2008 was a busy year
Wednesday, 28 Jan 2009
2008 was an extremely busy year for Alan Whelan and Solitaire.
The year started as always with Alan acting as sound engineer on several high end corporate functions during January and February.
With the arrival of March came the debut tour of Irish Nights. Irish Nights is produced by Solitaire and GFD promotions. All the music and albums form the show were recorded and produced by Alan at Solitaire Recording Studio. Alan also acts as Sound Engineer and Production Manager when the show is touring. Irish Nights performed 9 weeks and 52 dates in The Netherlands from March to May 2008.
From mid May onwards, Alan acted as sound Engineer on several of the major Irish music festivals including Oxygen, and Electric Picnic where he was FOH on the Body And Soul Mainstage. Alan mixed such bands as The Orb who headlined the stage, and amongst others a large Irish Music jam session including, Liam O Maoinlai, Steve Cooney, Mary Coughlin, Kila. The stage operated from 10am to 4am every day and a huge array of musical styles and acts appeared.
Alan also undertook the Technical Managers role on the Mainstage and 2nd stage on the Dun Laoghaire Festival Of World Cultures. Over 20,000 people turned out to see the free concerts at the mainstage over the weekend.
When the summer ended, actually the next day after Electric Picnic, Alan went to Belfast to start work as Production Manager and Sound Engineer with "On Eagles WIng", a large scale musical. 5 weeks of rehearsals were followed by 3 weeks of shows at the Belfast Opera House, The Helix in Dublin and the Millenium Forum in Derry. The show is due to tour the USA later in 2009.
Finally in Nov Alan went to Prague for preproduction on the Gaelforce Dance tour of Eastern Europe 2008 and the first show of the tour, before heading out with the show to Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia. Gaelforce played in venues ranging from 1000 to 5000 seats over 5 weeks.
After that, it was mid December and time for a well deserved break over Christmas.
