On her recent arena-scale tour of French-speaking lands on both sides of the Atlantic, Celine Dion relied on a Meyer Sound LEO Family reinforcement system, provided by her long-time audio reinforcement supplier, Solotech of Montreal.
FOH Engineer for the tour was Denis Savage, who worked with System Designer/Engineer Francois Desjardin.
“When you looked at the IMAG screens and listened to the system, everything seemed close and intimate, even when you were 200 feet from the stage,” said Desjardin, who has prepped the audio system for every one of Celine Dion’s shows since 1992.
All 28 of the shows for Dion’s tour were booked into just five venues – including a run of nine sellout shows in Paris at the Accor Arena and ten at Montreal’s Bell Centre. Solotech’s LEO Family rig was used for all indoor arena shows on both sides of the Atlantic.
For the Paris run, the system was configured with a total of 52 LEO-M and 12 LYON loudspeakers in the four main front arrays, with dual arrays of 16 LYON-Ws each covering the far side seating and eight LEO loudspeakers for rear delays. Sub-bass was supplied by end-fired arrays of six each 900-LFC low frequency control units flown behind the left and right arrays, augmented by 24 1100-LFC elements floor-stacked as three cardioid arrays.
The systems for the 10 Montreal shows, as well as five performances at the Videotron Centre in Quebec City, deployed most of the same loudspeakers but in slightly different configurations as suited the acoustics and layouts of the venues.
Other key members of the Solotech team on the tour were Audio Crew Chief Louis Philippe Maziade, Head PA Tech Jonathan Trudeau, and PA Techs Francis Lussier and Franck Martin. Denis Savage mixes the shows behind an SSL L500 digital mixing console, and Dion’s vocal microphone choice is the Shure SM-58.
After a short break to recoup, Celine Dion resumes to her semi-permanent Las Vegas residential performances in the Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. The 4,298-seat venue, where Dion will celebrate her 1,000th performance in October, has been equipped with an all-Meyer Sound system (designed by Desjardin and Savage) since it first opened in 2003.