Hélène Grimaud – Woodlands and beyond...
One of the appeals of our work is most definitely the diversity of the projects we are getting booked for. Sometimes the emphasis is mainly on technical challenges and other times manpower is more prominent (i.e. in the case of live events with lots of cameras and live video production). And then there are those events where the main focus is placed on "simply" assist artists and their guests in enjoying an unforgettable great evening with lasting memories. No job is like the other and time and time again we meet interesting people, artists and their vision. This was the case in 2017 with Hélène Grimaud when we were part of her project Woodlands and beyond...
We were delighted to visually facilitate eight of the concerts of this exceptional talent on the piano. Even twice in the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and one concert each in Munich’s philharmonic hall Der Gasteig, in BASF’s concert hall the Feierabendhaus in Ludwigshafen, the Historic City Hall of Wuppertal, the Philharmonie de Paris, in Dresden and in Lucerne/Switzerland.
While Hélène Grimaud regaled her audience with songs from her album Water at the grand piano, perfectly harmonized visual works of art of her partner Mat Hennek provided additional atmospheric moments on a square LED wall in the background. The size of the LED wall varied depending on the location and was quite an eye-catcher with its 70-80 m². The entire stage setting constituted only of the wall, that is to say, the content presented on it. An artist, her grand piano and an LED wall of approx. 9×9 m by rent4event – you could call it simple harmony. However, the aim was even overachieved precisely with that simplicity: the audience was enthralled by focussing on what it heard and saw.
We used our EKTAVISION modules together with the 6 mm LEDitgo LED wall sB6io. The latter stood optically on the stage floor but was "flown" for the most part (you can watch a time lapse video about the assembly of the LED wall in the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg on YouTube). The LED wall was animated with Mat Hennek’s content - which was naturally also square - via Coolux Pandoras Box media server.
Pictures are worth a thousand words, hard to say how many words would equate to a video clip. Find out and enjoy a few impressions of Hélène Grimaud on YouTube.