Trans-Siberian Tribute Concert

The Woodlands High School Orchestra performs a Trans-Siberian Tribute concert every year. As an active participant of our technical theatre program, I was invited by our technical director, Timothy Jackubek, to design the lighting for their concert. This was the first production that I had full creative power over the lighting design and I was very excited to have the opportunity. Concert-style lighting was a new and exciting undertaking and broadened my artistry and technological experience with lighting design. Our orchestra department had fixtures such as moving lights, lasers, fog jets, and a snow machine that I was eager to incorporate into designs.

I had to solve unique challenges in this new experience. For instance, I would not be able to program the lights with the orchestra on stage until just a few hours before the concert. That small window of time was not going to allow for my design to be as creative and interactive with the music as I wanted. In order to solve for this, I requested the program for the show which included the list of songs and order in which they would be performed. Once I had that, I watched videos of all kinds of concerts to get inspired, downloaded ETC Nomad on my computer at home, and thoroughly listened to the songs. As I was listening to the songs, I would visualize in my head what I wanted the lights to look like and started to program the show completely blind with no visualizer. Any extra time that I had in our auditorium in the days leading up to the concert, I would look at my design and make sure that it presented in the way I had it visualized.

At this point, the product of this concert is what I am most proud of as a designer — not because I think it was perfect, but because I put my best into it and the design was completely mine.