Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Tharon Musser, age 84 (updated 4/21)

Tony award winning lighting designer Tharon Musser has died at age 84, according to TheatreMania. There's a better obituary at LiveDesign. The Miami Herald picked up the AP version. The New York Times just published their obit.

I believe that there was a brief time in the 80's when every show on Broadway was under lights designed by Tharon.

What's the connection to South Florida? She designed the lights on the ill-fated production of Thom Eyen and Henry Kreiger's Dangerous Music at the Burt Reynolds Jupiter Theatre. I remember her puffing away on her pipe as the lighting crew re-programmed the great-grandaddies of intelligent lighting; their control levels had to be calibrated before every performance, and even then it wasn't unusual for one light to be pointed off in a tangent.

UPDATE April 28:
Live Design has been getting a lot of tributes to Tharon, and they've published them here.

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