LD Heiða Kristín Ragnarsdóttir supervises trainee Louise Bagger on the MA3 (photo: Caroline Momma, VPLT)
Denmark - SPOT, an annual music festival in Aarhus showcasing up-and-coming Danish and Scandinavian talents, saw 300 artists and bands perform across 25 stages throughout the city.
Lighting designer and programmer Heiða Kristín Ragnarsdóttir used a grandMA3 light console to run lighting on her stage, reserved for WILM (Women In Live Music) a European non-profit organisation that supports women working behind the scenes and backstage. For the first time, this stage was run by an all-female tech crew.
Ragnarsdóttir reports: “The MA system is my first choice for everything from theatre to concerts. It is very important for me to be able to personalize the setup to fit my needs of the moment which the grandMA2 software does easily. It is highly reliable, has intuitive controls and a lot of flexibility in programming which makes it ideal for ‘busking’ festivals.
“For a stage with a very varied genre of performers it was important that each performer had a lighting design to fit their aesthetic. A play on warm and cool along with dramatic side and backlighting gave us a good foundation to accommodate everything from Greenlandic metal to reggae for children.”
Lighting trainee Louise Bagger adds: “Being a self-taught lighting technician and coming from a different type of console I was excited and a little bit nervous to try out the grandMA3, but thanks to Heida, I quickly gained an understanding of the console, and of how easy it is to personalize a setup to your exact needs. The console design offers a nice straightforward outlook of all the faders, executers and the two screens.
“With the touchscreen and keyboard, making changes to your setup is very simple. The experience with WILM and with Heida as my mentor was amazing and I learned a lot about light programming for different types of shows. I really enjoyed the grandMA3 and I cannot wait to get even more hands-on experience with an MA console soon.”
(Jim Evans)

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