Belgium - Tumult, the Sanzaru Order techno/rave parties, are adding passion, energy and excitement to Belgian night life. Organised by Skippen Dam, Tumult events travel from club to club, with non-stop music by leading DJs. Adding to the immersive effect of the Tumult experience is an intense lightshow featuring Chauvet DJ Intimidator Hybrid 140SR fixtures, supplied by Sound & Co. “This is the fifth annual edition of Tumult, and the second year that we have lit the parties,” says Jonas Bellemans, CEO of Sound & Co. “Skippen Dam invests a great deal in bringing a lot of DJ talent to these events, which limits the budget for lighting. At the same time, you need a lot of intensity to support this kind of music. So you have to find fixtures that give the right balance.” Bellemans notes that the 140W Intimidator Hybrid 140SR, with its intense output, motoriz
USA - Clearwing Productions once again selected Harman Professional Solutions’ JBL Professional loudspeaker, Crown amplifier and Martin lighting products to kick up the excitement at Summerfest 2019 in Milwaukee. The deployment at Summerfest comes months after Clearwing made a significant upgrade to its audio inventory with a multi-million-dollar purchase of JBL VTX A-Series line arrays. More than 200 JBL Professional loudspeakers, fills and subwoofers are featured, including the new JBL VTX A8 and A12 line array loudspeakers. The Martin MAC Allure made its debut this year, along with support from the Martin Atomic, VDO, and RUSH lines. “We are really enjoying the flexibility that the new JBL A8s offer for our various stage configurations as well as the versatility that we’ve come to enjoy from the A12s,” comments Bryan Brunclik, Clearwing Productions Mi
South Africa - Wireless LED lighting manufacturer Astera has announced DWR Distribution as its exclusive distributor in South Africa. It is understood that the agreement will include other southern and central African countries. DWR is headquartered in Johannesburg and has bases in Cape Town and Durban as well as extensive contacts across southern and central Africa. The company is headed by Duncan Riley, Robert Izzett and Bruce Riley and supplies an array of brands and products and equipment for the entertainment and architectural sectors which includes lighting, audio, AV and staging. “I am hugely excited,” comments Astera’s sales and marketing director, Sebastian Bückle. “I think the African and South African markets are vibrant and full of potential and I have heard so many great things from around the industry about DWR and their incredible custome
UK - Robe has announced the appointment of Jordan Tinniswood to the international exhibition team. Tinniswood’s appointment is very much as a result of the NRG (Next Robe Generation) initiative in which he has been actively engaged throughout his academic career. He joined the Robe team at the beginning of June, just as he was completing his final year studying Lighting Design at Rose Bruford College, and takes on the role of lighting and media technician, working alongside Nathan Wan (pictured, left), Andy Webb and Tomáš Kohout. Tinniswood will be helping the team on various projects around the world. His first project was realising the design of the T1 Rube Goldberg machine, which was the centrepiece of Robe’s stand at the recent ABTT Theatre Show in London. Tinniswood has since gone on to programme international theatre workshops which have take
USA - Dustin Klein has the philosophy that the primary goal of a lighting designer is to bring music to life by creating a visual space for the band. For his recent work on Papadosio’s second annual Summer Sequence at the Pisgah Brewing Company, part of creating this space relied on weaving the lighting around the band’s music to tell a visual story. Klein relied on a variety of Chauvet DJ fixtures to transport the audience to another dimension, one ruled by the genre-bending music of the band. Placing six Chauvet DJ Intimidator Wash Zoom 450 IRC fixtures on the upstage truss facing outward allowed for an even spread of wash that created depth and shaping on stage. “I ran the Intimidator 450s in their highest channel mode, in order to chase the individual pixels and tie together the different sections of the light in full rig color wipes and
USA - Kelly Clarkson, the singer-songwriter who rose to fame after winning the 2002 American Idol, has recently been a regular coach on The Voice and is set to host The Kelly Clarkson Show in September. She also hit the road earlier this year to play venues across the US on her first tour in nearly four years. Lighting design for the Meaning of Life outing was by Roy Bennett, who employed an overhead grid of 120 Elation DARTZ 360 LED fixtures to accentuate nearly all aspects of the highly entertaining show. Key design elements of the set included a VIP bar that surrounded the B-stage to enhance the party environment, and a large upstage video screen that displayed a variety of content including heavy amounts of I-Mag. The DARTZ, housed in 10 overhead lines of truss, 12 fixtures per truss, complemented both in Bennett’s cohesive design. "Th
