Johnson had just been using a grandMA2 light on the Maximo Park tour, and was happy running the version 2 software, while rental company Lite Alternative has also just invested in grandMA2 consoles. So he and Normandale made a joint decision to re-programme the Chapman tour onto grandMA 2.
Johnson did this using a grandMA2 full-size and a visualiser, which was particularly helpful, and it took only a day. "It's not like you are learning a new console - all the features that everyone loves from the grandMA 'series 1' are great on the grandMA2". He then transferred the show onto a grandMA2 light for the European tour, taking another light for backup - supplied, together with all the lighting hardware by Lite Alternative. In the US, Chicago-based Upstaging is supplying two grandMA2 full size consoles.
Normandale's design breaks the mould of traditional cued light shows, and follows a 'passage of time' concept, based on a sunrise and sunset taking place over a 45 minute crossfade, denoting a journey of progression that is independent of any of the songs.
The rig is a mixture of Martin moving lights, nine 48-way ColorBlaze LED strips run in multi-cell mode, 12 MR16 birdies, 10 profiles and nine 1000W light bulbs dangling on different length cords over the stage. These are controlled by the artist via a footswitch pedal that fires one of the grandMA2 cue stacks.
The sun is projected by various different fixtures - according to the time of day - onto a white upstage cyc, its movement triggered through the console via 20 cues in the sunrise/sunset stack. It rises on stage right and sets on stage left.
All the cue stacks all have multiple timings applied, which is extremely easy to do with the grandMA2. The console is also triggering four layers of video content stored on an Arkaos media server.
(Jim Evans)
