The lighting design was created by Entec's Ryan Brown. With no production rehearsals, scant on-site programming time and some seriously high profile shows ahead of him, he took full advantage of Entec's newly updated WYSIWYG system to visualise and pre-plot the show in their Northolt HQ. This proved "Absolutely invaluable" he comments.
It's the third time that Entec has worked with Maan's management, UK Box Office, who approached them to create a "fabulously elegant" lightshow after being inspired by seeing archival images and hearing about previous projects that the company has undertaken.
Gurdas Maan's spectacular career has spanned 30 years during which time he's recorded over 27 albums, written over 200 songs and raised the profile of Punjabi music worldwide, in the process becoming the most influential and prolific Punjabi singer ever.
They wanted a geometric looking lighting rig with a definite architectural look to be an eye-catching core to the show, so Brown decided on a central spherical truss flanked by three 'chevron' shaped trusses per side, all flown at different heights to enhance the overall stage depth.
In total, the rig featured eight trusses. The 6m diameter circle upstage was the visual hub, and this was joined by six gently curved 'eyelash' trusses - as they were dubbed - and a front truss that was used to facilitate lighting positions for washing the stage.
To enable patterns, colour and texturing to be projected onto the circle, the centre section was fitted with a stretched projection screen surface.
Brown chose eight Clay Paky HPE 300 moving lights to be positioned equidistantly around the perimeter, and these enabled - through texturing, colouration, gobo effects and programming - the circle to become the centrepiece that everyone imagined.
The circle - and all the other trusses - were toned with a total of 24 x i-Pix Satellite LED 'bricks'.
Each of the chevrons was rigged with two Vari*Lite V*L3000s, two Martin Professional MAC 700 Washes and two MAC 250 Beams.
The front truss contained six bars of 6 PARs for general washing, some more V*L 3000s and four MAC 700 Washes. For control Brown used a grandMA full size console.
Entec supplied a four-person crew consisting of rigger Pete Schofield, Simon Chandler Honor as crew chief and Sven Jolly on dimmers, complete with Andy Emerson who assisted for the RAH shows.
(Jim Evans)
