The distinguished Swedish lighting designer, Palle Palme has provided an
imaginative lighting design for a pre-Christmas season at Stockholm’s famed Berns
Salonger — using exclusively LED fixtures from the GLP impression catalogue.
The “Motown Featuring Afro-Dite’ revue is one of the Drose & Norberg entertainment
productions for whom he has been working for the past four years. “We presented
the Motown show in the north of Sweden last year, but without Afro-Dite, and when
Robert Drose told me that they planned to stage the show at Berns Salonger it felt
like time to expose it to a big audience.’ And for this he needed big lighting.
As technical manager at Berns Salonger from 1989 to 1992 Palle knows the venue
well, and helped relaunch it after a four-year refurbishment.
In fact the Motown show is all about the music, voices and lighting, made up
entirely from 72 GLP heads. ‘We do not have any set at all—the visual look of the
show is entirely in my hands. Because it is a 90 minute show without intermission
we have to keep the audience engaged, both with the choice of songs and the
lighting states.’
GLP’s new representative for the Nordics, Daniel Ruden, was eager to bring Palme
up to date with a new portfolio including X4, X4XL, X1, X4L, X4 Bar 10 and Spot
One.
Palle said he was immediately inspired. ‘The colour temperatures are amazing and
the skin colours really smooth—in fact I didn’t need any tungsten for this purpose as
I expected. Normally it is not the easiest thing to mix a colour from an LED unit that
lights the skin well but here it was really simple.
Easy to programme and quick to respond at the grandMA2 desk, the new roster of
X4, XL, X1, X4L, X4 Bar 10 and Spot One received an immediate thumbs-up from
both Palle Palme and his head of lighting, Calle Grimaldi.
As for the deployment of the fixtures, the small X1, X4 Bar10 and X4L are all
mounted on towers, with the different units detailed for different effects. ‘The X1
and X4 Bar10 are used for effects only,’ he says. ‘The bigger units [X4, X4XL and
X4L] are used for front, side and backlight. I also have SpotOne on the floor behind
the artists.’
It is clear that in addition to GLP, Palle Palme also has a love affair with the venue.
“Las Vegas cannot compete with this—I am always so proud when I work at Berns
because in my opinion it is one of the few real fantastic showrooms in the world,’
he says unequivocally. ‘When we have the opportunity to do a proper show with all
those lights, other producers should come along and look at the potential.’
