Stavanger Concert Hall installs Esprites
- Details
The venue - busy reopening for an action-packed autumn - has not been quiet during the pandemic period, which has seen the delivery of 66 x Robe Esprite moving lights and 24 ParFect 150s, all part of an ongoing technical upgrade overseen by head of lighting, Nils Foss.
The new fixtures are rigged in the 1,200 seat Fartein Valen concert hall, named after the Norwegian composer Fartein Valen and featuring a magnificent organ made of 65,000 parts. Fartein Valen is home to the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra.
They are also in the fully flexible multi-purpose Zetlitz hall which has capacities of 850 seated and 1,900 standing and is used for a wide range of performance - from rock concerts to contemporary opera. It is named after poet, Lutheran pastor and Stavanger native, Jens Zetlitz.
The Concert Hall has some large highly attractive foyer areas which become flooded with natural light and are also used for various events, and there is a large outdoor amphitheatre for summer shows.
The 48 Robe Esprite Profiles and 18 Esprite PCs are distributed between the two main rooms and have replaced a quantity of older moving lights purchased when the building opened in 2012.
The ParFect 150s have superseded older conventional LED side lights as part of Zetlitz’s permanent house rig.
“It was time for a change,” stated Nils. “We needed fixtures that were more powerful, quieter, lighter in weight and generally more versatile and sustainable.”
The city of Stavanger made the budget available to facilitate arrival of the new lights over the summer - when the Robe fixtures were delivered by Norwegian distributor, Norsk Sceneteknikk AS.
The Esprites were chosen after a demo by Lars Kristian Bakke from Norsk Sceneteknikk which impressed Nils and team. “You can see for yourself how well built and engineered the units are,” said Nils, adding that topping it all off was the “excellent” service they knew they could expect from the distributor.
To be absolutely certain about the decision, Nils also called round some other long term Robe users, finding that everyone he spoke to was “super happy” . . . so he went ahead and placed the order.
The Concert Hall currently has 15 Esprite Profiles and 18 Esprite PCs in the rig, with the balance of the Profiles in the Zetlitz overhead system, joined by the 24 ParFect 150s. The control platform is grandMA3, with new consoles delivered just before the pandemic shutdown also as part of the same upgrade package
