UK - Lighting designer Tim Routledge used his new grandMA2 light console to control lighting for The Stereophonics' high profile 'homecoming' gig at Cardiff Castle last month. The event - which saw the 10,000 tickets pegged at 1998 prices, the last time the band played the venue - celebrated the launch of their new album Keep Calm & Carry On.
Routledge a founder of grandPA, the UK's only programming house for the grandMA control platform, was asked to light this show plus a warm-up at London's Electric Ballroom, following a TV special he did for the band at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium - for which his lighting design won a Welsh BAFTA Award.
grandPA was among the first UK companies to invest in the new grandMA2 consoles when it was released. "It's a beautifully comfortable desk to use," says Routledge, "with ergonomics and design carefully and intelligently thought-through in all ways."
Fixtures run from the desk included six A&O Falcon Beam 3K searchlights, several Robe moving lights, and a pair of ETC Source Fours which key lit lead singer Kelly Jones.
The truss towers were interconnected with 48 horizontal scaffolding bars to which 250 ChromaQ ColorBlock LED units were attached, mostly configured as four-cell colour changing blinders, and all pixel-mapped through the grandMA2.
There were also 2-lite blinders and Atomic strobes positioned at various points within the ColorBlock 'matrix'. All the lighting equipment was supplied by Blackburn-based HSL.
