Lighting designer Bryan Leitch and his company Siyan has invested in more new Avolites equipment to service the Coldplay world tour that’s just kicked off in Europe. The kit supplied is a Sapphire and a Pearl console, plus two Avolites ART2000 dimming systems.

The tour follows the massive success of Coldplay’s debut album Parachutes, and is expected to continue into 2003.
The Sapphire is used to operate a 4-way Radlite PC-based video system, designed and operated by Nick Whitehouse, while the Pearl, operated by Leith himself, is running all Coldplay’s lighting.

Leitch comments, “Avolites was the only way to go” when it came to choosing his control system. With the Coldplay tour scheduled to run for many months, and with Siyan being busy with so much other work, he decided to purchase new control equipment. This boosts Siyan’s current stock of Avo consoles to 7 Pearls, 2 Sapphires and 3 Azures. Lighting fixtures controlled by the Pearl include fourteen SGM Giotto 400 spots, twelve Futurelight MH640s, four Movietech 575 wash lights and eight Martin MAC 600s, plus conventionals - four Moles with colour changers, ground rows and eight ETC Source Fours, used as band keylighting for the video cameras. There’s also 150 metres of blue Non-Neon outlining the stage so the band can see their way around.

Leitch comments, “The ART dimmer is an excellent piece of kit. It’s very helpful being able to mix-and-match between power and dimming channels, and utilising the DMX Merge so the Radlite desk can take over the key-lighting has been invaluable. It makes life very easy!”.

The Sapphire was chosen to run the Radlight system because offered plenty of preset focuses, which are used do the camera switching.

Photos by Louise Stickland