Rocking the castles with Robe
- Details
Krystof is headlining this year’s Ceske Hrady tour as well as playing their own shows concurrently. The tour presents the best of Czech ‘multi-genre’ rock - from psy-core favourites Dymytry to crazy punk anarchy with Visaci Zamek - to mixed, family-friendly, sold-out crowds at every stop.
The format is two stages set up side-by-side and ‘flip-flopped’ both exclusively using Robe moving lights supplied by ZL Production which also supplies audio, video and staging. ZL has been servicing this event since 2013.
This year, due to Krystof being the headliner, one of the stages was larger to accommodate their impressive and highly visual show.
Jiri is also working regularly for ZL Production as an LD and their de facto head of lighting. The Plzen-based ZL has also supplied Kristof’s production for many years so there are lots of crossovers.
At the core of the main stage lighting were 20 x Robe BMFL Spots, 37 Spiiders (16 on the house rig and 20 for Krystof’s floor package, rigged on vertical trussing towers) and 12 ColorWash 700E ATs on the front truss for key lighting, plus quantities of strobes and blinders.
They ran two RoboSpot systems, both located FOH and running with BMFL Blades.
For the first time on this event, four of Robe’s new IP rated iPointes were positioned along the front of the stage, where they frequently survived a good soaking as the weather was characteristically unpredictable.
Jiri has worked with Krystof since 2004 and so knows the band and their music very well. To some extent, the Main Stage lighting rig was built around their design and spec which included five upstage columns of 6mm LED screen, but within this he also had to design a ‘universal’ lighting rig that would work for all others playing on the stage for the Ceske Hrady shows.
His console of choice is a ChamSys MQ500 and he programmes and runs all the lights on this.
Krystof are also headlining a string of their own shows this summer, and so for continuity of design and practicality, ZL has another identical stage, roof, lighting system and technical crew which is servicing these as some of the dates were too close to allow it being covered with one system.
For ZL Production, Ceske Hrady is a key summer tour, and they take care of technical production and support for many of organisers Nedomysleno’s shows.
They supply around 30 crew in total for the tour - with another five looking after the Krystof show’s extra lighting and video. All the kit including two Adamson PA systems is travelling in nine trucks, two full of lights and another carrying Krystof’s set and backline.
(Jim Evans)
