A matter close to our hearts – Adam Hall Group supports the Ziegelei Open-Air-Festival

On August 26-28, the 8^th Ziegelei Open-Air Festival (also known as the Brickworks Open-Air Festival) once again attracted hordes of music fans to Neu-Anspach. Across two stages, plenty of local heroes provided a stylistically varied musical framework for one of the biggest rock and pop festivals in the region. For the Adam Hall Group, it is always a matter of the heart to support the Brickworks Open-Air as a sponsor deeply rooted in the region. For this reason, the event technology company headquartered in Neu-Anspach provided the entire technical equipment for the Cave Stage free of charge.

“The Brickworks Festival simply has to live on, so we are happy to support it with people power, vehicles and technical equipment for light and sound,” explains Adam Hall COO/Managing Director Markus Jahnel, who was on site again this year and was enthusiastic about the varied programme. In addition to the live bands, the programme included a festival market, yoga classes, tractor tours, crate climbing, a reading tent, and the Hochtaunusspiele for children and adults – a festival for the whole family. The Ziegelei Open-Air is organised by Achim Schmidt, owner of the “Scheuer” music club in Idstein-Wörsdorf.

On the big Barn Stage, the bands Mallet, Kellerkommando and the Band Of Friends rocked from early evening on Friday, transporting the musical genius of Rory Gallagher into the present day with their music. Small wonder here, as bassist Gerry McAvoy played with the late Irish guitarist, singer and composer Gallagher for many years. The smaller Cave Stage belonged to Brew Berrymore, a group from Bavaria who thrilled with their self-proclaimed future rock, and Pinski, aka Insa Reichwein. Together with her band, the guitarist and singer presented a mix of rock, progressive metal and pop. The finale, well after midnight, was a rock party with DJ Horst.

Saturday brought more heavyweights to the Barn Stage. The tribute band The Chain played songs by Fleetwood Mac, including from the Peter Green period. The band Jupiter Jones is known to a large audience for the song “Still”, and now, with Nicholas Müller back as front man, they were certainly one of the highlights, drawing huge crowds for their performance. Things also got busy when John Diva – with his Rockets Of Love – did credit to the genre of hair metal. Singer-songwriters Dota Kehr and Conni Maly, who travels the world as Lava 303 with groove box and electric guitar and makes every party shake with her acid rock ‘n’ roll, took turns on the Cave Stage. An insider tip for friends of hearty blues and blues rock is surely the French guitarist and singer Manu Lanvin. When he really got going, he would leave the stage while playing and plunge into the crowd. On Sunday, the day of the Hochtaunusspiele, Makia and Gastone provided a relaxed musical feeling.

Adam Hall Group provides the stage tech

Felix Bücher and his team were responsible for the technical management of the live stages. For the full-time “Team Leader Quality Assurance” at the Adam Hall Group, the work began days before the festival opened – and continued until the last piece of equipment was stowed away in the Adam Hall Group’s vans at the end.

Cameo OPUS W5 Wash moving heads were enthroned on the four pillars of the lighting backline. With their high light output of 15,400 lumens, they bathed the stage in brilliant and intense colour scenes. The Cameo EVOS W3 Wash Moving Heads were no less involved in creating an intensive atmosphere with bright colours. With their small footprint, they were perfectly integrated into the vertical truss construction. Thanks to full colour LEDs with an additional warm white chip, the EVOS W3 conjured up pleasantly warm pastel tones as well as a wonderfully warm white light to illuminate the musicians. Eight Cameo ROOT PAR 4 fixtures with RGBW equipment rounded off the rear lighting row.

Two Cameo F1 D Fresnel spotlights with daylight LEDs on light stands were used as front lights on each side of the stage. The F1 is the most compact spotlight in the Cameo F Series and easily replaces conventional spotlights with comparatively inefficient 650 watt halogen lamps, so it is made for the small Cave Stage. And because light doesn’t come close without fog, the Cameo PHANTOM H2 Hazer permanently pumped evenly fine fog onto the stage.

Distributed around the site, the Cameo ZENIT B200 – as wash lights – and the ZENIT B60 – as PAR spotlights – set coloured light accents that also served as orientation for the festival visitors. Both ZENIT models are IP65-certified, which made planning and placing them outdoors uncomplicated, even in bad weather. During the day, the batteries were charged with the photovoltaic system available on the brickyard site, so that, thanks to their long battery runtimes, they could be operated after sunset without using precious electricity from the socket.

STINGER provides powerful sound

For the front sound reinforcement, Felix Bücher relied entirely on active loudspeakers from the LD Systems STINGER G3 Series. Two stacked LD Systems STINGER SUB 15 A G3 15” bass-reflex subwoofers provided the powerful low-frequency foundation for the STINGER 12 A G3 satellites. The multi-functional full-range speakers were also used for stage monitoring, complemented by full-range touring class speakers from the LD Systems DDQ Series.

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“Just like every year, the biggest challenge is to supply power to the two stages in parallel. The battery-powered Cameo spotlights proved particularly helpful in this respect. During the day, we were able to charge the batteries using the venue’s photovoltaic system in order to be able to operate them self-sufficiently in the evening and at night.”
Felix Bücher, Technical Management Live Stages & Teamelead Quality Control Adam Hall Group