Gladys Knight recently toured the UK, with Blackburn-based HSL supplying lighting equipment and crew to the production, which was co-ordinated on the road for HSL by Lester Cobrin and designed by UK and Nashville based LD, Neil Scrivener.
The PAR can rig used by Knight in the US provided a starting point for Scrivener’s design for this tour, which saw him add a number of Vari-Lite VL3000 Spots and Martin by Harman MAC 2000 Wash XBs to the rig, which meant he could dramatically reduce the number of PARs required to efficiently light the 60ft wide stage and performance space.
He created a 5-colour PAR wash then added in several strings of ACLs which were gelled. The moving lights and LED fixtures, which included PixelLine battens on the floor lighting the backdrop, substituted at the RAH with the organ lighting LED package, were then layered on top of this base illumination.
The XBs were used as a secondary wash layer coming from the top and lighting the whole stage from the mid-truss which was trimmed higher than the front and back.
Scrivener operated the show using a Hog Full Boar 4 console.
Joining him from HSL on the road were Pete Watts taking care of dimmers and tech Ewan Colson. “Pete did a brilliant job at blind focussing the ACLs each day and Ewan is a fast climber, which was essential when the band wanted to sound check at 2pm each day,” said Neil. The rig was prepped and co-ordinated at HSL’s base in Blackburn by Sean McGlone.
HSL’s MD Simon Stuart commented: “Gladys Knight is an iconic performer and we were really happy to be working with Neil and her production to help make the shows stand out for her many UK fans”.