Bluegrass in Western Carolina (photo: Eric Rayburn)
USA - The Aiken Bluegrass Festival held this May at the Western Carolina State Fairgrounds featured a healthy dose of rock-infused newgrass sounds alongside traditional bluegrass.
Lighting this year’s festival, John Berret reflected the spirit of both branches of bluegrass music. Aiding him in this endeavour was a collection of Chauvet Professional Rogue fixtures, supplied by Quest Sound Productions.
“I really needed to be aware of the relatively limited space I had available while designing the festival rig,” says Berret. “At the same time that it had to be compact, my rig also needed to be versatile enough to create unique looks for 19 different groups representing different generations of bluegrass.”
With limited height and room for his design, Berret optimised the placement of all fixtures to enhance the impact of his lighting. He hung six Rogue R2 Spots and two Rogue R1 Beams on upstage truss, as well as ground stacking four Rogue R1 Beams on totems below the truss and four Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures about 3’ in front of the R1 Beams.
Adding the four Rogue R1 FX-B units gave Berret the impact of 20 moving lights, since each fixture has five independently controlled LED heads. Berret had these heads going in different directions at some points, then had them act in unison at others, to reflect the music being performed.
“The colour mixing, dimming and shape of the light from the Rogue FX-B gave me so much more freedom throughout the festival,” says Berret. “I was able to drive all the tripping concert goers over the edge with the seamless rainbow of colours and beams they produced. They paint air exceptionally well.”
(Jim Evans)

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