South Africa - The Rivers Church in Sandton decided to open a new place of worship to maintain the growth and comfort of their congregants. Their new location, formerly known as Theatre on the Track in Kyalami, is an old theatre turned conference venue, designed with holding people in mind. The venue needed an overhaul and DWR Distribution, with the help of the Install Crew, completely stripped and renovated the old technical installation from top to bottom, making it look fresh and professional and adhering to the Church’s aesthetic standards. Edward Helliwell, technical manager from the Rivers Church, was adamant on having a top-notch lighting LED based lighting system, which was supplied and installed by DWR. This includes eight Robin LEDWash 600s, six Claypaky Axcor Beam 300s and four Robe DL4S Profiles which come from the Sandton branch. These all serve a very s
UK - Specialist equipment supplier and production house, Light Fantastic Production Services have applied their stock of Robe MegaPointe fixtures to a variety of prestigious live events. Having made a significant investment in Robe MegaPointe fixtures to extend their growing lighting inventory, Light Fantastic has been keeping these versatile, powerful fixtures busy throughout the Spring season. LFPS director, Rob Myer, says: “We have a long-standing relationship with Robe so naturally we are delighted with the performance of our MegaPointes. Over the past few months we have been making great use of them on a host of projects, from creating aerial searchlight effects and gobo projection across building facades to adding incredible theatrical looks to prestigious large-scale live events, including a particularly spectacular product launch installation on a roof at C
USA - The Brooklyn Tabernacle, designed in 1918 by Thomas Lamb, the architect of the original Madison Square Garden across the East River in Manhattan, flourished for years as the Lowe’s Metropolitan, one of the leading vaudeville theatres of its day. Today, after being rescued from disrepair by the church, the building resonates with the uplifting energy of Pastor Jim Cymbala’s Sunday services, special events throughout the week, and performances by the six-time Grammy winning Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, which is directed by the pastor’s wife, Carol. Supporting these activities are immersive lighting and video displays that would have been impossible to imagine back in the building’s vaudeville theatre days. Running the lighting and video system is a ChamSys MagicQ MQ500 Stadium, installed in early 2019 by lighting designer Abner Torres of Out of Darkness Desi
Colombia - Teatro Colón Bogotá, Colombia’s national theatre, finished the last stage of a four-year renovation with the addition of 10 ADB Stagelight Klemantis AS 1000 cyc lights and 10 Axcor Profile 900 fixtures provided by Audio Concept de Colombia. “In selecting the Axcor Profile 900s, we outlined the needs of the luminaires based on certain parameters - they must be spots, have blades, CRI, and, above all, must be LEDs,” says Leonardo Murcia Buitrago, the theatre’s lighting manager. “We compared the technical specifications of all the brands we looked at and without hesitation went with Claypaky. The Axcor Profile 900s give us a great temperature. The curve is so natural and exponential.” “The new Klemantis cyc lights have the most wonderful colour curvature and dimmer, perfect for theatre,” he adds. “We included the fixtures in all of our
UK - Registration is now open for PLASA Show 2019, which returns from 15-17 September to bring over 200 brands lighting, audio, AV, rigging and staging brands to Olympia London. Mirroring the growth of the AV sector, this year’s show will present an array of next-generation LED screen technology from major players such as Canon and Midwich. Furthermore, Netgear will share its networking and integration solutions. The audio presence at the show has been growing rapidly over the last few years and in 2019, the show will welcome Void Acoustics and CUK Audio in addition to Bose, d&b audiotechnik, Yamaha and Adam Hall among others. Meanwhile, live audio demos will double this year, with L-Acoustics taking a dedicated demo space and KV2 Audio demo'ing its products, which fe
Sweden - Despite having worked with Swedish House Mafia’s Axwell and Sebastian Ingrosso in a one-off show in San Francisco, when the time came, Vision Factory production designer, Sam Tozer nevertheless had to pitch for the gig (read full production report in LSi June). At the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium gig he had gone heavy on GLP’s popular impression X4 20 Bars and equally en-vogue JDC1 hybrid strobes, and that same formula worked for him again at the house legends’ comeback shows at Stockholm’s Tele2 Arena. It quickly became clear that this would be no ordinary EDM experience. Assisted by LD, Alex Hess, he says: “I already knew the feel of the performance the boys would want to create, so the
