Art and History

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 || MA Lighting

Via the music of Brahms, Grieg, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky or Verdi you can travel back in time. A journey that seems so fitting for the city of Jerusalem, which breathes history with every building. It was therefore a perfect match when the music of these well known composers opened the "Jerusalem Festival of Light 2010" with the performance The Light Concert". Taking place at the Sultans Pool in the Israeli capital the concert was merging music and lighting in a high-class event.

The performance included the work of internationally renowned lighting designer Gert Hof and the music of The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra IBA orchestrated by Gal Altrovich. With the old city walls of Jerusalem as a dramatic backdrop to the event, it also relied on the latest technology, with a grandMA system used for lighting control. Lighting director and programmer Ofer Brum ran the show on a grandMA full-size console with a grandMA light as a backup and two MA NSPs (Network Signal Processors).

Hof expained his design: The whole show was planned over a period of nearly four months. My focus was the language and alphabet of light. You have to read and hear manifests of light to translate them into architecture built high above in the sky. Orchestrations, events, all art is only interesting if it reflects the courage, passion, obsession, willingness to take risks and the thoroughness of the director and it also has a unique character. An event is always a positioning, a definition and a delimitation. My orchestrations are shaped by my faith into the extraordinary, the peculiar, the visionary.

Ofer Brum explains the development of the concerts lighting: The show programming was done on a grandMA full-size with MSD (Martin ShowDesigner) 3D lighting visualisation software. I made the 3D model, including stage trusses, moving hoists and all lighting gear. After the model was approved by Gert Hof, it took four days to program the whole show. Pre-programming the show proved vital, as we only had two nights on site to focus and test the whole setup.

Besides a plethora of other lights 63 x 4K search lights were installed for the show and reached with their beams into the night sky above Jerusalem.

As production manager worked Kobi Rosenthal. The lighting equipment was delivered by Gil Teichman. A.B. Electronics is MA Lightings distributor in Israel, Jordan and Palestine.