COLDPLAY: MUSIC OF THE SPHERES WORLD TOUR

With the goal of significantly reducing its carbon output, Coldplay’s recent touring campaign has got people talking. Over a year into the cycle, TPi catches up with the crew to discover the steps taken by the production to be as sustainable as possible and how they have managed to uphold high production values while doing so.

Call it a lack of preparation; but personally, when I go and cover a show, I don’t like to read too much about the production before speaking to the crew. My justification for this is that I like to give those who have toiled away for weeks, months or years the chance to highlight the most interesting elements of the show from their perspective and not influence their interview with my own views. I bring this up because there was no way of avoiding reading about The Music Of The Spheres World Tour when it first hit the road in March 2022 –and for good reason. This is a production that is addressing the challenge of making largescale touring more sustainable and doing so in a public forum.

Being a more sustainable touring act is not exactly a new concept and something we’ve followed with interest over the years in TPi, but suffice to say, this tour has taken things to a new level and yet still managed to create a show that lived up to the band’s established reputation as one of the world’s best stadium performers. Before a single confetti cannon was fired or the 60,000 PixMob LED wristbands flickered with light, TPi found itself in the centre of Manchester’s Etihad Stadium with Production Manager, Chris Kansy to learn how far sustainability went within this production and to pose the question; how might this tour influence the wider industry?

LET’S GO BACK TO THE START…

“I certainly didn’t have to do too much of the heavy lifting in the early days of this show,” chuckled Kansy, as he walked us around the site, pointing out all the notable moments of the set as final preparations were made. With the initial production being overseen by Bill Leabody before hitting the road with Jake Berry, Kansy was busy getting Roger Waters’ latest show on the road [see TPi #275] and only took over the

PM role recently. “I’ve filled in with these guys on a number of occasions and was happy to be back on board,” he reflected.

“W ith the album called Music Of The Spheres, you’ll notice in the set and even the LED screens, there are no real straight lines, and everything is rounded. That theme is present throughout the show, and we have some very special moments from the custom-made LED spheres to these giant circular inflatables that are attached to dancers that then filter out into the audience at the end of the night.”

There didn’t seem to be an element of the show, where sustainability wasn’t considered.

“This is the first tour where the entire production is being run off batteries – second-hand BMW i3s to be exact,” stated the PM. “Paul Traynor, who has been the band’s touring electrician for years, made this entire system possible and it’s incredible.” Along with the batteries, the tour also featured several other power generation solutions – from a kinetic dance floor that turned fans’ movement into energy, along with a selection of bikes at the back of the arena that fans could jump to turn their pedal strokes into power. “We even have wind turbines up on the top of the delay towers, and during the day, we lay out a solar sheet which powers our Wattsun storage batteries,” enthused Kansy.

Although this was a tour of new technology and solutions, the band and production once again put its faith in several tried-and-tested suppliers including STAGECO, TAIT, Solotech for audio, Upstaging for lighting, PRG for video, Strictly FX, Clair for walkie talkies and show communications, Mission Control for backline, audio communication and global RF licencing. Trucking is provided by Stagetruck and freight by Global Motion. Crew travel is handled by TAG and Beat the Street, orchestrated by Production Coordinator, Eme Boucher. New faces on the supplier roster include ZAP Concepts, which oversees all energy solutions on the tour, while EPS provides the energy floor, with Smart Power providing the bikes. Eat To The Beat keeps the band and crew fed throughout the cycle.

Higher Power

Traynor, who wore two hats as the band’s Stage Manager and Tour Electrician, was originally brought in when the band began asking how they could go about creating the most sustainable show the world had ever seen.

“We started working on what would become this power solution around 18 months before the first show,” he recounted. “It was a rather intimidating task as nobody had ever tried anything on this scale. The closest we’d seen was in the festival market with some batterypowered solutions, but a Coldplay stadium show needs around 1.2 Megawatts of power.”

Due to the enormity of the task, Coldplay’s management were keen to bring in experts from the suitability field including Luke Howell from Hope Solutions along with TPi Award-winner, ZAP Concepts.

“After Chris did the interview with the BBC in 2019 and said they would take a break from touring until they were more environmentally beneficial, I was asked to join the management team to help them work out how that might become possible,” explained Howell. After gathering data from previous tours, Howell was able to create a baseline of impacts and look at where the team needed to focus its attention.

“Paul Traynor and I focused on power while I also worked with Bill Leabody on other aspects including freight with Global Motion, creative and design with Misty Buckley, steel and staging with TAIT, lighting design with Sooner Routhier and various other tour elements.”

The entire show is powered by repurposed BMW i3 batteries, which can be charged from mains, onsite renewables as well as generators.

“We are touring with generators run by HVO fuel, which we use to charge the batteries each day,” explained Traynor. “We’ve had this system on the road for over a year and we’re tweaking constantly to make it better. We had the generators as a redundant system, however, due to the reliability of the batteries, we are now only using them for charging. ZAP is monitoring our power output constantly, so we know how much we are using, and can make changes accordingly, if required.”

Setting up camp just outside the stadium wall, in a makeshift office by the generators, TPi caught up with ZAP Concepts’ Tim Benson. “Power was always going to be one of the first things this show needed to tackle in a bid to become more sustainable as it is the second largest carbon footprint after audience travel when it comes to live shows,” began Benson. “When Paul first approached us to collaborate, he provided what their expected power loads were, and from there, we devised the system that we now tour with.” Benson went on to explain that one of the initial issues the team faced was creating a system that would be modular and mobile enough to travel the globe.

On a regular show day, the i3 batteries are charged three times a day by the generators. “We can turn the generators on for a short time to recharge the batteries, making them more fuel efficient compared to more ‘traditional’ generator shows, where they would be running 24 hours a day.”

During the show, a pair of energy floor platforms flanking two FOH tents welcomed around 70 people on each surface and as fans moved up and down on the floor, their vertical force generated power, which was stored in Wattsun Batteries. “There are 44 modules on the platforms which each connect to