Anouk - Who's your momma Tour

Forty-five FALCON® BEAM 7000W searchlights from A&O Technology recently made their world premiere on a concert tour with Dutch superstar Anouk. The ultra-bright xenon searchlights, originally conceived for outdoor use, were being used here for the first time in large numbers indoors. The artist gave four concerts featuring the xenon lighting systems: in her native Holland, in the Gelredom Arnhem, and neighbouring Belgium, in the Sportarena Antwerp, with a total of over 130,000 fans attending the four shows. The overall lighting concept was the brainchild of the Berlin lighting director Gert Hof. On the fourth night, in Arnhem’s Gelredom, the impressive megashow was recorded for a future DVD release.

In the course of weeks of intensive preparation, Gert Hof developed first the overall concept and then the details of a light-show in which every movement of the searchlights was tailored meticulously to the musical and lyrical context. With the support of Jens Probst of A&O Vision, he then spent a further ten days working on the implementation, programming the lighting effects and choreographing the operation of the equipment. A significant part of the equipment used on this tour was supplied by A&O Technology, including not only the abovementioned forty-five FALCON® BEAM 7000W searchlights but also a further eleven FALCON® BEAM 3000W luminaires as well as, for the programming, two grandMA full-size lighting consoles and a grandMA 3D system.

With the help of a telescopic crane hired especially for the purpose, the A&O team moved each of the FALCON® BEAM 7000W searchlights to its appointed place in the three-storey scaffolding, with fifteen on each level. The ten FALCON® BEAM 3000W luminaires were distributed in a symmetrical pattern along the front edge of the stage.

“We were on a very tight schedule in both Antwerp and Arnhem,” remembers Helge Altenschmidt, A&O Technology’s technical director, “with only a day each time to construct and a night to dismantle the set. Fortunately, by dint of sedulous planning in the run-up to the tour and outstanding coordination at the venues themselves, we experienced no problems in keeping to the schedule.” The A&O team had eight helpers at its disposal for both setting up and pulling down.

The client, Mojo Concerts NL, working here in collaboration with Gert Hof Productions, was greatly impressed both by the performance of the FALCON® luminaires and by the flawless technical execution of the production.