The World Leaders Festival, hosted by American Express, was a five-week show celebrating revolutionary creators of our time who have reshaped the world as we know it. The show was held at Liberty Grand in Toronto, Canada, with an evening being devoted to each of the 14 leaders. Included in the festival were such artists as Peter Gabriel, Joni Mitchell, Stephen Sondheim, and Harold Pinter.
The lighting designer for the festival was Paul Mathiesen. Paul designed a rig consisting of 32 Martin Professional MAC 600NTs, 20 PALs, an assortment of ETC Source Fours and Source Four PARs, and a large amount of dimmed fluorescent lighting, all controlled by two MA Lighting grandMA consoles, and supplied by Christie Lites Toronto.
Programming the grandMAs was Ken Wiebe of Pan Tilt Studios. "I am having so much fun," said Wiebe. "I really like the console, and having 60 sequences per page rocks. I love having the ability to program on one console near the stage and then upload the show data to the other console via Ethernet--not a floppy disk in sight!" he continued. "I keep thinking back to other gigs I have done recently without the grandMA and wishing that I had one then."