Lighting designer Carlo Pastore and Gianna met professionally for the first time in 2011, in a show where Patrick Woodroffe was in charge of setting up and directing the lighting design. That tour was entrusted to the care of Eneas Mackintosh, founder of Lime Light.
At the time, Carlo Pastore was a programmer and Eneas's lighting assistant. During the second part of the tour, he was put in control of lighting desk operations and that was when he met Gianna Nannini.
"We met again this year - for the first time since 2011 - for the Hitalia Rocks tour, thanks to Live Nation Concerts. We came up with several ideas and designs and presented our concepts using three-dimensional WYSIWYG views.
"One of our ideas hit the nail on the head. There is a simple, effective symbol with great visual impact on the stage backdrop: a large 'H', which is the first letter of the name of the album and appears in its graphic design. This 'H' is not only found in the stage scenery, but also on the tour gadgets, T-shirts and all the merchandising.
"I asked the producers for several Clay Paky lights, including 28 Alpha Profile 1500s, Clay Paky's powerful, silent beam shapers, able to generate countless shapes in multiple dimensions. Their light output is most impressive. I used a battery of 10 for backlighting on the ground, another ten on the back truss and on the ground again for backlighting, and four on each side for side lighting."
Fourteen powerful nonintrusive Sharpys are everywhere on the stage and produce beams that are so focused and aligned that they create shafts of light in the sky and spectacular mid-air visual effects together with the gobos.
The show, and the synchronized management of all the effects in particular, are handled by a Grand MA 2.
(Jim Evans)
