Kenny Chesney is the most recent megawatt music star to sign with the Sphere in Las Vegas.

The multi-platinum artist will perform a 12-night residency on the acclaimed venue Sphere starting in May.

Chesney will probably be the primary country artist to perform concert events within the high-tech Sphere space.

The other Sphere bookings were classic rock bands – U2, Dead & Company and Eagles – in addition to Phish, the extremely versatile (and great) group that actually belongs in a category all its own.

“When we started talking about all the possibilities of playing Sphere, I was all in,” Chesney said in a press release. “The very idea of ​​4D technology and the incredibly tuned sound elevates the experience for No Shoes Nation, literally immersing them in music, images, sound and togetherness. This will be a whole new way for me to rock the fans and I can’t wait.”

Kenny Chesney Sphere tickets go on sale to most of the people on January thirty first at 10 a.m. PT, thesphere.com. There can be a Sphere presale starting January twenty first at 2:00 p.m. (Code: SPHERE).

Vibee is the official VIP concert and hotel package partner for Kenny Chesney's Sphere residency, KennyChesney.Vibee.com.

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Originally published: January 16, 2025 at 9:00 am PST

When I first saw it on the Las Vegas Strip last 12 months, I almost wrecked my automobile. What was that big glowing ball that looked prefer it had been dropped by aliens?

It turned out that it was built by entrepreneurs and top engineers who “Bullet“” as a unique venue that attracts attention even in the glamorous world of Las Vegas.

From the outside, the outer shell of this giant sphere – called the exosphere – is visible to anyone driving down the Strip and even from airplanes overhead, making it a Las Vegas landmark.

This giant sphere is covered in LED lights. Sphere officials say it is the world's largest LED screen, covering 53,000 square meters with 1.2 million LED pucks and capable of displaying a billion colors. It is also the world's largest spherical building.

In May I was there for the first time to attend the “Dead forever” show by Dead & Companywhich incorporates former members of the Grateful Dead, in addition to guest artists similar to Singer-songwriter John Mayer. The Dead has at all times been known for its leading edge technology and great graphics, so I used to be excited to see what they might do with such an unusual venue.

I had trouble getting tickets because there have been hordes of other Dead fans fighting over them, but I finally got three for my birthday in May.

I paid $1,100 for the three tickets, which I used to be embarrassed about. It was essentially the most money I've ever paid for a concert in my long, long life. Afterwards, I deeply regretted spending a lot money on only one show, but I invited a couple of friends to come back and have a good time my 68th birthday.

I used to be still complaining about how much I had spent after we arrived Bulletwhich is positioned next to the Venetian Hotel and Resort. I’m paralyzed and use a cane, so I used to be glad to see a smiling wheelchair user on the Uber exit lane helping anyone who needed it.

My friends and I needed to stop for a couple of minutes to take photos of ourselves in front of the remarkable glowing orb that displayed famous Grateful Dead graphics.

I used to be then quickly wheeled inside and into the bowels of the constructing, where there was a freight elevator that took wheelchair users to the extent of their seats.

I saw a person wearing an apron with Grateful Dead graphics and told him I liked it. We chatted for a minute, he discovered it was my birthday and insisted on buying us drinks. He escorted us up the elevator to our floor, which was conveniently positioned right next to a lovely cocktail lounge. I can't fault seating that near a bar.

I ordered a special Mai Tai drink they called “Tai Dye” and it was delicious. It was nice to have another person pay since the drinks were expensive – as they at all times are at concert events.

Our host, Martin Valenzuela, told us that he was the top chef at Sphere and positively won us over together with his friendly gesture.

Then we entered the actual concert hall and were momentarily overwhelmed by its size and layout. The 17,385-seat auditorium seemed tiny in comparison with the massive dome that surrounded us. We couldn't resist taking photos before the show even began.

I ended complaining in regards to the high price of the tickets. According to the corporate's website, the whole Statue of Liberty would fit inside.

We were early, so we sat down and enjoyed watching the world refill. Seating was orderly and simple. There was a wheelchair area near me, but I didn't need it.

The show began on time, which is at all times very necessary to me. I'm old – don't waste the time I actually have left.

