The Milwaukee Irish Fest is the largest Irish music festival to take place outside of the Emerald Isle itself. Staged on lakefront grounds at Henry Maier Festival Park, has grown significantly since its inception nearly four decades ago, with 16 performance stages and over 100 acts this year. A celebration of Irish music, food and culture, the event is organised entirely by volunteers.
This year, all 16 stages featured Allen & Heath mixing consoles – ranging from compact analogue ZED mixers to dual dLive front of house and monitor splits for the larger stages. Performers included Celtic rock groups Skerryvore and Enter the Haggis, and bagpipe rockers the Red Hot Chili Pipers. Smaller performance spaces featured traditional dance lessons and Celtic cooking classes, as well as an art exhibit displaying a comprehensive North American Irish music archive.
‘Every year, Milwaukee Irish Fest provides its patrons with world class displays of Celtic culture and music,’ says the event’s Production Manager, Brian Christ. ‘From the smallest areas run by volunteers to the large stages run by both union and guest engineers, Allen & Heath’s feature-rich and great sounding consoles captured every speech, hard shoe and bagpipe – powering four days of non-stop entertainment.’
The Celtic Roots and Lakefront Brewery stages each used split dual A&H Avantis consoles, which feature 64 channels of 96kHz FPGA processing. The consoles were paired with GX4816 (48 XLR input/16 XLR output) portable expanders to connect inputs and outputs.
The Miller Lite stageused a dLive S7000 surface at front of house, and a C3500 surface for monitors. The DM48 MixRack at FOH fed an EAW line array digitally via Dante.
‘Irish Fest brings together artists, musicians, and performers from all over the globe to use our products and provide music, dance and the joy of the Irish spirit to thousands in attendance,’ says Allen & Heath USA National Sales Manager, Pat McConnell. ‘It was also a fabulous opportunity for a bit of craic and shenanigans with our team, local engineers, bands and crew. I’m already looking forward to next year.’
More: www.allen-heath.com
