Building a better future for live music
Berklee NYC’s Daniel Pembroke is in the vanguard of academics and industry professionals advocating a more holistic approach to live events
Words David Davies
Sustainability has always been at the forefront of everything I do,” says Daniel Pembroke, who throughout his interview with LIVE, outlines an impressive commitment to environmentally focused practices across the many facets of his career – as an educator and academic, festival co-founder and producer, and techno producer and DJ.
Now programme director of live music production and design at Berklee NYC institute of contemporary music and the performing arts, Pembroke is a firm believer that the route to change starts with awareness.
“If you’re not talking about sustainability and being responsible with it, then people are not going to address it,” he says. “It’s one of the topics I explore right from the beginning of our first semester, so students are thinking about sustainability in live shows. That might include things that can be done before or after a show, such as shutting off and power cycling the equipment as well as using the right materials – and not using plastic water bottles. I do think we’re making an impact, though it’s a long road because it’s still not often talked about in the industry.
Pembroke is certainly playing his part in trying to change the conversation. A background in architecture and design helped instill a “focus on space, how space reflects change and how change is reflective in space and people. I brought a lot of that to the table with Berklee NYC, including a strong emphasis on making collaborative and student spaces that can be employed extremely effectively.”
Indeed, it is clear that nurturing collaboration – not to mention an all-encompassing approach to producing and delivering ive events – is integral to the master’s degree programme now overseen by Pembroke.
“We have classes such as project management, set design, story narrative and business entrepreneurship, as well as an interdisciplinary focus which addresses multichannel live sound.
We also cover lighting, cameras and content creation, while a show control class focuses on how technology interfaces with all these different components and anything that’s to do with the production.”
Making progress in the Motor City
This belief in the importance of a truly holistic approach to live production is rooted partly in personal experience, not least as a partner of Charivari Detroit, an electronic music festival held each August.
The event is taking a year off in 2024, but there’s no doubting the breadth of the eco measures its organisers have sought to implement over the years – from eliminatingthe ‘extraneous use of lighting’, to experimenting with green bicycles as power sources, and the development of less energy-intensive, ‘more intimate’ performance spaces.
Pembroke’s design background has proven invaluable as the festival has focused on “employing sustainable materials for all of our builds, as well as bringing in vendors and food trucks that are focused on recycled materials.
“Every year, we look at how the festival operates and think about what we can do to become more sustainable,” he adds. “It’s also a very community culture type of festival, so we are showcasing local DJs, not bringing in artists from overseas and significantly increasing our carbon footprints from the plane travel.”
Implicit in the direction pursued by Charivari Detroit is the hope that other events might adopt a similar ethos, although Pembroke acknowledges that – for now at least – it’s a decidedly variable picture out there.
At the moment, for certain parts of the industry, ‘sustainability doesn’t seem to be a priority’ – an observation underlined by a global trend towards increasingly elaborate arena shows with huge power requirements.
“We don’t have any of those huge LED walls [at our event], so that is an impact on the fan experience. Our analysis concludes that, if you’re serious about being more energy-conscious and sustainable, then you can’t keep bringing in more and more lighting and visual elements,” notes Pembroke.
Technology for a purpose
While the decades since the live industry began to mature in the mid-seventies have often revealed blanket-style adoption to emerging technologies, it’s apparent that the industry needs to make a decisive break and foster a more individual, production- and artist-led ethos that uses new video and audio solutions in a more targeted way.
“‘Are we using this technology for a purpose? Is it part ofthe story we are telling, or of the artists themselves?’” quotes Pembroke, explaining the sort of questions that might be asked at the start of the planning process. “‘Is this something we could use less?’ You might not need all that lighting and pyro all the time. Thinking about what you want to achieve, and what you need to achieve it, can be beneficial.”
Ultimately, the more artists, promoters and production companies who scrutinise their relationship to technology and its impact on energy consumption, the sooner the tipping point will arrive.
“Industry leaders need to say enough is enough,” states Pembroke. They need to convey the message that it is possible to secure brilliant results by “looking at analogue sets and thinking about sustainable building and staging. Because there are plenty of ways to create great live experiences without involving a huge footprint.”
This feature was first published in the Summer 2024 issue of LIVE.
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