Lighting Designer Andy Moore used seventy Chroma-Q™ Color Blocks in his design for the final Jamie Cullum UK tour dates at London's Royal Albert Hall.

After touring almost non-stop to promote second album Twentysomething, Cullum has become the biggest selling UK jazz artist ever. The latest 2005/2006 European tour, to support the singer's third album Catching Tales, kicked off with more than a dozen dates in the UK and Ireland before moving to Europe.

The tour's production lighting is provided by master contractor Kevin Ludlam of Zig Zag Lighting (London), in collaboration with Neil Hunt of Zig Zag Lighting Ltd in Leeds. The tour was rigged by Hadyn Thomas (Up There Rigging).

When LD Andy Moore was looking to create some general stage wash lighting in a variety of colours using audience blinders fitted with colour changers, Neil and Kevin suggested he could achieve a better, richer range of colours with added flexibility and reliability from one of the latest colour-mixing LED fixtures.

After considering various products, the lighting team chose the Chroma-Q™ Color Block DB4 on account of its high brightness, modularity and compact design. Zig Zag Lighting's Kevin Ludlam commented: "We considered other LED products for this tour, but they just didn't offer the same flexibility as the Color Block in terms of our requirements. As well as using it at various angles to provide the main stage colouring, we've been able to use it for discreet lighting inside the piano and across the front of the stage as footlights."

Having gotten to grips with the Color Block’s capabilities on the rest of the UK dates, LD Andy Moore decided to add a further thirty units to the tour rig for the final two dates at the Royal Albert Hall to really complement the aesthetics of the prestigious venue. Andy commented: "Originally the idea was to just use Color Blocks for wash lighting the stage, but once I started playing with them I realised I could achieve much more visual impact by dotting them around the stage and using them to create some interesting coloured strobes and chases, all from the impressive built in effects engine."

The full lighting rig for the Royal Albert Hall dates consisted of three overhead trusses containing fifty Color Blocks, eight Tourspots, forty eight Pars and six Source 4 profiles. A video screens truss containing five Color Blocks. Three Color Blocks inside the piano and twelve Color Blocks, four Tourspots and four Tourwashes around the sides and front of the stage. Control was provided by an Avolites Pearl desk.

Zig Zag Lighting's Neil Hunt was also impressed by the Color Block from a rentals viewpoint, seeing it as the ideal fit with LED pixel mapping software as units could be easily configured in various shapes and pixels assigned to each block's four RGB LED cells. This led him to invest in the forty units used on the tour as permanent rental stock, sourcing the units from the Northern sales office of exclusive distributor, A.C. Lighting.

The Color Blocks will be used throughout the remaining European tour dates in 2005 to 2006.