Peter Maffay stepped away from conventional touring after his farewell run in 2023. Since then, as again in 2026, he has returned each summer with a series of individual concerts under the Love Places banner, playing venues that either hold personal significance for him or that lend a distinctive atmosphere to the evening. Lighting designer Günter Jäckle specified 16 GLP Creos and 80 GLP impression X5 wash fixtures for the 2026 shows.
Jäckle is once again responsible for the lighting design. Maffay’s long-standing designer has worked with the artist for many years and ranks among the most experienced live lighting practitioners in Germany. The Love Places shows present a different problem from a continuous tour with a fixed equipment pool. Every venue brings its own structural conditions, sightlines and distances. A compact core of equipment travels with the production, with further material added locally depending on the site.
For Jäckle, that means the central tools have to be powerful, quick to integrate and predictable in color. It is precisely why he builds the open-air rigs around a substantial GLP element.
“On productions like these, a setup has to work in very different places,” says Günter Jäckle, lighting designer. “The less friction I have between different systems, the faster I get to a clean result. With GLP, I know the color mixing and I know the colors will sit where I want them.”
Before a lighting design can take on any dramatic function at all, it has to solve a far more concrete problem – the people on stage have to be visible. That sounds obvious, but it becomes a genuine challenge on open-air productions. Front positions are often a long way back, truss heights and angles follow from whatever the site allows, and the stage has to work not only for the audience in front of it but for the camera feeds on the large screens.
With Peter Maffay, there is a further complication. What stands on stage is not a compact rock line-up but a 14-piece band, and all of them have to be lit under open sky in a way that is not merely bright, but modelled, cleanly separated and camera-ready.
This is where the GLP Creos comes in. Jäckle uses the IP-rated fixture as a multifunctional working light with visible design quality, covering wash light, side accents and side-stage positions, while also forming part of the stage picture itself.
“With Maffay, the first thing you have to do is get 14 people bright on an open-air stage,” says Jäckle. “That sounds banal, but it is often the decisive point. On open-airs, the front truss frequently sits further back than you would like. You need fixtures that genuinely help you. I can use the Creos conventionally as a flood. I can use them as side light. And on top of that, they look like something. I get a great deal of function and design in very little space, which is enormously valuable on productions like these.”
The Love Places concerts take Maffay not into standardized arenas but to places with a character of their own. Therefore, the lighting design has to stay recognizable without overwriting the venue, responding flexibly to different staging and rigging situations while still delivering a high-quality show every night.
Jäckle approaches that with a clear systems logic. Rather than combining as many different fixtures and manufacturers as possible, he works from a consistent GLP core. The 80 impression X5 wash fixtures form a familiar, color-rich component of the setup. The Creos extend that core as a tool that takes on important front, side and wash duties specifically under open-air conditions.
“I try to work with as few different manufacturers as possible,” says Jäckle. “Not as a matter of principle, but because it makes the work simpler and cleaner. When color mixing, dimming behavior and basic character all match up, I arrive at a good, reproducible result more quickly. With GLP, I know my own colors, and I know I can get to where I want to be very fast.”
That also plays into how the shows look on screen. As is standard on large open-air productions, a substantial part of the stage action reaches the audience through cameras. The lighting has to work spatially in the room while appearing clean, balanced and chromatically controlled in the camera image.
“These days, you think about the camera automatically as a lighting designer,” says Jäckle. “You see immediately when colors don’t go together or when faces aren’t cleanly readable. With GLP, I take my palette, adapt it, and I can rely on it working.”
For all the planning and technical demands, Jäckle understands light, above all, is part of the musical dramaturgy.
“At the end of the day, what I want is to play the lights along with a good band,” he says. “I don’t want to spend my time managing technical friction because colors won’t come together or fixtures behave differently from how I expected. I need tools that give me freedom.”
On the Love Places open-air dates, the Creos does exactly that. These fixtures solve central lighting tasks under demanding outdoor conditions, bring a designed presence to the stage picture, and sit chromatically within a GLP system Jäckle has known for years. Together with the impression X5, they form a compact, capable core for concerts that are framed differently in every location but have to look unmistakably like Peter Maffay every night.
“I feel a strong connection to GLP, and Olli Schwendke always supports me superbly,” Jäckle concludes. “The equipment has proved itself across many productions. When you’re working with a large band in special places, that trust is exactly what you need. Then, you can concentrate on what it’s actually about – the music, the atmosphere and the moment.”
Photo credits: Paul Gärtner
