The summer is here and the festival season is in full swing. In Sweden, this means Summerburst has arrived. Now in its sixth year, the festival has, to date, taken place at two distinct cities, Gothenburg and Stockholm. With audiences of over 100,000 at each venue, Summerburst presents the best in electronic music for two days at each site. This year Summerburst Baltic has been added; the Vingis Park, Vilnius in Lithuania will host the festival that boasts a multitude of artists from the EDM genre including headliner Steve Angello.
For the past three years, lighting design duties for Steve Angello have fallen to Jon Trincas. “After a valuable period of working as a technician on a wide variety of shows, from theatre and opera to concert touring, I began operating about four years ago. I got involved with Steve Angello’s team and began creating live show designs. Currently I design and operate for both Steve Angello and Galantis; between them we do over two hundred and fifty shows a year so I’m kept pretty busy!”
Away from touring, Trincas is also the creative director of ZEAL that gathers the collective talents of four colleagues to provide design services to a wide range of artists and festivals including the lighting and rigging production for Steve Angello’s headline show at Creamfields last year.
For the past year, Trincas has become an exclusive grandMA2 user. He explains why: “Designers and operators tend to be very loyal to their board of choice but my previous brand of console was not only hard to specify in many parts of the world but wasn’t really offering the programming options I needed. Switching to MA control meant I could replicate our show on a daily basis worldwide, maximising the experience for the audience and also making my life on the road a lot easier. The support I got from Ambersphere Solutions during the transition stages was fantastic and very accommodating. No query was too big – or too small; everyone was always happy to help. I soon wondered why I hadn’t made the switch years ago!’
‘For me, macros were the biggest selling point of the grandMA2. With the nature of the shows we deal with on a daily basis, I have to find ways of creating and updating my showfile in very minimal time, sometimes only an hour on site. The file is built in a way so that I can adapt effortlessly on a daily basis. The show is completely busked and on the fly so I have to have everything at my fingertips.’
‘With the macros I am able to update a few groups and run the macros to update all my programming like effect selections, intensity chases and various other elements of the show. The macros being command line based really helps me utilise the time I have on site efficiently.’
‘I also use layout views with the grandMA2s to create a custom bespoke layout for my show. Here I have all my colour presets and various other fixture elements laid out in a fashion that I find comfortable and efficient. I haven’t found any other console to offer this level of layout. From working offline on grandMA2 onPC and then loading my showfile into a real console I have no transition issues with screen sizing of layout of faders like some other consoles.”
Trincas is now a passionate convert and always specifies a grandMA2 with an MA2 Lite as a networked backup. During time away from global festivals he uses MA platforms offline to create new shows both for Steve Angello and other clients of ZEAL.
“I find I am learning new features on the console all the time. For example, I now also run Lasers via the grandMA2 giving me more control over show elements and keeping everything in time. I start every show with a base file which I’ve created. From start to finish I can have a small show cloned and ready to use on site in under an hour. The larger type of EDM shows take a bit longer. Being able to recall presets from previously used fixtures is also a massive time saver. There are some shows where we literally fly in and go straight to site and do the show. Being able to recall presets from used fixtures and then a sneaky import of a few positions from the house file I am able to go straight into a show with no on site programming time.’
‘Very simply, without the grandMA2 I wouldn’t be able to do the level of job I do now.”