When lighting designer Tom Campbell, who loves challenges, was tasked to imagineer the ambience in a special setting for Anna Calvi’s performance with the Heritage Orchestra at St John’s Church, Hackney, London, he mixed imagination with a Robe moving light rig and some novel ideas to unravel a richly layered piece of lighting sculpture.

Factors galvanizing the production were no flying facilities and only a single phase 63A power supply to run all the technical, sound, lighting and a full camera shoot. This was split into two single phases to run the production. In addition to the Heritage Orchestra, the evening saw many exclusive collaborations with a series of special guests.

Campbell lit a festival tour earlier in the year for Calvi, including her incendiary set at Glastonbury’s The Park Stage and so he took the floor-based design from this as the basis for St. John’s Church, expanding and adapting the concept to fit the space and occasion.

Any ground support was out of the question as it would have ruined the aesthetics of the church, and an additional test for Tom’s design skills came in the form of a fixed circular pipe structure which hung above the stage housing the altar lights. This effectively capped the ceiling height for his design, however did find that the spherical halo-like nature of this contained the visual picture very effectively.
To add to the visual eccentricity of the surroundings, he specified six custom 10K fresnels which retained their fabulous classical shells and outer casing, but inside were fitted with Robe LEDWash 600s complete with a transparent LED panel across the front. These were rigged on stands upstage and complimented with seven Patten 2013s on 6- and 8-foot high tank-trap stands. Each Patten 2013 had a LEDBeam 100 rigged immediately below it on the stand, so these tiny movers could be focused directly up into the Patten 2013. The LED source was reflected back onto the stage via its dish surround, and this brought a completely different dimension to the spacey retro fixtures.

Another 12 x LEDWash 600s were dotted around the floor and rigged out in the room and on the balcony, used for general washes from jaunty angles across the choir and orchestra. Ten of Robe’s MMX Spots were split into two groups, six running across the stage in front of the orchestra and four rigged on the balcony. A single Robe BMFL was positioned upstage centre and kept for one powerful back lighting moment effect in “Strange Weather’.

Campbell operated the lights with his own Avo Tiger Touch console, and the rest of the kit was supplied by rental company Siyan. The lighting creativity was stripped back and raw to match the intensity and intimacy of Calvi’s highly visceral performance, a feat that he executed with exceptional sensitivity and feeling, playing the lighting as if it was an instrument. He loves the luscious and real tungsten capabilities of all Robe’s fixtures including the LED sources and he used this feature subtly in this show. Campbell also appreciates Robe’s colour mixing in general with the “Rich range of lovely pastels’ and also the quality of the light output – all subtleties which were are key to lighting a show like this appropriately.

The results helped create a sensually beautiful, textured and immersive environment for all to enjoy and for the cameras to capture for future reference.