USA - Currently one of the hottest tickets on Broadway, the musical Hadestown has won eight Tony Awards. One was for Nevin Steinberg and Jessica Paz’s sound design, which features 28 Alcons Audio V-series pro-ribbon monitors. The Tony was the icing on the cake for Nevin and Jessica, who also won a Drama Desk Award for the Hadestown sound design, as well as being nominated in the Outer Critics Circle Awards. Nevin is a longtime user of Alcons pro-ribbon loudspeakers, including them in the sound design for Dear Evan Hansen and Hamilton: An American Musical, both of which continue to attract sell-out audiences. “Alcons pro-ribbon loudspeakers have proven to be an excellent tool for my Broadway productions,” says Nevin. “Hadestown, in its intimate home at the Walter Kerr Theatre, seemed a great fit for the Alcons sound.” This was
France - Nearly 300 Robe moving lights and seven RoboSpot systems were delivered by Melpomen (part of the B-Live Group) to the 2019 Hellfest French rock festival, complete with six BMFL LTs from rental company Novelty, claiming a ‘world first’ for the usage of these fixtures in a festival context. The event is staged annually at Clisson in Loire-Atlantique and claims the biggest festival audience in France – attracting approximately 170,000 - and it is also one of the largest metal festivals in Europe, with six stages of live action and over 100 artists performing. This year the line-up included Kiss, Slayer, ZZ Top, The Sisters of Mercy, FuManchu, Gojira and Mass Hysteria. Robe moving lights - 126 BMFL WashBeams, 126 MegaPointes, 12 BMFL Blades and six BMFL LTs plus seven RoboSpot control systems - were prominent across the two main stages (1 and 2), which produ
USA - An inscription at the entrance of Lewis University’s Philip Lynch Theatre offers a glimpse into the building’s past. It reads ‘Lewis Holy Name School of Aeronautics’, a testament to a time when the 250-seat thrust stage and studio theatre with a 90-seat black box space served as an aircraft hangar, part of this suburban Chicago school’s long-standing commitment to educating aviators. The inscription is not the only manifestation of Lewis University’s rich aviation history that can be seen in its thriving Theatre Department. Like its counterpart that is responsible for educating future pilots and aeronautical engineers, the Theatre Department is committed to exposing students to the latest technology in their field. Toward this end, the department added Chauvet Professional Ovation and Maverick LED fixtures from JRLX, Inc. to its Philip Lynch Theatre lightin
Spain - Grammy award-winning Argentinian performer, Coti, recently completed a 20-date tour of Spain, culminating in a performance at the Gexto Sound Festival, with a compact dLive Wings system handling monitor duties. Coti Sorokin is one of the best-known artists, songwriters and producers in the Spanish speaking world, with numerous platinum discs to his name. For Coti’s latest Spanish tour, monitor engineer, Alejandro Blanco opted for his own highly portable mixing system, comprising a dLive C1500 19” Surface fitted with a WavesV3 card for multitrack recording and a DM32 MixRack, fitted with a Dante card, a superMADI card for digital splits and AES10 card, for running wedge monitors and side-fills. “dLive is the best sounding console on the market right now and in my opinion, there’s no other mixer that offers the capabilities of dLive, without the need of t
Réunion Island - The Indian Ocean island located east of Madagascar, recently premiered a new cultural event, Réunion Métis, a multidisciplinary art festival dedicated to living together. Held 27-29 September along the seafront in the city of Saint-Paul, and free to all, the experience encompassed music, art, dance, food and light art installations, including a light show with night-time sunrise courtesy of local company Stage OI and Elation Proteus Hybrid moving heads. Réunion Métis was a new way of experiencing culture in Réunion with all the senses brought into play. Co-created by PORLWI and Sanjeyann Paleatchy, the festival was an opportunity for local talent to immerse islanders in inspiring art and light. One special light art installation involved a son et lumiére at the end of the Saint-Paul landing pier, a light and sound atmosphere with lighting effec
UK - White Light has recently supplied the lighting equipment for Mamma Mia - The Party, an immersive theatrical dining extravaganza based around the music of ABBA. Created by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, Mamma Mia! The Party transports its audience to the island of Skopelos where taverna owner Nikos and his family present their story in a night of song, dance and feasting. Running for four hours, the show is packed full of ABBA’s best-known songs which are performed by actors and musicians around the audience members. The show was first performed in Sweden and has now arrived in London, where it is running at The O2, Greenwich. The lighting designer for the show is the award-winning Patrick Woodroffe. He comments: “We wanted our audience to truly believe they were in a Greek taverna on Skopelos. Bengt Fröderberg’s set design was so authentic and, for
