Trooping the colour LSA Sept 15 SD7

CLOSE-UP: LIGHTING/SOUND
Copyright Lighting&Sound
America September 2015
http://www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html
Trooping the Color
By: Julie Rekai Rickerd
began in 2008, when the color
guard team of Blessed
Sacrament High School in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
approached musical icon David
Byrne, seeking permission to use
some music from his album The
Forest.
Because the request came from a
high school, Byrne allowed it, gratis,
with the proviso that he be sent a DVD
It
40 • September 2015 • Lighting&Sound America
of the performance. Seeing the video,
he says, “A door opened to a world I
didn’t know existed, a sport of the
arts; wildly creative in a vernacular
way, an under-the-radar art form.”
Color guard evolved from its military
tradition of marching with flags, rifles,
and sabers to a popular high-school
artistic sport involving the spinning of
flags, tossing of wooden rifles, and
genuine sabers within a themed chore-
ography set to prerecorded music: a
mix of ballet, rhythmic gymnastics,
interpretive dance, and cheerleading.
Byrne’s “shock and awe” at this
revelation led to his determination to
spread the color guard news to a
wider audience; he conceived the idea
of inviting ten of his musician colleagues to pair with each of ten color
guard teams, to write and perform live
music for them and unveil the results
Photos: Luminato/David Leyes
Contemporary Color was an experiment in color guard spectacle
in large public venues.
Aaron Rosenblum, a producer, and
LeeAnn Rossi, of Byrne’s record label,
Todo Mundo, were drafted to organize
what became Contemporary Color,
which recently had its world premiere
at the Air Canada Center as part of the
2015 Luminato Festival in Toronto, followed by performances at Brooklyn,
New York’s Barclays Center, its firstever collaboration with the nearby
Brooklyn Academy of Music.
While Rosenblum and Rossi scouted teams, Byrne interested ten colleagues in matching up. Teams were
chosen and paired with St. Vincent,
Beastie Boys, Ad-Rock and Money
Mark (of the Beastie Boys), How to
Dress Well, Devonté Hynes, Zola
Jesus, Lucius, Nico Muhly and Ira
Glass, tUnE-yArDs, Nelly Furtado, and
Byrne himself. Each artist wrote a
number for a team, working with team
members and their choreographers; at
the same time, a superb creative team
of concert touring professionals was
assembled.
Abigail Rosen Holmes’ lighting
design was a cornucopia of brilliant
hues that enhanced each team’s
sparkling costumes, highlighted the
colors and motions of each of their
individual tarps, and created an appropriate mood for each performance.
Holmes was inspired by the fact
that the production was “a fusion of
very different cultures. The most interesting aspect for me was that there
would be no cultural and visual expectations of how the show would be lit. It
was quite new, with no rules. I could
contravene norms, because there were
none. There were also no technical
requirements, since the teams had
never performed under stage lighting. I
very consciously lit them so they could
be seen clearly throughout. I wanted it
to be modern and I used color to
define dimensionality. I wanted each
guard to be distinct, to individualize
each guard, and also to create a common language for the whole.
Everybody was truly excited and had
signed on because they wanted to be
there. It was a challenge to light the
entire 90' x 60' floor area and high up
into the air.”
PRG supplied the lighting equipment and rigging, including 62 of the
company’s Bad Boy CMY Spots along
with 18 Philips Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots,
eight VL2500 Washes, eight VL2500
Spots, and four Reel EFX DF-50 diffusion hazers. Felix Peralta programmed
the show on two MA Lighting
grandMA2 light consoles, two
nected to their color guard. There was
never any sense of one being more
important than the other.”
Music director Daniel Mintseris was
the musical multi-tasker. “My early
challenge was the band lineup that
had to be determined before the music
was written. We didn’t want to limit the
composers’ instrumentation options,
but had to secure the band with
enough notice to make sure musicians
were available. It wasn’t easy to hire a
“The most interesting aspect for me was that
there would be no cultural and visual expectations of how the show would be lit. It was quite
new, with no rules. I could contravene norms,
because there were none. There were also no
technical requirements, since the teams had
never performed under stage lighting. —Holmes
”
grandMA2 fader wings, and two
grandMA2 NPUs. The rigging included
PRG’s BAT Truss, which can be prerigged with all automated lights prehung and ready to be flown once
unloaded and pinned together.
