The tour, Grande's first international tour, is playing 88 dates worldwide in support of her second studio album, My Everything. Kuroda, who is also lighting designer for Phish and Justin Bieber, designed the touring rig for the North American and European legs of Grande's tour as well as lighting for individual shows in Asia and South America. VER supplied the fixtures for the touring rig.
Prior to the start of the tour Kuroda sat down with Grande to discuss the feel of the show. "She really likes the look of diamonds," he says. "So we decided collectively to make the thrust diamond shaped, and 80 percent of the rig is diamond-shaped pods with smaller diamond pods inside them, hanging lower so they look like chandeliers."
When Kuroda used B-EYE K20s in his lighting design for the Doritos Stage at SXSW in 2014, he invited Grande's management to see the stage design and the fixtures' effects programming. "I said I wanted to use the B-EYEs as an effect light for her tour, and they thought she'd love it," he recalls. Kuroda specified 88 of them for the touring rig.
"We run them in 169-channel mode and write our own effects for every pixel," he says. "That's the most complicated mode we could use. They are fantastic fixtures that work great on the tour. We use their kaleidoscope, zoom - and custom program every pixel effect you can think of."
Grande's Manila show at the Mall of Asia Arena featured 36-40 B-EYE K20 fixtures and 40 Stormy strobes.
"I had specked Stormys for the touring rig, but we weren't able to make it happen," Kuroda says. "We finally got to use them in Manila, and they were fantastic. Stormys look like a traditional strobe, not a block of LED lights. We also used our LED Strobes as a wash light from time to time. They have a nice wide, even field of light, which was good for lighting the dancers around Ariana from the sides. They gave us just the right visual environment we wanted."
Francesco Romagnoli, Clay Paky Area Manager for North and Latin America, added, "This looks like a beautiful tour for a great artist and we're glad Mr. Kuroda chose our fixtures to be part of the design."
(Jim Evans)
