Steven Cohen Productions, in conjunction with Epic Production Technologies and Syncrolite are supporting the reunion of piano men Elton John and Billy Joel for their Face2Face tour with a lighting rig that includes gear from Martin Professional. Steve Cohen and Mark Foffano designed the lighting for the tour. Foffano programmed for both artists and served as the overall system designer. Kevin “Stick” Bye is Elton John’s lighting director.
The rig includes Martin MAC III Profiles, MAC 700 Profiles and MAC 2000 Washes with lighting control from a Martin Maxxyz and Maxxyz Modules. Video control for low resolution LED screens is from a Martin Maxedia Broadcast.
The 32 Martin Professional 1500 watt MAC III Profiles are located upstage on three separate hinged trusses that conform to the angle of the upstage area.
Foffano, who has worked with Joel since 1998, uses the MAC III beams to shine through the low res LED screen and scenery for both artists. “They’re brute lights that push themselves through anything,” he said.
“The color mechanism is crisp and the color saturations are excellent,” Foffano added. “The cyan and magenta are really clean and pure.” When asked about reliability, Foffano reported no issues.
The MAC 700 Profiles sit atop LED built into a Tait Towers lifting system that creates the look of a skyline. The MAC 2000s are used in upstage and downstage trusses.
Two Martin Maxedia Broadcasts were programmed by Curtis Cox to feed content to low resolution LED screens over the stage. One Maxedia Broadcast is used for pixelmapping and the other for video content purposes.
The entire show and Maxedia servers are controlled by one Martin Maxxyz console using more than 26 universes of DMX. The DMX is transmitted from the Maxxyz console backstage over ArtNet. Maxxyz Modules are used for direct playback access.
“Maxxyz is a platform we are comfortable with,” said Foffano. “We’ve been using it for about five years now. Its ease of programming is a great time saver — you can get to where you’re going without having to push a thousand buttons. The support is great too. It doesn’t matter where we are in the world, we can always call someone.”
The Elton John / Billy Joel Face2Face tour is expected to run periodically over the next two years with dates set for November following the summer stadium tour.
