MOLDEJAZZ FESTIVAL

Situated by the Romsdalsfjord and close to Årø airport on the north-west coast of Norway is Molde — a small and friendly municipality, often called the “town of jazz and roses”, but also notable for breathtaking views of icy mountain peaks. For most of the year, its population hovers around 25,000. For one week in July, however, that figure soars to an amazing 100,000, thanks to Moldejazz — a festival that annually engulfs the whole town with up to 100 events of all sizes.

    Although generally one of the more purist larger-scale jazz festivals, Moldejazz has also attracted some stellar mainstream rock artists in recent years, including Sting, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker and Santana. This year was no exception, particularly on July 19, when the legendary Steely Dan shared a twin-headline bill — or “fantastisk dobbeltkonsert”, to use the local lingo — at the Romsdalsmuseet (museum) outdoor venue with Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint, the influential New Orleans R&B musician and producer who recently collaborated with Costello for last year’s album, The River In Reverse.

    A number of obvious song choices were absent but Steely Dan’s performance was otherwise little short of perfection, as one might expect from a band that have long been a major technique reference point for serious musicians.

    With founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen now keeping the band’s torch aflame with a crack 10-piece band (guitarist Jon Herington was particularly outstanding), the enigma and sardonicism of songs like 'Haitian Divorce’ and ‘Kid Charlemagne’ remains as vibrant as ever... but where were ‘Reelin’’ and ‘Rikki’?

    Chick Corea, Bill Laswell, the Dave Holland Quartet and a host of local and European artists rounded off an exceptional line-up for a festival that boasts one of the longest and most colourful histories in the world.

    Initiated by the local Storyville Jazz Club, the Molde International Jazz Festival (to give its full name) was established as far back as 1961 — six years before Montreux — and unlike most festivals which rely on external companies to furnish their production requirements, this one has its own: Molde Forum.

    In fact, it’s arguable that Molde Forum’s origins precede the festival itself as many of its eventual technical crew were shared with the Storyville, whose history began in 1953.

    As Jo Tore Bæverfjord, Molde Forum’s MD, explained: “We had many people in Molde taking care of the technical elements and that led to thinking about starting a jazz festival here. Up until the late ’70s, the Storyville was still the big attraction, bigger than the festival, and the technical guys became more important when the modern jazz musicians became more reliant on electric, rock’n’roll equipment.

    “At the time I started taking care of production, it was the late ’70s and I was handling both the club and the festival which was then held in a local cinema. Very soon, the festival outgrew it and we moved it to a sports hall, where we installed a large PA system and used modern technology for the first time. That was the catalyst for formalising the production side as a proper company, which originally had the very long name of Techniques of the Molde International Jazz Festival.”

    For about a decade, the company looked after all aspects of the festival as well as all the venues in and around Molde. By 1990, however, the technical demands had become so great that the festival decided to establish Molde Forum as a stand-alone company with the responsibility for the technical production. The goal was to establish a company capable of not only handling the festival’s technical requirements, but also operate as a resource centre for cultural events all over the country — a move that has paid off in many ways.

    The growth of the company has been a steep curve, said Bæverfjord. “In our first year, our revenue was about NOK290,000 [£25,000 or US$50,000], compared to last year when our turnover was around NOK14m [approx. £1.2m/US$2.4m] after running 700 or so gigs.”

    Molde Forum is, according to Bæverfjord, a production service in the most complete sense. “As well as the obvious sound, lighting and staging, we even supply toilets, seating, marquee tents, and for the last five years we’ve also extended into sales and installations in churches, sports halls and schools.

    “We service about half of Norway — we can't go up north because it's too expensive. We are small but our services are wide, maybe too wide! So we're always hiring freelance people to support the six of us who are full-time. At Moldejazz, for example, our crew is 100 people strong, and we follow that up with a big festival in Trondheim for 160,000 visitors, plus the biggest country festival in Scandinavia, which is in Seljord in southern Norway.”

ny other countries, Norway is filled with young, enthusiastic, would-be production technicians, but in Bæverfjord’s experience, the number of those immersed in studying theory is considerably higher than those who have made it into the practical world.

    Bæverfjord commented: “I am all for taking on new, young freelancers, but we can't use those guys as much as those who have not grown up in our kind of work. They must accumulate some practical experience before they can come to us.

    “We have many youngsters who have started here at age 16 and maybe play in a band — sometimes two, three or four every year. But they soon move on to Oslo, for instance, to work freelance. It’s a bit difficult to get young, ‘A Class’ guys to settle down in Molde... maybe it’s not exciting enough for them!”

INVENTORY
Since the 1980s, Molde Forum has been a fervent user of Renkus-Heinz sound systems. Its first investment in the Californian brand was in SR6 cabinets and a CE-3T system that remain in stock today.    

    It was its embracing of Renkus-Heinz line arrays that took Molde Forum to another level of sound quality. “We currently have two main types of system,” said Bæverfjord, “the STLA/9 and PN102LA line arrays, which are both active and in use for Moldejazz. We also have the DR18-2 [2 x 18"] subs that augment both systems, and there are 18 of them out today on the Steely Dan/Elvis Costello gig.”

