As the house lights dimmed on a nearly sold-out crowd of 3,000 at the Providence Performing Arts Center on January 29, the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, silhouetted in silence on stage, anticipated the arrival of singer-songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov at the foreground. Under a shadow cast by a backlight stepped Isakov, with his solitary croon and guitar opening into “She Always Takes it Black,” the closing track on his 2013 album The Weatherman. Overhead, an array of orbs and smaller bulbs suggested a celestial nightscape, warm with a reddish glow.
After the 2016 studio album Gregory Alan Isakov with the Colorado Symphony saw the stripped-back folk songs of Isakov’s first five albums recomposed with an orchestral richness, his songwriting and lyricism continued to mature on Evening Machines (2018), which earned a Grammy nomination, and Appaloosa Bones (2023), which charted on the Billboard 200. Following solo sets at the Columbus Theatre in 2015 and PPAC in 2023, Isakov’s 2026 return to Providence included, for the first time, support from the Rhode Island Philharmonic. Lighting designer William Succoso, on tour with Isakov, worked to color the evening’s ambiance.
“To start with, we kept it fairly mellow because we knew we were going to climb,” said Succoso in a phone interview after the performance. “The tempos were going to get up there, the songs were going to get up there, so it was nice to just ease into something, and then away we went.”
When architectural firm C. W. & George L. Rapp designed the original Loew’s Theatre Building in Providence as an ornate cinema in 1928, the construction plans included a decorative rosette at the center of the ceiling dome. Although wired for electricity, the chandelier meant for the space was never installed during the building’s incarnations before rebranding and reopening as PPAC. In the early 2000s, PPAC commissioned glass artist Dan Dailey, a RISD alum who studied under Dale Chihuly, to design the grand chandelier that serves as a centerpiece today.
But on stage, PPAC’s rigging system behind the scenes extends almost 70 feet above the performers, with vertical pipes known as box booms located at either side to enable custom lighting for the venue’s events. In addition to nearly 200 dimmers, 100 ellipsoidal stage lights, and three 3,000-watt spotlights on site at the theater, dozens of line sets, or metal bars called battens, hang over the stage, allow for versatility in positioning set pieces or additional lighting.
The arrangements for Isakov’s PPAC performance began months in advance, with Succoso scoping an overarching vision and specific technical requirements in the context of a full tour. Isakov’s late January run featured more than a dozen concerts in just over two weeks, starting in New Orleans and traversing up to Montreal, including two nights at Boston’s Wang Theatre.
“His music is very moody in a great way,” said Succoso. “We wanted these shows to reflect how people feel when they’re sitting in their living room listening to the music, and I doubt anybody is sitting in their kitchen with a big light on listening to a Gregory Alan Isakov record.”
Providence was the first night of the winter tour to integrate an orchestra, followed immediately by back-to-back dates featuring the Colorado Symphony at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Succoso said the variance between lighting Isakov alone, or with one or two backing musicians, and creating a focal point and sense of balance across dozens of musicians posed a challenge.
“I just want him to stand out, or somebody in his band, or the conductor,” said Succoso. “You don’t want to affect their ability to play, so if you can’t create negative space by going really dark how do you make somebody stand out? You do that by going brighter than the background, which gets into this weird limbo that isn’t super-bright, that sets this intentionally moody show.”
With 17” of snowfall remaining on the city’s streets after a weekend blizzard and the morning temperature climbing slowly from 7°F but failing to break past freezing point, an early load-in at PPAC enabled the crew to set up their audio and visual equipment with ample time before the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra arrived. Isakov and his backing band joined them for a midday set rehearsal. The full run-through created an opportunity to test the sound and lighting in advance, while the musicians secured a sense of their dynamic and instrumentation together.
As the evening performance began, a backdrop hung behind the stage depicting a muted but evocative image of the natural and fabled American West, open space between a canyon’s bluffs. A sparkle of lights against the fabric hinted at a vaster canopy as the backing band assembled by Isakov’s side. Leading into “Amsterdam,” a rising murmur from the symphony fell into harmony, with the philharmonic’s string section steadily climbing toward a crescendo.
“I realized putting these tracks in order today, you just keep getting sadder,” Isakov said later from the stage. Transitioning into “Master & a Hound,” he added, “And we’re not even there yet.”
For almost two hours, across two sets punctuated by an intermission and an encore featuring “Time Will Tell” and “Feed Your Horses,” the illumination of the globes in suspension conjured suns and moons in equal measure, or a fragment of some starry and planetary expanse. At one point, violin and upright bass dueled under a single spotlight, its beam calling forth the spirit of an Eastern European jazz bar or cafe session. Throughout, Isakov held prominence, and so too did his band and the orchestra—the moods that their music elicited matched by gentle hues.
“It’s like a tight wire act,” said Succoso. “It’s something that we dance across the whole night.”
Gregory Alan Isakov will return to New England on October 2 and October 3, 2026, supporting Zach Bryan at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.