Traditionally held in July, the annual Jerash Festival for Culture and Arts transforms the ancient Jeddah city into one of the world’s liveliest and most spectacular events.

After a three-year, pandemic-enforced absence, the festival returned in December this year with a line-up of top regional artists including Tamer Husny, Marwan Khoury, Asi Hillani and Rabeh Saqer. And for the eighth consecutive year, Amman-based live production specialist Triad Live Productions provided sound and lighting production. The sound system of choice was KV2.

‘The set-up this year was a little different,’ says Triad General Manager, Amjad T Marar. ‘In the main 5,000-capacity South Theatre, we were required to install a large truss structure on stage with a height of 16m. Ultimately, that worked to our advantage as we flew a VHD2.0 cabinet left and right at 16m that took care of the upper tier seating; and thanks to its vertical dispersion of 40°, it also provided perfect coverage all the way down to the bottom of the middle seating section as well.

‘We set up another pair of VHD2.0s groundstacked left and right at the front of the stage at a height of 6m off the ground (on top of the subs) to cover the lower seating areas. In terms of subwoofers, we deployed a total of eight VHD4.18s and four VHD2.16 groundstacked left and right. A double ES1.0 systems and four ES2.16s acted as side fill and 20 EX12 stage monitors completed the system.’

For the 2,000-capacity North Theatre, Triad opted for a double ES1.0 system supplemented by four ES2.16 subs.

‘The sound we achieved was incredible to say the least,’ Marar reports. ‘Of course, we had the occasional comment from certain sound engineers along the lines of, “Where are the speakers?”. My answer to that is always the same – forget the hanging bananas, close your eyes and try to forget your traditional notions of what should sound good – and just listen.