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HSL lights Barry Manilow’s farewell tour

HSL lights Barry Manilow’s farewell tour

The very final leg of Barry Manilow’s “One Last Time” farewell tour saw the singer play arenas in nine cities across the UK, culminating in a performance at London’s O2, with lighting equipment and crew supplied by Blackburn based HSL. Manilow’s long term Creative Director Seth Jackson designed and specified the rig.

 

The final tour lasted over 18 month and encompassed 80 shows across all continents. The UK section of this was project managed on the road for HSL by Lester Cobrin and back at base in Blackburn by Sean McGlone, with Cobrin liaising directly with Seth Jackson and lighting director Nathan Alves.

 

The idea was to present a production design with clean uncomplicated lines that was warm and inviting and almost the antithesis of a ’concert’ aesthetic: No visible metalwork, no truss layering, no in-the-face video, etc. although Jackson reckons that they may well have purchased every last piece of red velour draping available on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

With Manilow right at the heart of the show, a rear spot was required to create back-light and a front spot to illuminate his face for the fans. The workhorses of the show were Robe BMFL Spots. Jackson used  VariLite VL3500 spots to frame the band with side lighting, and Clay Paky A.leda K20s with B-Eye lenses for colour washes and effects lighting, the latter using the prisms and rotating lenses for aerial impact, especially as backlight behind the band coming from below.

 

A few more VL3500s were dotted around out front for key light and finally a slew of Robe LEDBeam 100s on the downstage truss toned some of the drapes and were also used for wide beam looks. The show was run on a GrandMA2 console, with Nate Alves doing the majority of the operating and Jason Workman doing a couple of stints. Barry Manilow then insisted Seth Jackson took the helm for the last run. Jackson was looked after on the road by HSL’s crew of Steve Sinclair, Richard Griffin and Paul Makin, and adds that Nate Alves was instrumental to the whole tour taking shape and running as smoothly as it did worldwide.

 

(Photo: Brent Sandrock)

 

www.hslgroup.com

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