FESTIVAL FOCUS
FESTIVAL FOCUS 2019 Live event design and technology highlights from the busy, summer festival season.
MA LIGHTING: SPOT FESTIVAL The annual music festival in the city of Aarhus, Denmark, showcases up-andcoming Danish and Scandinavian talent. Artists and bands from all corners of popular music play various stages across the town. This year’s festivities feature over 25 stages, 200 acts and an extensive MA Lighting presence. Lighting Designer and Programmer Heiða Kristín Ragnarsdóttir used an MA Lighting grandMA3 light console to run lighting on her stage, that was reserved for WILM (Women In Live Music), a European non-profit organisation that supports women working behind the scenes and backstage. This stage was also special this year, because for the first time ever in Denmark, it was run by an all-female tech crew. Ragnarsdóttir explained why she voted for MA: “The MA system is my first choice for everything from theatre to concerts. It is very important for me to be able to personalise the setup to fit my needs of the moment which the grandMA2 software does easily. It is highly reliable, has intuitive
controls and a lot of flexibility in programming which makes it ideal for ‘busking’ festivals. For a stage with a very varied genre of performers it was important that each act had a lighting design to fit their aesthetic. A play on warm and cool along with dramatic side and backlighting gave us a good foundation to accommodate everything from greenlandic metal to reggae for children!” Lighting trainee Louise Bagger added: “Being a self-taught lighting technician and coming from a different type of console, I was excited and a little bit nervous to try out the grandMA3, but thanks to Heiða, I quickly gained an understanding of the console, and of how easy it is to personalise a setup to your exact needs. The console design offers a nice straightforward outlook of all the faders, executers and the two screens. With the touchscreen and keyboard, making changes to your setup is very simple. The experience with WILM and with Heida as my mentor was amazing and I learned a lot about light programming for different types of shows. I really enjoyed the grandMA3 and I cannot wait to get even more hands-on experience with an MA console soon!” www.malighting.com www.spotfestival.dk 84