Greece - With a varied programme of events, this year’s Summer Nostos Festival (SNFestival) attracted more than 200,000 people and featured an array of High End Systems and ETC gear across five stages. Athens' most modern cultural landmark - the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre - played host to the annual, week-long festival. The centre's gardens, the canal, the National Library and the Greek National Opera were transformed into stages for music and theatrical performances, family activities, educational workshops and sports for visitors of all ages and backgrounds. George Tellos of LightingArt oversaw all lighting design for the festival. With a team of five lighting programmers, Tellos was tasked with illuminating the vast and varied schedule of events while under tight time constraints. It involved designing, programming and operating 50 shows over eigh
South Africa - The Mosaïek Teatro, a large-capacity venue that forms part of the Mosaïek Church in Fairland, Johannesburg, can accommodate 2,800 people and has become a home to various productions such as Idols South Africa, The Voice finale and international performances scheduled for 2020. Mosaïek recently invested in two DiGiCo SD5 mixing consoles with SD Racks and Waves. “With only three SD5s in South Africa, two of which are now based at the Mosaïek, this has been an important investment for the market they are catering for,” comments Kyle Robson of DWR Distribution, the DiGiCo distributors in Africa. “DiGiCo is one of the top brands in the world, if not the most requested console on technical riders,” adds Estian Els, head of technical at Mosaïek Teatro. “The SD5 suites our business model very well. We chose the larger console in reg
UK - Lighting designer Elliot Baines of Spiralstagelighting utilised Prolights Panorama IP Airbeam moving beam and Panorama IP WBX wash lights to raise the roof for DJ sets on the main stage in the Metropolis district of Boomtown – one of the UK’s largest independent festivals. Held for five days at the scenic Matterley bowl estate in Hampshire, the 66,000 capacity event fuses “immersive theatre and arts with a global, genre-spanning music bill”. During the festival, its 14 fully immersive districts come together as a fictitious city with its own story narrative. In the futuristic Metropolis district, the main Pagoda Plaza outdoor stage’s eclectic global bill included US house DJ, Kenny Dope, techno from Dr Rubenstein, retro house grooves from Sally C, electronica from Horse Meat Disco, and soulful disco from The 2 Bears. For Elliot’s lighting design
South Africa - With limited funds available for festivals in South Africa, it takes people who are able to give of their time and resources to keep the arts alive and to support the organizers who so tirelessly give of themselves. One such individual, is Brandon Bunyan of Black Coffee, a Durban-based technical supply company. Black Coffee is the main technical sponsor of The Hilton Arts Festival. This year, the show was hosted from 13 to 15 September at Hilton College in KwaZulu Natal. In the early days Bunyan worked on the event as a young technician and for the past 16 years, Black Coffee has sponsored gear and technicians to the Hilton Arts Festival which has grown from one to eight performance art display venues, making it the second largest festival in the country. “I first became involved because of my passion for theatre, to keep in the theatre game as a mark
UK - Martin Audio has announced the first sale of its new Wavefront Precision WPS array into the rental community. The 8” ultra-compact system -featuring scalable resolution optimisation technology - met the requirements of its premier partner, Capital Sound, and has gone out on Eddie Izzard’s UK and Ireland tour. Izzard has toured with Martin Audio PAs on many occasions in the past, but it was his sound engineer Alan Behr, a fan of the Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array (MLA) technology on which it is based, who had requested the brand. However, looking at the tour itinerary, Capital realised that while some venues would require the comedian to play through existing house systems, in others the restricted rigging and loading points would preclude the hanging of heavy incoming rigs. Capital account manager Robin Conway comments: “We had to look at lighter opt
UAE - Protec recently took delivery of the first Outline Newton in the region. Newton product specialist Middle East Luca Gianni helped to organise a demo in the field during an event in KSA and hosted a complete in-depth training course exclusively dedicated to Protec technicians, to ensure that the new processor’s possibilities were exploited to the utmost and the team was able to make the best possible use of its great processing capacity and versatility. Tim Allison, head of Protec’s audio department, stated that the Newton processor would be put to use on large-scale events in the UAE and KSA, and continued, “I envisage the Newton as an integral part of all our FOH main processing racks.” Luca Gianni confirms: “The Protec team is highly qualified and will definitely make the very most of the Newton, thus increasing the company’s in the field and part
USA - Multiple EMMY Award-winning lighting designer Bob Barnhart chose 80 VL2600 Profile luminaires from Vari-Lite as his “workhorse” tool for the 16th season of Fox’s popular TV show, So You Think You Can Dance. The new LED fixtures helped Barnhart to deliver an endless variety of looks in the tightest of time-frames. Produced by 19 Entertainment, Dick Clark Productions and Conrad Sewell Productions, the show sees around 900 dancers compete to be declared “America's favourite dancer”. During the show’s final stages Barnhart needed to light almost 80 dances, usually with just 20 minutes available to decide each different design. “The challenge is keeping the different looks fresh, so we try to use lighting equipment that can do a wide variety of things,” says Barnhart. “A ‘workhorse’ in this situation is much more valuable to me than a ‘o
