NEW YORK – LD Tom Halpain lit both the U.S. tour and a sold-out 15-performance Broadway concert engagement featuring Harry Connick, supporting the artist first with a grandMA console, then a grandMA2 for the Broadway shows, "and now we've taken the grandMA2 light out for the rest of the tour," in support of Connick's Your Songs album, Halpain said. Halpain, who has worked with Connick on tour since 2003 and serves as lighting director and programmer for the tour, noted that Connick has no set list for his concerts. "He hates being confined. We know the first song, then he calls them out as he goes along. We need a desk that's flexible so we can easily jump from song to song."
To accommodate Connick's inpromptu approach, Halpain treats each of the artist's songs as its own page. "He calls them out, I hit the page and away we go. We can have 80 active songs on a tour, and I need to be able to access any of them at a moment's notice. Sometimes it's just Harry and a trio or quartet with improv, which means I may have to busk completely. I have to be able to take a trio look and build on it quickly. Flexibility is key."
Halpain noted that Connick likes to keep up with the latest technology for every aspect of his show. "The band members have computers using the proprietary Connick Viewer for their sheet music – they're in the same boat we're in where the ability to move around quickly is of the utmost importance. We're not using any conventional fixtures for Harry – only moving lights and LEDs. It's a smaller rig, but very well laid out and utilized."
The complement of fixtures for Connick's Broadway performances included 10 Martin Mac 2000 Profiles, 15 Mac 700 Profiles, 17 Mac 700 Washes, 16 Mac 2000 Washes and 25 Mac 301 Washes plus four VARI*LITE 3500s, 30 PixelLine 1044s, eight PixelLine 110ECs, eight PixelLine Pixel PAR 90Ls and 23 Elation Elar 108 PARs. All were supplied by MAS Lighting, which provided the grandMA gear as well.
Although Halpain had no training on the grandMAs, he downloaded the PC version of the software and figured them out for himself. "The learning curve is very fast," he noted. "If you can read a manual, you can run this console. The grandMA2, especially, seems to be very user friendly; you need very little hand movement to access what you need – everything is right there. The patching is great, too."
The Your Songs tour's stop on Broadway visited New York's Neil Simon Theatre earlier this year, and the last two shows were recorded for television.
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