The tour took the band through Germany, Austria and Switzerland (photo: Paul Gärtner)
Germany - In April 2019, singer / songwriter Lena Meyer-Landrut released her fifth, critically acclaimed studio album, Only Love, L. In June, the Only Love tour of 12 dates took the band through small to medium-sized halls in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Designer JoJo Tillmann developed a reduced set with a scalable lighting design for single-trailer transportation. Although there were four musicians, two backing vocalists and two dancers on stage, alongside the singer herself, the show was not conceived to be ‘over-staged’.
"I designed the set on a very stripped-down basis,” reports OPUS award winner JoJo Tillmann. "Apart from a small ramp leading up to a platform, there were no set building elements on the stage. As a result, versatility became all the more important."
For his lighting design, he mainly used fixtures from the GLP catalogue: impression X4 Bar, KNV ARC and Cube as well as FR1 made up the majority of the lighting—and always delivered surprises thanks to the creative deployment of the individual elements.
He arranged the X4 Bars, one of JoJo's “favourite light tools”, one above the other like the rungs of a ladder, and placed the construction directly behind the platform. "The individual Bars resembled a large light mirror," he explains, adding that “basically, the X4 Bar provides the real hit and is a really unique fixture". Hardly any lighting design can manage without the versatile LED Bars, he believes. Here they were framed by two vertical columns, each consisting of six GLP KNV Arc left and right. "We lovingly named this arrangement the 'palm tree'," recalls the designer.
The two ‘palm trees’ were mainly used in the disco elements of the show and provided lighting impact and versatile effects. “The arrangement of the KNV’s on top of each other resulted in a centre line, which in turn allowed me to design either organic-looking geometrics or linear geometrics. Regardless of whether geometric or organic/ figurative, both can be easily achieved with the KNV."
JoJo proceeded in a very similar way with the KNV Cubes, which were arranged in 4x3 blocks in the corners of the stage, as a horizontal row of four under the platform and as a half-high vertical row of four on the left and right of the stage.
The designer also hung a total of 24 GLP FR1’s on two meters of pipes that were off-axis (2x12 left / right), creating a portal-like impression that framed the events on stage. JoJo, who had already tested the FR1 for a permanent installation some time ago, knew pretty well what to expect from the compact power packs. “The FR1 is a small, light spotlight that can be used to excellent effect in a network. It's just a great lamp."
In addition to JoJo Tillmann, the lighting crew consisted of technicians, Gregor Jodlowski, Martin Paul, Nina Mesitz and Jens Hillenkötter.
(Jim Evans)

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