential as this market grows.”

Those who deserve credit for their contribution at B’estFest include stage managers Adrian Rugina, Stefan Botea and Gabi Rizea; FOH technicians Lucian Balas, Ronald Smit (of DEE Sound, Belgium) and Stanga Laurentiu; monitor/stage techs Vlaicu Silviu, Cristea Robert, Cristi Balas and Alex Serb; lighting designers Dani Klinger and Popa Alin; lighting operators Dan Serban, Constantinescu Gelu, Maican Catalin and Babei Adrian; and head riggers Stan Sergiu and Lucian Vanca (Escape Group).

In the days that followed my visit, Paradigma and many of the B’estFest crew were involved in a Def Leppard/Whitesnake double-header at Romexpo’s B Pavilion. The same team also staged B’EstFest Aftershock on July 11 — a ‘finale’ mini-festival with a hardcore rock line-up headlined by Judas Priest, and serviced major stadium shows at Bucharest’s Stadionul Cotroceni for Metallica (July 23), Lenny Kravitz (July 26) and Iron Maiden (August 4).

There is every opportunity for EMAG!C to promote Bucharest tourism through future B’estFests. With a three-day pass priced at a mere 240 Lei/60 euros, and the availability of budget flights and low-cost accommodation, it could be cheaper for British festival-goers to travel to and attend B’estFest than, say, Glastonbury or T In The Park... and get a dose of Eastern European culture thrown in.

And if anyone’s looking for a top class hotel, you couldn’t do better than the small and stylish Montclaire — www.montclaire.ro — near Brasov, which boasts the some of most incredible views I’ve ever seen from a balcony. Consider that a recommendation!

TPi
Photography by Mark Cunningham,
Alex Barbulescu & Steven Wallraf

EMAG!C’S GUIDO JANSSENS ON PERFORMING IN BUCHAREST
“There’s an amazing lack of appropriate live entertainment venues in Bucharest, especially indoor arenas, which is why promoters here only have the summer in which to earn their money.
“Apart from the football stadium — Stadionul Cotroceni — we have one 4,000-capacity theatre-style venue, the Sala Palatului, which is OK and we’ve put on shows there by the likes of Duran Duran. It remains from the pre-1989 Communist days and it was there that [feared dictator] Nicolae Ceausescu held his party meetings.
“There’s also a run-down sports hall, the Sala Polivalenta, where you can do shows for 7,000 people, but both venues belong to the Ministry of Culture. This means that if you’ve booked an artist to play here in a year when Romania has elections, there’s a huge risk that those venues may host party rallies in those venues, and because their requirements supersede everything, we’d not only lose the gig but also a lot of money. “It’s a very bad situation and all we can do is hope for the best, which isn’t any way to run an industry like this.
“So on one hand, it’s difficult to do things here, but on the other, I love it, because this is a country where you can still make a difference. We can be part of creating something new and vibrant, and I relish the opportunities to do that.”