Sam Smith

Gloria the Tour

year

2024

capabilities

Art & Design

Asset Coordination

Design & Engineering

Fabrication

Integration

Machinery Automation

Scenic

Show Development & Production

English singer/songwriter Sam Smith is known for stunning live shows. For 2023’s Gloria the Tour, the challenge was to capture the luxuriant sheen of the recorded work onstage. Staging, scenic, and automation all had their role to play in the opulent, visually arresting show at Sam Smith’s Gloria Tour, which featured a 65ft gold sculpture based on the Louvre’s “Hermaphrodite endormi”.

reverse angle of Gloria sculpture and stage

TAIT employee applying gold foil to Gloria sculpture

Sam Smith on stage in front of gold Gloria sculpture

Image provided by Madison Phipps

Smith exploded into the limelight in 2012 as a guest vocalist on Disclosure’s critically acclaimed “Latch”. Two years later, with debut album In the Lonely Hour, Smith won four Grammys and netted a host of number-one singles, becoming an internationally renowned pop superstar in the process. Almost a decade later, for 2023’s Gloria the Tour, Smith was keen to build a scenic setup that captured the album’s artistic vision in a live environment.

Sam Smith on stage in front of Gloria sculpture with purple lasers

Image provided by Madison Phipps

For Gloria the Tour, Sam Smith needed excellence. TAIT’s Jacqui Pyle hand-sculpted a wax maquette model based on “Hermaphrodite endormi”, which was scanned into CAD software and scaled up to full size to match the grandiosity of Sam Smith: Gloria the Tour. Delivered in multiple pieces, the 65x20x10ft gold structure was hard coated with polyurea coating and mounted to a custom support structure to allow it to be used as an extension of the stage.