Connecticut's Calvary Life Church Re-Emerges with Help From Elation And Global Truss

On Wednesday morning February 2, 2011, Calvary Life Family Worship Center had the roof fall in -- literally. During one of the snowiest winters in Connecticut history, the Cheshire, Connecticut church's three-year-old building collapsed under the weight of heavy ice and snow, its pastor and several other ministry leaders narrowly escaping the calamity.

Totally destroyed, the church had to be re-built from scratch. When Calvary Life's new building opened just over a year later in May 2012, everyone agreed that a miraculous re-birth had taken place. The $3.5 million facility is not only larger and more sturdily built than its predecessor, it offers church members a full range of amenities including a basketball-court gym, fitness room, café, and youth center.

The focal point of the building is its 700-seat main sanctuary, which features a state-of-the-art lighting/sound/video system designed by Advanced Systems & Technologies, LLC (AST) (http://www.ast-av.com or http://www.soundvideolighting.com). Both the house and theatrical lighting systems are built around products from Elation Professional and Global Truss, including: 35 Elation Opti Tri Pars; 20 Elation Pro Par 56s; four Elation Platinum Spot 5Rs; two Elation Antari HZ350 hazers; one Global Truss 20' truss circle; one Global Truss 10' truss circle; and an additional 110' of Global Truss 12" x 12" box truss. There are also six Mega Tri Par Profile fixtures from Elation's sister company American DJ.

Like Calvary Life's new building itself, the sanctuary's lighting setup was designed to go beyond the merely functional. One of its highlights is a circular configuration of trussing that fills the center of the room, giving the appearance of a metal chandelier. Designed by Terry McCarthy, systems designer and chief engineer at AST, the dual-circle structure was constructed with a 20' outer ring of truss and an offset 10' inner ring from Global Truss. Additionally, there are 110' of box truss, providing "great angles for back, upstage, and downstage lighting positions," said McCarthy.

"This is a very contemporary church. We wanted to give it an innovative design," McCarthy said of the truss centerpiece. "Many hours were spent focusing on the technical infrastructure of all the audio, video, and lighting systems. The lighting, however, is the most innovative."

The house lighting system includes 35 Elation Opti Tri Pars, a DMX RGB color-changing par can with 18 3W tri-color LEDs. The Opti Tri Par units are all individually addressed with 140 separate channels of control. "The 140 channels of data enable the lighting designer to create thousands of color schemes," said McCarthy.

For the theatrical lighting system, McCarthy used 20 Elation Pro Par 56 LEDs, 16 of them flown and four serving as uplighting. There are also four Elation Platinum Spot 5R moving heads, which can create a variety of effects, with features like eight dichroic colors, 22 gobos, a prism, variable frost filter, motorized iris, 0-100% mechanical dimmer, and variable speed shutter/strobe. The theatrical lights were chosen to provide "color for creativity, great video wash and added effects, in addition to 36 channels of 1,200W dimming," said McCarthy.

As with the 140-channel house system, a lot of flexibility was built into the theatrical lighting system, added McCarthy. "The theatrical system consists of 96 20A circuits distributed on high quality, professional labeled modular raceways. It also features 10 channels of Elation optical DMX control distribution, enabling connectivity at six locations on stage, as well as multiple connection points on each truss."

Calvary Life officials and members were amazed and grateful when they first saw the extraordinary building that had arisen in the wake of the disaster, and there certainly has been no shortage of enthusiasm for the new cutting-edge lighting system. "The church loves the lighting," said McCarthy, "and many comment on the truss as soon as they enter." Plus, with products from Elation and Global Truss, "the church received an exceptional value for their money."

See Elation Professional and Global Truss at PLASA Focus: Stamford, November 12-13.