Lighting designer Conner Ostrowski of Wide Open Productions joined Counting Crows in early 2025 to refresh the stage aesthetic for the world tour of Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets.
Conner chose to work with Robe moving lights — 10 iFORTE LTX, 16 iPointe65 and 32 Spiider — as the core of a striking lighting design, winning over both the band and their diverse fan base as they kicked off an extensive U.S. tour, with lighting equipment supplied by Upstaging.
With no video elements onstage, all visual emphasis was placed on lighting to support the band’s latest musical venture.
Upstaging — with whom Conner had previously collaborated on projects including electro duo Chromeo — has a large inventory of Robe fixtures, but it was at Tennessee-based Pulse Lighting, run by Preston and Paul Hoffman, where he first encountered and fell in love with Robe products early in his career. Conner still uses Pulse’s previsualization facilities for much of his visualization work.
Wide Open Productions — Conner’s creative studio — is known for delivering inventive and appropriate visual designs; “design with purpose” is its mantra.
We don’t necessarily choose the newest or trendiest fixtures just because we can or because they’re available. Each project is assessed individually, and its creative treatment is carefully considered, selecting a combination of products that will achieve the best possible results.
Before the tour, he received a briefing from Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz, who appreciates theatrical contrasts and subtleties, as well as being able to see the lights himself and feel their impact on the audience.
For Conner, who was born into theatre and grew up surrounded by it, working with a rock band that valued the drama, tension and anticipation that theatrical-style lighting can bring to a performance was music to his ears.
He wanted to use the iFORTE as key lights, as well as fire them out into the audience to create bold, powerful rock looks, drawing the entire room into the onstage energy. The iFORTE became a key element of the rig, with four installed on the mid truss and six on the downstage truss. He knew intensity would not be an issue with the iFORTE; in fact, there were moments in the set when he had to dial the brightness down. He also chose them for their reliability and gobos, which were fundamental to the design, along with the animation wheels and color, helping to fluidly paint the stage in support of the music.
There is no other fixture on the market where an animation wheel can be used fully zoomed out and the effect still has so much presence. The punch and zoom ratios for creating these effects work brilliantly and deliver every time.
During the song Colorblind, he worked elegantly and strategically with dark and negative spaces onstage, introducing particles of light into them, noting that the iFORTE LTX remained bright and visible even with gobos engaged.
The iPointe fixtures were rigged on 3-meter horizontal truss sections, mirrored in the overhead structure, enabling full stage coverage and low-level backlight from all directions, bathing the band in light. Conner believes the gobos of the iPointe and iFORTE complement each other extremely well.
The entire overhead rig was raked, wrapping the stage to add extra edge, and the iPointe fixtures positioned in the center of each pod helped keep the band immersed in light as they moved around the stage — one of many theatrical flourishes in the lighting design.
These fixtures required IP rating, as the U.S. tour included both indoor and outdoor shows. The iFORTE LTX and iPointe units were connected to a remote follow spot system and could be assigned follow duties at any time. The Spiider fixtures were rigged in 16 pods — nine in the air and seven on the floor — each also containing an iPointe, effectively surrounding the band members and giving Conner a powerful toolbox to create layered atmospheric scenes and bold, high-impact looks, while also accenting more intimate moments with fine detail. The Spiider fixtures were used in a multifunctional way. Pixelation and the Flower Effect offered additional texturing treatments, and they could also operate as standard wash lights.
Conner is a fan of Robe’s colors and color-mixing systems, as well as the engineering of its RGBW chips, capable of producing impressive gradients that translate into striking looks.
The Spiider fixtures proved essential in building the complex dramatic layers required for songs such as Under the Aurora and Rain King.
No set list was available before lighting programming began. At that stage, he was told to prepare for any song the band had ever recorded — hundreds of tracks — which was ultimately refined to 53 songs with meticulously crafted lighting cues and numerous interactive “oooh” and “ahhhh” moments for the audience.
Together with his two programmers, Mike Gionfriddo and Scott Huggins, and the wider creative team, he developed a very special show that was “as much fun as it was challenging”. It showcased both their imaginative talent and the flexibility and scope of the fixtures, allowing them to maintain a contemporary and clean look.
The Upstaging crew chief was Paul Mundrick, and lighting technicians were Emil Vuorijarvi, Kendall Clark and Hannah-Grace Harper. “They were fantastic, and I can’t thank them enough for the great support, knowledge and fun we shared working together”, said Conner. Hannah also managed the remote follow spot system.
Conner also praised the excellent support from the Robe North America team and Upstaging, where he worked with account handler John Bahnick, project manager Josh Wagner and special projects/Follow Me programmer John Weston, with additional Follow Me support from Chris Lose.
Keeping everything organized and running smoothly on the road for Counting Crows were production manager Shawn London and tour manager Tom Mullally.
For the subsequent seven-week European leg, Conner ran lighting from an Avolites D9-330 console — two were on tour supplied by Neg Earth. Having started his career programming and operating on Avolites, and with rigs changing daily in Europe, he felt it was “the right control platform for the job”.
