Pharos - Leaderboard - May 2024

Projects

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Denmark - Østre Gasværk is a theatrical venue in Copenhagen. It opened in 1979 on the site of a redundant gas works and the theatre is housed within the old gas tank. Its giant cylindrical shape makes it a dramatic place to stage the musicals and theatrical events that Østre Gasværk is known for.

The addition of a new DiGiCo Quantum 7T has revolutionized the programming and rehearsal process. Morten Frank, head of sound and board operator for its latest musical, UrineTown, explains what it means to have the DiGiCo Quantum 7T at the front-of-house position.

“Having the Theatre software for our Quantum 7T has really helped,” he says. “It gives us a great overview of the cues in the show, and quickly being able to change members of Control Groups during rehearsals has been a massive improvement to our workflow.”

The DiGiCo Theatre so

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The Netherlands - On 23 March 2024, the Grand Hotel Amrâth Kurhaus in Scheveningen, echoed with the beats of music and the excitement of the crowd as the sold-out Must x Kurhaus took centre stage. The event not only showcased an impressive line-up of artists, but also underlined the rich history and allure of the venue.

The Grand Hotel Amrâth Kurhaus stands as a monument to elegance and grandeur, with roots dating back to 1818. Over the centuries it has served as a beacon of luxury and sophistication, hosting dignitaries, celebrities and now events like Must x Kurhaus.

Headlining the event was internationally acclaimed Spanish DJ David Penn. Joining him were Mr Belt & Wezol, DJ Roog, Divine and MC Roga, each contributing to an electrifying atmosphere that captivated attendees from start to finish.

Enhancing the sensory experience was th

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Italy - On 3 March, pop-rock band The Kolors played the Forum d'Assago in Milan before announcing their new international tour which, in addition to Italy, will visit Switzerland, Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Belgium.

The lighting for the concert was designed by lighting designer Francesco De Cave who chose 120 Ayrton Cobra laser-sourced fixtures for the event, supplied by Italian service company, Agorà.

Cobra features a native contrast never before achieved by a digital light source, 0.6° beam angle, and extreme focus range that allows the shape of the beam to be adjusted to suit operation at any distance XT -Focus.

“I have already used Ayrton fixtures for many tours and programmes: Eurus, Domino, Perseo, Cobra,” states lighting designer, De Cave. “This time I chose Cobra as the special feature in the lighting design pre

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South Korea - With 4,000 seats, Noksan Church in Gangbuk, Seoul is one of the largest worship spaces in the country. It’s also the first to install an immersive sound system, placing the congregation at the centre of the celebration made through words, music and praise.

With cooperation from Nexo distributor A-Works and using Yamaha AFC for ambience control and object-based mixing, the system was designed and installed by CTO Kim Do-seok and the team at immersive media technology specialists Sound Korea ENG.

Five arrays of nine Nexo Geo M10 are hung above and across the stage at the front of the chapel, with two lines of six Nexo MSUB 18 hung centrally. Amplification and processing are provided by Dante-networked Nexo NXAMP4X2Mk2 Powered TD Controllers.

“The installation at Noksan Church is the latest immersive sound project by Sound Kore

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USA – Pop band LANY recently wrapped up the North American leg of its 2024 tour, A Beautiful Blur, named after their fifth album released in 2023. Bandit Lites provided the lighting for duo Paul Klein and Jake Goss who named their act in honour of Los Angeles and New York.

Lighting designer Ben Gilbert sought to streamline the design with LED fixtures, offering both a cohesive design and easier time programming. He drew inspiration from the cylindrical halo video element and curved the lighting trusses around it.

Bandit Lites supplied Ayrton Khamsin S, Chauvet Strike Array 4, Chauvet Color Strike M, Chauvet COLORado PXL Bar 16 and Bar 8, VL 3600 and ROBE Pointes as well as two grandMA 3 Full consoles and a Follow Me System.

“The Khamsin is the workhorse of this design and is a fantastic LED fixture,” said Gilbert. “With its f

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Belgium - The Flanders Technology and Innovation Festival (FTI) is a six-day celebration of technology and innovation hosted across different cities in Belgium. The entertainment event takes place at the Buda Island in Kortrijk and is organised by Hangar K. Split into five distinct areas, the festival aims to bring people together to experiment, strengthen bonds, innovate and tackle the technological challenges of the future.

Leyard Europe’s LN Series LED screens delivered for the Unwrap Arena at FTI. The space celebrates new technology with an educational bias. During the festival children, educators and interested adults are invited to test out new equipment and immerse themselves in gaming to find out more about this booming Flemish industry.

