Two-time Tony winner (including Best Scenic Design for Moulin Rouge!) and double Emmy winner for Hairspray Live! and the 86th Oscars, Derek McLane has also turned his talents to the concert touring world. Most recently, McLane set the stage for the current Hans Zimmer Live tour, pairing up with lighting designer John Featherstone and video designer Peter Nigrini to create a compelling environment for Zimmer’s iconic movie music.
Read about John Featherstone's lighting here.
“I had worked with Hans a few times before,” explains McLane, noting that the former iterations of his collaboration with Zimmer were with lighting designer Mark Brickman. “There were no projections at the time,” he notes, but there is quite a bit of video on large LED screens for the current tour, which is continuing to play in Europe. “Hans is an old friend of my wife’s as she had hired him to do music for films at Sony Pictures, and he was nominated for an Oscar when I designed the sets and I saw him then. Our relationship developed from there.”
For McLane, the difference in the touring world is the limitation on the amount of scenery due to short load-in times, generally six hours (the huge sets for bands such as U2 and The Rolling Stones are obvious exceptions to such a rule). “The scenery also needs to be much more mobile than for television or even a Broadway tour,” he says. “We were looking for an exciting way to present the musicians on stage. The first time at the Hammersmith Apollo, we started with Hans playing alone on stage, then the rock band was seen, and finally the full orchestra was revealed using a series of black drapes.”
This time, the LED screens became a giant scenic element, with Nigrini joining the team along with Featherstone for the current tour—McLane and Nigrini had just done MJ The Musical together on Broadway. “John added the tilting trusses and battens of lighting, which became moving scenery,” notes McLane, who designed a series of risers so that everyone could see the musicians. “There is also a small stage at the top of the stairs for Hans’ large synthesizer, which looks like an old telephone switchboard with a lot of cables coming out of it.” Singers, such as Lebo M for The Lion King, and musicians including Pedro Eustache on the duduk, also perform on that upstage riser.
“Being in Hans’ presence is reason enough to do this,” quips McLane. “He is a genius and to hear his music played live is amazing.” Especially this year, with members of the Ukrainian Odessa Opera Orchestra joining Zimmer for the tour, and a blue and yellow wash of the Ukrainian flag on an LED screen for a poignant opening to the concert.