Every lighting project is a puzzle, for this Park City, Utah based designer, a collection of disparate parts that must be woven together into a balanced, harmonious look through the art of design. Since leaving the Tisch School for the Arts at NYU to work for Broadway legend Ken Billington in the 1990s, Kusner has […]
A sense of expectation runs like an open road through the flowing music of Counting Crows. The multi-platinum band’s songs don’t play out, as much as they unfold, taking listeners on a journey that holds out the promise of something new happening just around the bend. Mike Zielinski, the band’s longtime lighting designer, captured this […]
It isn’t easy to make waves in New York’s intense and crowded live music scene, but when Bowery Presents, the owners of several of the city’s top drawing concert venues, opened Brooklyn Steel in April, everyone in the Big Apple took notice. Located in a cavernous former steel plant in Brooklyn’s hip Williamsburg section, the […]
Overly complicated fixtures rarely find their way into a Travis Shirley rig. By his own admission, this Houston-based designer’s lights of choice are usually “meat and potatoes.” Admittedly, this may come as a surprise to anyone who’s seen the stunning looks he’s created for longtime client Enrique Iglesias on the singer’s current world tour with […]
Theatrical lighting designers have never had more power to choose colors, even to the point of subtly changing hues on the fly during a show. However, with this capability comes a responsibility says Cory Pattak, the host of the popular design focused podcast “in 1: the podcast.” Now that they are freed from the task […]
The space separating lighting from video has narrowed at an astonishingly rapid rate. Thanks to technological advances like pixel mapping and high-output LED video panels that easily double as lighting fixtures, what was once a gap just a few years ago has narrowed to an ever-so-small crevice. This convergence has created a wealth of opportunity […]
Quite a few skills that go way beyond lighting design are needed to make someone a successful house LD. Part psychologist and part tour guide, good house LDs not only need to make visiting designers and bands feel welcomed, they also often have to lend a supportive ear to visitors who recount woeful tales of […]
Colours of Ostrava is the biggest international music festival in the Czech Republic and one of the largest in Central Europe. With its unique location at the Dolní oblast Vítkovice, an old Czechoslovak mine with Unesco World Heritage status, the festival draws some of the biggest musical acts from around the globe. This year, it […]
Lights are often the last things this Las-Vegas based designer thinks of when conceptualizing looks for a tour. Admittedly that might seem strange at first, given the bright, brilliantly colored lightshows he’s created on the way to earning a CMA Award and Parnelli nomination. Still, for Reade the power of lights lies not only in […]
For this Irish lighting and stage designer, the process of creating stunning visuals begins not with his eyes, but with his ears. There in the music of his clients lies the roadmap that will guide him in crafting his designs. Every show, he believes, is made up of musical moments, and every moment must be […]
His lightshows for the likes of Machine Gun Kelly are scorching and intense, but when it comes to accenting those lightning bolt beams with fog, Alex Kelly takes a carefully measured balanced approach. Sure, there are volcanic bursts of brightly colored fog from the Vesuvio RGBA machines that invariably find their way on to his […]
Designers often talk about creating an “immersive environment” with their on-stage light show. S Jeremy Peters of SJP Productions takes this a step further by routinely extending his designs to off-stage elements. Nothing outside the stage is beyond the scope of Peters’ creative eye. He’s made trees at festivals sway with moving colors, accented architectural […]