Held in the Dutch port of Rotterdam, the North Sea Jazz Festival recently saw more than 75,000 enjoy artists including Jamiroquai headlining the Nile stage on the final night. With 15 stages in the city’s Ahoy arena, the festival sells out every year – in part due to the variety of music, which includes classical, contemporary and futuristic jazz from across the globe, as well as blues, pop, hip-hop, dance, soul, world and funk.

For the capacity audience of 10,000 in front of the Nile Stage, Yamaha Music Europe supplied pianos and drumkits for all stages at the festival and actively helped to provide a range of backline for many of the artists. At FOH was a Yamaha Rivage PM10 mixing system in the hands Rick Pope in potentially difficult circumstances. A Yamaha console user for around 20 years, Pope is using the Rivage PM10 throughout Jamiroquai’s current world tour.

As back problems for Jamiroquai lead singer Jay Kay caused the first few dates of the tour to be postponed, North Sea Jazz was only Pope’s second show on the Rivage PM10. Added to that, the nature of a festival meant that he was unable to soundcheck. ‘Festivals are always a challenge, because of the tight turnaround times, but I have been working with Rivage PM10 for some time and it’s a fantastic desk,’ he says. ‘It really is the easiest console I’ve ever used and, thanks to the quality of the onboard processing, I don’t need any outboard. I already had the show on a USB stick, so I was able to turn up, switch the desk on, load the show and was ready.’

The console’s ease of use meant that Pope was able to make any necessary adjustments very quickly, ensuring the capacity audience enjoyed a great-sounding set: ‘Rivage PM10 just works fantastically well. The sound of it is so good, it’s not difficult to create something wonderful,’ he concludes.

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