Art Centre Melbourne’s Hamer Hall is Australia’s premier, multi-level concert venue hosting some of the most prominent national and international artists across jazz, rock, pop, multicultural, chamber, classical, cabaret and contemporary music.
Hamer Hall is home to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and is the preferred Melbourne performance venue for the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
The venue opened on 6 November 1982 and had an extensive redevelopment between 2010 and 2012. In a massive upgrade, the Hall has just replaced the 2012 lighting rig of Robe and Vari-Lite fixtures with 32 x Martin MAC Ultra Performances and 21 x Martin MAC Ultra Washes, the brightest framing fixture in its class.
The Martin MAC Ultra Performance and MAC Ultra Wash have raised the bar for highly bright and compact lights. They feature benchmark output across the zoom range, a next-generation framing system, higher definition optics and astoundingly low noise levels.
“The installation of the MAC Ultras is the most exciting thing that I’ve done in my tenure here at Arts Centre Melbourne,” commented Peter Darby, Lighting Manager for the venue. “The old lighting gear doesn’t owe anyone any apologies, but by 2024, they were tired and weren’t delivering the output or feature set required of a premium venue like Hamer Hall. So, one of my first projects at Arts Centre Melbourne was to get the ball rolling for the refresh.”
Darby adds that the refurbishment has been a massive team effort between himself, Josh White (Project Manager, Theatre Technical Development), Dan McKay (Technical Director, Production), Trent Barclay (Hamer Hall’s Lighting Supervisor at the start of the project) and current Lighting Supervisor Jake Kirby.
They universally decided that the Martin MAC Ultras were the best option, with Darby remarking that “they’re Martin’s best LED lights and Hamer Hall is the best concert hall in Australia, so it’s a perfect match!”
“The support from Show Technology has been outstanding,” he added. “They came to the table with a fantastic package for us. Martin has also been amazing with a great extended warranty.”
Features such as shuttering and whisper-quiet operation have opened a new world for the lighting team. Suddenly, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra can be lit with side wash and gobos, which was impossible with the previous lights due to their noise.
“They are extremely quiet for an LED unit of that size,” Darby said. “They deliver the boldness in terms of output and the feature set required in our space. The Hamer Hall stage floor is very pale; previously, we would have lost coloured light on it. The MAC Ultras deliver lovely saturated colours and punch through everything.”
Whilst features such as framing and animation have become standard in a quality lighting fixture, Darby says the light output of the MAC Ultra is phenomenal. Darby and his colleagues surveyed a few LED spotlights, reporting that the MAC Ultra was the strongest.
“They are certainly the brightest when you go to deep reds or anything in that spectrum,” he added. “They used to disappear on the floor and now our programmers are like, oh, gee, I’m running at 30%, and it’s amazing! Previously, everything had to be full to see it.”
While the MAC Ultra’s quality of light and brightness are its most noticeable features, the shutter system, decent gobos, 1:7 zoom range and animation wheel are equally attractive.
According to Darby, the team at Hamer Hall is now able to deliver amazing effects and looks with a beautiful lighting rig. The performers benefit from the new rig as it caters superbly to the diversity of shows.
“The response we’ve had from not just our programmers but our clients is extraordinary,” remarked Darby. “They are blown away with the capabilities of this new lighting rig. We’re able to deliver looks that we’ve never even dreamed of.”
The photographs show the MAC Ultras in action in The Songs of Elton & George featuring Anthony Callea, Tim Campbell and John Foreman with the Australian Pops Orchestra. Well-known lighting designer Peter Rubie was delighted to use the MAC Ultras in his design.
“As a replacement to the old rig, which was starting to tire in output capability and fresh looks, the new rig has a great selection of fixtures that I know already are going to be true workhorses,” he commented.
“I pre-visualise many of my shows that I bring into Hamer Hall, and previously, something that looked good in the visualiser often didn’t hold firm enough in reality. Because of the age of the fixtures, I frequently needed to be bound to choices like preferring pale colours over saturates, and I would also be faced onsite with some fixtures that would break down and need to be swapped out – or worked around.
“I am now free to fully explore creative visions and varying levels of intensity as the saturated colours shine through with ease. As a Lighting Designer who is a frequent visitor to concert halls across Australia, I can honestly say that the new standard lighting rig in Hamer Hall is unmatched anywhere else.”
Finally, the MA Lighting grandMA3 full-size console Hamer Hall received last year has a great rig to control. The Lighting Department consciously chose to run the console in MA3 mode from the get-go as they decided it was better to have all programmers learn MA3 from the start instead of learning MA2 and then transitioning to MA3.
Darby also recently oversaw the lighting fit-out for Arts Centre Melbourne’s new black box space called The Show Room. The venue is designed for small to medium companies and is fully kitted out with help from Show Technology. The rig includes ShowPRO Pluto 350s, ShowPRO R3 Washes and an MA Lighting grandMA3 onPC command wing for control.
Production Photos: The Songs of Elton & George: Anthony Callea, Tim Campbell and John Foreman with the Australian Pops Orchestra.
Lighting Design: Peter Rubie
Photography: Peter Rubie
