By George Biggs
UK and Ireland dates have been announced for An Evening with Whitney: The Whitney Houston Hologram Tour, a ground-breaking international tour which will use holographic technology to bring the late singer to life.
The tour has been in the works for a while, created by the combined efforts of BASE Hologram and the Whitney Houston Estate. Whitney Huston (who passed away seven years ago) will be the centrepiece of the upcoming tour post-mortem, and her digital performance will be accompanied by supporting singers, dancers and a live band.
It is clear the organisers of this tour are banking on Houston’s outstanding vocals. The CEO of Production at BASE Hologram said, “there is a reason why it is so hard to cover a Whitney Houston track, she really was one-of-a-kind”. Thus, it makes sense that they’d avoid this problem altogether and use her original sound.
An Evening with Whitney is also set to be a marvellous spectacle of choreography and performance. Fatima Robinson helms this aspect of the tour and has previous experience working with Kanye West, Rihanna and the Academy Awards.
While this concept is undeniably innovative, the organisers are not the first to consider using hologram technology in concert. Holographic versions of Tupac and Billie Holiday have ‘performed’ already, and there are long term plans to recreate the likes of ABBA and Amy Winehouse in the same way.
This fledgling trend in live music is almost contradictory: how can this technology be sold as a way of ‘experiencing’ the absent if they can’t hear their vocals directly for themselves? The answer, it seems, is that the experience is a hyperbolic presentation of what once was. You don’t pay to see Whitey Houston as she was; you pay to marvel in her grandeur and celebrate her life.
Tickets in the UK go on sale this Friday 20 September 2019 at 9am. Tickets are available from www.theticketfactory.com/tickets/events/whitney-houston/