Lighting designer Marc Brickman created a red, white, and blue theme for the July 4th Fare Thee Well concert by The Grateful Dead, celebrating the band's 50th reunion and farewell tour on the 239th anniversary of the United States. The light show utilized the Philips Color Kinetics LED fixtures—including their ColorReach Powercore exterior floodlights— that were used to update the iconic building's lighting system in 2012.
As reported in Billboard, the Grateful Dead-themed Fourth of July tribute on the Empire State Building has "never been done before for a rock band of this magnitude," says Brickman.
Billboard also writes, “In a tribute to the Grateful Dead’s Fare Thee Well shows at Soldier Field in Chicago and Independence Day, New York’s iconic skyscraper turned red, white, and blue, with a ‘swirl of the color spectrum’ to approximate the band’s tied-dyed ethic, award-winning lighting designer Marc Brickman tells Billboard."
Set to their closing number “U.S. Blues,” the light show was displayed on video screens while Grateful Dead performed at their Chicago Independence Day show. Iconic Grateful Dead graphics were also incorporated into the design, dancing within the mast of the building.
For the full article, visit Billboard.