News
Caspian Seasons, an International Festival of Classical Art, is an annual event in city of Astrakhan dedicated to the cultures and music of the Caspian littoral states: Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, and Azerbaijan. In 2024, Uzbekistan and Belarus also took part in the festival. dreamlaser was responsible for the technical support of the event, video content, and video engineering of the main stage.
The festival aims to highlight the cultural and artistic diversity of the participating countries and to create a dialog between them through classical music. Therefore, our visual concept of the stage was based on the cultural, geographical, and ethnic diversity of the Caspian littoral states. Elements of historical architecture, ornaments, floral and animalistic paintings, and natural landscapes became the leitmotifs of the concert's visual series. Thus, for the overture to the opera The Tsar's Bride by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, we created a luminous animation of ornaments decorating the royal chambers of the 10th-15th centuries. And during Abai's aria from the opera Abai by Latif Khamidi and Akhmet Zhubanov, the stage was decorated with a smalt mosaic of natural mountain landscapes and birds.
The festival takes place on the Cathedral Square of the Astrakhan Kremlin. Our team's task was to create an architecturally complementary stage that would fit well into the location and use the area itself as part of the show. The idea was to create a stage without a backdrop, through which the trees could be seen. The stage area was framed by LED screen arches and the park behind the stage was illuminated as part of the overall lighting design for the concert.
On the sides of the stage, we installed dynamic projection scenery. During the show, not only the video content of the projections changed, but also the architecture of the structures themselves. Video and physical synchronization of the scenery was ensured with lidar systems attached to the moving elements. The sensors tracked the position of the scenery relative to the ground and transmitted the signal to the video server. This way we achieved smooth image movement following the projection surfaces.
Stars of the opera stage, including soloist of the Mariinsky Theatre, Honored Artist of Russia Ildar Abdrazakov, Honored Artist of Russia Agunda Kulaeva, People's Artist of Azerbaijan Dinara Alieva, soloist of the Hamburg State Opera, guest soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Dovlet Nurgeldyev (Turkmenistan), Honored Artist of Kazakhstan Talgat Musabaev, and Iranian violinist, winner of international competitions Amin Ghafari performed at the festival. The Caspian Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the chief conductor Mikhail Golikov performed the works of Russian and foreign composers.
Project Team:
Irina Gaudasinskaya, Festival Director
oops team, light artists, dreamlaser partners
Kristina Shikina, Executive Producer
Egor Torgov, Technical Manager
Stanislav Popov, Video Engineer
Daria Gonoshilina, Content Producer
Marina Koreva, Art Director
Kristina Meshchankina, Content Supervisor
Daniil Boiko, Vladislav Chuprikov, Nikita Shirshikov, Technical Specialists
August 17, 2024