The Nova’s Red Room Global Tour party arrived into Dubai on Sunday morning on Qantas QF2 and headed straight to the Shangri-La Hotel which was base camp for a three-night stay in the UAE. The 42-story hotel was also home to the third and final international performances before the tour returns to Sydney.
Nova organised a desert safari on the Sunday afternoon which included some dune driving and dinner under the stars. A special treat for the tour party was a performance from Optus-sponsored YouTuber Sarah Stone who has been travelling with the Optus team on the trip. Stone is a songwriter but her YouTube channel is famous for her quirky covers of pop songs. Three tunes have close to 2m or more views, with her version of “Royals” now close to 10m views. For her desert performance, Stone performed an original and a couple of covers.
On Monday night in Dubai the most diverse night of entertainment took place.
First up was budding UK solo star Aston Merrygold who is in the midst of chart success for his first solo single “Get Stupid”. Merrygold was a member of The X Factor runners-up JLS. He flew in from the UK on the morning of the Dubai show for Nova and then left for the airport to return for a breakfast TV spot in Manchester Tuesday morning. “Get Stupid” was the highlight of a short set with a couple of other tunes from his first solo album due soon. The other highlight was Merrygold’s serenading of Nova Entertainment’s group marketing manager Leanne Glamuzina who was plucked from the audience.
The Dubai headline act was Rudimental and they flew in especially from Asia for Nova. Like Ed Sheeran, Rudimental found the Red Room gig much different from what they have been used to. Earlier this month they played in front of 75,000 at Wembley Arena.
The club inside the Shangri-La holds slightly less, but it had a good crowd for a Monday night British double bill featuring drum and bass and pop. With respect to the other artists, Rudimental have been the coolest artists to grace a Red Room stage this tour, and they didn’t have any trouble whipping the Nova competition winners into a frenzy and getting the rest of the club hipsters engaging too.
The band played some material from their forthcoming album, “We The Generation”.
The tourists have one more day in Dubai before it’s back aboard QF2 for the remainder of the trip home.
Hear more: Smallzy’s Surgery on Nova at 7pm has special Red Room Global Tour highlights that Smallzy and EP Zach have been sending home.
Day 10 preview: Red Room photo highlights and what does the tour party do on a day off?
Photos: Rudimental onstage for Nova at the Shangri-La Dubai
Aston Merrygold serenades Nova’s Leanne Glamuzina