Christmas Spectacular featured a combination of favourite music classics, breathtaking dance, thrilling lights, sensational lasers and a fantastic indoor firework finale. Special guests included West End star Kerry Ellis and chorister Jack Topping.
Royal Albert Hall (RAH) lighting design and systems manager, Richard Thomas utilised the venue's Jands Vista T4 console to control the ambitious lighting production.
"The vision for my design was to produce an exciting and dynamic light show in conjunction with lasers and pyrotechnic effects, to complement the music, dance, ballet, and vocal performances," says Richard. "The music programme was quite varied, with music from well-known ballets, operas, musicals and the movies, and therefore the lighting reflected this with a combination of subtle and colourful looks to more bold and dramatic lighting effects."
The design utilised the RAH lighting rig, with extras, and consisted of some 130 moving lights - including Clay Paky Alpha Washes & Spots, Vari*Lite VL 3000 & 2500 Spots, Robe Pointes and ETC Source 4 Revolutions.
"The Vista helps by making the job of creating looks with large numbers of fixtures very quick and easy," says Richard. "You are able to spend more time looking at the stage, focussing on the lighting and less time worrying about the programming, which for a show with a load in, a morning rehearsal and two performances in one day makes a real difference."
The Jands Vista console range will be showcased at Prolight & Sound, Frankfurt in March on the stand of UK dealer, A.C. Entertainment Technologies (stand location 9.0, E63).
(Jim Evans)
