LOS ANGELES — When Yanni Voices began its 51-city tour of the U.S. and Canada last spring, the production crew used a pair of grandMA2 consoles to coordinate the lighting and visuals that gave the audiences glimpses of even farther-flung destinations, from the Taj Mahal to African landscapes and the Great Wall of China.
Yanni, the self-taught Greek pianist/composer, is touring to promote his 14th studio album and live DVD. He was accompanied by an international array of performers, including Chloe, Ender Thomas, Leslie Mills and Nathan Pacheco. Yanni Voices will resume with engagements in Mexico and South America later this year.
Gary Westcott served as lighting and video director, with Wally Lees programming lighting. Westcott was initially hired to put together video clips to be projected as part of Roy Bennett’s lighting design for the TV show, Yanni Voices in Acapulco.
“The producers liked Roy’s design so much that they decided to modify it slightly and take it on tour,” said Westcott. “So the original programmer Wally Lees and I used the grandMA to reprogram the lighting and video to accommodate those changes and the addition of more lighting fixtures. Yanni Voices is a very theatrical show with a lot going on; it’s a very big production.”
Bennett’s lighting works with Westcott’s collage of video imagery, including abstract graphics along with the international landmarks, graceful archways and Buddhist and Hindu statuary. The imagery appears on LSI Industries’ V-Lite supplied by Nocturne Productions.
“I ran two grandMAs separately to program the video and lighting,” Westcott noted. “But for the show, one grandMA ran the other; 70 percent of the cues were on timecode and the rest were operator-controlled at the opening and close of the show.”
Westcott and Lees had programmed the original TV show in Acapulco on a grandMA1 system, but changed over to the grandMA2 for the tour, with those systems running under emulation of grandMA1 software.
“I was very excited to use the new console,” Westcott said. “And I love all its bells and whistles. I like the new button layout; the whole texture and feel of the console is very good. It also offers 10 more faders, which are something I’ve always wanted. It feels very modern and the displays are so much better, too: The larger monitor and multi-touch are a much needed development,” Westcott added.
Upstaging supplied the lighting package for the tour. A.C.T Lighting is the exclusive distributor of grandMA in North America.
For more information, visit www.actlighting.com.
