Over the past few months the gigs for Marco Antonio Solis has been a real experience for me in many ways. Getting the opportunity to be working arenas and amphitheaters has been awesome. With having bigger rooms, definitely comes more responsibility. I couldn’t tell you how many patch sheets I’ve gone through and updated in the past month, lol. I haven’t done the design gig a lot so Vectorworks was a must purchase.
This is mainly due to having one off gigs and not a constant tour. With one offs we have to switch vendors literally every gig. So with that being said you will have vendors that may not have all the fixtures. From a design standpoint you will need to update your plot in Vectorworks with the new fixtures. The console programming needs to be changed as well. This is why offline editing is so important! I can go on and on that being said, it’s all about properly communicating as much information as you can to the different lighting vendors you will have. With all of the gigs that have gone by I got to experience Madison Square Garden for the first time. It was so cool to see all the pics for past shows to actually absorb the history that has taken place there. When you see pics of John Lennon, The Grateful Dead, Billy Joel, etc. it makes me think about all the great acts that have set foot there. The most recent show we had was Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California.
I felt that this show had great improvements in my programming and operation. Getting the proper time to do everything the way you need it done and utilizing all your hands proactively makes the work fly by so much quicker and effective. After the Shoreline show I got to come back to my hometown to do another festival. This time it was a bluegrass festival with many notable acts for its respective genre. The rigs were a bit smaller, but it is after all their first year, but I see great potential for it down the road. I will be looking forward to it next season and I’m glad that it’s a gig close to home to work 7 minutes away from my house. Always a good thing! Here are a few pictures from the main stage and late night set:
The Marco Antonio Solis tour wraps up in mid October and now there is a metal tour I’m trying to lock in to last the rest of the year. I’ll keep you posted on the rest of the tour and thanks so much for reading. ~Tony
Email: tonycap22@hotmail.com
Portfolio: http://www.rockyou.com/show_my_gallery2.php?instanceid=63793856
