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The Stones sell-out 50th anniversary tour (photo: Todd Kaplan)
The Rolling Stones have wrapped the US leg of their 50 & Counting world tour with grandMA2 consoles along for the still-wild ride. The Stones sell-out 50th anniversary tour is their first in six years.
They opened the U.S. leg in LA and concluded their 18 dates in Washington, D.C.
The band performed on a stage set featuring a giant set of psychedelic lips and a tongue-shaped walkway that riffed on their iconic logo. Patrick Woodroffe was the lighting designer and Ethan Weber the co-lighting director. Upstaging supplied the lighting equipment.
Weber and programmer/co-lighting director Dave Hill manned two grandMA2 full-size consoles, networked together, for the tour.
“We love them”, says Weber. “I handled the key lighting on one console and Dave ran the bulk of the system off the other.” Both men are veteran Stones lighting directors with Hill having programmed every tour since Steel Wheels. And both are veteran MA users.
“We both spent a few years on the grandMA,” Weber says. “I switched over to the grandMA2 last year for Green Day, and found it a very fluid changeover.
The grandMA2 has a good feel and look to it. I very much like the way it programs and operates-the bigger screens make for quicker access, the effects engine is much improved, more functional macros, etc. And I’m very appreciative that the command syntax is close to that of the grandMA ‘series 1’. It seems like it can be hit or miss with updated/re-designed consoles, but think MA got it right with the grandMA2.”
