To celebrate the New Year, the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra played a Great Gatsby themed party in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dallas -which required diligent lighting to produce the correct ambience.
Randy Cline of Time Matters Entertainment, based in Dallas, was the event’s Technical Producer, coordinating all the staging elements. He asked Lighting Designer, Eric Wade of Crossfade Design, to create a dramatically different lighting scheme to set the scene and a stylish tone for a classy evening of fun and music.
This was also a unique presentation in that there was no conventional stage, instead, the 16 NOJO musicians were positioned in the lobby, all on the deck, with a dancefloor and a VIP area set up immediately in front of the orchestra, near the bar entrance. In response, Wade deployed lights wherever he could fit them. Fixtures were put around the floor, on the PA stacks, behind couches, tables, and even around the hotel’s front desk.
Challenged for power and lighting positions in and around the lobby, powerful LED light sources were the only way to go, so Wade selected Robe LEDBeam 150s and Robe DL7S Profiles. Wade has used Robe Tarrantula LED Moving Head Stage Lights many times before but for the due to their intensity he needed lighting equipment that was more subtle and smaller. So this was his first time he used the Robe LED fixtures. The Robe DL7S Profiles were used to light the lobby ceiling. Two fixtures covered the entire ceiling evenly and Wade was able to create striking multi-layered patterning and texturing.
Wade said: “The LEDBeam 150s were the perfect fixture for this job – wonderfully small with more than enough horsepower for the size and application. They made a huge impact in the limited available space.”
He also used some wireless battery-powered LED fixtures and some LED battens, all supplied by Time Matters Entertainment and controlled from an MA Lighting grandMA2 console.
Wade and his team had to maintain an atmosphere of elegance in the marble-columned lobby with its intricate deep blue and gold Texas flower petal carpets and other bespoke features. So positioning and rigging fixtures was a galvanising task that Wade overcame by carefully placing the Robe lighting to create an ambience that didn’t distract but lit the orchestra effectively.
The Robe fixtures were supplied by Time Matters Entertainment’s TMELED.com rental shop. That was recently established to service both existing and new accounts. The venture also made a large investment into Robe including; Robe BMFL Blades, Robe LightMaster side mounting kits, Robe RoboSpot BaseStation & MotionCamera systems, Robe Tarrantulas, Robe MegaPointes, Robe DL7S Profiles, Robe DL4F Washes and Robe LEDbeam150s.