Vista T2 and S3 for Keane World Tour

Lighting Designer Rob Sinclair has specified Jands Vista T2 and S3 consoles for award-winning UK band Keane’s current world tour.

The 16 month tour to promote latest album Under The Iron Sea began last Apriland has incorporated every size of venue, ranging from intimate club shows to arenas. The shows culminate in August with festival headlining slots.

Keane embarked on the North American leg in May, which includes dates in LA, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, Montreal, Portland, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, District of Columbia and New York.

LD Rob Sinclair has enjoyed a highly successful working relationship with the band since taking over lighting duties – something which is mirrored by his partnership with the Jands Vista console since its launch back in 2004.

Rob commented: “I absolutely adore the console. It’s made my life so much easier and more productive, and makes me look like a much better LD than I really am!”

For this tour, Rob’s brief from the band was to make the stage look as cluttered as possible and give it a sense of space and depth. Rob worked with video pioneer Kevin Godley, who came up with the concept of a forest of aluminium vertical poles with light shining through it to give the set a very 3D perspective.

The rig for the US leg was supplied by Chicago-based Upstaging Inc. and is a scaled-down version of the European arena show. Featuring MAC 700 spot and wash moving lights along with a mixture of Airstar balloons, conventional fixtures and Atomic Strobes, the rig also includes a Kinesys motor control system using custom Pantographs specially built for the tour by Blackburn-based HSL Group.

There is also a strong video element in Rob’s design, which consists of a mixture of abstract images and live close-up feeds from four remote cameras. Three Catalyst media servers supplied by UK-based Scenographic provide the custom video content, which was made for the tour by Rob and Tom Palliser from Whitehouse Pictures.

The wide popularity of the band has meant the production has visited a variety of venues in Europe, North America, Asia and South America.

In this respect the Vista’s ease of use and time-saving features, such as the generic fixture model, have really helped Rob deal with the unpredictable nature of playing completely different size venues from night to night and the challenges of using locally sourced rigs.

He commented: “After having such a good experience with the Vista on the last Keane tour it really was a no-brainer when it came to choosing a desk.”

Commenting on the increased benefits with this tour he added: “I did the first date a year ago and am still using the same Vista show file from day one, it’s just grown and grown with the tour. I only need to work on a song once and the console keeps it. If I’m using new fixtures I just change fixture types.”

Rob’s also been impressed by the overall user-friendliness of the console, leading him to control absolutely everything you see on stage with it, including the camera close-up shots which he cuts from the Vista using a preview monitor.

In addition to using a Vista T2 as the main production console, Rob has also been using a Mac-based Vista S3 to cope with some of the more intimate shows where the lighting was supplied locally.

As with previous Keane tours, the Vista consoles were supplied by UK-based Lite Alternative, who Rob has worked with for many years.