Robe puts 2CELLOS in the spotlight
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Birsa has been lighting the band since 2014, when he worked as the production LD for Schengenfest, one of Slovenia’s largest music festivals. The band liked what they saw and asked him onboard, a move development has opened the door to large-scale international touring and one-off shows all around the globe.
“There is always massive scope for lighting 2CELLOs and being visually imaginative due to the vast range of the music” he comments. “Lighting is also an active way in which we like to help draw all the fans into the performance.”
The main moving lights on the US tour were 34 Robe MegaPointes, 24 Spiider wash beams, with five BMFL Spots for key lighting, all supplied together with other lighting kit by Upstaging, who have been a steady investor in the brand in recent years.
Let There Be Cello was a new tour but for continuity and practicalities, like a tight time schedule between the start of it and the end of the last tour, they used the previous touring lighting rig as a base design, freshening up with some new lighting and video elements.
The US tour was split into two segments covering mostly arenas in major cities and including some famous venues like Radio City Music Hall in New York, The Shrine in Los Angeles and Fox Theatres in St Louis, Detroit and Atlanta.
The technical design stayed straightforward and versatile, leaving the stage space clean and uncluttered with Luka Šulić, Stjepan Hauserand and drummer Dušan Kranjc as the focus.
They opted for long straight trusses with a series of drop-down bars to give some variation while keeping quick and easy to load ins / outs in mind, and new for this tour were 18 thin towers, nine each side of the drum riser loaded with LED battens which merged into the LED screens upstage.
The back LED screens were on an automation system and could move position for variations and - in the lower position - to create silhouetting effects.
Crt controlled the lighting via his ChamSys MQ80 console, using an MQ100 Pro as backup.
During programming and operating, he works in tandem with video designer Zaor Kolar who is also mixing five cameras and the playback video. Birsa worked with Upstaging crew chiefs Ron Schilling on the first leg and Jim Fredrickson on the second.
(Jim Evans)
