Michael Franti hits Red Rocks with ChamSys
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Franti’s iconoclastic and richly fertile imagination was on full display at his 13 July appearance with his band Spearhead at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Supporting their multifarious performance was a Matt “Jonezy” Jones designed light and video show run with a ChamSys MagicQ MQ80 console.
Kicked off after the conclusion of his Love Out Loud Yoga class, Franti’s show took the audience through a weaving musical journey that touched rock, hip hop, blues, dance, music and a host of other genres all sprinkled with the star’s unique poetic cadence. Jones’ lightshow moved along with the music, displaying a range of looks created with a rig that was meticulously arranged so as not to detract from the geological beauty of its setting in Red Rocks Amphitheater.
“I designed the light rig around the natural setting, with as much rock-viewing as possible,” said Jones. “Another goal was to have each moving head hit the rocks throughout the set. There were quite a few songs in the set that had long music-video-style content, so we had to include a video wall upstage centre, but again we designed that structure to allow as much rock-viewing as possible.”
To add to the versatility of his rig, Jones set up a busk page on his MagicQ MQ80. Using the copy-linked feature, he found it easy to create a whole new busk page for his tech to operate for the opening artists. Discussing the busking-friendly nature of his console,
Jones noted: “I punt a good deal during Franti shows. As I tell everyone, ChamSys consoles are the best-designed tools for busking. I always have a ‘sidecar’ consisting of a single Extra Wing managing speed and size masters for effects and different fixture types, so being able to do stuff on the fly in the programmer, yet having speed/size masters governing these effects, is massive for me.”
Jones worked with a variety of control protocols: DMX for lighting, ACN for LED tape and ArtNet for video. His MagicQ MQ80 worked seamlessly with all protocols. There were no special configurations required for DMX or ArtNet. “The LED tape brains we got from our LED tape sub-vendor, work best with Unicast ACN, so I just specified an IP address for each universe,” he said. “After that we were off to the races.”
(Jim Evans)