Chief catalyst, Vincent Vanderbeck, is the power behind Hangar K. The company has a passionate ambition

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USA - For the March world premiere of One of the Good Ones at the Pasadena Playhouse in Southern California, lighting designer Jaymi Lee Smith turned to Elation’s new Proteus Odeon LED profile fixture to fulfil a number of lighting roles.

The Odeon, a full-featured 30,000-lumen moving head that houses a variable CRI LED engine, allowed the designer to find the best blend of intensity and colour accuracy to accurately form the onstage lighting while energising the theatre with full-on effects after the final curtain. 

Founded in 1917, Pasadena Playhouse, distinguished as the official State Theatre of California and honoured with the 2023 Regional Theatre Tony Award, stands as one of the nation’s most prolific theatres, having staged thousands of original productions. One of those original plays, One of the Good Ones, which ran f

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USA - Supporting Shaindy Plotzker’s performance at The New Jersey Performing Arts Centre on 6 April was a deeply immersive, multi-level set design on a substantial (18ft deep and 13.5ft trim) stage.

At times, this expansive set evoked images of an ancient courtyard, at others it inspired with majestic mountain-like imagery. Lighting designer Moshe Baskin and programmer-operator Max Blackman brought this spectacular panorama to life with help from 170 Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied by Shaya Alder’s Eagle Production.

Baskin described how the design came together. “This concept came from an Israeli designer, Ronen Najar. Eli Gersner of EG Productions, who produced the concert, reached out to have us create something with it. I took it into Vectorworks and worked on it until I was happy. I substituted the original fixtures with Chauvet Prof

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Romania - When WJB Media was looking to build the first certified Dolby Atmos Music Studio in Bucharest, together with Ines Sound, they turned to LEA Professional to amplify the space.

The team’s end goal in creating the studio was to ensure more engineers and artists could experience the immersive effects of Dolby Atmos first-hand. The studio, which runs a 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos system with Lipinski speakers and four LEA Professional amplifiers, is already attracting musical talent from far and wide.

The visionary behind the studio is legendary sound engineer Joe Hellow, who has worked with some of the top artists and labels before using the pandemic experience to redefine what was next in music production. This was Hellow’s second experience working with LEA Professional amps, having already created a similar studio in Nashville, TN.

“What

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Denmark - Lighting designer Niller Bjerregaard, of Happy Light Guy, who has achieved global acclaim for lighting metal arena tours, has found that his current work for singer-songwriter Jacob Dinesen’s 40-city 2024 tour of Europe has led him to reignite many ideas from his early work for King Diamond.

“I joined Jacob Dinesen Band in 2017 for a lengthy tour of Denmark as the new LD and production designer,” said Bjerregaard. “Now, I am with his current tour, and it’s been a great learning curve for me to get involved in that scene coming from metal music. This is a genre of music with a fan base that is absolutely dedicated to the genre and style, but believe it or not, there are many similarities between this and metal from a design point of view. The reason I find Jacob and his music so interesting is his openness to a theatrical approach for his

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UK - Office rentals specialist Halkin recently opened new premises on King William Street, in the heart of the City of London’s financial district. Distributed across four floors, the workspace required an extensive AV system that would fit the brand’s technology standard and enable collaboration and ease of use for clients. London-based AV and IT specialists, Tateside led the integration of a complete AV system across a total of eight meeting rooms.

“We have worked with Halkin on several workspaces over the past couple of years,” reveals Jack Cornish, technical director at Tateside. “We started out collaborating on smaller jobs such as upgrades of existing meeting rooms. The complete integration of the new office spaces at King William Street is our largest project with Halkin.”

Halkin has established a technological standard across all

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Italy - Prolights’ VersaPar has been included in the lighting setup for 100Minuti, the new prime-time show on the La7 network, hosted by Corrado Formigli and investigative journalist Alberto Nerazzini.

Provided and installed by AMG International, the VersaPar units will be used throughout the duration of the show, illuminating the studio's perimeter and contributing to creating a captivating setting. These LED PARs are ideal for broadcast environments, thanks to their high luminous output, extensive zoom range, and advanced colour mixing capabilities.

The versatile design of the VersaPar, combined with its colour uniformity and quiet operation, makes it a vital element for any television production that seeks to combine high visual and technological quality. Additionally, VersaPar's HD Dimming technology ensures that every detail is visibl

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Qatar - The opening ceremony of the AFC Asian Cup at the Lusail Stadium in Doha, on 12 January 2024 featured an impressive lighting design by Roland Greil and his team.

