ChamSys Homecoming at Glastonbury
PILTON, UK – It had been 1,088 days… or 26,112 hours… or 1,566,720 minutes. However you measured it, the time seemed excruciatingly long. But at 8 am on Wednesday June 22, the wait was finally over, as the gates to Worthy Farm swung open and Glastonbury was officially back.
For many, the initial experience was a bit surreal. After spending much of the past three years dealing with a pandemic lockdown, they suddenly found themselves smack in the middle, of the mother of all live music festivals. Any initial uncertainty soon vanished, however, as they got caught up in Glastonbury mom–ents.
Time may have passed, but all of the familiar sights and sounds 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.
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 Visualiser.
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 Brag, 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 like 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.











Towler, of Nineteen Sixtyone Ltd., began working on Outlander when it debuted in 2013 at the invitation of its HOD Gaffer Scott Napier, and has been with the program for all six seasons since. In that time, the show has made a major transition from tungsten and HMI heavy lighting into a rig consisting mostly of LED fixtures.

For the Arsenal Festival, Birsa called on his
Given the complexities of his Dubioza Kolektiv show, Birsa said time coding was essential to his plans. “I could not have done things quite this way without timecoding,” he said. “The show would have to be built with much less to it if I had to run everything 100-percent manually. Happily for me, the MQ80 does a great job receiving timecode.”


Despite this issue, Hyra was able to create a captivating lighting design that engrossed the large crowd gathered in Byton’s historic Market Square as well as those watching the livestream of one of the most important events in Poland. Dynamic and deftly executed, his smooth color changes and seamless transitions flowed naturally with the traditional Polish folk dancers on stage. Later in the evening, when the initial performers were replaced by a rock band, he created a tour-like show.
Hyra credits his console’s “easy on the fly cue editing,” with helping him adapt. He notes that thanks to this capability he was able to change looks quickly to reflect the vision of his director. The user-friendly intuitive interface of the 
Building on the energy of the band’s performance and driving the intensity level ever higher was a 40-universe Niller Bjerregaard light and video show powered by the designer’s two
“The broadcast was as original as it gets,” said Bjerregaard. “All elements and features were as they happened that night and nothing was added or changed to enhance the viewer experience. The Stuttgart recordings were part of numerous recordings on that tour, but no elements were used from other shows, so what fans saw was exactly what happened. This video is a close as possible to that night, which is pretty cool.”
Bjerregaard used the M-Box Media Server. “Michael Austin Smalley, a renowned Light/Media Designer from Las Vegas and great friend, helped me in setting up,” said Bjerregaard. “My MQ500 controlled the media server with special designed video content, including movie clips with matching sound effects through the PA, as well as all camera live feeds.
Their bows feverishly jumping off the strings of their instruments, Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser, the Croatian cellists who make up the group, mange to push the oft-played rock classic to new levels of intensity. Reflecting the driving force of their performance visually throughout the 4 minute and 21 second video is a dynamic and intricately layered light show by Crt Birsa of Slovenia-based Blackout Lighting Design.
“I didn’t want to go multicolor,” he said. “Basic palettes were the most well-suited for this venue. Patterns and movement were what I relied on to visualize the music in a way that stood out.
Birsa notes that the Time Code and Cue Editing features his
“The MQ80 is a compact unit, but its powerful enough for elaborate jobs, and it’s a straight forward console to run,” he said. “For me, it’s the perfect console to take it on the field when I have a pre-programmed show and all I have to do is make some corrections. It also has UPS inside, which is most useful when you run the whole system by generator. If it runs out of fuel or something else happens, you have the chance to save the show and shut down securely. Really, this console has never let me down.”

Drawing on the brooding aura of its physical setting, Babenhausen Kasserne, an abandoned and desolate former military base that was built 120 years ago, the video evokes a haunting air of mystery. This quality is accentuated by Adrian Schmidt’s riveting lighting design that he powered with his ChamSys
Throughout the video, Schmidt creates wave after wave of lighting intensity that includes towering aerial effects, brilliant white flashes, and cascading “waterfalls” of light. Helping him navigate his way through this vortex of looks was his trusty console.
“All the features of the ChamSys helped me in this project, as we had limited infrastructure, a huge (113m x 85m) area, and long cables for data transmission via ArtNet,” said Schmidt. “We also had very little time for setting everything up, as the sun went down at 5 pm. My console performed flawlessly through it all.”





















As the top chefs and their assistants met in secret that morning,
A ChamSys user for ten years, Luhaäär only recently moved up to the MQ500M. He found the transition seamless. “I had used this console a few times before, so I was familiar with it,” he said. “The 


“We programmed the cues with a
“The stage lights are actually not real light but volumetric shaders that were animated by Victor Pukhov to mimic my ChamSys programmed lighting cues,” said Morandi. “Most importantly, Vincent Masson created the 3D animations that made the show look stunning. He used our 2D content as starting point, and with a lot of passion and talent created the 3D versions of it.”



Their sound can also inspire an uplifting lighting design — even on short notice. This was plain to see at the trio’s recent socially distant livestreamed concert at Salt Lake City’s Maverik Center, where Nicolas “Murph” Murphy supported their evocative cinematic-like performance with an artful blend of bold light and shadows.
“The group’s production manager is an old high school friend of mine,” he said. “I was able to get a recording of every song they planned to perform. I tend to listen to the track a few times and then program out what I visualized in my head. Kind of my normal process when I am afforded the time. Due to our limited time available in the venue, I pre-programmed everything in MagicVis at my house in less than a day, something I was able to do, because it’s so easy to work with this software.”
The stunning looks created for this show also translated well onto photographs. A “bonus” in this concert, notes Murphy was that his design was photographed by Leavitt Wells.