Maroon 5 Get X4 Bar Treatment at Mandalay Bay

The latest in a succession of lighting professionals to adopt GLP's award-winning X4 Bar 20 platform has been designer and programmer, Brian Jenkins.

Part of an experienced team based on America's West Coast, along with people like Roy Bennett, his verdict was unequivocal. "In the moving LED batten market, GLP has hit it out of the park."

Jenkins is no stranger to the German company's products, having originally been introduced to the Volkslicht by Seth Jackson when he was designing the Selena Gomez tour. This kick-started an enduring relationship with GLP and its staff.

Now in his fourth year with Maroon 5, the LD says, "When we first fired-up in 2015, Roy Bennett designed the production and lighting, with Jason Baeri and myself handling programming and associate design duties. We've found a workflow that we both enjoy.

"Outside the main tour, which Roy designs, I handle all the other designs and show direction and am given creative freedom for each show. "And this included two shows at Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on December 30-31.

Regarding his lighting plot as "an extension of Roy's vision," Brian Jenkins kept returning to a promising, and pre-existing structural concept but recognized that it needed some "extra legs."

Having been introduced to the X4 Bar 20 by Matt Shimamoto at Volt Lites he could see instantly that it had great potential. "A few designers were present and we rammed through all the normal FX: color saturation, dimmer curve, speed, pastels, homogenization, etc. Fast forward to LDI 2015 and 2016 when Matt programmed the hell out of them ... and this gave the industry a chance to see the uniqueness of this fixture."

With the Maroon 5 rig at Mandalay Bay he was able to build on the dynamics created by Roy Bennett, by incorporating the X4 Bar 20 into the plot. "They stayed out of the way for part of the set, but when the intensity finally flew to full, it gave the stage a slick, framed look. The 48 units on the 'diamond' legs worked out as planned, but I popped the budget and needed to use a further fixture for the horizontal trusses." All inventory was supplied by Delicate Productions of Camarillo, who have been a regular supplier over the years."

Speaking of the battens' functionality, he said, "The whole purpose was to give the lighting rig an anchor -- a way to turn on the rig, get a look, without a ton of Profile/Beam fixtures hitting the stage or crowd.

"I used them in crazy 88-channel mode and had a great time with some cell groupings, sweeps, random pops -- what most LD's would only achieve with a long, linear array of fixtures! The tilting mechanism is just an added bonus."

In fact he says the new tilt firmware provides the fixture with "a snappier tilt response." He explains, "There were a couple of [stand-out] moments when we pumped the stage with heavy fog and pushed the X4 Bars into narrow; this created a nice effect with plenty of beams coming from the units."