Hikaru Utada embarks on 25th Anniversary tour with Ayrton classics
For the first time in six years, the acclaimed singer-songwriter and J-Pop sensation, Hikaru Utada, embarked on a tour of Japan and Asia, which lasted from July to September. The tour in support of their new album, Science Fiction, also celebrated 25 years of chart-topping music from Utada with an other-worldly and monolithic production design.
The futuristic set from JAW studio’s Jason Ardizzone-West simultaneously celebrated the momentous anniversary whilst also looking toward the future. How appropriate then that lighting designer Jeremy Lechterman of Fragment 9 should feature some classic Ayrton fixtures as major components of his design: the iconic MagicPanel 602 and MagicBlade R, both of which are celebrating a decade of use and proving as relevant today as ever.
Amid the set’s 110ft wide alien landscape of sand dunes stood nine video-tiled sculptural monoliths, inside of which Lechterman had concealed 144 MagicBlade Rs in hidden rows. These, combined with skillful video design from Fragment 9’s Jackson Gallagher, helped define and transform the visual language and composition of the stage throughout the concert. “The Ayrton MagicBlade Rs were very effective in activating the ‘machines’ and helping to push the energy of the content out towards the audience,” explains Lechterman.
A late addition to Lechterman’s design was a series of MagicPanel pods, populated with 56 MagicPanel 602 fixtures and hung asymmetrically over the main stage. “I was trying to find an unobtrusive way to echo the asymmetric arrangement of the monoliths with lighting, to really expand the visual terrain vertically when that felt appropriate,” says Lechterman. “The resulting MagicPanel pods gave us that verticality, whilst also feeling ‘alien’ in a way that matched the rest of the design. The square nature of the fixture fitted well into the mechanistic landscape.”
Lechterman has called upon Ayrton products for several of his past productions and says: “I’ve always lauded Ayrton on their ingenuity. At the time these products came out, there was literally nothing like them in the market. If I could put Magic Panels on every show, I would. There’s something about the square form factor that I’m just really drawn to as a designer. The ability to create these monolithic, rectangular looks is something you cannot do with any other fixture out there.
“We’ve used the MagicBlade on tons of projects, from Walk the Moon to alt-J to Keith Urban, and now again on Hikaru Utada. We love how we can tuck them into places and then get these really beautiful, complex looks from them. Even though there are newer versions out there now (the FX for example) we found the Blade Rs to be plenty bright for what we needed on this show.”
Lechterman was supported by lighting programmer Erin Anderson and associate designers Sydney Asselin and Alex Talbot.
The MagicPanel 602 and MagicBlade R fixtures were supplied, along with the full lighting inventory, by Kyoritz.
Text: Julie Harper
Photos: © Jason Ardizzone-West, © Jeremy Lechterman
of Fragment 9
