The grandMA hobnobbed with royalty at the Coachella Valley Music Festival where it was the console of choice for programmer Demfis Fyssicopulos and lighting designer Garry “Sport” Waldie who helped headliner Prince light up the stage. A.C.T Lighting is the exclusive distributor of the grandMA in North America.

The three-day annual Coachella Festival was held April 25-27 in Indio, California. It was founded as the first major independent festival of rock, electronica, and hip-hop and has since grown into a top showcase for indie bands. This year Prince headlined day two of the event.

“Sport brought some elements from the lighting rig we used last year for Prince: 21 Nights in London I cloned the information from the London (for which we had several weeks of rehearsals) show into what we had at Coachella,” he continues. “Once on site, we used an ESP Pre-Visualization system to massage the show and adapt it to the festival. Attempting to do that without the grandMA's cloning capabilities would have been close to impossible.”

In addition, during the performance the two grandMA consoles supplied by PRG were networked in a multi-user environment which allowed Fyssicopulos to assist Sport in running the show.

The grandMAs controlled an extensive lighting complement which included 30 Vari-Lite VL3000 Profiles, 22 Mac 2000 Profiles, 32 Mac 2000 Washes, six 10K Synchrolite Series 3 and five 3K Synchrolite Series 3, 12 Vari-Lite VL5 Arcs, 12 Martin Atomic Strobes, and 10 Mole Richardson Molefays.

“With the grandMA we could change over fixtures from our last rig with Prince, which was in the round in London, to this rig very easily,” Sport declares. “We were able to do a ton of work before we arrived at the show; it was great to have the ability to retool the London production to accommodate Coachella. Now I can’t wait to use the grandMA with video.”

“Sport and Demfis made good use of the grandMA’s flexibility, which was critical in a festival setting like Coachella,” adds Bob Gordon, president and CEO of A.C.T Lighting. “They were able pull the elements in from another show and change fixtures as needed without extensive re-programming. Given Demfis’ programming skills and Sport’s understanding of how Prince works, they pulled it off in grand style and gave the audience what they should expect at a Prince concert.”