Disrupting and Redesigning Concert Touring
The challenge was on. Coldplay’s front man Chris Martin announced they would no longer tour until they could do it in a more environmentally green way. Conversations started prior to the pandemic, so while the industry locked down, efforts continued into trying to meet that mantra for when shows happened again.
In 2021 they met their goal, with the tour starting in 2022. The band issued this statement: “We pledge to make our Music of the Spheres Tour as sustainable and low-carbon as possible, guided by three key principles: Reduce. Reduce our consumption, recycle extensively, and cut our CO2 emissions by 50%. Reinvent. Support new green technologies and develop new sustainable, super-low carbon touring methods. Restore. Make the tour as environmentally beneficial as possible by funding a portfolio of nature- and technology-based projects and by drawing down significantly more CO2 than the tour produces.”
PLSN checked in with the creative team behind the Music of the Spheres Tour to learn how this mantra would disrupt and redesign the normal process of concert touring and production, and wondered how this would fare for the future.
It all comes to life across the globe, under the expertise of Production Director Jake Berry, with Upstaging (lighting and trucking), PRG (video and cameras), TAIT, Stageco Group and EPS America (staging and scenic), Strictly FX (special effects) and PixMob (interactive LED wristbands).
The Planetary Production
Production Designer Misty Buckley—who was also a co-creative director with Phil Harvey—collaborated with Lighting Designer Sooner Routhier on the tour. The challenges were many, Buckley says.
“The inherent nature of the music touring industry is not a sustainable one,” she points out. ”That said, it is an industry of thinkers, inventors and innovators. When we approached our teams and collaborators, to discuss ideas around sustainability and green initiatives, everyone jumped at the chance to make a difference. We looked at ways to reduce the weight from the tour, reducing steel and truck space and creating innovative ways of building LED screens.”
Designing this tour through a pandemic was complicated. “All those opportunities to reach out to new companies and try and test new ideas, were very limited by many company’s capacity to take on more work,” Buckley says.
The band was involved in every aspect of the production design, and as such, they pay close attention and provide a great deal of input, Buckley notes.
Buckley explains the collaboration with Harvey and Routhier. “We started with overarching concepts and narratives. Taking our starting point as Pythagoras’ Music of the Spheres philosophy—that the sun, moon and planets create sounds and harmonies that are not audible to humans, but can be heard by our souls. We then explored music in space and went into a whole amazing creative wormhole of time, space, music and aliens—which led to the concept of alien music festivals in space, love, people and togetherness. It was a really mad and wonderful creative thread,” she explains.
She then turned to reading and collecting ideas and images that inspired her, sketching different ideas and drawings until they began to head in a direction that the band liked. Those sketches then got turned into CAD drawings. “We kept going until the geometry worked, then we added the alien hieroglyphics and all the different languages associated with the planet map on the album artwork. Each planet has its own language, concept and emotion. We created renders of this world and concept that lead to the building of a scale model so we could visualize the production design in the context of the stadium. This is always the most exciting part as the band gets to see it in real space.”
Routhier joins in. “Once the concept of the album and the overarching creative direction for the tour was developed, Misty presented the concept to the larger creative team. It was instantly apparent that the show would be very lighting friendly. The colors of space and its celestial bodies are plentiful and lend themselves very well to a Coldplay show. The word ‘Spheres’ also lends itself to beautiful light movement and architecture. We began giving our lighting positions names like ‘planetary aura,’ ‘moonrise,’ ‘horizon,’ and so on. It all felt very cosmic and helped us sink into the themes of the production. There was a good bit of promo throughout 2021 that helped us fully realize the vision and expand upon the ideas. The creative for Music of the Spheres grew and continued its expansion much like our universe!”
Celestial Staging
The band had asked for staging to be built using a combination of lightweight, low-carbon and re-usable materials including recycled steel. Carrying out the creative concepts, TAIT constructed three circular Mag Deck stages—in line with the spherical planetary theme—linked with runways to allow the front man Chris Martin to interact easier with the audience. The main stage and B stage feature custom scenic wings, while the C stage uses custom LED video decks. Black soft goods attached to the decks feature celestial artwork to enhance the design aesthetic. Now that the stage had been set, lighting was the next consideration.
Sourcing the Lighting
With the wide range of LED lighting on the market, Routhier’s big hurdle was sourcing those that were IP65 rated to withstand the weather and doing it during a global pandemic.
“The dreaded term ‘supply chain issues’ is very real,” she says. “John Huddleston and Matt Gohring at Upstaging did a tremendous job acquiring everything we needed and suggesting options that would fit the requirements. It was also a challenge to weigh out the best approaches to sustainability. Everything has an effect on the carbon footprint.”
The decision early on was to select IP65 rated fixtures as much as possible. “We wanted to reduce the amount of fixture swaps, part replacements, shipping of fixtures and parts, crew climbing, and so on. We also tried to source fixtures from companies with really healthy sustainability models. Most manufacturers have extremely strong policies. That wasn’t necessarily the hard part. We went with all LED and laser engine products except for the [Robe BMFL] FollowSpot System. At the time, there wasn’t an LED fixture powerful enough to follow the band around from a 286’ throw distance. These are also the only fixtures in the show that are not IP65 rated.”
