In Kyiv, Ukraine, ‘vertical concerts’ were initiated by rock band Green Grey who performed on the rooftop of a building opposite the city’s Bratislava Hotel – where fans occupied nine stories of rooms with separate balconies, each with a fantastic socially distanced view of the gig.
Ukrainian rental and technical production company Alight was called upon to provide lighting for the rooftop stage – atop of Hotel Bratislava’s separate restaurant building – with a production lighting design created by Eugene Kostyra, which featured 10 Robe MegaPointe lighting fixtures.
The equipment was craned up to the rooftop, rock ‘n’ roll style – where Green Grey played the first vertical set, followed a couple of weeks later by hip hop act TNMK (Tanok na Maidani Kongo) and rock band, O’Torvald.
Robe MegaPointe fixtures were deployed behind the stage, creating powerful backlight shooting up into the night skies, illuminating the architecture of the stage and highlighting the unique urban landscape during Green Grey’s set. During the O’Torvald’s performance, MegaPointes were placed on the stage floor and in front of the main lighting gantry upstage.
Kostyra – who works full time for Alight and is a prolific LD with The Voice Ukraine among his recent projects – specified MegaPointes as his ‘go-to’ lighting fixtures. “They are just so versatile that I use them on virtually every project I design,” he stated.
He believed that “as one of the brightest beam / spot luminaires on the market” MegaPointes are perfect for spectacular and spontaneous high impact effects. On these shows, although initially hidden behind the line-of-sight, he could simply blast them in with different colour / gobo combinations boosting the energy and excitement of the performance.
Alight has been investing steadily in Robe products for the past six years and now has over 200 units in rental stock. The company consider Robe “one of the best” brands to work with for reliability and quality, and since they purchased their first fixture, Robe has been prominent on the many shows they design and supply.
There were several other lights on the vertical concert’s rig, including small beam lights and matrix panels, together with the MegaPointes, all programmed and run by Eugene from an MA Lighting grandMA3 console.
The team’s biggest challenge was to make the show amazing and throw the energy across the void to the audience so they felt close to the artists and like it was a regular arena show, rather than on another building. “Vertical concerts have created a massive buzz of excitement and been hugely popular, selling out fast,” Kostyra said. Instead of buying tickets, fans booked hotel rooms with up to four people from families and household bubbles per room.
For Kostyra, who has lit shows in some interesting places before, the most enjoyable aspect of working on the Vertical Concerts was “the incredible teamwork.” This included with Alight Lighting Crew Chief, Katunin Vitalii and Green Grey’s frontman and guitarist, Andrii “Diezel” Yatsenko. Sound and staging infrastructure was supplied by Zinteco and LED screens from ScreenPro. The news comes as the Ukrainian national lockdown measures have been extended until 31 August.
