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RG Jones Celebrates 90 years

RG Jones directors, staff, alumni and clients celebrated the unique landmark year in true audio style at the home of one of its closest clients, All England Tennis Club at the end of November.

This historical event brought together many old faces; some stretching back over decades. The founder’s son Robin Jones attended along with his own son, Peter Jones. Sound consultant and RG Jones’ Senior Project Manager Simon Honywill gave an exceptional speech recounting many memories that he had of the company throughout the years.

The All England Lawn Tennis Club was extremely supportive and helped the company celebrate in style in The Terrace debenture lounge, starting the evening with a tour of The Clubs renowned museum (including a virtual reality tour which is highly recommended). Plus head coach of The All England Club and Master of Ceremonies, Dan Bloxham was on hand to coach guests on the Nintendo Wii Sports and take them for a once in a lifetime tour around the grounds.

Communications Director Sarah Gellas explained “The Terrace at The Club is a beautiful long wide room so we decided to split it into various areas, attempting to reflect the company’s glory. Mixing old with new, we utilised the latest in Sennheiser’s mobile connect – an assistive listening app delivering high definition sound to mobile”.

“Aside from a distributed sound system running background music, we programmed different channels on the mobile connect unit for each area of the room and supplied guests with headphones and a password” continued Managing Director Andrew Williamson “guests could tune in to hear my business partner, John Carroll narrate the history of the company, whilst viewing the exhibit containing some of the greatest pieces from our collection – including the legendary Marconi microphone that the company proudly owns. This mic boasts a history of extraordinary people throughout the century including King George VI and Winston Churchill. We also had a channel for the silent disco area running the mega mix from the studio hits, one dedicated for hard of hearing (for speeches) and finally a channel for the Nintendo Wii”.

It was truly a family affair with contributions from lots of RG Jones alumni – both present and past. John Carroll narrated a full history of the company, ex studio engineer Ben Robbins compiled the mega mix of songs from the studio hits (which is now being played on the hold music for those who are really interested). Peter Key kindly recorded the stings for the intro to the speeches and Gerry Kitchingham provided pictures and memorabilia for the display.

A giant cardboard cut-out of the old Morris J-Type van provided the cover for the sound engineer for the night, Sam King. We also commissioned a life-size picture of the old Morden studio and the view from FOH at Pyramid stage so guests could see them in more detail and get some idea of actually being there. A gobo image of RG Jones spun around the room whilst people celebrated with fine wine and champagne.

“The Clubs in-house catering company FMC provided an array of tasty delights” continued Sarah “we really couldn’t have been more grateful for all their help. Sennheiser and Yamaha also got involved in helping us make this event into something unique. We are now putting together a video to commemorate the evening and it was so great to catch up with so many old faces. LSI published an article on the party which appeared in their December edition to mark the occasion and we’re looking forward to celebrating our centenary – might have to get started on the planning but first we have had a number of requests for a museum, so watch this space”.

Lighting Sound International Article December 2017

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