Routhier says essentially every fixture in the rig is new to her. “We really love everything in the system. It has the perfect mixture of powerful beams, big breakup looks, and punchy LED strobes. IP65 rated fixtures are more of a recent development. The pandemic gave manufacturers time to develop them properly. Thus, the majority of our lighting rig contains fixtures recently produced.”
One element of the show design consists of inflatable LED spheres, constructed with groundbreaking technology developed by PRG Project’s Frederic Opsomer. ”They are inflatable screens that basically pack down to take up very little truck space despite their impressive size when inflated,” Buckley describes. [For more details on the inflatable LED spheres, go to page 24.]
Because of the big video component in the show, Routhier had to balance the lighting fixtures with the inflatable spheres. “Our team is super collaborative. We had a very active dialogue regarding content, colors, when to give and take on lighting and video, what shapes to use, and so on. There was a very detailed document that was constantly evolving throughout the process that we referenced. In the end, we went into developing the art of the show with a great road map.”
Some fixtures stood out when it came to the road map. “The Claypaky Xtylos, Ayrton Perseo, and Ayrton Domino fixtures are very punchy and allow us to push beams in front of video when needed. Video did their part by adding negative space and pulling back brightness at times. It was really just a dialogue between departments that assisted this challenge.” Other fixture brands specified include ACME, Astera, Chauvet Professional, and Robe.
People Pixels
Lighting Operator/Programmer Shaheem Litchmore not only runs the lighting rig, he also programmed and controls the PixMob wristbands worn by every fan in the stands. The wrist devices, embedded with LEDs and infrared transmitters, allows the crowd to become part of the show with its synchronized lighting effects.
Using LED wristbands is not new. Coldplay has been using interactive wristbands since the 2012 Mylo Xyloto Tour. But they were new to Litchmore, and he underwent training on PixMob’s newest in its line, the 7-LED wristband, developed to meet the eco-friendly challenge. The company declares it “the world’s first compostable plant-based plastic wristband” sourced from renewable sugarcane. The wristbands are sanitized and refurbished for continued use. When they hit the end of their usefulness, the plastic casing is removed and can decompose in an industrial composter or in regular compost.
Accompanying the PixMob wristbands are PixMob infrared lights. Litchmore says they have 40 IR wash lights and eight IR moving heads to provide the immersive light experience along with his own rig.
“These innovative wristbands are controlled with our grandMA3 lighting console; and the signal is delivered via 40 strategically placed IR washes and eight IR moving heads that live within the lighting rig,” he says.
The band dictates the frequency and placement of the PixMob effects. “The wristbands aren’t present in every song of the setlist, which in turn allows it to be special when they are utilized. Some songs have iconic wristband looks/vibe the band love to see across the audience. I follow the band’s lead on how much programming they would like to see per song.”
The show has “a massive number” of timecoded cues to compliment the music as well the theatrical elements within the show, Litchmore notes. “Although we run timecode, some moments of the show still require manual triggers. The band ‘keeps me on my toes’ by adding a few spontaneous musical outros to songs here and there; so generally, song endings and transitions into the next song of the setlist are triggered manually.”
Sustainable Special Effects
David Kennedy of Strictly FX designed and supplied lasers, pyrotechnics, confetti, balloons and flames. Kennedy details what measures they went through to go along with the mantra.
“We chose the pyro, balancing getting the looks we wanted with avoiding certain pieces that are less environmentally friendly due to their chemical makeups. In this regard it is more to do with obtaining the chemicals and components than the actual environmental impact of the pyro itself. Pyrotechnics are not as negatively environmentally impactful as one might initially think.”
Lasers, he notes, have been on a decline in terms of power usage and environmental impact for a number of years. “With the units generally being smaller, more fit into single cases really cutting our shipping impact. Our largest laser is eight times brighter than most of the old, water-cooled units and fits into a single case. It’s the same for the flames. Our eight flames and control fits into six cases worth of stuff.”
The balloons are biodegradable / recyclable or compostable, and a special cleanup crew collects the balloons at the end of the show. The confetti is paper only, and fully biodegradable as well. ”The confetti blowers we are using balanced the height and fullness of the look with both the gas use and the labor to make it happen,” Kennedy says. “We are using half of the gasses, substantially less labor and the height of the confetti plume is about 90% of what it was previously, and it looks fantastic.”
While following all the rules, there is still the fun element throughout the show, which is a hallmark of Coldplay’s concert tours. Among the many effects is the oversized custom mirror ball, built by TAIT, with Strictly FX lasers piercing from the inside. It was only used in a few songs at first, and soon got incorporated into about half the show.
People Power
Other sustainable elements of the show include the activation areas of the Energy center, including people-power bikes in which fans pedal to power up the lighting on the C stage. There are also the kinetic dance floors that harness the energy of dancing fans to charge up batteries and help power the shows.
Production Director Jake Berry says of their 30 trucks, two carry the BMW batteries to power the show. There are more elements to the production and the process of touring itself on the 11-bus caravan, with all areas trying to meet the mantra to the extent that they physically can.
