The Kimmel Theatre stage will be aglow like never before during a new collaboration that brings lighting and music together in a single end-of-the-year performance.
Students in the Block 8 theatre course, Lighting Design, are spending their final 18 days of this academic year tackling the role of lighting designer. A big part of their course studies includes designing the lights for the upcoming Jazz and Pop/Contemporary Ensemble concert performed by their peers on Sunday, May 3, at 7 p.m. in Kimmel Theatre.
“It’s a collaboration of everything good—all the interdepartmental collaboration, all the students supporting each other,” said Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Ben Laur. “It’s going to be a lot of fun, and it’s totally free.”
Laur conducts the Pop/Contemporary Ensemble and the Jazz Ensemble, both of which will take part in this fully illuminated concert experience. The Pop/Contemporary Ensemble is planning a lineup of about 15 songs, and the Jazz Ensemble will play about eight pieces, some of which are composed by students.
“The show is going to be more lively and vibrant,” said Oskar Diyali ’27, who is a member of the Pop/Contemporary Ensemble from Nepal. “People can get up and dance more easily because every song is going to have a specific set of lighting designs. It’s not just about going to a concert and listening to music. It’s about the experience of listening to that song while the projection is going on.”
Professor of Theatre Scott Olinger is co-teaching Lighting Design and says his students started the block by examining how lighting reveals form and affects the viewer. They also studied black-and-white photography and progressed to lighting a scene from a play.
“We’ll finish the block with this collaboration because designing for a rock concert, from a programming perspective, is one of the most complicated challenges we can tackle in class,” Olinger said. “Students will be assigned songs that the bands will play, and then we’ll analyze them and collaboratively design a lighting installation that gives them the most flexibility to make visually impactful images to reinforce the energy and emotion of the music.”
While Olinger has helped with lighting for the Pop/Contemporary Ensemble before, and often designs the lighting for big shows across Iowa and the country, this will be the first large display on the Kimmel Theatre stage for the Cornell ensembles. It will include using a full concert rig—a professional-grade setup designed for large live performances—designed specifically for this concert.
Senior Lewis Fawcett ’26 brings a dual perspective to the collaboration, performing on drums in the ensembles while also studying theatre lighting in the Block 8 class. This senior from Minnesota, who is gearing up for a career in music production or sound engineering, is also excited to display his senior capstone project for his B.S.S. in arts production during the concert.
“For my capstone, I created audio-reactive visuals using a program called Touchdesigner,” Fawcett said. “Basically, I created a visual that reacts to music in real time. So when music happens, something visual happens. It will be incorporated into the lighting design, and lights will react with the instruments that are playing during the show.”
Projects like Fawcett’s highlight a point Olinger emphasizes to his students: lighting is not just technical support, but a powerful storytelling tool.
“It’s much more complex than pushing a few buttons to the music,” Olinger said. “We need lighting to see the actors on the stage, but it also helps tell the emotional journey before us. In addition, this project helps students realize that you can work as a lighting designer in so many different fields—plays, concerts, film, theme parks, architecture, retail—every story can be enhanced by lighting.
Preston Lippe ’28, a sophomore saxophone player from Texas, performs in the Jazz Ensemble and knows this performance will stay with people long after it’s over.
“The things that we remember tend to be more emotional, and lighting absolutely helps set the mood and feeling that a concert or area can have,” Lippe said. “Choosing how that lighting is going to either interact with or highlight the performers can very much help increase the emotion from the performers to the audience.”
The Jazz and Pop/Contemporary Ensemble Concert is free and open to the public. No tickets are required. The Pop/Contemporary Ensemble is the new ensemble that supports the Contemporary Commercial Music major at Cornell. The major equips students with practical skills to work as professional musicians, prepare for advanced degrees in audio engineering or acoustics, supplement a major in business, or help entrepreneurs find their niche.