Published on September 14, 2017
Conducting a symphony orchestra is challenging enough on its own. Add in the simultaneous task of synchronizing the performance to a parallel element and it takes on a whole new complexity.
That’s what Benjamin Rous likes about it. Rous, resident conductor of the Virginia Symphony, will lead the musicians through a special performance under the stars at Christopher Newport University on Sunday night, which will include a unique and spectacular multimedia show.
“I love when the orchestra gets to be part of something bigger than itself,” Rous said. “It can be a ballet or an opera, or something like this two-fold performance going along with the visuals. We’ve got it set up to be a really big event.”
The performance, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday (September 17) on the campus’ great lawn, celebrates the university’s inaugural comprehensive campaign. The “Defining Significance” campaign was launched in 2014 with a fundraising goal of $42 million. The final total will be announced Sunday.
The symphony performance is open to the public free of charge. It will include a fireworks display.
It will feature a multimedia light show produced by Quince Imaging, a Washington D.C.-based company that provides lighting and other effects for major events and concert tours. By a happy coincidence, the multimedia director Quince selected to handle the show was Katie Wilson, who grew up in Newport News and graduated from Hampton Roads Academy in 2000.
Wilson, who works out of New York, had just returned from her work on the European dates of a concert tour by the band Arcade Fire. She called Quince to check on upcoming projects and got a nice surprise.
“They told me they had won a bid on a college project and they wanted to send me the information and a picture,” Wilson said. “I looked at it and started dying laughing, because it was CNU. They didn’t even know I was from Newport News, but I told them that I lived down the street from CNU and watched this college change from the ground up.
“There’s nothing more perfect than working on a project so close to home. A lot of projects take me far away. After five weeks abroad on the Arcade Fire tour, I’m thrilled that this will bring me home so my family can see some of my work. They don’t get to see it very often.”
Both CNU and Wilson are keeping mum about specific details of the 12-minute multimedia light show. They want it to be a surprise for those in attendance.
Wilson has been part of teams working on some massive stage shows, and while an outdoor performance on a college campus is smaller in both scale and budget, she is excited about all of the work that has gone into Sunday’s show.
“We’re working in very, very high resolution, so the rendering times alone are quite excruciating,” she said. “It’s a 12-minute piece, which is the same length as the Madonna Super Bowl halftime show that I helped work on. And that Super Bowl show was a lower resolution than what we’re working on now.”
The light show will be a part of the climax of Sunday’s performance, a selection by local composer James Hosay called “Defining Significance,” after the CNU campaign. Rous said the rest of the show — about an hour, 45 minutes in total — will feature works that have some connection to the history of the U.S. Navy, including works by Maurice Ravel, George M. Cohan and Duke Ellington.
Rous was impressed when he learned that he would be collaborating with Quince, the same company that does the extraordinary light displays before the NBA games he watches on TV.
“They can make a whole arena look like something else, or make it look like the floor is caving in and up comes this 3-D object,” Rous said. “Their work is big-time, and CNU managed to get them for this. That’s what is so exciting.”
Similarly, Wilson said she enjoys the teamwork involved in working with both the symphony at the university to create a display that tells a cohesive story.
“My job is to work with them to create and evoke emotion and tell a story,” she said. ‘The main goal at the end of the day is to say thanks to the people who made the ‘Defining Significance’ campaign a success. It’s very inspiring, and hopefully at this scale, it should wow the crowd.”
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