Scottish singer songwriter Gerry Cinnamon concluded his summer tour with two sell-out concerts at his home stadium, Hampden Park, in Glasgow, breaking records as he did so. Cinnamon was the first Scottish artist, and the first independent act to sell out the 50,000-capacity stadium—twice!
His long-term production and lighting designer, Pete Hutchison of Illumination Creative Design, knows all about Cinnamon’s determination to entertain every member of his audience and give each and every one of them an unforgettable experience, whichever part of the stadium they are seated in.
His set and lighting are designed to deliver big moments, which include lots of pyrotechnics, video, and lighting effects, and are based on an open design which renders the performer highly visible to all. From an artist’s perspective, Cinnamon likes a lot of haze coming off stage to create that big party look.
He wants the trusses to run directly into the rear seats, as an added element, to keep everyone involved and part of the show, no matter where they are. To achieve that you need a lot of mist and it helped that we had theONE™ generators from MDG. They are absolutely amazing. The volume of mist they produced to fill the entire stadium was impressive, Hutchison says.
theONE™ generators were positioned on the floor at stage left and right, and upstage either side of center stage. They were supplied by rental company, Adlib, which has collaborated with Hutchison for Gerry Cinnamon’s tours since the beginning of his rise to fame. “It’s hard to pay a complement to theONE™”, says Adlib’s head of lighting and video, Tom Edwards. “How do you say anything other than it’s possibly ‘the best hazer in the world’! It’s called theONE™ for a reason”.
The fact that we never have to talk about them or worry about their performance on a stage as large as this, outdoors in the Scottish weather, speaks volumes. The stage is 22m tall and 30m wide, but we never once struggled for haze. They gave us enough haze during the day for beams to cut through and never struggled for beam looks in either daytime or dusk. And they are reliable – they just turn up and they work.
This is the first time Hutchison has used theONE™ and they definitely did not disappoint: “I’ll absolutely be taking them on any outdoor gigs I do from now on. They were fantastic", he confirms.
