A
LMA
:^ LU
S
H
A
ALIC.DION
:^
B
RIA
N
PU
R
N
E
LL/CD
A
P
R
O
D
UCTION
S.Y
VES AUCOIN,
Céline Dion’s pro-
duction designer of
30 years, knew her
Courage world tour
needed to be a tran-
sition for the pop star when they
sat down to brainstorm in Janu-
ary 2019. Her album of the same
name debuted atop the Bill-
board 200, Dion’s first release
to do so in 17 years, and her
international trek (which began
last September and runs through
September 2020) is her first
since the close of her 16-year
reign as Las Vegas’ residency
queen. It’s also her first major
tour following the 2016 death of
René Angélil, her husband of 22
years and manager for 33.
Unlike Dion’s Vegas residen-
cies — which combined grossed
$681.3 million, according to
Billboard Boxscore, and were
held in a 4,100-seat theater — her
Courage arena tour is for an audi-
ence five times that size. (Its first
19 shows grossed $33.2 million.)
Aucoin jumped at the chance
to incorporate big production
elements, most notably a fleet of
104 drones that light up and fly
around Dion during the climax
of “My Heart Will Go On.”
“The touring show needs to
be designed in a way that you
can put it in a truck, load it in
the morning and have a short
night” breaking the stage down,
says Aucoin. “It’s another way of
designing things.”
He also hired video com-
pany Silent Partners, which has
created tour visuals for Taylor
Swift, Katy Perry and P!nk, to
ensure that fans sitting alongside
the stage are engaged as well —
for Dion’s Vegas shows, the seats
were only in front of her. The
clips are as elegant as they are
useful: Dion shows off her skills
in a stunning pas de deux, poses
in couture and floats in a surreal
water ballet as the ghostly theme
from Titanic fills the venue.
“For almost 10 years, she has
been in my ear saying, ‘I want to
do a video in the water!’ ” says
Aucoin with a laugh, adding
that most of the ideas executed
in the show were Dion’s. “She
has always been involved in the
creativity of any of the shows
we’ve done; now, she’s wearing
more the hat of the boss.” It’s
a role she took out of necessity
after Angélil’s death, but Aucoin
assures that Dion “has surround-
ed herself with people who can
make sure that even when she
has her back to the stage, we are
there to deliver her vision. She’s
a strong woman.”
Even with so much change,
Aucoin says that one thing
stays the same when planning
and executing a Céline Dion
performance: “It’s always a good
chunk of money. It’s about the
same allowance of budget from
a Vegas show to a touring show,
but it’s a big multimillion-dollar
project — always.”
Her Show Will Go On
Céline Dion wanted her first arena tour following her Las Vegas residency to feel
just as intimate — and production designer Yves Aucoin knew what to do
BY HILARY HUGHES
WHEN SINGER-SONGWRITER ALMA-
Sofia Miettinen was 16, she placed fifth
in the 2013 season of the Finnish show
Idols. She returned to school, putting her
musical ambitions on hold. A year later,
though, one of the show’s judges, rapper
Sini Sabotage, asked her to tour and
write together; she was all in and started
her career as ALMA.
While on the road, ALMA met Sony/
ATV Germany senior A&R and creative
manager Sarah Schneider and was
invited to a writing camp in Helsinki.
Within weeks, she was signed and sent
on writing sessions around the world, re-
cruiting managers in Finland, the United
Kingdom and the United States along the
way. By 2016, Universal Music Germany’s
Daniel Lieberberg signed her to a world-
wide recording deal with Universal Music
Group (except for the Nordic regions,
where she’s signed to Warner).
With UMG’s help, ALMA was soon
cowriting hits for Charli XCX, Tove Lo
and Kash Doll while also recording her
own dance-pop songs for her 2018 re-
lease, Heavy Rules Mixtape. But despite
her trajectory, her debut full-length
kept getting delayed. ALMA started to
consider a new label home, saying: “I
grew away from that EDM dance-y vibe.
It didn’t make sense for me anymore.”
She wanted to be on a label “that under-
stands what I’m trying to make.”
Around the same time, Lieberberg had
been tapped as Sony Music president of
continental Europe and Africa, and called
ALMA almost immediately. “He was like,
‘Hey, let’s make this record. I believe in
you, and I’ve always believed in you,’ ”
she recalls. In 2019, she inked a new
worldwide recording contract with Sony
Music (a cosigning with Epic Germany
and RCA U.S. and U.K.). As for her debut
album? It will finally arrive this spring,
boasting credits from Justin Tranter,
Andrew Wyatt and Sarah Hudson.
“We know her as one of the world’s
best songwriters,” says RCA co-presi-
dent John Fleckenstein. “She’s blessed
with a very clear vision of where she
wants to go.” —GAB GINSBERG
SIGNED
ALMA
LABEL EPIC GERMANY/RCA U.S. and U.K.
Dion onstage during
the opening night of the
Courage tour in 2019.
30 BILLBOARD • MARCH 14, 2020
ON THE ROAD