Chauvet supports Vandross tribute tour
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Supporting Cambridge’s heartfelt musical tribute is an immersive and colourful Ashely Horton-designed lightshow that features Chauvet Professional Rogue R3 Spot fixtures, supplied by Music Mann.
Horton’s lighting design is smooth, engaging and versatile. The latter quality was extremely important, given the spectrum of songs in Vandross's back catalogue.
Horton's decision to specify the Rogue R3 Spot was influenced by a desire for visual versatility. Thanks to a number of features such as a 300W LED engine, 13° - 37° zoom, and saturated colour mixing, the R3 Spot give him the tools to craft a number of visual moods for a wide variety of songs.
"We were looking for spot fixtures that had a lot to offer in terms of performance and versatility,” comments Horton. “The R3s fit perfectly for cost and flexibility. In the end, I was so impressed by the Rogue R3 that I decided to construct the entire show around it. The sheer brightness and versatility of this fixture provides incredible looks within the theatre venues we’re playing."
Positioning the eight Rogue R3 Spots in his rig all on a single upstage row of truss, Horton is able to integrate the fixture’s varied palette of effects into each song to create a number of different supporting atmospheres. "The gobos, prisms and split colour features give us a cornucopia of different looks to play with," he says. "Quick shifts of colour bursts are making it easy to transform the atmosphere completely from emotive to energetic - and everything in between."
Given the gruelling demands of a 100-show tour, Horton also expressed approval with regard to the R3's reliability. “We are over 40 shows into the tour, and the R3 Spots haven’t given us a single problem," he says. "It is a good feeling to have such confidence in a fixture that’s so integral to our vision of recreating the atmosphere of a Luther Vandross show.”
(Jim Evans)
