What started as a small annual holiday party for Connecticut-based band, Goose, has grown into a two night extravaganza filling Virginia’s Hampton Coliseum. Creative Director Will Thresher, Lighting Designer Andrew Goedde, and Programmer Tony Caporale collaborated on the December dates loaded with set themes and special effects for their 10th annual Christmas, or Goosemas, show. Says Goedde, “Every year before, this has been Christmas themed, but this year, we wanted to do something different, so we did Goosemas in Space! The design was based around this theme with the six pods or ‘UFOs’ above the stage,” with the venue itself playing a role as “the Mothership.” After a year of touring, the band has new dates booked in 2024.
Lee Rose Refocuses
LD Lee Rose knew it was time for a change when he found himself turning down two major lighting gigs in 2023: the Daytime Emmy Awards and CBS’ Big Brother. “After 53 years as a lighting designer for theater, then dance, then concerts, and finally TV and films, I have decided to retire from entertainment lighting,” Rose says. “I have been feeling like the time had come to move on. August was 53 years in lighting since my first ‘paying’ job at the Phoenix Little Theater in 1970. I had done some lighting in junior high and high school, but all unpaid work. From touring from the mid 70’s through 1984, to Ocean, Rose & Associates from 1984 through 1998, when I joined Design Partners, through its dissolution in 2016, and finally going solo, it’s been a wonderful run.”
Career highlights include 38 years with Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve show, an annual TV event which he started doing in 1985 until changes in Dick Clark’s ownership and personnel ended his run with the 2023 show. Other bright moments in his career: Working along with fellow LD David “Gurn” Kaniski to light the Acropolis, The Forbidden City, and, for the first time in history, light the Taj Mahal for Yanni concert specials. He also did a 15-year run as lighting designer for The Golden Globe Awards. Over the years there have been consulting and design jobs on feature films including Bringing Down the House, Vanilla Sky, and Almost Famous. After years of specials and one-offs, Rose also spent a relaxing four years as the LD on the E! series Chelsea Lately.
“It’s time to spend the next chapter of my life in new pursuits that bring me great joy and serenity,” he notes. Those pursuits are familiar to followers of Rose’s Facebook page, on which he posts his underwater and Milky Way photography. Capturing the light and colors of the sea and the sky still engage his creative talents. “I’m just going from lighting designer/director of photography for the biz to LD/DP for myself,” he notes. His new website, www.leerosephoto.com, promises to be online in early 2024.
Guarino’s Kaskade-ing Plan
Sean Guarino is working on what he calls “the first EDM Christmas concert” with his touring client, Kaskade, who has just released his second electronic dance music Christmas album. Lights and video were programmed in previz during band rehearsals in Salt Lake City, UT, with the DJ’s first shows Dec. 19-21 in Los Angeles. “It’s been a fantastic year,” Guarino reflects. Because of those who left the industry to pursue a different career path during the pandemic, Guarino says he “turned down work for the first time in my career, as I was too busy.”
And 2024 looks even busier. “We are in talks to expand to a new city and take over the production for a NBA team that wants the style we created in Vegas for the Golden Knights,” he says, adding, “The touring side seems to keep growing as there is just not enough of the good people to go around.”
Guarino notes, “My biggest resolution in 2024 is to be more present in my family’s life as we all know that traveling and touring for work takes us away from the people who mean the most to us,” he says, pointing out that he welcomed his second child in 2023. “I am always the first flight out after any touring shows are done. That way I am home as soon as I can be. It was tough but worth it this year.”
Libby ‘Styx’ to Finding Balance
With Styx performing their usual Vegas residency at the Venetian Jan 26-Feb 3, and working on a co-design with Ben Moffitt for the Styx/Foreigner summer shed tour in 2024—and lots of shows in between—Libby Gray is “trying to strike some kind of balance” in her life. “My father’s death last fall put things in a different perspective and—as so many of us have learned quite late in life—there’s more to life than the lighting obsession that drives us,” Gray reflects. “So, while I’m doing the usual continuing education this year, I’d like to put that perspective into application by renewing a commitment to seeing the friends whose towns I visit on the road, taking time on days off to seeing something new in an old city, and giving more breathing space to my wonderful bus-mates, local crew, and vendors who make this beautiful, implausible endeavor called ‘touring’ possible,” she says. “It’s important to remain aware that everyone is carrying some burden that no one else knows about, and kindness is free. I am grateful to every one of them, and want everyone to have a creative, fun, and safe 2024.”
Share your news with Debi Moen at dmoen@plsn.com
