How Phish is reimagining Las Vegas’ Sphere

Phish, the beloved Vermont jam band, is known for their creative and playful concert spectacles. CNN chats with the band as they take on a new challenge: conquering Sphere, the new entertainment venue in Las Vegas.

Concerts by Phish, the beloved Vermont jam band, have become known among fans as unique, once-in-a-lifetime events filled with striking visuals and spontaneous sonic explorations. Over the decades the band has performed more than 2,000 shows and are famous for never repeating setlists — drawing deeply from their extensive canon of more than 300 original songs plus countless covers. That hasn’t changed. But now, 41 years into their journey, the band has conceived yet another new way to experience their music live: four concerts at Sphere, the $2.3 billion venue in Las Vegas that was christened last fall with a series of shows by U2. The Phish shows kicked off Thursday and run through Sunday night. “It’s a paradigm shift in live music and visual (presentation),” Trey Anastasio, Phish’s bandleader and creative force, told CNN in an interview last week about the Sphere dates. “It’s … an exciting new canvas.” Phish is just the second band to play Sphere, after U2. The state-of-the-art, spherical venue is dominated by a giant LED screen some 250 feet high that wraps above and around the audience. That vast screen, along with 167,000 speakers that ensure pristine sound, make for an immersive concertgoing experience. But while U2 played mostly the same set list and paired songs with pre-made videos that repeated each night, Phish is taking their usual freewheeling approach.