“When I make my music, I want people to feel good, I can really feel that when they sing the lyrics back to me,” house heavyweight Sonny Fodera told an interviewer from Forbes earlier this year. The Australian-born star must have had no doubt that his music was having the desired elixir effect on his audience recently, when he performed two sold-out shows at O2 Academy Brixton. Throughout both shows, the walls of the iconic concert venue reverberated with fans responding to the highly emotive songs from his recently released fifth album “Wide Awake,” and other recordings.
Fodera’s songs, of course, were very familiar to his fans, as he garners over 4.1 million listens a month on Spotify. Helping to connect the big crowd to his shimmery synths, house heaters, and bouncy bass lines at the South London venue was a bold Tom Cull lighting design that featured 89 CHAUVET Professional fixtures, supplied and installed by BIGABOX Productions, which also furnished the video wall.
Seamlessly moving from intense aerial displays with aggressive crossing patterns, to moody atmospheric settings, to dark, shadowy haunting looks, Cull’s lightshow reflected the wide and nuanced emotional range of Fodera’s vocal-driven compositions.
The kit’s 10 Maverick MK1 Hybrid, 24 Rogue R3 Beam, and 16 Outcast 1 BeamWash fixtures, hung primarily on mid and downstage truss, created most of the dynamic aerial effects. Some of the beams, along with eight STRIKE 4 warm white blinders delivered intense audience lighting from their positions on four vertical stage-left and stage-right truss structures. (These structures flanked the two side video walls, to create a nice harmonious look on the stage.)
Also included in the kit was a collection of 23 Color STRIKE M motorized strobe wash fixtures, which were arranged on the deck as well as on diagonal truss risers that moved from the left and right edges of the stage to its center. These high output units were used to create blinding blasts of light at times, whilst at other moments, they bathed the stage in emotive colors.
Adding more color to the stage were four Maverick MK2 Wash and four COLORado PXL Bar 16 linear battens, which saturated the deck and stage sides in vivid hues.
“Dean Graves and the entire BIGABOX team deserve a lot of credit,” said Cull, adding that they did an excellent job putting together a kit that “made it easier for a designer to reflect this music in light,” and that, of course made every fan who crowded into 02 Academy Brixton for these shows very happy indeed.
Further information from CHAUVET Professional: www.chauvetprofessional.com
