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