USA - ADJ Lighting has planned a two-day summer ADJ road tour event at Soundcheck Nashville to demo its latest lighting, audio, and video technologies and offer informative tech sessions on a variety of lighting and video control solutions. On 16-17 July, ADJ Lighting will be in Nashville, Tennessee, at Soundcheck Nashville studios, 750 Cowan Street, where the company will spotlight its latest lighting, audio, and video technologies recently shown at InfoComm tradeshow. The showcase will include ADJ’s IP65 outdoor rated lighting solutions. “Nashville is of my favourite ADJ road tour dates because we always have a strong turnout of lighting professionals. In fact, this is our fifth year in a row at Soundcheck Nashville,” comments Alfred Gonzales, national sales manager of ADJ USA. “ADJ is coming off a very successful InfoComm show. We’re looking forward to tal
The Netherlands - Andre Beekmans, lighting designer with The Art of Light, used Ayrton’s Ghibli LED spot fixtures to create a lightscape on and around the main stage at A State of Trance festival in The Netherlands this year in celebration of ASOT 900. A State of Trance (ASOT) is the weekly radio show of award-winning DJ Armin van Buuren and the largest trance network in the world. Every year the 50th episode is celebrated with a major live concert in The Netherlands, with smaller satellite events in other countries around the world. This spring marked the 900th show, which was celebrated in front of a 35,000 capacity audience at the Jaarbeurs Centre in van Buuren’s hometown of Utrecht, designed and operated by The Art of Light, and promoted by Alda Events. Lighting designer Beekmans chose 65 Ayrton Ghibli, supplied by Ampco Flashlight, as the main spot fix
USA - Australian burlesque Star Wars parody The Empire Strips Back has just completed its most extensive North American tour to date, also visiting Canada for the first time, complete with a suitably boisterous lightshow designed by Peter Rubie, featuring 30 Robe Spiider LED wash beams as the core moving light fixtures. The show has delighted audiences since it launched at the Vanguard Theatre in Sydney in 2011. Peter has been involved with the show for the last four years, taking over from original lighting designer Ross Graham. Since then, it has evolved into the performance spectacle it is today including new acts and songs, and in 2018, a complete refresh of the lighting rig. It was at this stage that Peter decided to replace the previous LED wash lights with Robe’s latest generation Spiider - a fixture known for its power, smooth colour mixin
EMEA - Audio Technology, Ertekin Elektronik and Masterpiece have been appointed as distribution partners of Studer by Harman, operating across Egypt, Turkey, and the Middle East respectively. “Introducing new distribution partners means we can present the latest Studer technology and align the Studer brand with the wider Harman Professional ecosystem, providing a greater range of high-quality options for our customers in the region,” said Andrew Smart, business development manager, broadcast, EMEA. The agreements see Audio Technology, Ertekin Elektronik and Masterpiece offering pioneering Studer products including Vista control surfaces powered by Infinity processing engines and Glacier Professional Mixing Consoles to their existing and future customers. “We’re delighted to partner with such highly-motivated distributors who can provide an extremely im
USA - Hung on five 30ft truss fingers that rise at a 30° angle as they go from upstage toward the audience, the Chauvet Professional Nexus Aw 7x7 fixtures at the heart of Greta Van Fleet’s lighting rig allude to a plane taking flight. Eric Cathcart, the band’s lighting designer, has a first-hand appreciation of this dizzying trajectory. The owner of Bigtime Lighting Design, Cathcart was with the quartet on some of their earliest touring a little over a year ago. Back then everything, including lighting, audio gear and the backline (not to mention the band), fit on a single bus and trailer. Today, a Grammy Award win and a slew of No. 1 hits later, the band’s caravan is considerably larger at five vehicles. Cathcart’s rig, with its 100 Nexus panels, which, like the rest of the fixtures, were supplied by Primer Global Productions, sprang to life with the kind of
Italy - Showman and superstar Vasco Rossi - Il Blasco - returned with another Live Kom tour, including six sold out nights at Milan’s San Siro stadium with a performance to match his profile. Leading the creative production team was lighting designer Giovanni Pinna, who has worked with the artist for many years as part of a team ensuring that the live shows are constantly exciting, interesting and innovative and meet the massive public expectations each year. A master of making impressions - Giovanni chose to use over 340 Robe moving lights - 152 x MegaPointes, 122 x Spiiders and 72 x LEDBeam 150s - to assist in the visual impact. Video screens / content director and disguise server operator Marco Piva and disguise tech whizz Nicolas Di Fonzo worked directly for Giovanni who also collaborated closely with live camera director Peppe Romano from Except to create
