The Milwaukee Irish Fest is the largest Irish music festival outside of Ireland. Located on scenic lakefront grounds at Henry Maier Festival Park, Irish Fest is a celebration of Irish music, food, and culture – organised entirely by volunteers. The festival has grown significantly since its inception nearly four decades ago, with 16 performance stages and over 100 acts this year.
All 16 stages featured Allen & Heath mixing consoles – ranging from compact analog ZED mixers to dual dLive front of house and monitor splits at the larger stages. Performers this year included Celtic rock groups Skerryvore, Enter the Haggis, and the entertaining bagpipe rockers 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,” said 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 ran on split dual Avantis consoles, which feature 64 channels of powerful 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 stage was powered by 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.
“I am honoured for Allen & Heath to be included as the exclusive brand provider for mixing consoles,” said Pat McConnell, Allen & Heath USA National Sales Manager. “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. 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!”