Sound Division celebrate
night On The Town
Sound Division used all their conceptual experience
of lighting and staging to help transform the
Sky Bar at the London Coliseum into a ’50s
style jazz cocktail bar for a star-studded Tribute
To Leonard Bernstein.
The party, hosted by Jerry Hall, followed the
Sky and Artsworld presentation of the English
National Opera’s On
The Town, and was dominated by a stunning
New York skyline — designed by Ed Thorpe
and Design Director Adrian Harrison from the Special
Projects team in Creative Services at Sky Television
(Sky are season sponsors of the English National
Opera).
This formed an exhilarating backdrop, which was
subtlely brought to life by Sound Division, working
through the event’s public relations agency
Premier PR.
With little space to operate behind the black
drapes, the company chose to integrate LED lights
into the set itself, providing a twinkling night
sky via the use of camouflaged Thomas 1044 LED
battens and Palco LED’s. The front of the
set was also lit unobtrusively with Black M16
Thomas Birdie lights, in a bespoke black casing.
Elsewhere, Mac 600 moving heads washed the room
with swathes of colour, ETC Source 4 profiles
highlighted the piano and musicians and a pair
of the smaller Mac 250 heads, floor-mounted behind
the set, created a slow searchlight effect.
Finally, the dancing ‘Sky’ logo was
assigned to a further pair of Mac 500’s
— dedicated to gobo projection.
Explained Chris Baxter, who led Sound Division’s
team and project managed the event, “Since
the set had to resemble a 1950’s bar we
took the edge off the lighting by frosting the
birdies and having everything set on low dim;
we used bright pink 500W PAR 64 uplighters and
all 70 ceiling fixtures had to be specially gelled,
using Lee #148 filters (bright rose).”
Sound Division also provided the Alistage staging
(and black surrounds) flanked by four tripod-mounted
Nexo PS8’s and LS400 subs.
William Flowers mixed the show, provided by a
jazz trio and a variety of stars including Tara
Palmer-Tomkinson (piano), Lesley Garrett and Colin
Salmon, singing behind a classic 1950’s
style microphone.
“Everyone was delighted with the authentic
way in which the spirit of Leonard Bernstein’s
era was recreated,” exclaimed Chris, adding
that Sound Division had subsequently received
a number of compliments for their sensitive approach.
May 2005 |
