ESS’ US team has just completed a Memorial Day Concert, honouring US soldiers, at Auditorium Shores in Austin, Texas. Grammy Award winners Asleep At The Wheel and Travis Trite headlined the day, performing on an ESS Orbit 15m stage. A second ESS stage hosted five bands billed to provide a backdrop to a traditional Texan barbecue ‘cook-off competition’. In true Texan style, 30 accomplished contestants arrived with their barbecues toed onto the site by trucks and prepared their fayre over 24 hours throughout the course of the event. "Perhaps this kind of event should have been a feature at the Queen’s Jubilee party?" mused Greg Howell, ESS vice-president for sales and marketing.
Austin’s Parks and Recreation Division, sponsors of the 2002 'blues on the green' concert series, has asked ESS to provide a stage each Wednesday at Zilker Park for seven consecutive weeks throughout June and July. This event draws huge crowds and is something of an institution within the US’s fastest growing city. Around the same time, ESS’ US team will be attending to a 4 July Independence Day Celebration event, providing two stages including an Orbit system once more at Waterloo Park in Texas.
Towards the end of July ESS will be shipping a substantial amount of equipment from it’s US base to the Foro Sol site in Mexico City for a Britney Spears show. ESS has already been involved with Britney Spears in Australia and Japan this year. Tim Norman, managing director for ESS, said: "We have become adept at dealing with events within monarchies and republics at the same time. It’s a wonder that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office hasn’t seconded us for diplomatic duties."
(Lee Baldock)
