On January 28th one of the true architects of rock 'n' roll music, Chuck Berry, performed at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas. Lighting design company ILIOS Lighting of Austin designed the show lighting using a Martin MAC 250 rig under Maxxyz control.

The rig consisted of 10 MAC 250 Wash, 8 MAC 250 Entours and Source Four Leko’s and Par’s with haze from a Jem ZR 24/7. The MAC 250 Wash were ground based and arranged in a straight line across a backdrop cyclorama. The Entours were located at the base of three triangular scrims on small risers. LD Bryan Azar of ILIOS Lighting commented on the choice of Entours, “Chuck Berry currently doesn’t have a regular on-the-road band so we didn’t know how to approach focus until the day of the show. We needed something quick and flexible that could still provide some good artistry and punch.”

On the control side show details were not available ahead of time but the Maxxyz console proved to be a stress reliever. Bryan comments, “Hands down one of the most useful features about the Maxxyz for this particular show was the on-board visualizer. We did not have an advance for this show. Really all we knew for the month before the show was that Chuck Berry was going to play. We were able to get a boat load of work done before the date of the show with several potential back up plans in the programming and operations scheme.”

Meagan Metcalf and Jack Davis of ILIOS programmed and operated the show. “What I found useful about the Maxxyz was its ability to run multiple banks simultaneously,” commented Meagan. “I like the ability to add fade times into presets in order to give me more on the fly capabilities, as well as the ease of access to all my presets, groups and banks. The built in visualizer was also valuable as there was little time onsite to do programming. I also like the large, well-lit buttons that I can read in the dark.”