As we claw our way back to live concerts, Metropolis Touring, an independent, wholly Australian-owned concert and event promotions agency has seen a niche in the market. Overseas acts may not be able to tour here so rather than relying on the usual cover bands, Metropolis has staged several shows in honour of various acts with songs performed by well-known Australian singers with a full orchestra.
In Sydney, the shows have been held at The State Theatre with ei Productions supplying lighting and audio.
“We’re grateful to Metropolis for having us on board for these shows especially during this challenging time and they’ve had to jump some huge hurdles to get these show happening,” commented Neale Mace, managing director of ei Productions. “The Orchestrated gigs have included shows specific to David Bowie, Queen, Elton John, The Beatles, Metallica, Fleetwood Mac and there’s more in the pipeline I believe. Now that the initial concept is up and running, we’re looking to augment the lighting designs to have specific looks for each show. For example, Queen now has a back wall of LED Cans akin to Queen in the 80s, Bowie has an Aladdin Sane lightning bolt with embedded LEDs and we’re working on concepts for the other shows right now.”
The original brief was for a nice, basic looking lighting rig that had enough lighting coverage for the orchestra to be seen and of course enough front light to light the band plus guest singers and also lighting for the conductor George Ellis. Audio required around 56 channels, now creeping up to 64 channels, and needed a great sounding flexible gear package.
For the State Theatre, there’s always a space issue as it’s not a particularly wide proscenium opening and with the number of risers required for the orchestra and band, there wasn’t much room for any floor-based lighting.
“There’s also the trusses in there not being centre of the stage, so you have to allow for that,” added Neale. “It looks wrong on the truss, but right from the audience perspective.”
For audio, Metropolis’ FOH engineer Greg Hicks preferred a Yamaha CL5, which ei Productions had in their inventory, and the CL5 has been rock solid on these shows. Monitors use a combination of d&b M4 wedges and Shure PSM1000 so a bit is going on at the stage end. A Digico SD10 + SD-Rack and D-Rack cover monitor duties. Ei Productions also invested in a bunch of DPA 4099 microphones for the orchestra. They also supply a full riser package for band and orchestra that changes slightly for each gig.
ALIA visited the Your Songs: The Music of ELTON JOHN Orchestrated show where the lighting brief was just to keep it simple and to create scenes and moods but also keep the orchestra well backlit and the conductor lit up at all times.
The design had already been in the State Theatre for the last couple of months as a generic rig but when Bryce Mace got involved he added eight GLP x JDC-1s placing them on the floor behind the orchestra so he could create a flood of colour behind them or even just point them back to light up the house smother.
“The JDC-1s work great to just add huge floods of colour and create a whole new mood plus they are also just a great strobe,” said Bryce. “As we have done so many of these shows, the rig frequently changes however for this show in particular we went with Ayrton Ghiblis for our spots, Martin MAC Quantum Washes for front and rear wash and NitecLED Blinder IIs for crowd blinders.”
This show was the first show Bryce operated for Metropolis, on an MA Lighting grandMA3, so it was a fairly busked show. However, every show the band and orchestra rehearse the whole set so as the rehearsals went on he would be behind the console and periodically add various cues to make certain parts of the set stand out.
“After the first show, we decided we were going to try and make each one of these shows its own vibe,” he added. “We will more or less keep the flown and floor rig the same but we will be adding different elements to each show; for example for Queen we added a wall of Acme LED Par100 Cans and for the Fleetwood Mac show we are bringing in a scrim and a bunch of Vintage Blazes. I guess it can be challenging to come up with unique ideas with so many of these shows happening at such a fast rate. I think there is at least 30 – 40 more of them this year alone!”
The last year wasn’t a great one for the industry so Bryce is grateful for Metropolis and their drive to put on all these shows and having him on board.
“I’m very familiar with all the artists they pay tribute to so it’s been great that the promoter has entrusted me to throw new ideas out in the mix to make each show look different to the other,” he remarked. I’m very excited to see how the rest of these shows come out looking!”