Is ‘Sustainable Touring’ Sustainable?
And how is the band rating their efforts? Coldplay posted the following announcement about how it’s going, in part, saying: “When we announced this tour, we said that we would try our best to make it as sustainable and low carbon-impact as possible, but that it would be a work in progress. That remains true. We don’t claim to have got it all right yet… We are doing our best, and always genuinely welcome suggestions as to how to do it better.”
How are industry professionals on the tour viewing these efforts? Strictly FX’s David Kennedy says, “I know for certain that it put pressure on some of the other larger tours to make sure they’re paying attention because they’re being asked the question all the time. That was the point of it. We work with Billie Eilish who has some similar asks as well. It’s a trend I am rather in favor of!”
Buckley welcomes these efforts. ”It’s obviously a huge challenge, given that the nature of touring is inherently unsustainable. On a personal level, it’s very important to me, so it was a welcome challenge to actively bring those values in to the design and the touring industry. These are just part of the incredible work that Coldplay is doing on a wider level, not to mention the inclusivity and diversity schemes. The last two and a half years have been hugely inspiring to be a part of these ideas and initiatives.”
Production Director Jake Berry weighs in on the impact as well. “I think that what Coldplay is doing is to pave the way for people to think more about how they tour. We don’t have all the answers, but they are trying,” he points out, suggesting that it is still in the early stages. “In some cases, Coldplay’s thinking is way ahead of what the infrastructure can handle.”
Routhier says this mantra makes us think as we move forward. “What gear and practices over the long term have the least effect on our planet? We might not have been perfect in our approach,” she notes, “but we moved the needle and know how we can go further with future tours.”
Coldplay Music of the Spheres Tour
Production Team
- Co-Creative Directors: Misty Buckley and Phil Harvey
- Production Designer: Misty Buckley
- Lighting Designer: Sooner Routhier
- Video Designer: Leo Flint
- Special Effects Designer: David Kennedy/Strictly FX
- Technical Production Designer: Malcolm Birkett
- Creative Project Manager: Grant Draper
- Production Director: Jake Berry
- Technical Manager: Russell Glen
- Stage Managers: Paul Traynor and Sean Robinson
- Lighting Director/Operator: Shaheem Litchmore
- Lighting Programmers: Joe Lott, Matthew Kemp
- Lighting Crew Chief: Daric Bassan
- Electrician Crew Chief: Mike McGillion
- Video Director: Ant Barrett
- Screens Director: Josh Koffman
- Video Programmer: Dan Trenchard
- Video Crew Chief: Phil Johnston
- PixMob Wristband Programmer: Shaheem Litchmore
- Special Effects Crew Chief: Michael Barrett-Bourmier
- Special Effects Laser Lead: Ashley Neal
- Special Effects Pyro Lead: Victor Negron
- Special Effects Confetti Lead: Alan Grant
- Head Rigger: Bjorn Melchert
- Head Carpenter: Flory Turner
- Automation: Adan Maldonado
Vendors
- Lighting and Trucking: Upstaging
- Video and Cameras: PRG
- Special Effects: Strictly FX
- Staging & Scenic: TAIT, Stageco Group and EPS America
- LED Wristbands: PixMob
Gear
Lighting
- 2 MA Lighting grandMA3 full size Console
- 1 MA Lighting grandMA3 Light Console
- 10 MA Lighting Network Processing Units
- 38 ACME Pixel Line IP Strobe
- 48 ACME Thunderbolt
- 80 Astera AX3 with Domes
- 66 Ayrton Domino Profile S
- 74 Ayrton Perseo Profile S
- 192 Chauvet Professional Strike M
- 12 Chauvet Professional Well Panel
- 74 Claypaky Xtylos Aqua
- 2 Robe BMFL FollowSpot
- 12 Robe BMFL FollowSpot LT
- 7 Robe RoboSpot Base Stations
Video
- Moonrise Arch: ROE Visual CB8 LED Panels
- I-Mag Circles: ROE Visual CB8 LED Panels
- Spheres: PRG 25mm LED Inflatable Spheres
- Media Servers: disguise gx 2c
Special Effects
- 1 FireOne Firing System
- 8 X-Laser 36W Triton Unit
- 8 X-Laser 10W Triton Audience Scanning Unit
- 1 Arctos 120W Trident
- 12 Arctos 15W Coral Series Unit
- 8 Explo X2 Wave Flamer
- 16 MagicFX Stadiumblaster Confetti Cannon
- 31 MagicFX Stadiumshot Confetti Cannon
- 12 Master FX Mystic Haze Machine
- 6 HazeBase Base Tour Haze Machine
- 6 TubeHaze Setup
Truss
- 14 Tyler Truss 10’ Custom HUD Truss Arch
- 8 Tyler Truss 10’ HUD Truss
- 26 Tyler Truss 5’ HUD Truss
- 32 Tyler Truss HUD Truss Corners
- 16 Custom Lighting Ladders
To read more details about the inflatable video spheres used for this tour, CLICK HERE.
For more detailson the video control and camera package on the tour, CLICK HERE.
More Coldplay Music of the Spheres tour photos by Steve Jennings: