The choirs performed on four consecutive nights in the week leading up to Christmas with viewers eliminating groups as the nights wore on. Lachey's Cincinnati-based choir emerged the winner taking home $250,000 for the Cincinnati Children's Hospital.
Lighting designer Greg Brunton was challenged to light more than 40 songs during the course of the shows. "We knew what songs would be performed from night to night only one hour before the show because we didn't know which choirs would be moving on," he explains. "So we had to reformat cues each night. Fortunately, the grandMA was so versatile that we were able to do that. We didn't have to work in a linear fashion like other consoles; we could jump from song to song very easily and quickly. And redoing a string of cues was easy, too."
(Jim Evans)
