Serenity of Summer for Korn with Ayrton
- Details
Two-time Grammy award-winning alt-metal band Korn was busy crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic this summer, firstly headlining the 17-date Serenity of Summer tour in North America, before crossing over to Europe for a festival run and then back to the US for further leg on home territory.
Church elaborates on the details: “There were a huge number of Ayrton DreamPanel-Twin fixtures on this design, along with a supporting number of Ayrton NandoBeam-S9 and NandoBeam-S3 units, 15 MagicBlade-FX and half a dozen MagicRing-R9 fixtures. As this outing was split, design-wise, into three distinctly different sections, it was important to pick fixtures that were versatile and could adapt to our differing stage settings without losing any of their dynamic performance.
“For example, after the SOS tour in North America, the European festival leg featured a new version of the central stair riser MagicPanel-R design we did last year, and I’ve just finished the last US run where we reinstated the SOS ‘pods’ but this time sitting on stage framed by Nandobeam-S3 and MagicBlade-FX.
“With this summer’s dates we wanted to go a step further in both design and look,” continues Church. “The introduction of the DreamPanel-Twin allowed us to combine two different types of stage effects: lighting fixtures and video. The hybrid nature of the fixture gave me a lot of options to create my show moods.”
Church arrayed 64 DreamPanel-Twin fixtures in four 4x4 ‘pods’ which he rigged as an upstage wall above the band. “Mounting the DreamPanel-Twins in the pods made transport, installation and handling very easy and effective,” he says. “In addition, we got a really imposing look. We also combined the video screen of the DreamPanel-Twin fixtures with video projection onto our white cabinets we stacked up behind the band. The old school touch of Mesa cabs and modern fixtures suited the band’s profile exactly, as well as supporting the versatility of the band’s performance.”
Church also located 20 NandoBeam-S3 upstage of the band at floor level, and added a row of 15 MagicBlade-FX fixtures along the top of the cabinets, using both sets of fixtures as support for the main stage design in all spaces. Six MagicRing -R9 units were rigged on the upstage truss which was flown relatively low between the cabinets and the pods that are such a central element to the look of the stage.
Finally, the Nandobeam-S9 fixtures were hung on the downstage truss and provided a solid front wash, proving that Ayrton units can provide that quality of vital base lighting as well as all the dynamic icing on the top.
(Jim Evans)
