LD Courtny Seipel On Lighting Ninajirachi and Gordo at Coachella 2026

Programming one Coachella set is a year of work compressed into an hour at FOH. Make it two of them, on the same Friday, and it is now a totally different kind of challenge. That was the job in front of Courtny Seipel at Coachella 2026, where she ran lighting for Australian electronic producer Ninajirachi on the Sonora stage and Gordo on the Yuma stage across both weekends. Two artists, two genres, two completely different rigs, and the mental flip between them on a tight clock.

Seipel's path to a stage like Coachella started with seizing a moment. The first one (for Gordo) came as an acrylic build: a sixteen by sixteen Taraka logo, with two days to construct it from scratch and get it across the country to Brooklyn Mirage before doors, with the promise that if she and a colleague pulled it off, she would run the show that night. They pulled it off. She has been on the Gordo roster ever since. Ninajirachi followed a similar pattern. Seipel was on a fly date for another artist when she crossed paths with the team. The shows went well, she made the impression, and it was only a matter of time before they called her again. A couple of strong one-offs in California turned into the rest of the tour.

Both gigs share one critical attribute. They are fully busked, with no timecode anywhere in the set. That puts the entire show on the LD's ability to read the music in real time.

"Both sets are fully busked with no timecode, so I have to make myself very familiar with the music. Ninajirachi keeps her set pretty consistent, but Gordo plays anywhere from two to fourteen hours and pulls from outside his own catalog when the room calls for it. The prep is completely different." - Courtny Seipel

Two Files, One Previs Room, Two Very Different Prep Environments

With both sets falling on the same Friday, Seipel front-loaded the prep. She put roughly four full days into previs ahead of the festival. The previs room was where the Gordo file took shape. Seipel spent her hours in grandMA3 building dynamic phaser effects that would carry the set. The Ninajirachi prep kept evolving. The team flew to Arizona for full rehearsals with the touring ground package and Nina herself, running her set top to bottom and testing color themes against new visual content before load-in.

Sonora: A Ground Package Designed Around Nina

Seipel drew and designed the Ninajirachi ground package herself in Capture 2025. The footprint, combined with the Sonora house rig, gave her hard movers and beam tools that wrapped Nina and interacted closely with the visual content. "I wanted a unique look that surrounded Nina and felt large," Seipel says. "The ground towers gave me space for blinder and strobe moments and added depth, and the house package mixed well with what we brought in."

Ninajirachi Ground Package

10 x Acme Tornado

18 x Chauvet Color Strike M

10 x Ayrton Diablo S

Custom 360 LED Rope Fixtures

Yuma: Programming Inside SJ Lighting's Megastructure

Yuma was the opposite challenge. Seipel was working inside someone else's design at scale, programming nearly 1,400 fixtures from a wide manufacturer mix without losing the room's architectural feel. She leaned into the Sceptrons with custom bitmaps, a tool she does not get to use on most rigs, and broke the rig up into sections so phasers and other show elements that usually live on smaller systems could breathe across the space. "Because of the sheer size of the rig, I was able to implement phasers and other show elements that aren't used as often," Seipel says.

Between weekends, both files picked up new material. Gordo sent in a fresh intro for week two, and Ninajirachi swapped in a different special guest on a different track, which gave Seipel additional moments to build into both sets. She also tightened her selection grids and refreshed phasers across the file.

"Going from building a Taraka sign to programming on the most lighting-intense stage on the grounds was a wake-up call about the trust behind the scenes. Standing at FOH staring at the Yuma rig was a reminder of how much has been put in my lap." - Courtny Seipel

The biggest takeaway came at front of house during both sets, when more than a year of work landed in front of her at once. The foot traffic from other touring programmers stopping by FOH was, in her words, a reunion of creatives, and a reminder of how much support travels both ways at the festival.

Crew Lists

Ninajirachi

Lighting Designer / Programmer // Courtny Seipel

VJ // William Corbani

VJ // Ryan Sciaino (Ghostdad)

Visual Direction // Aria Zarzycki

L1 // Brian Stevenson

L2 // Andres Trueba

Laser Operator // Jordan Scott

Production Manager // Tyler Vitullo

Stage Manager // Felix Alfonso

Production Vendor // Hardwired Productions

Stage and Production Management // Chris Schroeder Productions

Gordo

Lighting Programmer // Courtny Seipel

Laser Operator // Alon Guez

Production Director // Adam Rodriguez

Media Credits // Aria Zarzycki (Ninajirachi), Tessa Paisan (Ninajirachi)