Lighting designer and director Andrew Nissley is out with Lindsey Stirling, the American violinist, dancer, performance artist and composer, who’s a YouTube sensation with more than a billion total views. Stirling’s music is a combination of classical, pop, rock and dance. Her tour dates tend to be sell-outs and she continues to grow as an artist. The solo dates in the States wrap up this month, then she shares the stage with three more multi-artist U.S. gigs in December. Then she returns to the road for a European leg in 2017.
Andrew Nissley
Lighting Designer and Director
When we talked to Nissley, he doesn’t refer to himself as a designer, more just a lucky tech guy.
“My background is just being a nerd who likes technology and playing music, and the goal to keep working with both those things together. I’ve only worked for three artists in maybe six years of attempting to do this as a career and it’s worked out great somehow. I don’t think I understand that part either, really, but here we are…
“When I start the process I use SketchUp for hashing out designs quickly, then MA’s onPC and MA3D to do more detailed work. Once this rig was nailed down, most of the programming was done at home with MA 3D over a three-week period. The set list doesn’t really change at all unless we do a festival where we don’t have all our own production, an acoustic set played on toy instruments doesn’t always translate into a festival dance tent.
“The grandMA console I run the show on just ended up being the platform I decided I wanted to learn most on. Previous to using it as my console of choice, I had only used Avo desks and a lot of odd computer MIDI-based lighting that were cued through playback systems.
“Lindsey is very involved in all aspects of her career, and having a very concept-oriented artist makes building a show a great experience. We settled on the design you see for the show, and most of it stayed the same from its inception, except for the staging, which was from Lindsey’s input later on. She also has a very clear vision for video content. Immersive did an incredible job bringing that vision to life, and the rest of the show is all content Lindsey edited herself. I try to let that happen first, then work what I do into it once I’ve seen even a rough version.
“For the songs where we have projection, the screen projection surface is a 40-by-20 Pepperscrim from the Belgian company ShoTex. Presumably it’s relatively new, as I could barely find any information about it initially. Immersive had used it on other projects and recommended both company and cloth to me. We’re using a Panasonic DZ-21K projector, with a second as backup only. Since we’re mostly in theaters this tour, we hang the fabric and bring it in on a fly rail at different points during the show (as opposed to the kabuki drop style of last tour), all of which Lindsey had very specific conceptual direction for. Both video elements are HD outputs, but FOH Projection is a 1920×960 image as the scrim is 2:1 in size, and LED is 1440×504. All the LED is LMG’s 8mm tiles.
“The lighting and video is supplied by LMG, whom I’ve used for three years now for almost every tour I’ve done. I worked with rep Craig Mitchell and his team, who are amazingly supportive. Among the fixtures on the tour, I’ve got the [Martin] MAC Viper and Quantum Wash, which are staple fixtures for me. The Mythos were a late addition, but they’re super versatile, given this show is ballet and theater one minute and rock/EDM insanity the next. Admittedly, the rest is as much eye candy as we can fit into one truck to make the big songs feel as big as they can.
“Lindsey is someone I consider myself very fortunate to have as an employer and collaborator. It’s amazing to see how far she’s come in the time I’ve been on her team, which is the best group of people I’ve ever worked with. I know everyone says that to the point it’s a cliché now, but it doesn’t make it less true in any case.”
Lindsey Stirling Brave Enough 2016 Tour
Crew
- Lighting Designer & Director: Andrew Nissley
- Lighting/Video Co: LMG
- Lighting & Video Techs: Glenn DiNicola, Kris Hartman
- Tour Manager: Erich Jackson
- Production Manager/FOH Engineer: Rob McWhorter
- Stage Manager: Clay Barnum
- Video Content: Immersive, Lindsey Stirling
- LMG Account Rep: Craig Mitchell
- Trucking Co: Egotrips
Gear
- 2 grandMA2 Full consoles
- 20 Martin MAC Vipers
- 12 Martin MAC Quantum Washes
- 12 Martin MAC Aura XBs
- 8 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes
- 24 Robe CycFX 4 fixtures
- 16 Claypaky Mythos fixtures
- 16 Elation ACL360i fixtures
- 8 Chroma-Q Color Force 72
- 2 Base Haze XL hazers
- 104 LMG Omega 8mm Tiles
- 2 Panasonic DZ-21K projectors
More tour photos by Steve Jennings:
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