While the festival features predominantly in its annual schedule, the Montreux Centre also hosts a diverse range of other events, from conferences and exhibitions, to product launches and various other concerts and festivals. Consisting of two main buildings, the older of the two recently underwent an extensive refurbishment with ETC brought on board to provide the lighting and dimming control systems.
ETC Europe's David Gray met with Didier Rocipon, lighting director at the Centre de Congrès, to discuss the requirements for the Miles Davis auditorium and the Conference Centre. Didier explains: "I needed a system which could handle both architectural and stage lighting. It had to be flexible enough to allow me to manage and monitor the lighting in many different rooms and in many different fashions." To meet these needs, Gray specified four ETC Sensor 36 module dimmer racks, each with 72 channels, an ETCNet2 DMX networking system, eight DMX 2-port Nodes, a Unison ER4 control rack, 28 Unison Control stations and Unison Light Manager software. WYSIWYG Design and WYSILink software programs were also part of the package.
"The Sensor dimmer racks give us a total of 288 circuits to play with," explains Rocipon. "At the moment, only half of them are activated so we've got a lot of room to develop the system in the future. Both space and ventilation were a priority for me since the dimmer room at the Montreux Centre is really small. Thanks to the ETCNet2 Ethernet system and nodes we can install fixtures everywhere we need to. I really appreciate the room for manoeuvre that I got with this lighting system."
Because the Montreux Centre plays host to so many different types of events, devising a system where all the lighting could be controlled from one point needed careful consideration. With ETC's Unison Light Manager and control systems throughout the building, any difficulties were overcome without compromise. "The facility to create and save looks on the computer and then activate them in each main room through the Unison control stations is invaluable," said Didier, "especially in such a large building. I asked for a system which would give me the flexibility to create new lighting designs and operate changes quickly and easily and with ETC, that's exactly what I've got." Since the system's been in operation at the Montreux Centre, ETC's David Gray has revisited the site to introduce the products and their full capabilities to the technical staff and to provide training.
In previous years, the event management company which runs the jazz festival has brought in its own rental equipment from dimmers to control systems and lights, but Rocipon hopes that with such a high-tech system now at their fingertips at the Montreux Centre, this will soon be phased out.
(Ruth Rossington)