    Molde Forum’s bond with Renkus-Heinz has its roots in the friendship between Bæverfjord and Molde native Karl Brunvoll who is now R-H’s VP of International Sales and back working in his hometown after many years at the HQ in Foothill Ranch, CA. Locally, Brunvoll is very well known as part of the family that founded the Brunvoll Thruster business in Molde almost 100 years ago, specialising in the manufacturing of bow thrusters (propellers) for the shipping industry.

    “Karl is a bit younger than me, but I remember he played bass in a local rock band,” said Bæverfjord. “He also worked at Philips in Oslo for a while and in 1982 we bought that first Renkus-Heinz rig through him, and installed it at the Town Hall. It was the first R-H installation in this area and it was only updated two years ago. We’ve used our line array systems for three years, and have worked very hard educating technicians.”

    For the Steely Dan/Costello/Toussaint show we saw at the Romsdalsmuseet venue, Molde Forum fielded 24 STLA/9s and 10 DR18-2s in the main left/right hangs with ST4 front fills, plus two delay towers each containing four PN102LAs with DR18-2s.

    “The museum area is very beautiful but it’s surrounded by many old houses, so it’s important we keep the SPLs at reasonable levels and make use of the delay system. We set it all up using AimWare and EASERA,” said Bæverfjord.

    While AimWare — a Renkus-Heinz software array prediction software — is used for setting up line arrays, EASERA (Electronic & Acoustic System Evaluation & Response Analysis) looks after the acoustic measurement aspects. A sibling development of the original EASE simulation software, the EASERA program consists of a measurement module, signal generator, real-time analyser and post-processing module. “We use that every time we hang a line array,” insisted Bæverfjord.

    As well as the museum site, Moldejazz took in a wide range of other venues including Kulturhuset (the Culture Club), the Forum, the Reknes acoustic music venue and Bjørnsonshuset (The Bjørnson House), named after the turn-of-the-century Norwegian poet, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.

    “The PN102LA cabinets provide 150° coverage; they can handle many different types of gigs and they’re probably the most popular and versatile loudspeakers we have,” explained Bæverfjord.

    “In a lot of these venues we get good results with up to four a side, or sometimes in a small line array configuration with anything from six to 12 speakers each side. And we have the ST4 which can also be configured as a small club rig as well as for front fills. Plus, they’re all active systems which makes the PA more compact, and frees up truck space.”

CONTROL
At the Romsdalsmuseet, the control gear supplied by Molde Forum included XTA processing, a Midas Heritage 2000 console at FOH and a Digidesign Venue D-Show on monitors, with Steely Dan bringing in their own Midas XL4 at FOH.

    On other stages, the firm supplied several other Midas boards, a Yamaha LS9, Allen & Heath ML4000s and ML3000s, plus a range of Soundcraft consoles.

    Aside from some of its own R-H, Turbosound & Martin Audio wedges, Molde Forum makes it a rule to sub-rent monitor systems for the bigger events. “We are going more and more into in-ear systems and I think the era of big, heavy monitor systems is passing,” said Bæverfjord. “It’s all changing, in my experience anyway, and we only need to sub-rent about two or three times a year.”

STEERABLE SOUND
The local 1,000-capacity church, Molde Domkirke, also played host to a number of festival performances and used another of Molde Forum’s Renkus-Heinz systems — the modular Iconyx Series of digitally-controlled column loudspeakers. These thin, vertical columns are driven by digital Class D amplifiers and controlled by powerful DSP engines and patented algorithms which focus energy into tightly controlled beams.

    “That's a very nice box — very modern, effective and interesting,” claimed Bæverfjord. “When Iconyx came along it gave us the ability to actually steer sound, so you can perform at a good level while minimising the risk of audio reflections that are so common in churches. We have a variety of Iconyx systems available for rent, but for the church’s festival shows we use two IC-24s [the second largest version] in conjunction with a pair of Genelec subs and the effect is outstanding.”

    Of course, we cannot forget staging and lighting, which Molde Forum supplied in droves for the festival. To summarise, the company provided a wide selection of MA Lighting consoles (including grandMAs at the museum site) to control Martin MAC moving heads, Thomas Cyc-lites and PAR cans, and oil crackers.

    The Norwegian press was full of praise for this year’s Moldejazz, with many claiming it to be the finest of its long history. It’s rare that a mainstream journalist makes mention of sound quality, but in a review of the Steely Dan/Costello gig for the Romsdal Budstikke newspaper, Marit Heiene wrote: “The concert arena setting was idyllic, and the sound was excellent everywhere I moved: transparent enough to hear all instruments, loud enough to get into the groove, but moderate enough that you were listening to the music... not the noise of a sound system.”

    I can’t argue with that, and combined with the splendid scenery and first-class hospitality, this is one off-the-beaten-track festival destination that comes with an official Total Production recommendation.