Three intimate shows took place in late January in Caracas, Venezuela; Bogota, Colombia; and Mexico City. Buchanan's Forever, which also featured renowned Latin American musicians, selected Elton John to headline the cause-related musical experience (Jon Bon Jovi headlined the first edition of Buchanan's Forever last year).
The benefit shows followed a series of tour style shows that the artist performed in South America. Unlike the touring shows, which were full Elton John and band performances, the private Buchanan's shows were solo performances - Elton John and his piano.
Lighting designer for Elton John's private shows is Andy Pygott, who also helps out as pre-production support on specific tour dates. He commented, "For the solo shows we normally design the rigs to suit the venue and varying size of each event. For this series we used the same main rig for all shows with a number of additions to suit each venue."
Layout of the venue equipment was arranged on site through production director and production designer Tupac Martir in coordination with Henry Crallan (Elton's production director). "As always we relied on Martin, knowing that the quality of light, colours and overall performance of the kit was as reliable as it can be," Martir stated. "For the Mexico City show, because it was filmed, we added 20 extra lights to the rig to provide more depth to the entire venue."
Because sourcing of equipment locally worldwide is an issue, Pygott says they need to work with fixtures they can get a hold of or easily adapt a show file to work with alternates from. "As such, the designs for the solo shows are based on MAC 2000 Profiles and Washes," he says, "which give us the ability to compromise downward in power to MAC 700's which would still be a suitable fixture for the events. The basis for starting with MAC 2000's is also about good CMY colour mixing. This makes all changes smoother, and the ability to reach a semi-decent red in the colour mixing is much appreciated.
"Also, the ratio of fixture size to light output works well, as with the solo shows it can look unsightly to have beasts of equipment on the floor and looming overhead. The reliability is also very good and the fixtures stay pretty consistently working once the rig is in the air."
For this series of shows, Pygott had seven floor-positioned MAC 2000 Profiles, five directly behind the piano and two either side of the stage, with two MAC 2000 Wash fixtures on the floor at the rear.
He then had three straight trusses, one front of house with six MAC 2000 Profiles and four MAC 2000 Washes; an upstage truss with six MAC Profiles and seven MAC 2000 Washes; and a second upstage truss flown a little lower with seven MAC 2000 Profiles. In addition, he placed LED battens on the rear two trusses.
All lighting equipment for the Buchanan's Forever shows was supplied locally by VLPS (Venezuela), Moving Lights (Colombia), and Total Pro (Mexico).
(Jim Evans)