We could see the band below, but they seemed tiny against the massive graphic projections that appeared throughout us. I don't know if the people around us were intoxicated – Dead concert events have at all times been known for the usage of psychedelics by their fans – but you actually didn't need drugs to benefit from the experience.

The graphics – you can almost call them “visions” – became a view of the earth that kept happening until it finally became a close-up of a certain white Victorian constructing in Haight Ashbury, San Francisco. This drew cheers from the group as people recognized the home where the Grateful Dead lived early of their profession.

Then the camera panned out and showed us San Francisco Bay. It panned out further and further until we saw the Milky Way. During the four-hour show, the glowing dome surrounded us with animations to accompany certain songs, sometimes eliciting gasps from the whole crowd.

At times, our seats would rumble and shake to the rhythm of the music. Apparently, technicians can even manipulate the air, similar to making a breeze and even adding scents. I'm glad to say that the air was less smoky than at indoor Dead concert events, which I appreciated. I assume the venue has some kind of wonderful ventilation system.

It was so wonderful and overwhelming that I turned to my friends and said, “We should come back and see it again!”, not caring how much the tickets cost.

Was it the easiest Dead show I've seen in 45 years? Musically, probably not, even though it was rattling good. John Mayer took over the role of the late Jerry Garcia within the band, and other younger musicians were also involved.

But was it essentially the most mind-blowing concert experience I've ever had, with or without mind-altering substances? Yes. Absolutely. We all talked in regards to the show after we left the concert and the euphoria lasted for hours.

If no concert is planned, the venue offers “The Spherical Experience”, It's a multimedia show that runs most days. According to the web site, tickets start at $94.

For combat sports fans, the Riyadh season NOCHE UFC is scheduled for September 14th.

The next concert for Sphere is The Eagles, in residence from September to January and I actually don't know if the visuals match what I just saw. After all, they're known for country rock, not psychedelics.

At the time of this writing, ticket prices reportedly start at $325, but I could only find seats for $1,100 and up, which is beyond my budget unless I win the lottery.

But I’d definitely return to see one other show on the Sphere, and the owners – Sphere Entertainment Co. – are apparently considering repeating the show in other cities.

I'm curious what happens.

The sphere

Where: 255 Sands Avenue Las Vegas

Information: www.thesphere.com

Learn more in regards to the science behind the constructing: thesphere.com/science

Originally published: July 24, 2024 at 1:11 p.m.

When the rock band Phish began singing their 2004 song “A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing” on the Sphere in April, greater than 18,000 fans stared open-mouthed on the Vermont quartet, who appeared to be stuck in the course of a coral reef.

Fish – to not be confused with Phish – swam from one side of the stage to the opposite between giant, pulsating jellyfish as all the dome was transformed right into a trippy underwater experience. Human bodies bobbed up and down within the water between glowing red and green flashes. Tall plants shot up from the ocean floor. The scene was just considered one of dozens of visual effects seen inside and out of doors the glowing $2.3 billion dome in Las Vegas – essentially the most talked-about concert venue on the earth.

The Sphere was designed by James Dolan, who also owns the New York Knicks basketball team. The project aimed to reinvent the concert experience by presenting a live music performance in a 15,000 square meter space with the very best possible LED resolution. Several million dollars were invested within the graphics.

None of the charming visual effects can be possible without Disguise, a London-based technology company that makes a box and complementary software that serves because the brains of the live show. Founded over 20 years ago, Disguise sells its technology to most of the world's most famous musicians, including Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake, in addition to festivals like Coachella.

Disguise is positioning itself at the center of an exploding marketplace for visual graphics at live shows, on film sets and even in churches. Demand for virtual production is predicted to grow from $1.99 billion in 2022 to $7.13 billion by the top of 2029, based on the corporate.

Having conquered the live music market, Disguise is now expanding into live news and sports, in addition to Hollywood productions. For example, the corporate is working with NBC News on election coverage and with Netflix Inc. on shows like Sweet Tooth. The company can be working with the Portland Trailblazers so as to add augmented reality to their basketball broadcasts.

