In August, Nigerian Afro-fusion star Burna Boy’s Twice As Tall event was the first in the London O2 Arena’s Welcome Back Show series of live concerts. Sold out with fans hungry for live entertainment, Yamaha RIVAGE PM10 digital mixing systems helped deliver a much-anticipated, impressive live production.
2021 has been a highly successful year for Burna Boy, winning a GRAMMY Award for his 2020 Billboard-topping album Twice As Tall, Artiste of the Year at the Global Music Awards Africa and Best International Act at the Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards. He headed to the O2 Arena with a spectacular show, arriving in a flying saucer and spending much of the performance on a stage projection, surrounded by the audience on three sides.
With music blending Afrobeats, dancehall riddims, reggae, American rap and R&B, the large production included a 16-strong choir using headset microphones, a string quartet, brass section, traditional percussion, guitar, keyboards, bass, drums and guest vocals.
The show’s audio production was provided by Eighth Day Sound. FOH Engineer, Temidayo Oladehin has worked with Burna Boy since his first UK tour, with he and Monitor Engineer, Duriel Mensah both using RIVAGE PM10 systems on this production, due to their ability to easily handle the high channel count.
With the large number of musicians on stage, Duriel had 50 sets of in-ear monitors to mix. Nine of the musicians used Yamaha’s Monitor Mix software to adjust their personal mix via their mobile phones while on stage. For the rest of the performers, including Burna Boy, the on-stage mix was fine-tuned by Tosin Orojinmi. He used Yamaha’s StageMix App to adjust the individual mixes during sound check.