Greil chose a grandMA3 system to control the lighting. This comprised four grandMA3 full-size consoles for the production and four grandMA3 light as mobile consoles in the stadium, supported by 12 grandMA3 processing units XL. In addition, a further three grandMA3 full-size consoles were used for preparatory work at the previz studio.

“The full redundancy as well as the incorporation of the remote consoles into the network were particularly important to us as it allowed us to operate from several different locations within the stadium. And for a show of this magnitude, the multi-user capability of the lighting consoles is indispensable, as we work with several programmers in these c

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Australia - American singer-songwriter Noah Kahan played a vibrant, sold-out show at Perth’s Red Hill Auditorium in Western Australia in front of 5000 fans.

Lighting director, programmer and operator Alexandra Lutz-Higgins utilised a largely Robe lighting rig supplied for this show by lighting and visuals rental specialist, Showscreens, also based in Perth. The company has recently invested in Robe Fortes.

The Robe count totalled 22 x Fortes, 21 x BMFL WashBeams (four running on a two-way RoboSpot system), plus 32 x Spiider LED wash beams.

Chase Hall from US-based design studio Cour Design originated the visual design and Lutz-Higgins has been onboard and on the road with it since May 2023 when the tour kicked off once Kahan’s third album, Stick Season, dropped.

Lutz-Higgins originally programmed the show together with Wi

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UK - The multi-use requirement of Cardiff Students’ Union’s Great Hall presented SWG Events with several challenges when designing and installing a frontline PA. The venue is a multipurpose space with a capacity of 1,500 and a variety of needs. First, the PA system needed to meet the approval of incoming circuit bands and productions, and at the same time be completely adaptable to a wide range of events. Since live music events are hosted in more than one space within the building, the PA needed to be demountable and reappropriated together in various locations.

SWG Events successfully met the challenges presented to them, their pitch based around Martin Audio’s Wavefront Precision WPS line array. Joe Bailey, account manager at SWG Events, adds, “With our strong ties to the Wavefront Precision product range in our busy rental inventory, we were conf

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Europe - Swedish metal band Amaranthe recently performed a near-sold out, 24-date tour of Europe promoting their latest studio album, The Catalyst, which was released in February.

The band’s lighting designer, operator and project manager, Lutz Neemann, together with systems technician and LD No2, Daniel Scheuch, used 14 Ayrton Diablo S fixtures as their main source of key lighting. Ten Diablo S were rigged on lighting towers and a further four on top of a truss set on a dolly as part of the floor package.

“I chose Ayrton Diablo S for this run with Amaranthe as they are equipped with the perfect features. They have great rotating gobo wheels, impressively real colour mixing and great dimming behaviour,” said Neemann. “It's simply remarkable how quickly the lamp responds to the dimming effects. As a touring LD for metal bands, I've se

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Ireland - Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, with Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators, is on a 40-cities-in-24-countries The River Is Rising tour, travelling with Nashville-based designer and programmer Keith Hoagland.

Vendors vary from place to place, but Hoagland works hard to ensure that the Chauvet Professional Color Strike M is always in his rig.

“I put it at the top of my list,” he says of the fixture. “The Color Strike M serves a dual purpose for me. It gives me great colours and coverage as a wash unit. Then, when I want to turn things up, it’s a powerful strobe. All this without taking up a lot of space on stage.”

Colour saturation and intense strobing were both evident as soon as Slash and friends took the stage at Dublin3 Arena on 28 March. For close to two minutes, the stage was bathed in deep saturated blues

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UK –Floridian ska punk outfit Less Than Jake are touring with video at the heart of their performance for the first time, with live feed footage and pre-made content displayed on three large LED screens driven by tvONE's Green Hippo brand of Hippotizer Media Servers.

Longtime Less Than Jake Lighting designer Nikki Dickinson, owner of Rig Lite Design Limited, teamed up with the band and Pete McCrea of Production AV to specify a kit list of five Marshall CV255 and CV366 cameras to capture the antics of the five band members, live feeds from which were fed into a Hippotizer Amba Media Server. A host of content taking in home-shot footage, old TV clips, song-related imagery and stock effects from various effect sources and from within Hippotizer were handled by the Amba and driven to the three 8' x 6' Desay M6 LED screens.

