Troubador Stage at Life is Beautiful Festival Comes Alive with Elation Lighting

	Troubador Stage at Life is Beautiful Festival. Photo: Adam Kaplan, ASK Media Productions Inc.

Outdoor festival season in the US extends well into the fall with festivals such as Life is Beautiful in Las Vegas -- now in its fourth season -- emerging as a highlight of the EDM festival calendar. Promotional events company Insomniac again joined forces with Life Is Beautiful and lighting designer Steve Lieberman of SJ Lighting to bring the fan-favorite Troubadour Stage alive, which took over downtown Las Vegas from September 23 - 25.

Lieberman, who worked with the three-day music, art, culinary, and learning festival for the second year, handled lighting design duties on the high-energy Troubadour Stage, where artists like Bassnectar and ZHU drew huge crowds. Standing 120' wide and 240' long, the domed Troubadour Stage took fans on a multisensory journey with the latest in lighting and video production hanging from a towering ceiling. Production for the event was handled by AG Light & Sound, who supplied an entertainment technology package that included 66 Elation Colour Chorus 72 LED battens, 36 Platinum Spot 35 Pro moving heads, and 116 Opti Tri 30 compact LED Par lights.

Well familiar with Elation's Colour Chorus 72 LED battens from having used them on several festivals over the past year, including at last year's Life is Beautiful festival, Lieberman again incorporated the 6' long strip lights into his design, lining them on stage and around LED screens, as well as atop LED displays that hugged the audience on either side of the stage. "They are durable and high intensity and fit our needs when detailing and highlighting a truss design, not just coloring it," stated Lieberman of the Colour Chorus 72 fixture.

Elation's powerful Platinum Spot 35 Pro, a feature-packed 800W moving head, worked from four long fingers of truss that extended out over the audience, a fixture that Lieberman says has great aerial geometric gobos with very clear definition and looks great up in the air with fog. "They also have clarity of focus and a nice defined edge," he adds.

The designer again turned to Elation's small Opti Tri 30 Par light to warm and highlight the spectacular truss elements in various shades of color. Lieberman has found the compact fixture quite useful on many of his larger designs, praising its small profile and great output for its size. "It fits perfectly into 12" truss and makes for a clean detail aesthetically," he said. "And because it fits inside the truss if the focus is slightly off they still look good and you also get a nice reflection off of the truss aluminum. It's also easy to mount, easy to address, and one guy can put twelve in a basket."