With more than 200 DJs and other artists on seven stages over two three-day weekends (March 15-17 and 22-24), book-ending (and dwarfing) the annual Winter Music Conference from which it sprang in 1999, the 15th annual Ultra Music Festival smashed its own impressive records for growth by drawing some 330,000 revelers to Miami’s Bayfront Park, doubling 2012’s 165,000 attendee count.
Along with the lion’s share of the world’s top DJs, producers and EDM artists — the roster included David Guetta, deadmau5, and Tiësto on both weekends along with Armin Van Buuren, Bassnectar and Afrojack, and Swedish House Mafia closed the festival in style with the final performance of their farewell tour on the last day of Weekend Two — UMF 2013 included combinations of artists that were as quirky as anything cooked up at Coachella.
A case in point: Avicii sharing the stage with singer/rapper Aloe Blacc, Mac Davis and other live-performing bluegrass artists, and three members of alt-rock band Incubus. (For more on Coachella 2013, turn to page 38).
After a shaky start — two workers were injured March 14 by LED panels that fell in high winds from the main stage during load-in — OSHA and other officials gave the event the green light to proceed the next day, March 15. Production crews were able to finish off the build for the 200-foot-wide, 105-foot-tall pyramid-shaped main stage, which was co-designed by Bruce Rodgers and James Klein.
Rodgers, from Tribe, Inc., called the main stage structure, made from 176 smaller pyramids, each featuring 40 panels of Tait’s Pixel Tablets, one of the “most technically advanced and largest concert stage designs” ever built, maintaining visual interest over the six days of performances with a seemingly endless variety of looks.
Engineered and constructed by Mountain Productions, with scenic elements from Tait, it featured a lighting design from Australia-based Mandy Lights’ Richard Neville and Alex Grierson that incorporated some 1,050 moving lights controlled by grandMA full size consoles — two active; two more for backup.
Along with a massive LED video presence, the main stage’s special effects included a dozen 32W full color lasers and more than12,000 hits of pyro.
Nearly 300 of the fixtures in the main stage’s rig were from Robe, including the 176 LEDBeam 100s that blasted beams from each of the stage structure’s smaller pyramids. The rig also included 25 LEDWash 1200s and 89 LEDWash 600s.
Neville and Grierson were able to expand upon the impact of the main stage’s LED video elements by linking beam colors to the video content via the “Color” parameter from the show’s Hippotizer media servers.
To accentuate the structure’s pyramid shape and also frame the DJs, Neville chose 121 Sharpys from Clay Paky. Other fixtures included 65 Solaris Flare LED strobes from TMB, 40 Elements Krypton KR-25s from ICD, Martin Atomic 3000 strobes and Nova Light Supernovas.
Joining the main stage on 32-acre Bayfront Park were other impressive stage structures, including the Mega Structure featuring Carl Cox, which was designed and lit by AG Light and Sound and Stephen Lieberman of SJ Lighting. Here, Eurolite STP-10s (also seen on the Live Stage, with lighting supplied by Paradigm) and 2x100W COB Blinders loomed large, and it was also where the Clay Paky Sharpy Wash 330 (see Road Test, page 53) made its U.S. debut. “I was extremely impressed with its output,” Lieberman said, adding that the color mixing system “worked flawlessly.”
Lieberman’s lighting rig, controlled by a grandMA2, also included Clay Paky Alpha Spot HPE 1500s and Beam 1500s with truss pods guided by 54 XLNT CyberHoist motors.
“We designed and built some amazingly complex and overwhelming environments that truly tested the limits of technology,” Lieberman said, noting how some of the pods with Sharpy Wash fixtures moved within 10 feet of the audience at times.
Other stages at the festival included the Live Stage, Ultra Worldwide Stage, Bayfront Stage, UMF Radio Stage and Eco Village, with LED gear from Elation (more than 300 LED video panels and 500 Opti Tri 30s), other fixtures from Chauvet (Legend 300E Beams) and Oracle TR-16 LED video panels from Global Trend Productions adding to the overall (and sometimes overwhelming) visual impact.
