Diamonds, Oxfam's Best Friend?

Lighting company Siyan used two Avolites Diamond 4s and a Pearl 2004 for the high-profile Oxfam "Make Trade Fair" charity show at the UK's Hammersmith Apollo this month.

Topping the bill was REM with the highly animated line up of Razorlight, The Thrills, Minnie Driver and her band, comedian Ricky Gervais, and a special guest appearance by Coldplay’s Chris Martin, who played two songs with REM.

Bryan Leitch created the general lighting design based on a festival set up. Nick Whitehouse programmed the show using one of the Diamond 4s. A second Diamond 4 was made available offline at FOH for visiting LDs to pre-program their show using Avolites’ Visualiser (supplied as standard with every D4). Whitehouse believes that the D4 is the best and most powerful option for festivals and improvised shows that need a high-degree of hands-on flexibility.

With only a short amount of time available for any pre-programming on the day, the second console was an invaluable aid to LDs Matt Dowden (Razorlight), Geoff Hall (The Thirlls) and Baz Halpin (looking after REM for Susanne Sasic).

The Diamond 4 controlled 12 SGM Giotto 400s, 20 MAC 600s, 16 ETC Source Four® profiles, 8 SGM Palco LED fixtures, assorted PARs, and 12 Robe Show Lighting XT250 washes. The latter were used on the floor at the sides of the stage to fill the gaps. The Pearl 2004 was used to run the audience lighting.