Southlake boasts a grandMA2 full-size with a grandMA2 light as a backup while NRH is outfitted with a grandMA2 light - all purchased from Barbizon Lighting.
"I used to be a touring guy whose console of choice was the original grandMA," says director of lighting/stage design Kyle Russelburg. "When I joined the church in 2008, part of overhauling the current lighting system was upgrading their current lighting console to the grandMA. The staff fell in love with them right away. They were easy to train on and fast to program. They just worked great. The transition from the grandMA 'series 1' to the grandMA2 was simple, too: The syntax really remained close to the grandMA 'series 1'. This really made it easier to upgrade to the grandMA2 console"
Southlake's 4,000-seat auditorium runs 48 moving lights, 92 LED fixtures, 389 dimmers, 18 LED video panels and two media servers, all controlled from the grandMA2. The other two campuses feature 12 moving lights and 50 LED PARs and will be installing a media server.
"The grandMA2 are rock solid," Russelburg reports. "We run them over Art-Net and streaming ACN and have never had a problem. We have a lot of volunteers, and they have been able to run cues and program stuff in a very short amount of time."
Gateway Church annually hosts a conference that brings churches from around the world to the campuses to examine their media installations. "A lot of churches always tell me they could never afford a grandMA2, but after a few minutes of explaining the different products and console sizes and what it does for us, they revise their thinking," says Russelburg. "It's really an easy sale once you dive into the console and show all it can do." A.C.T Lighting is the exclusive distributor of MA Lighting in North America.
(Jim Evans)
