It was an unseasonably cold mid-August morning, but the
thousands gathered at Rockefeller Plaza didn’t seem to mind, as the red
hot Today Show Toyota Summer Concert Series rolled on through
its fourth month with a dynamic performance by Platinum recording artist Neon
Trees. Included in the crowd were Berenice and Albert Chauvet, the
co-owners of CHAUVET Professional.
The Chauvets were on hand not only to enjoy
the music, but also to take in the performance of the Nexus 4×4, their
company’s COB LED panels, which have been in the forefront of LD Peter
Greenbaum’s lighting design for the popular early morning TV concert series.
There are 12 Nexus panels on the Today Show Toyota
Summer Concert Series rig. Greenbaum uses the fixtures as set pieces, eye
candy, colorizing lights and “lighting frames.”
The LD calls the
panels “amazingly versatile,” noting that they “not only do a lot of things;
they also do a lot of things extraordinarily well.”
Greenbaum, who owns Illumination By Design in addition to
being the lighting director of the Today Show, used two Nexus
panels downstage at the Neon Trees concert to engage the audience (live and on
TV). He also positioned six panels as facing on a mid-stage riser
and hung four Nexus units overhead upstage.
“The Nexus has performed well for us all summer long,”
said Greenbaum. “The colors it produces have been amazing both on camera and to
the live audience. What I really like about this fixture is that it doesn’t
simply produce colors, it captures the subtleties and nuances of every single
color, conveying its various shadings. This makes the light very
engaging. Our color at the Today Show is orange,
and we love the way the Nexus displays very rich and subtle oranges and reds.”
Also coming in for praise from Greenbaum was the output
of the Nexus. “This is a very bright, intense light, which is very
important to us, since we’re broadcasting outdoors during the day,” he said.
“We run the panels at 10 to 13 percent, and we always have ample brightness.”
For their part, the Chauvets were excited to see the
Nexus panels on the stage of a popular network television program illuminating
the performance of a superstar group. “We were humbled, honored, and grateful
to Peter,” said Albert Chauvet. “We felt we had created a very special tool
when we introduced the Nexus, but seeing it onstage the way Peter used it
really drove home this point. We’re glad that a product that began as a dream
on our part is a part of something that has been entertaining so many people.”
