The tour consists of 22 shows running for six consecutive weekends in June & July, bringing live music to seven forest locations for an evening of entertainment for all the family. This year's broad spectrum of acts includes Keane, Simply Red, Blondie, JLS and The Saturdays.
Pearce Hire works across the whole tour, coordinating two teams and sets of equipment to provide all the site power and both site & stage lighting. This year has seen a significant change in the lighting design for the stage with the company utilising i-Pix BB4 LED Washlights instead of the PARcans previously used, halving the power consumption of the lighting rig from previous years. The rig also includes MAC 700 Profiles along with a handful of generic fixtures.
John Huson, Pearce Hire project manager said, "With The Forestry Commission we're interested in exploring ways of making the concerts greener so this year we've designed a rig based around the incredibly bright i-Pix BB4 Washlights. Not only does this reduce the power consumption but it also gives more scope for dynamic effects than the traditional PARcan rigs of previous years."
"One other consideration when designing for these shows is that for the vast majority of the show it is largely daylight, only getting dark towards the very end of the show. Using a high output LED source not only provides the punch required for a daylight show but also provides some 'eye candy' in the rig, and we've designed a truss layout to maximise this."
Pearce Hire also invested in Robert Juliat Cyrano followspots for this year's tour supplying between two or four spots per artist.
Other practices that Pearce Hire has introduced to reduce the power include the addition of its new photo-cell light sensors onto the site lighting fixtures. These automatically turn fixtures off during day light hours saving both fuel and man power as previously this would have been done manually or left on.
(Jim Evans)
