Lighting designers at a sound show? Yep. For the third year Visual Terrain Inc. has produced “Organ Power VI” for the Roland Corporation. This year’s theme of “Music Around the World” was a live concert featuring 11 internationally acclaimed artists including Hector Olivera, Yuri Tachibana, Tony Fenelon and Mauro Goia featuring Roland and Rodgers products. This event was held at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach, CA, on January 13 and 14. This is the sixth annual production in association with other Roland activities surrounding The NAMM Show at the Anaheim Convention Center.
In addition to Organ Power, the production included the debut of “Music Power,” an educational presentation for approximately 500 local area high school music students. Music Power featured several new Roland products including guitar synthesizers, a sampling groovebox and the latest V-Drums.
Though the company is best known as a lighting design firm, Visual Terrain offers a wide ranges of services, including theatre consulting, production design, and management services for the architectural and entertainment markets.
“We are fortunate to have terrific client, an wonderful facility and a dedicated crew of professionals in all disciplines to make this event a great experience for the audience”, says Dawn Hollingsworth, the technical producer for the event.
Organ Power is staged with both live and IMAG video performances. To meet that challenge, lighting designer Jeff Ravitz and lighting director Erin Powell combined several intelligent lighting fixtures. “We needed a system that was flexible enough to create looks for 11 different performers each with unique musical styles,” explains Powell.
The rig included 15 Morpheus Panabeam XR2s, 46 VL-1000s and 30 Martin Mac 2000s effectively solving the design requirements. Running the show with the Whole Hog II supported the complexity of the show.
As to the criteria for the set design, designer Matt Levesque says, “The set was designed like a blank sheet of paper with the flexibility to translate to any style of music and, at the same time, give the illusion of movement and dimension during the live performance as well as during the video sequences."
In addition to the lighting logistics, staging a live show with performers from all over the world with limited availability was no easy task. According to production manager Eileen Thomas, “The great challenge is to bring of all the elements together with very little rehearsal time due to the performer's schedule during NAMM.”
Rounding out the production team were ATK AudioTek, Norm Levin Productions, Ed Marks and Kish Rigging.
For more information, visit the Visual Terrain website at www.visualterrain.net.