MAC TW1, MAC 700 for London’s Barbican

March 29, 2007

Located in London, the Barbican Centre is a large art complex with theatres, concert hall, cinemas, exhibition halls and other facilities. A part of the Barbican Estate, and owned, funded and managed by the City of London, the Centre opened in 1982 as ‘the City’s gift to the nation’ with a proclamation by the Queen as “one of the wonders of the modern world.” Not surprisingly, the venue is very popular with Londoners and tourists alike.

Barbican Hall
Barbican Hall, a 2000 seat venue within the complex, was originally built as a classical orchestral concert hall but today serves as a multipurpose venue holding concerts from classical to rock as well as conferences and other events. An early installation of automated luminaires including Martin MAC 600 units is now being replaced with a substantially larger installation of Martin MAC 700 Profile and MAC TW1 Tungsten units. (The intent is to continue using the MAC 600 fixtures for work at stage floor level and around the venue.) White Light of London supplied all of the new Martin equipment.

“We have a very big lighting rig for the size of the venue because we have to cover so many different types of events,” states Barbican Technical Supervisor Mark Bloxsidge. “The variety of shows we do is enormous so it’s important for us to have as much versatility as possible. It’s not unusual for us to do three different public shows a day.

MAC TW1
“The reason we chose the MAC TW1s is purely because we are an orchestral concert hall first and foremost. The big consideration for us is obviously noise. We very much like the colors were getting out of them as well. It’s much better at theatrical colors which is nice for some of the events we do. It’s nice to be able to use reds and ambers again after all these years. And the zoom on it is very good – it gives us better coverage.” The MAC TW1s 1200 watt halogen light source also makes it easy to color balance with the venue’s generic instruments.

MAC 700
The MAC 700 units allow them to add movement and color to orchestral, jazz and conference presentations. “The reason for choosing the MAC 700s is they give us a fast moving, visual effect we can use on the contemporary shows. We find more and more these days we are called upon to do complex lighting over the top of acoustic events, as well as the electric shows that we do. We do quite a lot of cross over events such as an orchestra playing with a jazz musician or contemporary musicians, or there might be a film or audio visual element.” Another criteria for choosing the new units was that they should be maintainable via the Barbican crew.

The Barbican Hall rig is divided into three parts: an orchestral rig of open white light pointing straight down for the orchestral players; generic lights, parcans and profiles normally hidden in the roof; and a moving light rig. The venue’s acoustic shell opens up and allows the other rigs to come into play when needed. There are six over-stage lighting bars of which three are designated as moving light bars with two additional FOH bridges. The intention is to rig six TW1s and four MAC 700s on each of the three over-stage mover bars, with a trim height of between 8 and 9 meters, using a further six TW1s in a front of house location.

“Because of the very busy schedule we don’t change the rig for every show,” Mark says. “We refocus and recolor but we don’t reposition the units because there is not time so with a lot of kit up there we can accommodate most events.”

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