Egypt - Green Hippo reports that its Hippotizer Media Servers are driving a range of custom high-resolution displays at the newly renovated Panorama 6th October Museum in Cairo, which commemorates the 6 October War of 1973. Using Hippotizer’s advanced mapping capabilities and flexible third-party integration options, local AV specialist Audio Technology was able to meet the many challenge of this complex installation, which includes custom HD projection mapping solutions in three interior halls, as well as on the outside of the building itself. The museum is now able to pursue its educational remit with a full-day entertainment program which brings the history of this troubled period back to vivid life for audiences of all ages. The building’s exterior is the projection surface for 4k resolution content, mapped and fed to six high-power 30,000 lumen laser projector
Italy - One hundred Claypaky Xtylos units were used to create the Il colore del suono (the colour of sound) lighting rig, conceived by the Giò Forma studio and created in conjunction with Claypaky's lighting designer Marco Zucchinali. The installation was put together for the Jova Beach Party on the runway of Milan Linate airport, which has been closed since July for major refurbishment works. The event was the final stage of Jovanotti's tour of the beaches of Italy. It saw over 100,000 people attend over eight hours of music with various guests, and culminated in a concert by Jovanotti himself, Italy's most loved rap singer-songwriter. Claudio Santucci from Giò Forma reports: “It all started with Jovanotti's and the creative team's request to have a light installation which could be seen from afar. I went to the Claypaky showroom to see their new light, th
USA - Located in Toppenish, Washington, four hours southeast of Seattle on the Yakama Nation reservation, is Legends Casino Hotel. Wanting to attract new guests by expanding their entertainment programme, Legends recently built a new events centre and sought to maintain their high standards by equipping the space in modern entertainment technology systems. Legends contacted Elation Professional dealer Morgan Sound of Lynnwood, Washington, for a vision to transform a 200' x 200' ballroom into a top-notch 1,750- seat concert and performance venue. Contracted to design and install the audio, lighting, video, staging, and drapery systems at the new events centre, Morgan Sound called on its team of AV experts to transform the space into a first-class venue. 1,750- seat concert and performance venue Morgan Sound equipped the centre with a cutting-edge Elation lighting syste
USA - Part Broadway-style stage show, and part story-driven concert, Nick Jr. Live! Move to the Music is on a national tour. The lively and colourful show, which is Vstar Entertainment’s third collaboration with Nickelodeon, has many of the network’s characters like The Bubble Guppies, PAW Patrol, and Dora The Explorer sharing the same stage for the first time. Supporting this cast of children’s favourites as they sing, dance and charm their way into young hearts is a collection of 47 Maverick and nine Ovation fixtures from Chauvet Professional. Colour rendering is very important when it comes to working with such a recognizable intellectual property, according to Jessica Mrovka, technical services manager at VStar Entertainment. Because the audience loves the characters presented on this tour and knows everything about them, even slight deviations from f
USA - High End Systems’ Sola Series automated luminaires drove the main Honda Stage at the 2019 Austin City Limits Music Festival in Austin, TX. For two consecutive weekends in October, 28 SolaFrame 3000 and 18 SolaHyBeam 2000 cut through day and night performances for Tame Impala, Billie Eilish, The Cure, Idles, Third Eye Blind, Cardi B and Robyn, among others. Houston-based LD Systems provided the gear, while its LDs Nathan Brittain and Lance Williamson worked with ACL Music Festival designer Chris Lisle on the overall design. The team deployed the 37,000 lumens of each SolaFrame 3000 for profile fixtures and band specials, while the SolaHyBeam 2000 washed the downstage with bold beams, animated gobos and effects. This year’s larger stage was 20ft wider, measuring 80ft wide by 60ft deep. Weather was a study in contrasts for the event with intense record-bre
UK - Northern Ireland’s new wave indie pop returned to touring with their fourth studio album, False Alarm, continuing a worldwide relationship with Britannia Row Productions. At FOH is Ian Laughton, a long-time Britannia Row customer who has live engineered the Club’s shows for over five years. “A great thing about mixing this band is that they want you to put your own stamp on it. They want a pretty different vibe compared to their recorded sound, and I love that; I have to be able to put my own touch on whatever I work on,” says Laughton, who works closely with monitor engineer Steve Donovan. The band’s engineers are joined by Britannia Row’s seasoned system tech Cesar Lopez, newly qualified stage tech Jacopo Fois and second system tech Giacomo Gasparini. The audio team’s combined efforts have been noted in the band’s close circles.