Germany - Like many others, lighting designer Thomas Gerdon would sit on the couch with his parents to watch music show ZDF Hitparade on a tube TV. He was then overjoyed when he was offered to design the lighting for the 50th anniversary of the show - all the more so as he knew German TV veteran, Thomas Gottschalk, would be hosting it. Gerdon’s task was to create a modern set for the 50th anniversary, which at the same time needed to connect with the look of the original studio (Berlin Union Studios). "It needed to pay homage to the old hit parade,“ explains Gerdon, describing the challenge set by the show’s production. "It was clear to me in which direction this design would go,” he continues. And much of this would require the implementation of GLP’s innovative solutions. “The back wall of the set would be the first anchor point,” he expl
UK - Light Engine Dry Hire, a new London-based dry hire service, launched on 1 May. The company offers stocks of the latest technologies and innovations in LED fixtures from a wide variety of manufacturers. The Light Engine Dry Hire directors Colin Bodenham, Jon Newman and Angus Chinn were drawn to their strict fixture selection by the clear advantages offered by LED fixtures of improved sustainability, minimal waste and high efficiency. The core team is completed by Ayesha Chinn as warehouse manager, and Steve Warren and Carolina Fajardo-Linares of LDC as the contracted marketing and promotional department. The Light Engine Dry Hire centre is located in London’s ‘Lighting Quarter’ of Park Royal NW10, making its position practical for collections and deliveries within Greater London and gives easy access to the M1 and M40 motorways. Light Engine Dry Hire already
Honduras - Reggaeton singer and Latin Grammy Award-winner, Nicky Jam, took his Intimo tour to the city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras for a show at Morazán Stadium that featured an Elation Professional lighting rig designed by Juan David Guerrero. Setting the party atmosphere with colour and high-energy visual excitement was a dynamic lighting rig made up of 36 Platinum FLX moving heads, 48 ACL 360 Bar LED battens, 16 Protron 3K strobes, eight DTW Blinder 700 IP and eight DTW Blinder 350 IP blinders with atmospheric haze from a pair of Antari F-7 Smaze machines. Production and operation of the event was by PRO504, a leading Honduras-based production company that gave the more than 20,000 people who attended the show an unforgettable audio-visual experience. “In Honduras, I used Elation thanks to the excellent service that John Lopez gave me,” stated Juan Dav
The Netherlands - The Kunstlinie Almere Flevoland (KAF) in Almere has installed 16 Claypaky Axcor Spot 400 fixtures in its theatre. Claypaky distributor AED Nederland provided the LED moving spotlights. KAF is a theatre and exhibition centre which opened in 2007 and was renovated and took its current name in 2016. The complex features three performance spaces in the theatre and an exhibition hall. “We were looking for lights that would work with a wide range of theatrical performances, concerts and event rentals,” say Maarten Bolt and Menno van Houten, Light technicians at KAF. “We did a long shootout of fixtures, and the Axcors stood out from the competition for their design, performance and attractive price. Plus, we had used the Axcor Spot 300s once and liked them, so we opted for the new Axcor Spot 400 models.” While lighting usage at KAF varies from
South Africa - The Suncoast Casino in Durban KwaZulu-Natal has a new Anolis lighting scheme which was designed and specified by Joao Viegas and Paul Pamboukian of PPALD. While Paul and Joao presented and drove the project, it was a collaborative effort involving the entire PPALD design team working in conjunction with DWR Distribution, who supplied the Anolis fixtures, and commissioned the system. The project was overseen for DWR by Johnny Scholtz. They were subcontracted to Edison Power, working for South African hotel group, Tsogo Sun, the end client. The brief was to replace the building’s tired old coloured metal halide [sodium] lighting installation which was outlined with coloured neon with something vibrant, colourful and contemporary to match the cosmopolitan vibes and energy of Durban. PPALD proposed the colour changing lighting scheme, complete
USA - Premier Production Services (PPS) of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania has taken delivery of Ayrton Mistral-TC (True Colour) spot luminaires for its inventory where they have been in active use since their arrival from ACT Lighting, Ayrton’s exclusive distributor in North America. PPS offers lighting and audio packages and production assistance for corporate meetings, school dramatic arts and other live events in central Pennsylvania. “We had replaced our older static fixtures with LED and wanted to replace our moving intelligent lights with LED as well,” says PPS vice president Rocco DiBacco. “ACT Lighting brought us some Mistral-TCs for a demo and a shootout with another fixture brand, and we really liked a lot of things about the Mistrals.” Mistral-TC has been created for applications that require perfect colour reproduction. It is equipped with an en
