The 13th Ultra Music Festival drew well over 100,000 techno fans to Miami's Bicentennial Park in late March, expanding to a three-day format for the first time. The event, which has developed a huge following among techno and electronic music fans, featured more than 300 DJs and numerous bands performing on six stages. Headliners on the main stage included The Chemical Brothers, Duran Duran and Tiësto.
Other stages included the Live Stage, Carl Cox & Friends, UMF Korea, Root Society and the Heineken Dome.
Steve Lieberman from SJ Lighting Inc. was the lighting designer for the main stage and festival at large. He selected an array of Clay Paky fixtures, supplied by AG Light and Sound Inc., and worked alongside Patrick Dierson to program the Carl Cox Arena.
"The Main Stage had several acts per day that had full production riders to fill," said Lieberman. "So, for the festival package, we decided to make the wings of the stage a very strong visual presence with large-scale video and heavy lighting effects. We also added 40ft flame cannons on the top of the structure.
Clay Paky was the primary lighting on the Main Stage, with Alpha Spot HPE 1500s the fixture of choice for the performance area. "Their great zoom range, fantastic iris functions and outstanding aerial gobos were some of the features that really made this fixture stand out," Lieberman notes.
Clay Paky Alpha Beam 1500s were placed on 55ft towers offstage of the performance area. "These fixtures have a tremendous output and really gave me the capability of creating very big looks with our stage no matter what needed to happen on the performance area," he states.
Lieberman also placed eight Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures on the downstage edge for beam aerial effects. "Don't be fooled by their small package - I was lighting up buildings across the highway with these fixtures," he says. "They kept up with the rest of the rig with no problem at all; considering that the rest of the system was all 1500w units, I was very impressed."
(Jim Evans)
