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FragmentNine and JAW Studio choose Robe for Hikaru Utada tour design

Creative studio FragmentNine (F9), led by Jeremy Lechterman, was asked by creative director/production designer Jason Ardizzone-West of JAW Studio to collaborate on the lighting elements of a production design for J-pop singer/songwriter Hikaru Utada’s 2024 tour, as the artist returned to live performance after a six-year hiatus for an extensive tour of Japan and Asia, supporting the new album project “Science Fiction”.

The lighting design included large amounts of Robe fixtures including 81 x Esprites, 72 x MegaPointes, 26 x TetraXs and three Robe BMFL Wash Beam EVs running on a 3-way RoboSpot system, all supplied in Japan by lighting vendor Kyoritz. Ardizzone-West’s initial discussions with the artist started a year prior to the tour. “We talked about wormholes, portals, Kubrick’s monoliths, Emma McEvoy’s sand dune photographs, and how we wanted to challenge the expectations and perceptions of how a J-Pop arena concert should look and feel”, he explains.

Their goal was to imagine an operatic-like space that was both familiar and alien, ancient and modern, “a mysterious landscape that is initially a sleeping machine - a portal to another level of consciousness which is slowly awakened by the energy of the audience activated by Utada’s music.” From this alien desert landscape, nine large monolithic sculptures emerged to assist a highly imaginative journey. These were built with a skin of Roe Vanish 8S LED video tiles and internally lit and juxtaposed with three luminous plinths on which the musicians were positioned.

Lechterman and Ardizzone-West have been wanting to work together for some time, and this presented a perfect opportunity. Together with video designer Jackson Gallagher of F9, they pooled ideas and forged creative mixed-media treatments that worked harmoniously, transforming the space into a series of emotionally charged environmental settings unique to each song. A major challenge for lighting was capturing and integrating the scale of the 100 ft wide landscape design, and another starting point was that 75 percent of the lighting fixtures needed to be floor-based to ensure the integrity and impact of the scenography.

The Robe Esprites and MegaPointes constituted all the spot and beam fixtures on the plot. The Esprites were deployed in two long lines, one below the stage at the back, similar to a horizon, with another row above the main upstage video wall, with the balance deployed on the overhead rig. They were used to assist in creating shadows against the monolith video sculptures, and to help push and radiate the energy and movement of the video content that was also at the core of the design.

“The nature and precision of the scenography required the artists to be lit very specifically, to enhance the spatiality of Jason’s original concept”, says Lechterman who has been using MegaPointes since the fixture was launched in 2017. For Hikaru Utada, they were rigged in the over-stage grid and used for pulling visuals away from the floor and adding height and layers of complexity to the design.

The BMFL EVs on the RoboSpots were used in rear and two high side positions for key lighting and low lighting as there was no front lighting on the show apart from in the B-stage area. “The goal of lighting was to always try to enhance but not overpower”, underlines Lechterman. “We had this gorgeous landscape and content for this show, so for light to be reinforcing those choices was a decision we made collectively.”

Lechterman’s team included lighting programmer Erin Anderson and associate designers Sydney Asselin and Alex Talbot. F9’s project manager was Rob Kuhn. Kyoritz’s head of lighting was Tomokazu Takahashi, and the lighting Interpreter was Michiko Rowson.

The collaboration between JAW Studio and F9 was so productive that they have subsequently announced a new joint project - “Loudbox”, a live entertainment design collective that aims to blur the lines between concerts, theater, and architecture through creative direction, production, lighting, and video design.

(Photos: Jason Ardizzone-West/Jeremy Lechterman)

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