The tour has just completed its latest European leg, and Francesco included 50 x Robe Robin LEDWash 300 moving lights as a core element of the lighting rig.
Grammy award winning multi-lingual Pausini is one of the most successful Italian artists of all time and has sold over 70m albums worldwide.
Francesco is one of Italy's best known and most prolific designers in the live and concert touring sectors and for music-based television shows. His lighting career started aged 14 and has continued on a massive upward trajectory. Lighting is something that he's absolutely passionate about. Other high profile clients include Tiziano Ferro and many more, and he has been involved with Pausini's live work since 2001.
On this one he is collaborating closely with Scenographer Gio Forma, and he also produced all the show's video playback content in conjunction with Mikkel Garro.
Lighting and video are inextricably linked in the design and when the video is playing, the lighting compliments, highlights and contrasts to it. Four different scenic backdrops are also used to enhance and bring visual transitions to the stage.
The 200 or so lighting fixtures on the European tour were all supplied by rental specialist Agora, together with all the video and the L-Acoustics V-DOSC PA system. "They are the best rental company in Italy for concert touring!" states Francesco.
Agora have also invested heavily in Robe in recent years via Robe's Italian distributor, Robe Multimedia.
The 50 x LEDWash 300s were distributed around the four over-stage trusses and six side trusses, with 16 on the floor just upstage of the main performance area and first row of the band. They were used for all the essential base stage and band washing looks, and were worked tirelessly throughout the two hour set.
Francesco likes all the fixtures in the LEDWash series, but for this, the very compact sized LEDWash 300 proved perfect, "Small, light, powerful and with very fast movement," he says emphasizing that they also packed very neatly into the truck without consuming very much space at all.
He used them as one large block of lighting as well as to highlight different sections of the stage. There were also many fast colour changing effects so the speed was imperative to make effects like this really flow.
For the Laura Pausini tour, Francesco is controlling all of the lighting from a High End Systems Hog 4 console which is also triggering the two Catalyst media servers that run the video. He was assisted by Emanuel Vangelatos at FOH and they worked alongside an Agora lighting crew of six plus four on video.
(Jim Evans)