Ayrton Magic Blade R moving F

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USA - Phoenix Lights 2024 featured EDM performances and light and video show created by Luis Torres on a massive 100ft-wide and 48ft-tall rig. Taking place on the Pheonix Raceway at the end of March, the festival featured performances by the likes of Kaskade, Deorro, b2b, Valentino Khan, Dr. Oliver Tree, Apashe, Alleycvt, Levity and Mamba. Torres channelled their musical energy into stunning visuals with help from 40 Chauvet Professional Color Strike M and 30 Maverick MK3 Wash fixtures supplied by Hardwired Productions.

Like the rest of the lighting fixtures in his rig, the Color Strike and Maverick units were spread throughout the truss structures. Torres did this to create unexpected visual moments and convey the kind of uncertain spontaneity that was in keeping with the festival’s supernova theme.

“I wanted the rig to have different moments an

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Sweden - The stage design for the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest has been unveiled ahead of the grand final in Malmö, Sweden, on 11 May. Lighting and screen content designer Fredrik Stormby from Green Wall Designs and production designer Florian Wieder are the creative team helping to create, design, and deliver a large-scale and spectacular show to a global audience of over 160m. 

The stage and lighting design for the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 will focus on the audience more than ever. With the stage placed in the centre of the arena, viewers will experience a visually revolutionary concept. The 360-degree experience surrounds the audience and viewers in the Malmö Arena. The stage is placed in the middle of the audience and shaped like a cross. Movable LED cubes, LED floors, light, video, and stage technology will be able to create gre

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Portugal – Europalco recently transformed Lisbon's MEO Arena into ‘a realm of sensory delight’ for the Generali Tranquilidade (one of the largest non-life insurers in the Portuguese market) annual meeting event. Europalco deployed the L-ISA system from L Acoustics for the first time in Portugal to create an immersive sound experience.

The event was organised by agency Desafio Global and marked an important milestone in the rebranding of the Tranquilidade brand under Generali Tranquilidade. Europalco implemented an impressive range of audio-visual technologies, scenography and furniture, turning the MEO Arena into an immersive sanctuary for the 3,000 attendees, including employees and business partners from across the country. In collaboration with Desafio Global, the aim was to create an event where sound played a key role in captivating the audience.<

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UK - For more than 35 years, the Sensible Music Group has provided recording, rehearsal and production services to the music industry at its London studios. Mixing, mastering and streaming services also feature at this multi-space complex, whose past and present client list reads like a who’s who of international popular music. From global megastars Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd to London ‘locals’ Amy Winehouse and Madness, Sensible Music has seen a galaxy of household names pass through its doors.

A recent decision to upgrade some of its tech saw Sensible’s chief engineer/producer Jon Moon contact amplifier manufacturer MC², initially to discuss amplification for Clair monitor wedges in the studio’s rehearsal rooms.

A discussion followed between Jon and Richard Fleming of MC² who made some suggestions and subsequently visited the studio

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Italy - Hip-hop duo Coez & Frah Quintale released an album, Lovebars, which they supported with a national tour, selling out arenas throughout the country. Embracing the latest in technology, the duo adopted immersive audio for their live shows via L-ISA spatial audio technology and did so by pairing for the very first time with L Series line array technology.

Compact, lightweight, and using up to 60% less material to build, the L Series is designed to occupy 30% less space than other products capable of the same output, minimising trucks on the road, and lightening the carbon footprint of the tour. Using immersive audio to create a small venue atmosphere in an arena For Coez & Frah Quintale, the opportunity to offer an immersive experience to their fans enabled them to create an intimate environment in what was a significant step up for the

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Vietnam - Powersoft’s energy efficient T Series amplifiers are powering a new sound system at Hanoi’s Goethe-Institut. Nestled in the capital city, Goethe-Institut is a provider of German cultural and educational programmes worldwide, promoting the German language and fostering international relationships.

The cultural institute needed a new sound system in its multipurpose room, capable of accommodating a variety of activities including teaching sessions, presentations, art exhibitions and musical performances. Goethe-Institut tasked local integrator PROSound Vietnam with the challenge.

“The multipurpose room had to follow our client’s high standards and have a clear, lively and detailed sound for teaching, for presenting arts, and playing classical, pop and folk music,” says Mr. Nguyen Viet Trung, CEO of PROSound Vietnam.

To achie

  1. AB Sound sets stage for Olympic qualifier
  2. JPJ Audio standardises on Nexo P15
  3. Kunshan DKU immerses with Sennheiser
  4. Hamilton UK and Ireland tour selects ETC
  5. Spiiders light Taipei Performing Arts Centre
  6. Florida theatre venues take Quantum route
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