An Evening with
Michael Bublé
Creating Intimacy in an Arena Setting
By Andrew King. Photos by Jay Blakesberg.
H
is voice is unmistakable and
his charm abundant, but
arguably, Michael Bublé’s
greatest asset as a performer
is the way he so effortlessly
connects with each and every member of
his audience.
Even in massive venues, the charismat-
ic entertainer can make tens of thousands
of admirers seemingly vanish, as though his
soulful baritone is coming from a small jazz
club stage just for you.
The internationally-heralded artist’s
latest tour is built around that unique ability,
and uses innovative audio technologies and
a clever system design to enhance the ef-
fect. Dubbed An Evening with Michael Bublé,
the 91-show run is the singer’s first in four
years and finds him and his touring band
joined by a local orchestra on each date.
Subsequently, the audio systems support-
ing the tour – including a sizeable house PA
system – are both expansive and complex.
At one point in the set, though, a small
ensemble joins Bublé on a central B-stage
for a selection of songs harkening back to
his days (actually) performing in small clubs
30 PROFESSIONAL SOUND
MICHAEL BUBLÉ ONSTAGE WITH MEYER MJF210 WEDGES
and lounges. For that portion of the show,
the main stage system is switched off and ar-
rays flown over the B-stage create a self-con-
tained, in-the-round system that localizes the
sound of his voice to his actual position for a
closer connection with the audience.
Altogether, it makes for an incredibly
compelling live experience from an artist
who has built his career on consistently
delivering just that.
“This tour design grew out of Michael’s de-
sire to have a more musical B-stage experi-
ence,” begins Craig Doubet, the artist’s go-to
FOH engineer since 2007. “On prior tours,
we’ve had B-stages at the FOH position –
sometimes in excess of 30 metres from the
main stage – and the delay from the PA into
open mics makes for a very difficult singing
situation.”
Bublé and his team had long sought
a solution to the lingering issue, and when
the staging design for An Evening with
Michael Bublé was revealed, Doubet and his
collaborators on the PA design recognized
their opportunity.
In total, there are over 170 Meyer
Sound loudspeakers deployed between
the two systems, with most coming from
the LEO family. Like all of the other audio
components for the tour, the package was
supplied by live production giant Solotech.
The main stage system boasts 16
LEO-M and 16 LYON-M and wide-dispersion
LYON-W cabinets for the front/out arrays, an
additional 28 LYON cabinets for the sides,
and a dozen flown 1100-LFCs to reinforce
the low end. Ground fill comes via eight
MINA and two JM-1P loudspeakers plus a
complement of four LFC-900s for bass.
As for the B-stage system, it includes
two long-throw arrays with five LEO-M and
six MICA array enclosures per side; side arrays
with 14 MICA boxes each; rear arrays of eight
LEOPARD boxes each facing back towards
the main stage; and two flown sub arrays
with six 700-HPs each. On the ground are
two 900-LFCs and seven MINAs for front fill.
Doubet had an inkling of this design a
few years back, based on a previous staging
set-up that had catwalks snaking through
the arena floor. Around that time, then-sys-
tem tech Louis-Philippe Maziade of Solo-
tech – one of the two monitor engineers on