Ayrton Khamsin and Domino light Adele in Vegas
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Weekends with Adele, a five-month series of Friday and Saturday night shows, commenced in November 2022 and ran through March 2023. The show received praise from critics for its ‘breathtaking’ staging and elegance and its remarkable ability to combine the spectacular and the intimate. A sold-out slate of dates attested to the show’s hit status.
FitzGerald previously worked with Adele when he served as the lighting designer for her appearance at British Summer Time in Hyde Park, London last July. Coming on board for her Las Vegas residency he knew “from the beginning that it would be a very theatrical show. It would build quite a bit physically and in intensity starting with a small concept and growing to fill the stage with a full orchestral extravaganza with scenery, moving elements, and projections. The lighting needed to complement that and still give a theatrical feel and concert vibe.”
FitzGerald mounted 192 Khamsin LED moving head profiles in three moving torms independent of the three moving projection layers on the show, as well as in three main overhead rows of truss for top and side lights and on two house truss positions.
“Khamsins were the workhorse for this show: They were the principal light used everywhere,” he says. “I had worked with them before and knew they were very bright and punchy, as well as offering a lot of options. I wanted uniformity in the rig – all the same lights in different locations for better, cleaner visuals – but that meant the fixtures had to be versatile.”
He explains that he wanted “a lot of flexibility in the way we positioned the lights” as the show evolved and Adele decided where best to perform each song. “We were able to move and adapt to the changes thanks to uniformity in the rig.”
Khamsins provided consistency and versatility throughout the show. “Khamsins could do it all: really tight beam effects, wide animation washes, shuttering, gobo washes, strobing, colour bumps,” FitzGerald says. “We even used them for key lighting because of their nice adjustable colour temperature. There’s a lot of dimming in the show as lights come on slowly to create the mood and feel of some intimate moments. Khamsins were also perfect for that kind of subtlety.”
On the other end of the spectrum, “the venue has a 120ft-wide proscenium, and sometimes we had to shoot a light from one side to the other or illuminate props, and Khamsin did that really well, too,” he adds.
FitzGerald also opted for 25 Domino LED moving head profiles, which were evenly distributed on the floor to create a horizon of light for the show. London-based Neg Earth Lights provided the rig.
“For some sections of the show it was only Adele and a piano - quiet, simple and beautifully intimate moments; and sometimes there were huge full stage band songs with complex flame and water effects. The show would go from ballads to a rock concert, all while using projection and LED surfaces balanced between content and IMAG. Managing our exposure and overall stage image for camera, iPhones and the human eye was a challenge that these fixtures worked perfectly for,” FitzGerald explains. “That demonstrated the versatility of the lights.”
For FitzGerald, lighting Weekends with Adele was about “giving Adele the moments she wanted for every song. The versatility of the rig made it feel like an intimate show at times or a very theatrical show at others. We made sure her audience of fans felt connected to every performance”.
