A. R. Rahman, India’s superstar

A. R. Rahman is an Indian composer, singer-songwriter, music producer, musician and philanthropist, whose live shows have become legendary in his home country as well as abroad. Lighting designer Becket J Tundatil has been responsible for lighting the majority of his shows — always with a trusty Jands Vista at his fingertips.

“I have been using Jands Vista since 2005, in fact I was one of the first users in India, and I wouldn’t use anything else,” remarked Becket. “I need the timeline feature to design my shows, the way I work can be quite different and I can only do it with the Vista.”

Becket owns a compact Jands Vista S3 supplied to him by Integrated Entertainment Solutions, the Indian Jands dealer who he describes as extremely supportive.

“I decided to go freelance last year and the first thing I needed to do was buy a console,” he explained. “Although another manufacturer offered me a good deal, I chose a Vista S3 for the comfort factor and the ease of use. It is just so simple and intuitive for me. Everything is drag ’n’ drop and touch in technology these day, so I have a touch laptop and a 21” touch monitor attached to the Vista S3 making a fully-fledged console in terms of operations.”

“The Vista S3 is so easy to operate it frees up more time to be creative,” commented Becket. “It is the software that does the magic. You don’t have to spend ages working out how to program a look. I did face a very minor issue on the MIDI when programming as it was the first time I was triggering through the MIDI controller. However Eddie Walsh and Susan Twartz from Jands looked into immediately and their suggestions were very helpful. Jands supply extremely good backup support.”

Becket reports that his Vista S3 has performed perfectly and has enabled him to run some very large shows such as Sunburn Goa, one of Asia biggest electronic dance music festivals. The A.R. Rahman show (pictured) used 230 moving lights as well as LED par cans, LED tubes and generics.