SUMMER HIGHLIGHTS: Bristol Sounds, Pride and Harbourfest - Part I

Summer ‘22 - so far, so good!

Here at King Sound, we’ve had a fantastic, busy, crazy summer but we made it through and enjoyed every part of the challenge.

We’ve still have August fully booked ahead of us but thought we’d share with you a few summer summer highlights so far.

If you’ve missed ‘‘Summer Highlights - Part II’’, click here to read about our busy summer.

BRISTOL SOUNDS — 22-27 June.

Bringing a diverse bill of live music to the heart of the city, the open-air summer concert series is one of the Bristol’s iconic shows and being our home town gig we were thrilled to be asked back for the seventh year running by promoters Crosstown Concerts.

Following a two-year hiatus, Bristol Sounds marked its return to the city’s much-loved harbourside with an expanded schedule of headliners over the 6 night run of shows: Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, The War on Drugs, Elbow, Jungle, First Aid Kit and Paolo Nutini all graced the stage at Amphitheatre to sell out audiences and great acclaim. We provided audio, stage management and crew for the shows with the audio package featuring our new L-Acoustics K2 system (which was greatly appreciated by all the visiting engineers) and Digico SD12 consoles. 6 days of early starts and late nights took its toll on our crew, but they remained rock solid though out.

SUMMER HIGHLIGHTS: Bristol Sounds, Pride and Harbourfest - Part II

Next stop was BRISTOL PRIDE — 9 July.

Not only one of the UK’s largest Pride events, but one of Bristol’s largest festivals, Pride is something we’ve been closely involved with since the beginning. Returning to the Bristol Downs after a Covid enforced break Bristol Pride was back - bigger, bolder and glitzier than ever before!

If you’ve missed ‘‘Summer Highlights - Part I’’, click here to read about our busy summer.

Perhaps our biggest full production gig of the year, we provided sound, lights, crew and staging over the whole site with kit spread across the five performance stages. The main stage, which was headlined by the fantastic Carly Ray Jepson, featured our 15M Orbit stage and a full-on festival sound and lighting system featuring our new L-Acoustics K2 system, Grand MA3 lighting console and Digico audio desks. All other stages enjoyed technical upgrades which kept the crowds dancing, laughing and having fun all day long. Site wide we proved over 150 boxes of PA, mostly L-Acoustics, over 300 square metres of staging and many dozens of lighting fixtures all from our extensive stocks of equipment. The build, break and 1 day show took up 8 full days and we employed around 40 people to help our full time staff produce the event.

And finally HARBOURFEST — 15 - 17 July (50th anniversary this year!)

The festival attracts over 250,000 visitors to enjoy over 120 hours of entertainment, across seven stages from spoken word to the latest Bristol musical talent, local dance performers, world class circus and on-water activity.

Each area of the one mile long festival was carefully developed by the Bristol Harbour Festival programmers Cirque Bijou, Thekla, Trinity Community Arts, Tony Benjamin, My Future My Choice, Rebecca Tantony, Grain Barge, Brunel's ss Great Britain and Jelli Records. A fleet of feature vessels was staying in the harbour as well as over 300 visiting boats, yachts and ships.