Busy Summer Festival Season for Martin Professional

	Festival De Cornouailles

Summer means outdoor music season across Europe with Martin Professional lighting rigs going up on a variety of music festivals.

The UK-based Reading Festival, the world's oldest popular music festival still in existence, and its sister festival, the Leeds Festival, took place simultaneously in August, sharing the same bill. Neg Earth provided the main stage lighting, trussing and control systems and turned to MAC 301 Washes, MAC III Profiles, and Atomic 3000 strobes with Atomic Colors scrollers.

Perhaps the world's best known outdoor music festival, Glastonbury, took place in June and as in year's past featured a plethora of Martin gear. Neg Earth supplied Martin MAC III Profiles and Atomic strobes for lighting designer Willie Williams for U2's performance on the Pyramid Stage; MAC III Profiles and Stagebar 2 linear LED battens on the Other Stage for the Chemical Brothers, Mumford & Sons, Friendly Fires, and Jessie J; and a Martin M1 lighting console for LD Richard Karkum on the Other Stage for Kaiser Chiefs. A Jem Roadie Compact high-output fogger was also used to provide professional atmospheric effects for several acts at Glastonbury.

Rental company DPL supplied MAC 101s, MAC 301 Washes, and MAC 401 Dual RGB Zooms with Jem ZR44 Hi-Mass foggers for LD Cate Carter on Glastonbury's John Peel Stage while Fineline was lighting supplier for the Acoustic Tent, Theatre Tent, Circus Big Top, Trash City, and Outside Circus, delivering MAC 350 Entours, MAC 101s, MAC 700 Profiles and LC Series LED panels with graphics from a Martin Maxedia media server.

The iTunes Festival, held at The Roundhouse in London, saw 62 artists perform over 31 days in July. Martin kit on the festival included a Martin M1 console and MaxModule Submaster and MaxModule Button wings for TV lighting designer Stan Crocker and TV lighting operator Seth Robinson. Crocker specified MAC 101s around the balcony, along with Stagebar 2s and MAC 401s to architecturally light the Roundhouse while the MAC III Profile was the predominant fixture on stage. The on stage mid-air projection haze came courtesy of Jem K1 Hazers. Among the acts were Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Adele, White Lies, Chase & Status, and Linkin Park, who used the M1 and extensive MIDI triggering. Rental company for iTunes was White Light and production electrician was Alan Boyd.

In June, another iconic UK festival, the Isle of Wight Festival, featured a predominately Martin rig for the Big Top stage with Prism Lighting supplying MAC 101s and MAC 700 Profiles and Washes.

Festival De Cornouailles is the new name of Quimper, France's classic festival where street musicians, dancers, singers, and performers take to the streets for what is one of the largest celebrations of Breton culture in the world. At night, the focus turns to concerts with this year's headliners including James Blunt, Suzanne Vega, and others.

Lighting designer François Guillet, who used Martin MAC 700 Profiles, MAC 401 Dual RGB Zooms, and LC Plus Series LED panels on the main stage, singled out the MAC 401 as an extremely useful side light with warm color and cold or warm shades of white. The fixture's FX macros were used for audience lighting between concerts and during applause. A Martin M1 lighting console and three Martin MaxModules were used to control automated and conventional luminaires with a Maxedia Compact media server, linked to the M1 using CITP, handling graphics for the LED wall.

Guillet had a novel idea to provide simple media looks onto the LED walls and connected a Martin ShowDesigner (MSD) 3D visualizer to the Maxedia video input to capture MAC 700 beams, multiply them, choose camera views and control the video at the same time. Sound and light for the festival was provided by SIWA with the help of MES.

Salacgriva, Latvia hosted the fifth annual Positivus festival in mid-July, the Baltic's largest rock music festival. Stage design and lighting designer was Andrey Dubkovs of Lumen Art Division, who turned to Martin MAC 101 and MAC 301 Wash LED moving heads along with MAC 2000 Profiles, MAC 2000 Washes, and other Martin gear.

"The design required a large number of small yet powerful lights and the Martin MAC 101 and 301 proved surprisingly powerful and fast," Dubkovs states. "Selection of the gear helped save on our production budget because of the small size, weight, and low power consumption. We used a minimum of DMX channels for such a large amount of equipment which in turn empowered artists to create lighting solutions that didn't depart from their designed performance concept." Martin's distributor in Latvia is Pro 1 Stage.

The likes of Suede, Interpol, Elbow, and Band of Horses played the second annual Northside Festival in Aarhus, Denmark, in June, with Nordic Rentals delivering a Martin rig that featured MAC 401 RGB Zooms, MAC 700 Profiles, and Atomic strobes. Nordic also delivered MAC 700 Profiles and MAC 401 Dual RGB Zooms for the Skanderborg Festival while lighting designers Lars Nissen and Kasper Steen Lange turned to Martin MAC III Profiles and Atomic strobes for the iconic Orange stage at Denmark's renowned Roskilde Music Festival.

Lighting designer Palle Palmé chose a Martin lighting package for the new Summerburst dance music festival at Stockholm Stadium in early June, which boasts Northern Europe's largest dance floor. David Guetta and other top DJs performed beneath a Martin rig of MAC III Profiles, MAC 301 Washes, MAC 2000 Wash XBs, MAC 2000 Washes, and Atomic strobes with Atomic Colors with graphics splashed across a Martin LC Series LED screen.