The Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre in the Sydney suburb of Penrith is known affectionately by the locals as ‘The Joan’. Like the grand old dame herself, The Joan has fantastic stage presence, with a 580 seat concert hall, 378 seat theatre and a 90 seat studio. Like any flexible performance space, the concert hall at The Joan hosts everything from touring acts to local community groups, which means the technical staff have to get shows, and looks, up and running quickly.
Taking their place among the lighting rig’s static LED and traditional incandescent fixtures are The Joan’s four new SolaSpot Pro 2000 LED source moving head spots. With a 600W Bright White Engine kicking out 26,000 lumens, the 2000s also include frost, 5 to 45 degrees zoom range, linear and three-facet prisms, and more. “They’ve also got two animation wheels, two rotating gobo wheels, and great colour rendering,” said Geoff Turner, Technical and Production Coordinator at The Joan. “They’re feature-packed, really bright, and pack a lot of punch. We felt the SolaSpot Pro 2000s had more features than the Martin MAC Vipers.”
In addition to the CMY + CTO system that Geoff and other designers love, the SolaSpot Pro 2000 includes popular High End System features such as Active Thermal Control, their Lens Defog System, and Indigo Highlighter LEDs. It’s the brightest white LED spot fixture in the High End Systems range, with long-throw optics built to keep sharp 
focus through the entirety of its 8 to 45 degree zoom range, making it perfect for large scale shows.
Also needing a new lighting desk that’s nimble and easily navigable, the trusty crew at The Joan chose a High End Systems Full Boar 4, enhanced with a Hog Playback Wing 4. “We wanted a good busking desk for use with moving lights,” continued Geoff. “We have a lot of concerts where we don’t have much in the way of rehearsals – one-night wonders, dance performances, and schools. A lot of the time, we have to make it up as we go along, and we feel the Full Boar 4 really excels in those situations.”
The Full Boar 4 gives the lighting operators at The Joan fast access to everything parameter they need through two 15.6” 10 point multi-touch screens, 10 motorised faders plus master fader, 12 user keys and five encoder wheels. Adding a Hog Playback Wing 4 to the system gives them an extra 15.6” screen, ten more faders and an extra master fader – more than enough physical control to handle anything unexpected a show can throw at them.
The Hog’s Palettes feature, giving operators the ability to map multiple parameter changes onto a single ‘button’ on the touch screen, was another big selling point for the crew. “That
was a big thing for us, realising what we can do with Palettes,” Geoff explained “Rather than relying exclusively on the faders, we can just hit a Palette. If you’ve set it up right, you have an unlimited amount of effects, moving head profiles, or gobo changes. It’s an easier and faster way to recall complex changes.”
All High End Systems products in Australia and New Zealand are proudly distributed and supported by Lexair Entertainment. “Lexair have been brilliant,” Geoff confirmed. “They’ve come to The Joan twice to run training for our staff on the Full Boar 4. Even when we first started looking at our options for a new desk, they bought units in to the venue and gave us a full run-down of all their capabilities. There’s a lot of different options on the market, and Lexair did a great job in showing us what the Hog platform can do. They really did a good job selling it, and that’s why we went that way.”
