The Visual Innovation Behind Cesare Cremonini’s sold-out Italy 2025 Tour

For Cesare Cremonini’s 2025 live stadium tour, a groundbreaking new visual experience has been brought to life through a rich creative collaboration between Cremonini, the Italian design studio GiòForma, and London-based creative studio NorthHouse, renowned for fusing design, visual art, and cutting-edge multimedia technology into immersive live shows.

NorthHouse, known globally for projects including Coldplay’s stadium tours, a variety of Disney shows and Royal ventures with the Queen’s Jubilee and the Kings Coronation Concert in the UK, was introduced to Cesare via creative director and designer, Claudio Santucci of GiòForma. Cesare, seeking a fresh creative direction, was drawn to NorthHouse’s extensive body of work and wanted to bring their energy and visual storytelling to his 2025 tour. He wanted to find innovative ways to integrate cinematic live cameras with video effects, graphics, and visuals into one extensive panoramic screen.

The collaboration began with a creative workshop in Milan at GiòForma’s studio. NorthHouse led the visual design and live camera direction for the shows. They worked closely with Cesare, Claudio, lighting designer Mamo Pozzoli, and the broader show team to craft the conceptual arc of the tour. That development continued across borders, including a subsequent creative workshop in London.They discussed the entire structure of the show. It was imagined as a journey that begins in Alaska, reflecting the artist’s personal path. Despite the strength of that narrative, they didn’t want the tour to be limited to it. The aim was to incorporate landscapes and the emotions of exploration and discovery, and then go beyond, creating something that extended past the journey itself.

Pushing the boundaries of creative technology

However, challenges are always present. When pushing creative and technological boundaries and striving to create something truly new that breaks with convention, the process inevitably becomes more complex. The goal was to strike a balance between large-scale spectacle and intimate storytelling, knowing when to focus on the narrative and when to make room for high-energy, visually spectacular moments. During rehearsals, Tom Bairstow, Founder and Executive Creative Director of NorthHouse, expressed his satisfaction that this balance had been successfully achieved.

On the technical side, the show is exceptionally demanding. Tom affirms that the story and design always lead their creative process, and technology is there to support, not dictate what’s possible. The sheer scale of the screen presented a unique challenge. At 65 meters wide with extraordinary resolution, it required immense coordination to ensure the technology served the storytelling rather than limited it.

For months, the NorthHouse team has developed and refined the visuals in the studio, working with advanced real-time technologies, including Unreal Engine and Notch, along with traditional design, animation and VFX tools. The show combines live camera, real-time images, and rendered effects into one unified canvas. NorthHouse used a range of design approaches to transform the screen into a versatile visual tool, integrating it seamlessly with staging and lighting to shift between cinematic, immersive, and architectural roles. Unlike most shows, which rely on separate screens for live camera feeds and graphic visuals, they aimed to create one seamless display where everything was fully integrated. Cesare became part of the visual world, immersed within the on-screen environments that also extended out into the audience experience.

Cinematic live camera integrated into the design

“We’ve got a fantastic live camera director that helped us craft and design a very cinematic show, ensuring the live camera image is not only stunning but it’s beautifully composed amongst a range of design styles and visual FX tools. Ultimately we’re creating worlds for Cesare to be immersed within that then extend out to the stadium audience”, says Tom.

Achieving that required close collaboration between the NorthHouse team, the visual design team, and their exceptional operations and media server teams. From a production standpoint, Live Nation played a crucial role in supporting the scale and ambition of the show. They provided the infrastructure and resources needed to bring such a technically and creatively complex vision to life.

NorthHouse also developed custom software using Unreal Engine to virtually visualise every camera angle, testing them with VR headsets and placing a “virtual Cesare” on stage to assess the interaction between camera, background, and lighting, as well as audience perspectives. This preproduction process ensured that by the time they arrived at the stadium, they were focused only on fine-tuning and testing. It’s a demanding process, but essential to deliver a seamless and immersive live experience.

There have been questions about why NorthHouse, a London-based studio, was brought onto the project instead of an Italian team. The decision ultimately came down to creative vision. Cesare saw NorthHouse not by their location, but for their ability to merge design and technology in innovative ways. NorthHouse has an extensive and diverse international portfolio, working across multiple continents and disciplines. This breadth of experience allows them to bring a wide range of cultural references and design styles to each project. That global perspective is clearly reflected in the show’s visual language, which blends various influences into a cohesive and compelling creative vision.

Emotional storytelling remains clear

One of the most compelling aspects of Cesare’s show is its potential to resonate on a global scale. While the primary language is Italian, the emotional range of the performance transcends language barriers. The show moves through a spectrum of moods, creating an experience that feels universally relatable.

From the beginning, Cesare, Claudio, and the creative team set out to offer the audience a dynamic emotional journey, one that could alternate between spectacular moments and intimate ones, both through the music and the visuals. Regardless of where an audience member is, the emotional storytelling remains clear and impactful. That universality is what gives the show its potential to connect with audiences far beyond Italy.

Indeed, at its core, the show explores themes of love, discovery, and unity, drawing from the wilderness of Cesare’s Alaskan journey back to the familiarity of Bologna, and these ideas are woven through every visual and emotional beat of the performance. NorthHouse is proud to have collaborated with Cesare and GiòForma on this ambitious production.

“Cesare is not only a fantastic artist and musician but also a really great person who we have enjoyed working with. He has incredible vision for the whole experience and has been in the collaboration all the way through the process. Creating this show with Cesare, Claudio and the team has been a real joy and we hope this is the start of crafting many more experiences and shows together as we’ve got something really special here,” enthused Tom. “Our mission is to make art, not content as we strive to push boundaries and cut through the noise with artistry, innovation,storytelling and emotion.Big ideas and genuine stories resonate profoundly and deeply connect with audiences and the last few nights in San Siro are testament to this. The energy was electric!”.