There are many ways fans and critics describe the music of multi-award-winning playback singer Jubin Nautiyal, and almost all of them revolve around a single word, “soulful.” The Dehradun, India-born superstar has an uncanny ability to weave multiple emotions, such as love, yearning, loss, hope and regret into the single line of a song, each one resonating with more depth than the next.
Reflecting the myriad passions in Nautiyal’s music can be a challenge for a lighting designer, but it is one that Roosevelt Dsouza, his longtime LD, excels at, thanks in part to his inspired use of colour. “Every song has its own way of conveying emotions, so I treat every song differently in terms of colour,” said Dsouza. “Color choice is closely connected to feeling.”
Helping Dsouza create evocative palettes at many stops on Nautiyal’s tour of Australia is a collection of CHAUVET Professional Color STRIKE M motorized strobes. Although he uses the fixture’s two bright white LED tubes for strobing and audience lighting, Dsouza relies heavily on the fixture’s RGB pixel mappable face to create colourful effects that capture the spirit of the music being performed on stage.
Dsouza divides the 16 Color STRIKE M fixtures in his rig evenly between stage left and stage right truss structures. Each of these horizontal structures is arranged in three ascending rows, providing Dsouza with a variety of angles to create colourful multi-level effects.
Given the breadth of Nautiyal’s catalogue and the range of emotions in each song, Dsouza adorns the stage with a wide variety of colours, from deep ruby reds, to translucent greens. However, his palettes are always smooth, rarely involving more than two or three colours at a time. Oftentimes, he will transform the stage with monochromatic varieties of a single colour.
While conjuring up his rainbow of colours and textured effects, Dsouza remains careful to keep attention focused squarely on his client. All of his looks are created with the idea of having Nautiyal at their centre. At times, this means downlighting the artists in brilliant colours, at others it may call for a vector of side light from the Color STRIKE M directed at the star as he performs on centre stage.
“I am a big believer in keeping the artist at the centre,” said Dsouza. “This has to be the justification of any looks I create.”
With Nautiyal seeming to be elevated off the stage on light, Dsouza more than lived up to this design vision, making his client’s moving, soulful songs even more powerful.
www.chauvetprofessional.com
Australian Distributor: Showtools www.showtools.com.au
