Jesse Clegg turns up the heat!

Jesse Clegg is a South African singer-songwriter, guitarist and pianist, whose three studio albums, When I Wake Up, Life on Mars, and Things Unseen, have made him a platinum-selling success in his home country.

From growing up in a musical family and spending his younger years on tour with his father, to kickstarting his own successful solo music career that has spanned over a decade, music has always been a part of Jesse Clegg’s life. Reflecting on his journey, Jesse and his team decided to host a series of shows at the Teatro at Montecasino in Gauteng in April 2022. After the release of his 2021 single, “Waiting on the Outcome” and the lack of concerts during the COVID epidemic it was a warm welcome to the South African music scene. Added to that he was joined by International Artist Nicholas Petricca from Walk the Moon and local favourites Denholm Harding from Just Jinger and Arno Carstens.

South African distributor, Audiosure took the responsibility of designing the live system together with the Zinto Marketing group. The team made full use of an Allen & Heath dLive system consisting of an S5000 console at Front Of House and a C2500 on monitor duty in the stage wings. Both were controlling the DM64 mixrack making use of the Allen & Heath multi-surface system. Due to the high-level requirements and scope of the show, this system was the perfect way to achieve what was required. Both nights were recorded using a Dante card, which made it possible to multitrack record all 64 inputs producing a crystal clear and concise recording of the show.

FOH engineer Verny Scholz has been working together with the Clegg family and many other well-known South African acts for decades. He relayed his enjoyment of the feeling of arriving at the venue and getting set up quickly. Verny made careful use of the gain tracking function on the dLive which allows the trim to adjust the signal, based on either the FOH engineer or monitor engineer changing any gain settings. Lesedi Maponya, Allen & Heath product specialist for South Africa assisted with set-up and provided on-site technical support to Verny where required.

The desk was responsible for driving a beautiful Martin Audio MLA mini system consisting of a hang of two MSX 15” Subs over eight MLA mini boxes per side. For bass reinforcement four WS218X Dual 18” Bins were positioned in the orchestra pit with four W8LM boxes spaced out for front fill. Complimenting this setup, another two MLA Mini systems were used as side fills and were angled and calculated to fire under the balcony so that Verny could monitor effectively from the FOH position.  For stage monitoring four of the LE monitor wedges were used.  Audiosure’s Product Specialists John Greaves (Martin Audio) and Lesedi Maponya (Allen & Heath) were on hand throughout the entire design, rigging and performances for technical support.

The lighting used for show consisted of a host of Chauvet and Chauvet Pro Fixtures all connected and driven by an Avolites Tiger Touch 2. The range of lights used were fifteen Chauvet DJ COLORband TRI’s, six Chauvet DJ Intimidator Beam LED 350’s, four Chauvet DJ Intimidator Spot 350’s, twelve of the Chauvet Pro SlimPAR Pro Tri’s, four of the Chauvet Pro Q-Wash 560Z, eight of the Chauvet Pro Rouge R1 FX-B’s and two of the Chauvet Pro STRIKE 4 Blinders. Lighting Design and Programming of the show was done with Capture 2022 by Creative Intensity. They shared the Capture and Showfile with the Lighting Controller running the show for the night who could trigger the cues for the relevant songs. The show was mixed on colour palettes and set up to Cue Monitor to adapt to the BPM.

Greg Payne from Audiosure had the following to say, “Jesse and Audiosure have enjoyed a great relationship for many years now. When Jesse asked us to help with his production, we were more than happy to assist with the help from our friends at Zinto Marketing. We were able to provide Jesse with a professional comprehensive system ensuring his amazing show was delivered to his audience in a way that he expected. Thank you to everyone that was involved in this production & thank you to Jesse for choosing us as his preferred brand.”