Time may have passed, but all of the familiar sights and sounds at Glastonbury were there to make everyone feel at home. For many lighting designers and directors, one of the more welcoming signs was a ChamSys console waiting for them at FOH when the festival returned June 22.
Picking up where it left off at the last Glastonbury in 2019, ChamSys seemed to be everywhere at the festival this year. The MagicQ MQ 500M Stadium, which was introduced during the pandemic in 2020, was the house desk at seven stages, including the Park Stage, (supplied by SWG Events), where Ed Warren used it to run Four Tet’s headline show, and the Acoustic Stage (supplied by Fineline Lighting), where Patrick Sollitt relied on its seamless cloning and morphing to make last minute changes for headliners Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott. SWG Events and Fineline Lighting also provided ChamSys consoles for many other Glastonbury stages.
The MagicQ MQ500M was used to support more than just music acts. At the Circus Big Top stage, James Loudon relied on the console to run 14-hours of preprogrammed shows for 30 different acts every day of the festival with to-the-minute precision. His task was made much easier by his console’s Magic Vis Visualizer.
Other stages that featured the Magic MQ500M as the house desk were the BBC Introducing, Silver Hayes, Sonic & Lonely Hearts Club, and The Unfariground Flying Bus, which was made of two convoy buses.
The ChamSys MagicQ MQ80 served as the house desk at the WOW Stage, The Hive and Left Field, which celebrated “20 years of pop and politics” with headlines Billy Bragg, Yard Act, and Yola. The intuitive layout of the console, as well as it Executor Buttons and Playback Faders, were valuable features for LDs busking shows on this stage.
When they weren’t serving as house desks, ChamSys consoles could be found throughout the festival, brought in by LDs such as David Howard (MQ80) for Hoosiers at the Avalon Stage, Will Thomas (MQ60) for Bonobo at West Holts, and Brian Kelly (MQ70) for Caribou also at West Holts.
As these LDs ran through their dynamic shows with various ChamSys consoles, one could be forgiven for thinking that Glastonbury had never really been interrupted at all. Such is the magic of this festival.
