The “Queen of Taiwanese Music’ Jody Chiang said farewell to fans after a long and
stellar 34 year singing career which has produced no less than 60 albums and seen
her win eight Golden Melody Awards.
Twenty-six epic concerts were staged by the superstar at the Taipei Arena in the
Songshan District of Taipei and the Kaohsiung Arena in Zuoying District, Kaohsiung,
Taiwan. Ticket sales for the original 16 dates were so over-subscribed that an
additional 9 shows were added, enabling over 250,000 people to see her perform
live for the final time.
Jody Chiang’s regular lighting designer since 2013, Tokyo based Mitsumasa Hayashi,
was asked to create high-impact lighting for the occasion. One of Japan’s leading
LD’s, Hayashi worked closely with set designer Fion Cheng and a team of producers
from the Young Hope Corporation in Taiwan to make the shows exciting, elegant
and memorable – a fitting tribute to a successful superstar.
Hayashi’s main effects lights were 46 x Robe Pointes.
The set started as a “bare stage’ and had a curved theme that included a long
runway snaking out into the audience, staircases and various hydraulic platforms
which rose out of the stage throughout the show.
The lighting was designed with full adaptability to the fore – able to transform from
full-on Broadway style razzamatazz one moment to the bare elemental shreds of
experimental theatre the next. At any time, the show presentation could be stripped
back to the base elements, which were the carefully and precisely positioned
lighting instruments.
A large arched upstage truss dominated the general stage architecture,
complemented by a large arched HD LED screen upstage, which was supported by
two side LED screens for IMAG.
Out above the audience, 368 paper lanterns were suspended in the celling as part of
the set dressing.
Hayashi first invested in ROBE in 2014 with the purchase of 40 units by his own
rental company, The Mula Corporation. He has compared and contrasted many
beam and “multi-purpose’ fixtures lately and Pointes have so far proved to be the
best choice for his design style.
Robe’s Pointe has been a big success in Japan, with over 1000 sold since the launch
in 2013, resulting in record sales for Robe’s distributor LTG.
He first used Robe’s best-selling multi-purpose fixture in 2014 on Japanese singer
Mariko Takahashi’s “Adultica’ tour and they have appeared regularly on his work
ever since.
Other lights on the rig included Vari*Lite VL3500 Wash and VL3000 Spot, a number
of other moving lights, 9-lite blinders and Xenon Pin spots from Ushio lighting.
All the lighting was controlled via a Compulite Vector console, supplied by rental
company Engineering Impact Taiwan Corp., together with the rest of the lighting
equipment.
Working alongside Hayashi in Taiwan were his FOH team from Mula : lighting
director Yoshinori Yamamoto, lighting programmer Takeshi Nakanishi, moving light
operator Lee Kyungmin, operator Toshiyuki Nakamura and lighting systems
engineer Kazuyoshi Kondo.
The biggest challenge was to balance the ambient brightness from the video screen
with the lighting. The lighting has to be powerful as the video, but not overwhelming
and balancing this dichotomy was the key.
