Sting Under Maxxyz Control

Sting will kick off his ”Sacred Love” tour on January 23rd at the James L. Knight Center in Miami. The Maxxyz lighting console will be there every step of the way on what is said to be a two-year worldwide tour. Prior to the tour however the ex-Police frontman performed a series of one off shows in London, Paris, New York and Chicago. On each of those four sneak peek performances the Maxxyz lighting console was used to operate a Stan Crocker-designed MAC dominated lighting rig.

On a perfect autumn evening in early October, Sting hit the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park before an estimated crowd on 40,000 for a free show in the shadow of the downtown skyline. The concert followed the release of Sting’s tenth solo album, “Sacred Love” and was dubbed “Sting Live at the Blue Five”.

Spread across the large 140-foot stage were a battalion of Upstaging-supplied MAC 2000 Wash, MAC 2000 Profile and a smattering of other automated lights, all controlled via a Maxxyz console.

Maxxyz Programmer Rob Smith reported that the Maxxyz ”performed very well” on the Sting Grant Park show. Rob, who has a background in touring shows working with the likes of Melissa Etheridge, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Beck and many others, was a Maxxyz Beta-test programmer and first used the console professionally on a Sting DVD taping at the Mayan Theatre in Los Angeles last May.

At Neg Earth in London, supplier for the European dates, LD Stan Crocker designed the looks for the show using the Martin ShowDesigner (MSD), which was networked together with Rob’s on board Maxxyz MSD. While Sting shows in London on BBC2 and Paris were theatre gigs, as was the first North American show at the Hammerstein in New York, the Chicago show was a large outdoor production, requiring more fixtures and extra programming.

“I used 8 outputs which means I didn’t need to bother with ArtNet boxes, which I would have had to do using other consoles,” Rob commented. “I took the show data from the New York theatre rig and added fixtures for the Chicago show. I then inflated cues to cover more lights, using the same cue structure and same fixture groupings. This made programming for the show relatively fast. Although it wasn’t a huge undertaking, it still took a bit of work.”

Rob found several new features on the Maxxyz a great time saver when programming the show. The Fast Focus feature in MSD on the Maxxyz allows you to speed up fixture placement by using MSD to select lights and focus them by clicking on a point in 3D space. That group can then be saved to a cue or preset focus and recalled. ”Fast Focus was a great help by making focusing quicker,” Rob stated. “It doesn’t matter how many lights you’re talking about – 40 or 400 – from your drawing you can choose a group of lights and focus all at once. You can store it, do single points and fan from point to point.” Fast Focus Fan is another time saving feature allowing you to click on lights and fan them out evenly across the drawing.

Fixture Filter, a Maxxyz feature that allows programmers to grab a range of lights, remembers the order they were sequenced and filters lighting parameters based on selection order. The ‘block’ feature in the Fixture Filter allows you to do the same but with sequential blocks of fixtures. ”The Fixture Filter allowed me to build groups and do focuses in blocks, all my front spots for example, which is a big help when you’re dealing with big rigs,” Rob commented. “You can also move lights around in the spreadsheet, which is nice to do. Both the Fast Focus and Fixture Filter are great time savers that enhance your ability to deal with many fixtures.”

Richard ”Nook” Schoenfeld also used the Maxxyz console to program the lighting for the opening bands. Nook also programmed the field and entryway lighting.

For Sting’s upcoming tour, Seth Robinson takes the reins as lighting director and will be programming the show on a Maxxyz. Stan Crocker is the lighting designer with lighting supply by Upstaging.