Pierre E. Roy Colorizes Beatles Story Band Orchestra II with CHAUVET Professional

	"The beginning of the show is much more focused on shades of white, because in the early Beatles days, colored lighting simply didn't exist. As soon as we enter the Sgt. Pepper era, I bring out all the colors," says Roy.

Pierre E. Roy, known for pushing the color envelope in his lighting designs, recently designed the Beatles Story Band Orchestra II Tour, which pays tribute to the original Fab Four. The March 14 show at Quebec City's Theatre Capitole featured a flow of psychedelic color patterns created with help from CHAUVET Professional fixtures.

"My color choices were made very deliberately to evoke the Beatles' psychedelic era," says Roy. "For the Sgt. Pepper intro, I created a beautiful rainbow effect that evoked the mood of the album. My colors were also chosen to follow the video content and match it visually, as we would say."

But the Beatles did not always play amidst rainbows. In the earliest days, when they performed at Liverpool's Cavern Club and in the underground haunts of Hamburg's St. Pauli Quarter, the lighting was often pale and dim. Roy reflects this, too, in his design.

"The beginning of the show is much more focused on shades of white, because in the early Beatles days, colored lighting simply didn't exist," he explains. So, for roughly the first 30 minutes of the show, I stay within variations of white -- warm, cool, slightly greenish, yellowish. As soon as we enter the Sgt. Pepper era, I bring out all the colors."

For the final two-plus hours of the show, Roy employs a panorama of colors. At times, his colors are painted across the stage in broad strokes, while at others they reflect moods in more narrowly focused beams. The palette onstage also moves seamlessly from monochromatic to multi-colored.

Key to helping Roy weave these colors together at Theatre Capitole were 16 Maverick Force 2 Spot fixtures. "We had 12 of them rigged on pipes to create different looks and for musician specials, and four on the floor to create a nice fanning effect while keeping the orchestra in shadow," Roy says. "Their wide zoom range was very helpful in changing the scope and depth of our lighting."

Joining the Maverick fixtures was a collection of COLORado 2 Quad Zoom units, which were used to pour additional color onto the musicians. "We were passionate about covering the stage with color," says Roy. "I am grateful that Pierre Chaine and Christian Morissette from Productions Orchestra Inc. entrusted me to bring this vision to life. We all wanted to use color to capture the magic of the Beatles."