Jands Vista T2 Controls Huge Rig on Dierks Bentley's RISER TourLighting designer, Chris Reade is back on the road with his Jands Vista T2, S1 and M1 consoles, controlling an even more technically ambitious rig for the latest tour by Platinum-selling singer-songwriter, Dierks Bentley. After recently topping the US Billboard country airplay chart with his 12th number one single, "Drunk On A Plane," Bentley and director Wes Edwards have just added the CMA (Country Music Award) "Music Video of the Year" Award, to the song's other accolades. The country artist's 2014 tour is called RISER, after the recent album of the same name. It kicked off in May in Charlotte, North Carolina, with sold-out shows in amphitheatres and arenas across the United States and Canada -- concluding in December. The tour further builds upon Reade's impressive lighting design and rig for Bentley on last year's Locked & ReLoaded tour with Miranda Lambert -- also controlled using the Jands Vista system. "I can't say enough positive things about Jands Vista!" says Reade, who first used the Vista platform in 2008, and subsequently invested in his own T2, S1 and M1. "I know Vista will handle whatever I throw at it. We did a massive show at one venue where we had 23 universes of instruments running, with only our tour floor package. The entire lighting rig (besides our floor package) had to be swapped over and the console handled it all." Reade continues: "Dierks is really into the visual aspect of his performances, and the Vista platform, in my opinion, puts me in the best situation to succeed in making his shows detailed in a shorter amount of programming time." Reade is using his S1/M1 as a tracking backup on the RISER tour, in addition to his main T2 desk. The consoles network through a Pathway Pathport VIA switch and output DMX via Pathport OCTO Art-Net nodes. "It all works wonderfully, and it's extremely fast," says Reade. "I also love the speed of editing very detailed timing via the timeline." In addition to the larger venues, the tour also plays a selection of fairs, festivals, and casinos, meaning that Reade has to reconfigure the lighting rig based on venue capabilities. "Without the fixture swap/cloning features of the T2, I would not be able to get through a touring cycle without having to start from scratch on the non-tour dates. The timeline is one of my favorite things about the Vista platform. When I'm programming I can bang out my cue lists and then go back and get into the details per cue, per instrument, per parameter, to adjust all of my timing, etc. It is extremely fast to edit a song once the looks are in. I do quite a few 'follow' cues, and making detailed timing adjustments is a breeze within the timeline." For the RISER tour, Reade is using a huge rig (provided by Rod "Red" Gibson of Christie Lites), including the new Martin MAC Quantums, MAC Viper Wash DXs, MAC Vipers, MAC Auras, MAC 700 Profiles, Elation Platinum Beam 5R, and Atomic Strobes, along with some conventionals. The company says the T2 is an all-in-one lighting package providing all the features that make the Vista such a great live desk: big LCDs, 15 playbacks (10 with faders), four DMX outputs and timecode input, and three encoder wheels for manipulating intensity, position, color, gobo, and beam. The Vista range includes a choice of portable, flexible control surfaces and self-contained consoles all running the same Vista v2 software. The award-winning lighting and media control system has been embraced by leading designers, companies, and venues all over the world on a wide range of shows. Covering entertainment, education and drama, installations, corporate, events and worship, the company notes there is a Vista system to suit all levels of user and almost any scale of show. Recent shows featuring lighting or media control by Vista include international concert tours by Queen + Adam Lambert, Peter Gabriel, Fall Out Boy, Bloc Party, Deftones, and Little Big Town. In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Jands is distributed by A.C. Enter-tainment Technologies Ltd. In North America, Jands is distributed by A.C. Lighting Inc. See Jands and A.C. Lighting at PLASA Focus: Orlando, February 17 - 18, 2015. 
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