All of this has helped Disguise reach over $100 million in revenue. To get to $200 million, the corporate needs to rent more people. To that end, the corporate is working with investment bank Raine Group to boost money for expansion.

“I need more investment to grow again,” said Disguise CEO Fernando Kufer over dinner at Mother Wolf in Las Vegas, shortly before the Phish show. “We've created a category. We run it. Why not capitalize on it?” he asked.

Disguise began as an art project. In the early 2000s, Matthew Clark, Chris Bird and Ashraf Nehru founded the multidisciplinary studio United Visual Artists, which integrated latest technologies with traditional media in sculptures, performances and installations. The first project was producing the visuals for British electronic group Massive Attack for his or her one hundredth Window tour in 2003, which led to a decades-long collaboration. They later developed software that enabled visuals at live events, often called d3 technologies. The group created pieces for musicians like U2 and the Rolling Stones, Broadway shows like Harry Potter and museums just like the Victoria & Albert. Kufer got here on board in 2015 after years of working for brands like Gillette and The Body Shop. He saw a business with huge untapped potential. At the time, the corporate employed 17 people and had revenue of about $3 million. The founders were torn between an art studio and a technology company. But Kufer knew exactly where to go.

“This is a technology company and we have to run it like one,” Kufer told his partners. He focused the corporate on hardware (the box) and software (technology for creating 3D visuals), renamed it Disguise and started signing contracts with more partners.

Disguise doesn't create the visuals itself — that's done by firms like Walt Disney Co.'s Industrial Light and Magic. The concert halls depend on Disguise to process, play and sequence the varied graphics. Clients pay anywhere from lots of of hundreds to tens of millions of dollars to make use of Disguise's servers, plus additional fees for access to varied software tools. While the server is the inspiration, Disguise sees way more potential within the software business — especially with regard to virtual production and live broadcasting.

CJ ENM, a South Korean entertainment company, is using Disguise technology for its in-house virtual production studio, the VP Stage, for 2D image and video mapping, in addition to virtual and augmented reality. The company plans to make use of the VP Stage to film a wide selection of visual content for every kind of entertainment, from movies to TV series, improvised shows, and commercials.

“Disguise offers unmatched solutions for 2D video and images,” a CJ ENM spokesperson said in an announcement. “For a company like CJ ENM, whose content library spans a wide range of genres and formats, Disguise's solutions are a great fit.”

Financial support

In 2017, Disguise began searching for financial backing. Kufer led a management buyout with the support of Livingbridge, a mid-sized private equity firm based in London. Over the following few years, Kufer grew Disguise's revenue to about $40 million and opened offices in New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.

Disguise was near closing a serious investment from the Carlyle Group, considered one of the world's largest private equity firms, when Covid-19 shut down live music and productions and reshaped live broadcasts. Disguise lost all of its projects overnight, and there have been moments when Kufer thought the corporate would need to close, he said.

The pandemic also had a silver lining for Disguise: It increased demand for virtual production technology – and gaming. Disguise had already worked with Epic Games Inc., which is best known for the video game Fortnite. Epic's most vital invention, nevertheless, is the Unreal Engine, a 3D graphics software that might be used to develop video games, produce or animate movies, and visualize spaces and products.

Recognizing the potential of Disguise's technology, Epic acquired a 5% minority stake, giving Epic the capital it needed to survive the pandemic and lure Carlyle back to the negotiating table. Carlyle acquired a majority stake in Disguise in 2021.

Everything becomes a cinematic experience, said John McConnell, the graphics producer for the Portland Trailblazers, considered one of only five teams within the NBA that produces all of its own live broadcasts. Working with the team, Disguise developed a temperature tracker that shows whether players are shooting well or not. When players are at their best or playing well, the temperature shoots up. When the team plays poorly, the bar drops and virtual icicles hang from the thermometer.

“Innovations like this are necessary as we compete for viewers,” McConnell said. “Our ownership group has been really focused on making the in-game broadcast the best it can be.”

Disguise's biggest opportunity could also be in Hollywood, where Kufer is moving after 23 years in London. In California, Disguise has signed deals with virtual effects studios to work on dozens of various sound stages, including many who work with Netflix.

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The show would have blown Owsley “Bear” Stanley away.

Yes, even the famed LSD guru — who was also a sound engineer for the Grateful Dead and architect of the band's fabled “Wall of Sound” before his death in 2011 — could never have imagined such a full-force psychedelic rock experience as he expected fans on Thursday on the opening night of Dead & Company's “Dead Forever” run on the Sphere in Las Vegas.

They watched giant terrapins play instruments, rode around on a bike with a skeleton in patriotic clothing, and did dancing bears.

Oh yeah, and the music was pretty good too, like this phenomenally popular Grateful Dead offshoot – consisting of Dead alum Bob Weir on vocals and guitar and Mickey Hart on drums, in addition to singer-guitarist John Mayer and bassist Oteil Burbridge , keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and drummer Jay Lane – played through 19 songs in two very generous sets.

They took the stage promptly at 7:35 p.m. – just five minutes after the printed start time – and were still in top form almost 4 hours later.

It was an ideal option to rejoice the return to the stage for Dead & Company, the Bay Area-rooted jam band that wrapped up its blockbuster 2023 farewell tour with three sold-out shows at San Francisco's Oracle Park in July.

It was also the primary of 24 nights the band will perform on the Sphere, which has quickly grow to be arguably Las Vegas' landmark because the dome pulses with amazing video images that could be seen for miles. Fittingly, it featured the Dead's signature “Steal Your Face” skull logo and other graphics as fans entered the constructing on Thursday.

“Dead Forever” is the second residency to happen on the $2 billion venue, which opened in September with an epic performance by U2. Overall, Dead & Company is the third act to offer public concert events there – after their jam bandmate Phish took to the Sphere stage for 4 shows in April.

So what are Dead & Co. doing so soon after selling a whole lot of 1000’s of tickets for his or her farewell tour?

Well, technically the band just said goodbye to touring – and the Sphere residency isn't really a tour. So the band is grooving straight through that loophole and straight to the bank as they play shows through July 13, totally on weekends (deadandcompany.com).

The 18,000 or so fans in attendance actually weren't frightened about semantics or technical details, as they enjoyed hearing such long-time favorites as “Jack Straw,” “Bird Song” and “Brown-Eyed Women” during a comparatively short event – musically speaking – first movement.

After a half-hour break, the group heated up the second set with a robust jam from long-time music partners “Help on the Way,” “Slipknot!” and “Franklin’s Tower,” with the ultimate third arguably being the musical highlight of the whole show.

The graphics were nothing wanting exhilarating and sometimes disorienting – because the eyes tried to make sense of the near-constant sensory overload.

There were just a few moments where I felt a bit of dizzy and even felt a touch of motion sickness as I attempted in vain to soak up the whole lot that was happening on the large video screens because the band played “He's Gone” and “Standing On.” the moon” and “St. Stephen.”

The downside to being bombarded with all these computer graphics – and, well, just the big amount of sunshine – is that you just literally lose sight of the particular musicians. They visually grow to be afterthoughts of the whole lot that is happening.

Still, there have been moments when the whole lot got here together so well, like when the group returned to space to perform a poignant version of Bob Dylan's “Knockin' on Heaven's Door,” then accomplished the epic show with a triumphant run-through Buddy Holly's “Knockin' on Heaven's Door” closed. Don't fade.”

The Sphere truly offers a concert experience like no other. And there are very few, if any, bands that seem to fit what this venue has to offer better than Dead & Co.

Set list:
1. “Feel like a stranger”
2. “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo”
3. “Jack Straw”
4. “Birdsong”
5. “Me and my uncle”
6. “Brown-Eyed Women”
7. “Cold Rain and Snow”
Sentence 2:
8. “Uncle John’s Band”
9. “Help on the way”
10. “Slipknot!”
11. “Franklin’s Tower”
12. “He’s gone”
13. “Drums”
14. “Space”
15. “Standing on the Moon”
16. “St. Stephen”
17. “Hell in a Bucket”
18. “Klokin' on Heaven's Door”
19. “Don’t Fade”