The fifth annual Palais en Jazz event was held recently at Compiègne’ Imperial Palace, bringing two days of jazz to a royal residence built for Louis XV and restored by Napoleon. Joining the musicians were an the Solid State Logic L500 Plus mixing console and Amadeus PA, featuring PMX monitors, Diva line array, and Maestro subwoofers.

Among the headliners were Damien Schmitt, Erik Truffaz and five-time Grammy Award-winner, composer, author, producer and bass virtuoso Victor Wooten. Jack Trifiro, Tour Manager and FOH Engineer for Victor Wooten was impressed with the technical preparation that Palais en Jazz Technical Director Yohan Progler, and the system tuning provided by Amadeus Director of R&D, Michel Deluc.

‘The Amadeus Diva arrays performed admirably, with impeccable and consistent sound quality throughout the venue,’ he says. ‘The band was very happy with the Amadeus PMX 15 for stage monitoring and the choice of Amadeus made for a very enjoyable show for audience and Band alike.’

The event marked Trifiro’s first use of the SSL console: ‘Most surprising was the wonderful choice of L500 at FOH,’ he reports. ‘I found the ease of navigation, intuitive layout and quality and clarity of my mix an extreme pleasure. With the superb quality of SSL Live and Amadeus loudspeakers a perfect match for Wooten’s impeccable music, the Palais en Jazz engineers could not have been happier with the sound they achieved.’

‘The SSL Live console is designed to help highly skilled operators deliver outstanding performances in the most demanding applications, and this festival is definitely an example of this,’ says SSL Director of International Sales, Philippe Guerinet. ‘The high calibre of the technical set-up and excellent on-site team made it possible for us to reproduce these great performances with immaculate natural detail. I feel everyone, from the musicians and engineers to the audience and hosts, really appreciated the quality of the whole event.’

Initiated in 2012 by Emmanuel Starcky, Director of the National Museums and the estates of the Compiègne and Blérancourt castles, along with and producers Hugo Brugière and Gaetan Byk, Palais en Jazz aims to blend different time periods and cultures in an effort to create one synonymous jazz sound. ‘I found the evening mesmerising,’ comments Starcky. ‘It was intoxicating… all the emotions and vibrations of the music created a moment that was simply magical.’

All performances were supported by Amadeus as a co-sponsor of the event.