“Theatrical lighting established and
defined the color guards as performance,” Holmes says. “We were all
excited to try something different and
to have the opportunity for two distinct
cultures to be introduced to each
other. The musicians were truly con-
band with backgrounds diverse
enough to perform music by Nelly
Furtado, Nico Muhly, tUnE-yArDs, and
Money Mark & Ad-Rock in the same
program. This had to be done before I
had any idea of what their pieces
would be like. Once the demos came
in, it was clear that there was going to
be a very wide range of approaches
from the artists.
“I wanted to avoid a generic house
band sound and deliver tailored,
detailed arrangements for each of the
www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • September 2015 • 41
LIGHTING/SOUND
artists. This required time, of which
there’s never enough. The band was
originally scheduled to rehearse for
two full days, but, due to technical and
scheduling changes, it turned into 12
hours. We had three days to rehearse
with the artists and run through the
entire program a couple of times. We
didn’t get to rehearse with the color
guard teams until our first day in
Toronto, although they had been able
to go over their routines with recordings from our rehearsals.
“Organization and preparation were
key. Kelly Pratt was invaluable as the
horn/string arranger and trusted collaborator. With a concert tour there are
usually one or two artists, and the
music is ready months in advance.
Here, we had ten artists with
42 • September 2015 • Lighting&Sound America
very diverse styles and musical personalities, and the pieces in some
cases were still being finalized days
and hours before rehearsals started. I
really didn’t want to shortchange the
music, so there was about as much
planning, programming, and arranging
as there would be for a regular tour,
except with only a couple of weeks to
do it and only four shows to play.”
Sound engineer and mixer Paul
David Hager translated the sounds
and music in what, for him, was a
novel assignment. “With
Contemporary Color, we were using
the wide side of the arena. This ended
up being an advantage for side coverage, as the distances to get to the
audience on the side and the front
were a lot closer to each other. Bob
Weibel, our systems tech, made several different possible calculations in
Clair Bros. prediction software before
we got on site. We could predict what
the speakers were going to do as production was designing the show and
moving things around. We could show
what would be covered and what
would not. It was a challenge mixing in
the ADA section of the arena. In
Canada, it was way off to house right,
on the very outer coverage of the PA
system; in Brooklyn, the ADA section
was a lot closer to the center.
“We used 32 of the new Clair
Global [Cohesion System C0-12] linearray speakers. There are only a few of
these systems built at the moment and
we were lucky to get one. The Clair
Global new sub, the CP-218 with six
per side flown in cardioid behind the
array, and two per side on the ground
provided more sound for the color
guards to feel. The front-of-house console was a DiGiCo SD7 with an insert
rack of [George Massenburg Labs]
GML 8200 EQ, API 2500 stereo comp,
eight distressors, and three [Empirical
Labs] fatso jrs [for compression]. For
effects, there were two Bricasti M7s, a
[T.C. Electronic] M4000 [reverb], and
two [Eventide] H3000s. A hard part
was meeting 13 musicians and ten
artists I had never met before and figuring out in a very short time what
each liked and was looking for in their
performances. The most challenging
was making sure the details of the mix
translated in the larger room. The
music had a lot of delicate parts that
could normally be lost in such large
spaces, but the sound system had a
very direct sound and made the person in even the farthest seat feel like
he was right up front.
“From the mix point of view, each
artist has his/her own style that needed to be a signature for each song.
“From the mix point of view, each artist has
his/her own style that needed to be a signature for each song. Some had more space and
were very quiet; some were rocking; some
more pop and dance. The sound system needed to handle all these requirements. — Hager
”
Some had more space and were very
quiet; some were rocking; some more
pop and dance. The sound system
needed to handle all these requirements. The band that played with each
artist did a great job getting this to
happen from a musical point of view.
With the SD7, I could program starting
snapshots for each song. Then I could
mix each song in whatever way I
chose. The dynamic of each song
needed to match what each performer
and color guard team was going for.
What ended up being really nice about
this particular system is that I could
mix with very wide dynamics in each
song and nothing was missed, so
each song was its own little concert
within the show.
“Everything happened as we
planned and maybe better. I was really
pleased that the quality of the sound
was noticed by a lot of people and it
made their experience that much better and made me feel that all the time
put into this was well worth it.”
There was an explosion of joy in the
grand finale showcasing all ten teams
and their musicians in a rainbow of
lights and colored streamers. It had
been a great adventure that everyone
was keen to repeat.
www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • September 2015 • 43