Australia - Lighting designer Alex Berlage used 36 Astera Titan Tube battery-powered wireless LED fixtures, each rigged on two individual winches, to produce a range of lighting, location effects, architecture and scenic elements for a new production of Lord of The Flies staged at Roslyn Packer Theatre by the Sydney Theatre Company. Directed by Kip Williams, the production has been acclaimed for many aspects including its diverse mixed gender 11-person adult cast who brought new energy and insight into William Golding’s tense psychological novel that explores some brutal, uncomfortable and uncompromising issues related to chaos, power and human behaviour. Alex is a theatrical director as well as a lighting designer and he’s constantly looking at different and more spatial ways to use lighting for building dramaturgic foundations and challenging some of the m
UK - When looking to up-grade the sound system in their council chamber, Newcastle Civic Centre turned to long established supplier Gary Nicholson of Newcastle-based Rock Warehouse to propose a solution. Having previously installed an HK Audio system in the Civic Centre’s largest space (the baronial style Banqueting Hall, capable of seating up to 600 guests), HK Audio was Nicholson’s first choice. Paul Frankcom was responsible for looking after the full gamut of AV requirements throughout the Civic Centre. He explains: "With the principal use of the Council Chamber being to host meetings for up to 200+ delegates using a variety of microphones positioned around the room, first rate speech intelligibility was the priority, with the objective being to commission a system capable of delivering a uniform audio experience for all delegates, with even coverage from the fr
USA - Milwaukee may be widely known for its Germanic roots and mass celebration of beer, bowling, and bratwurst, but this town is also the site of Irish Fest - a celebration of Irish music and culture - which this year utilised dLive and SQ Series consoles from Allen & Heath. Held downtown at Henry Maier Festival Park along the shore of Lake Michigan, Irish Fest 2019 featured 100 musical acts and 300 different performances spread across 16 stages. With Clearwing Productions handling the bulk of the event’s sound reinforcement needs, the Ingleside, Illinois-based independent rep firm Audio Biz deployed five dLive and six SQ Series consoles across seven of the stages plus a preshow/demo suite. Among the dLive systems were S5000 and C3500 control surfaces supported by DM48, DM64, and CDM48 MixRacks. Utilised at smaller stages where space was at a premium, SQ-5
France - For the past five years, XCPH has been responsible for designing the lighting rig for du Tour Vibration, a popular five-city back-to-school tour sponsored by Radio Vibration. Each year, their designs have been greeted with enthusiasm by the event organizers, performing artists, and the fans who turn out by the tens of thousands in France’s Central Region for the free concerts. This year, in a bold departure from precedent, Maxime Perrey scaled back the role of LED video walls that had dominated his previous designs in favour of a more lighting-oriented rig that featured Chauvet Professional fixtures. “The tour has continuously grown,” said Perrey. “This was the first year that I had carte blanche to create a plan. I wanted something different from the four previous editions. Before, video was much more present, with larger, more imposing, surfaces. S
Estonia - A Robe moving light rig supplied by Tallinn-based rental company E&T was used for Estonia’s two highest-profile annual summer opera festivals, the Birgitta Festival organised by the Tallinn Philharmonic Society and Saaremaa Opera Days organized by Eesti Kontsert. Saaremaa took place on a 60 x 30m stage built beside Kuressaare Castle on Saaremaa Island in the Baltic Sea. The castle is one of the best-preserved medieval fortifications in Estonia and provides a magical backdrop for all the operatic action to unfold. For the Birgitta festival, the same staging company constructed a temporary roofing / staging structure adjacent to the elegant ruins of the Pirita Convent in Tallinn, which dates to the 15th century. In both cases, the lighting rig comprised around 120 Robe fixtures – a mix of Spiiders, MMX WashBeams, MMX Spots, LEDWash 800s, Cyc FX 8
