For the first time in six years, the Lorde returned to venues across Australia for her Solar Power World Tour with a stunning stage and lighting design.
Lighting designer Matt Daw was brought on to the project by the creative director, Chiara Stephenson.
“Most of my pre-production work was a collaboration with Chiara who had collated a huge amount of references based on her brief from Ella (aka Lorde),” commented Matt. “These references kind of formed my brief to make something elegant, delicate perhaps slightly feminine (trying to avoid too many ugly black boxes of technology) but at the same time, some of the tracks musically demand that we could crank the energy up to 11.
Matt adds that once they were in rehearsals Ella was a great collaborator and very clear on what she did and didn’t like which meant he could hone the look of each track. Chiara designed the set, which was in effect a giant sundial as it was the Solar Power Tour. Ella wanted it to feel elemental which inspired the stone-like texture – which was great to light!
Matt actively works in both theatre and live music (his next project is Cymbeline for The Royal Shakespeare Company) and his work in both fields has a slightly unique flavour through cross-pollination between the two.
“I find the term ‘theatrical’ gets bounded around a lot in live music and can mean very different things to different people so always requires a degree of interpretation,” he added.
Matt is not a big fan of front light, saying its inconsistency from venue to venue is problematic and it just flattens things out.
“I have two remote-controlled follow spots for Ella on either end of the front truss, most of the time we only use one to give a strong key from one side, that’s the extent of anything close to front light!” he said.
Matt remarks that they didn’t have a huge lighting budget for this show. The final design was probably around a quarter of the size of what he had originally laid out but in the process of cutting things, he feels the design was distilled and ultimately better for it.
In Australia, the rig was supplied Chameleon with Martin MAC Aura XBs on the floor and side towers along with some TMB Solaris Flares on the side towers and built into the set. There was a back truss of Ayrton Perseos with a couple on the front truss too, all of these with the option to control via Follow Me (which Matt is a big fan of). GLP X4 Bar 20s were situated across the back of the set and finally, Chroma-Q Color Force Mk2s were used to light the backdrop
“The show was programmed by the wonderful Doug Green,” said Matt. “We had a week’s pre-vis in London, another few days at Upstaging and then a couple of week’s production rehearsals in LA. The show was a real collaborative effort with Chiara Stephenson, the creative director, Annie B Parsons, the choreographer and Ella herself. We really had a lovely time making this show and I feel this came across for the audience.”
The video was intentionally a very light touch. Jack Edinger was the video director and there were moments of iMAG projected onto the backdrop. Jack used old-school camera feedback effects and prisms which worked really nicely with the feel of the show.
“Largely we wanted any video elements to blend seamlessly with the lighting so that the audience wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the two,” commented Matt.
