Parnelli NextGen honorees are live event personnel who while haven’t been in the industry long are already making a mark. Meet another member of the NextGen Class of 2023. All are in the running for the “NextGen of the Year” Parnelli honor, which will be announced at the 22nd Parnelli Awards ceremony set for January 26, 2024 in Anaheim, CA.
For Lighting Designer/Director/Programmer Jonathan D. Martin, the resume is shaping up nicely. Acts he’s worked with include the Jonas Brothers, Carrie Underwood, Cardi B, and Lady A. Oh, and the most recent Super Bowl Halftime Show starring Rihanna. Of note is that all this has happened before his 19th birthday. There are other notable aspects to this NextGen’s journey so far—for example, if there was an award for “best use of downtime during Covid,” he would certainly be a nominee for that as well. It was then he started assembling an impressive bench of mentors that he continues to add to today.
Cold Calling Talent
Martin grew up in Newtown, CT. “I was home-schooled, so I wasn’t involved in traditional [school] theater programs,” he says. “But we attended a lot of community theater when I was growing up, and I was fascinated with the production aspects, always looking at the lights more than what was happening on the stage.” He would volunteer on the crews of some of those shows. Then in 2017, at the age of 13, he attended his first big stadium rock show: U2’s Joshua Tree tour, with a production design by Willie Williams. “It was so inspiring to me.” After that, Martin started becoming involved with the technical side of services at Walnut Hill Community Church in Bethel, CT.
His long list of mentors begins there as Strictly FX’s Production Designer Adam Biscow happened to also attend the church. “He took me under his wing,” Martin says. At 16, he became the youngest crew member to be hired at the megachurch, handling mostly lighting design and programming. During his stint there, the church greatly expanded and updated their gear, including the purchase of an MA Lighting grandMA3 console. “We went from having an all conventional rig to having moving fixtures, LEDs, and lots of pixels. That’s where I learned the basics of programming.”
Then came the pandemic, which he saw as a unique opportunity. “I realized that if there was ever a time to reach out to [professionals], that was the time.” He compiled a list from PLSN articles and Parnelli Award winners and started cold-calling lighting/production designers, and some took his call. “[Designer/Programmer] Tony Caporale was one of the first I got to speak with on Zoom, during which I explained I wanted to learn Vectorworks, which I had downloaded but hadn’t dived into yet,” Martin explains. Caporale gave him a drafting assignment, and two weeks later generously went over it with him.
A Winning Halftime
Another of his cold emails landed him a call with the team over at Earlybird Visual in Burbank, CA. While he initially interacted with Co-Founders Eric Marchwinski and Kirk J. Miller, “the whole team have been incredible mentors and really influential in my life.” An invite to be a support programmer for the American Music Awards in Los Angeles followed. They invited him back to help with that Super Bowl Halftime Show, “which was a dream come true, as ever since I was a kid watching Halftime Shows, it was a goal to work on one.”
While on-site, he again took on the support programmer role, working to make sure the rig was rung out before the lead team arrived. Observing Marchwinski and Programmer Mark Humphrey program the show was a dream master class. “Watching their hands flying all over the console keys was an incredible learning opportunity.” For the show, he was in FOH, but seeing that actual final performance would have to wait until later as his attention was elsewhere. “I was by our backup console holding a network cable ready to plug it into the rack if our main session went down,” he explains. He says he recently rewatched the performance and says, “It’s cool to play a small role in such a high-profile show. But really, for me, it’s more about the people that I got to do it with and the things that I learned.”
Another mentor is Harry Forster, one of the Super Bowl Halftime Show’s Lighting Directors, who then offered him a small club tour with singer-songwriter Elderbrook. This provided Martin his first official touring experience. As the only lighting crew member on it, he quickly learned to do everything necessary from the moment he woke up. Next, he went out for two months as Lighting Director for Lady A which included calling spots—another first for him. Then LD/Programmer Manny Conde brought him in on Cardi B’s Summer Jam show in June. “It was my first big show as Lead Programmer, and it was challenging because a lot of things changed in the process.” Here he learned another common experience in this business: “The show that actually happened was very different than the show that we programmed.”
From Vegas to Yankee Stadium
Some corporate work has come his way, too, which he says he appreciated because “I like getting an understanding of all industry sectors, while also working with as many designers and creatives as possible. And it was interesting to program a show that’s less about the music and more theatrical.” Designer Nick Whitehouse of Live Redesigned called with another opportunity: working a month of shows for Carrie Underwood at her Las Vegas residency. “He and Brian [Vaughan, also of Live Redesigned] offered me the Lighting Director position. A Vegas residency is unique as it’s the same venue for multiple shows and you’re not taking it on tour. So that was another great experience.”
Then it was Marchwinski who handed the 18-year-old the task of being Lighting Director for the current Jonas Brothers tour going on through December. “We recently had two sold out nights at Yankee Stadium, which was super cool,” he says. The all-stadium/arena tour experience is novel for someone so young. In addition to working with Earlybird Visual on this tour, he’s also getting to work with the team at Silent House, who designed the show, and he says it’s inspiring him to work toward more creative roles in the field. “Being able to work with top industry creatives and be mentored by them is incredible,” he says. “I’m very blessed,” Martin says. “I don’t take it for granted at all.”
But Martin has experienced low points, too. He was all set to go out with a big tour when a week before departure he was told those infamous words: “We’re going in a different direction.” Another time he was at the airport ready to go out with a show when he got a call that the tour was suddenly canceled. “We tend to operate without contracts and with a lot of promises, so it was my first taste of things going south.” He keeps busy in other ways, though—in 2021 he started a YouTube channel dedicated to helping other programmers learn MA3 software.
As for the future, he’s taking a wait-and-see approach. “I’m entrepreneurial-minded and hope to start my own design company in the future but I enjoy touring for now. In the short term, I would love to step into more lighting programming roles, and dive into video programming as well.” He was accepted to all the colleges he applied to, and while he could see himself attending school eventually, “to be honest, I’m quite content and feel blessed where I am right now. I want to be a sponge and absorb it all.” And not long ago he had a Zoom meeting with Willie Williams. “That was it all coming full circle for me.”
