The Parnelli NextGen series in PLSN spotlights up-and-coming live event professionals who have been making their mark on the industry. This month we meet another NextGen. All these talented individuals are also in the running for the “NextGen of the Year” Parnelli honor, which will be announced at the 22nd Parnelli Awards ceremony on January 26th, 2024, at the Anaheim Convention Center.
There are breaks in this business; and then there are breaks. Anton “Tony” Kroyer Jr. has the basics needed to thrive in this business, including talent and a copious work ethic. He was building a modestly successful career as a Lighting Tech, Programmer, and Designer on the Nordic island nation of Iceland when he was plucked up and put in the Programming/Lighting Director position of the long-awaited international Pantera tour. He has more than held his own and is now sifting through offers and opportunities for what will follow. “Iceland is home for me, and probably always will be, because it’s a country that is pretty crazy for music in a good way,” he says. “But we’ll see what happens in the future.”
Musical Family
Kroyer was born and grew up in the town of Mosfellsbær, near the capitol, Reykjavík, and grew up in a musical family. In addition to playing in local bands, his father has owned a music store for over three decades. His Mom is also a musician; they met in a band, singing and playing together in pubs and for special events. His brother is the professional singer/guitarist Magnús Kjartan in the rock band Stuðlabandið. Kroyer played the drums, which he credits for getting him “into the rhythm of a show I light, [as] rhythm is an essential part of what I do now.”
But mostly in school he was “that one nerd that set up the PA.” That and helping when his parents were performing provided him with some basic live event experience early on. He was also a local DJ which gave him more experience with the technical aspects including lighting. He became a good enough DJ that he did some touring around the country spinning for schools—pretty cool for a 15-year-old. Then he entered a DJ contest he was sure he wasn’t going to win until he did. This led to being invited to perform at a national festival.
On his way to the festival, he lost his USB drive with his music and was unceremoniously thrown off the lineup. But the festival was on Vestmannaeyjar (translation: Westman Islands), an archipelago with limited ferry transportation, so there he was with nowhere to go and no place to stay. A call to his big brother led to getting a place to stay with the catch being he had to rig down the PA and lights from a stage after a performance. “I had no idea how to do that,” he says. But he did it and did it well enough that he was hired by that production company, Luxor. He worked there for several years—in and around the capital—and gained more professional experience, especially working in the country’s largest concert hall, Harpa. During this period, the company increasingly needed someone to work lights, and he stepped up. “They had gotten four moving lights and were like, ‘can you make these lights move and blink?’ and I said, ‘yeah absolutely,’ not having any idea how to do that. But I figured it out.”
From Island to International Tour
This started a shift from doing audio to lighting, which he was increasingly drawn to because he felt like that presented the opportunity for more artistic expression. “I fell in love with it instantly,” he says. He became Luxor’s main lighting designer, though the gigs were modest corporate events and even graduations. “We worked on an old SGM board that still ran on Windows XP,” he says. Then he was drawn to the hip-hop and pop acts that were proliferating, and the more music events he did, the more he wanted to do.
A break came when some colleagues hooked him up to work on Denmark’s annual Roskilde Festival, which typically draws up to 100,000 people. He got a call to be a lighting tech, and “it was a fantastic experience.” A fruitful one too, because he met Jesper Danius Sørensen, the CEO of Victory Event, Stage & Tour ApS, a production company based in Demark. He asked Kroyer if he’d be open to touring work, and of course he was. A few months later, Pantera’s Production Designer Sonny Satterfield asked Sørensen for a programmer to fill in for Lighting Designer/Programmer Brian Hartley for a couple of weeks on the band’s European tour. “Jasper told him about me and said I was the best in Europe, even though I was young,” Kroyer says. “I had been programming for four years, and that was a great compliment, but I’m not going to confirm any of being the ‘best’ or anything like that!” Kroyer says with a laugh.
It was a tremendous opportunity for him as while he’d been programming—and even designing his own shows—around Iceland, he had only worked on a few larger concerts. “Sonny was sort of skeptical at first, and who can blame him—I am a 23-year-old kid,” says Kroyer. “But when I started working with him, it went smoothly. The shows went well, and everyone was extremely happy.” After a couple of shows, he got to meet Hartley in person.
Satterfield had been looking for a long-term partner for programming and taking care of all those things so he could focus on design. When they get toward the end of that European leg, Satterfield tells Hartley the kid is great, and he must come to America for the rest of the tour. But that started in just three weeks, and Kroyer had no work visa. Normally this is a minimum of a three-month process. “The production team was like, ‘that’s never gonna happen’, as getting a visa is serious,” Kroyer comments. “They want to know what you had for lunch on January 2nd of 2016.” The extensive hoop-jumping involved visiting the embassy, filling out and filing an array of forms, and deep background checks. But Satterfield was insistent, and Hartley was supportive. Jason Cain, Head of Lighting for Gemini Light Sound & Video, A LIVE EVENTS company, the company that’s supporting the Pantera tour, added his help as well. Somehow, they made it happen and Kroyer found himself on a plane to the U.S. “It was a lot of work and I’m extremely grateful for all the people that did this miraculous thing, getting me to the States in that short amount of time.”
A Legendary Band
Pantera hadn’t toured since 2001. Since then, they lost brothers, and founders, “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott and Vinnie Paul Abbott. Original members Rex Brown and Philip Anselmo reformed Pantera with Zakk Wylde and Charlie Benante for this tour. “It’s a tragic story but there’s still a lot of dedicated fans out there,” Kroyer says. “And I think Pantera getting back together was a matter of when, not if.”
Once stateside, Kroyer moved over to the Lighting Director chair, taking over for Hartley. He found himself driving the familiar grandMA3. “It’s a very different dynamic than the MA2,” which he was used to working on. “But it opens lot of windows and allows for more creativity,” says Kroyer. “The cueing, the storage, the sequences, and the magic presets are all great. It has everything we need to work on the show and is much easier to run, plus I have room to go in another direction if needed.” As for the show, the set list is pretty locked in, but the encores change every night.
After the Pantera tour, Kroyer has some design projects back home lined up and will work some shows there, including some big ones. There are some tour offers on the table, too. “I’m lucky enough to have some options so I’m weighing them.” As for the future, it’s simple: “I want to be a world-famous bad-ass designer like some of the ones I’ve gotten to meet and work with. I’m not going to think small. I’ve never been taught how to do that.” Meanwhile, he enjoyed this tour. “It was such a great team—and it was a fantastic way to learn. And even though I’ve only been doing this side of the job, I’ve learned so much and I’m already able to give back to others the way they’ve given to me.”
For more information on the Parnelli Awards and to make your reservation to attend to support all the NextGen nominees, go to www.parnelliawards.com.
