Israel - Avraham Tal is one of the best known contemporary Israeli singer-songwriters and multi-instrumentalists. His 2019 tour takes a more electronic vibe than previously, and with that, he wanted fresh input on the lighting front and a spec including Robe MegaPointes, Spiiders and BMFL Spots. He wanted this to be achieved without the mechanical precision of timecode but with a more organic process. Co-designers Eran Klein & Omer Israeli of Cochavi and Klein Light Architects proposed a scheme - including Robe moving lights - which was chosen to help explore and develop this idea and these new directions for the stage presentation. Madrix programmer and tour LD / operator, Naor Bonomo also provided input. A major part of this creative chemistry was focussed on finding a new way of synching lighting and video with elements of the music, utilising MIDI over Ethernet
Spain - Catalan singer-songwriter Rosalia is setting festivals worldwide on fire with her signature flamenco-urban fusion style and sold-out shows which feature lighting by Claypaky, represented in Spain by Stonex. In support of her second studio album El Mal Querer, Rosalia’s eponymous world tour - her first - launched in the spring and has played dates in North America, Latin America and across Europe, including Lollapalooza in Argentina and Chile, Coachella in the US, Primavera Sound in Barcelona, and Gurtenfestival in Switzerland. Engagements will continue through October. Rosalia enjoys an unprecedented reception whenever she performs. Her show at La Noche Blanca del Flamenco de Cordoba seduced 10,000 fans with her lyrics and flamenco styling enhanced by dynamic lighting design by Isabel de la Mora. Now, on her world tour, Rosalia is accompanied by
Belgium - A new chapter was added to the rich and widely heralded tradition of Belgian beer making recently thanks to the discovery of a medieval manuscript. Hidden away by monks of the Grimbergen Abbey in 1798 to avoid advancing French revolutionary troops, the recipe, written in Latin and Old Dutch, was unearthed about four years ago in the monastery’s archives. This May, after much painstaking research, the monks were ready to release their resurrected brew to the world. Rolling out such a beverage after a 220-year hiatus, calls for a special celebration, which is exactly what the Grimbergen Abby monks created, putting on Grimbergen Experience Days, a debut event for their business partners and beer connoisseurs from around the world. Adding an appropriate level of visual excitement to the proceedings was a lighting design by Thomas Boets of LDP who was retained
UK - To demonstrate its support for Leeds Pride, ASDA’s head office in the Leeds city centre came out once again in the movement’s traditional bright rainbow colours, with the help of TechLED and 4-Wall. To achieve the required look, 4-Wall’s Ben Perrin specified SGM Q7 wide-angled LED flood fixtures to be distributed evenly under the eaves of the building perimeter. For the building entrance, the tighter beam angle of SGM P5 architectural LED wash lights area, highlighted the features of the entryway. Perrin’s choice was based upon the two-fold suitability of the products to the job, explaining the SGM fixtures are “really wide-angled, really soft, really bright, produce really good pastel colours and because they feature in-built wireless control, they ensure the install and removal was really quick”. SGM’s Q7 is a multi-function flood light with
France - The Grand Concert de Paris, celebrating the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, takes place every 14 July at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, in the Champ de Mars. This year, a crowd of 300,000 people assembled to listen to the concert live, while a record audience of 3m viewers tuned in to watch the spectacle on television. Specialising in the delivery of large-scale shows globally, Gilles Bouvard Events and Shows (GB4D) has been working on this event with Radio France since 2015. This year, thanks to a successful experiment, they extended the traditional site wide Optocore redundant optical fibre loop by deploying an additional 152 Optocore X6R preamps. Explaining the reason, Bouvard said, “We had conducted several experiments with Radio France prior to the event, including the recording and capture of a jazz concert at La Maison de la Radio, with im
Europe - May saw the launch of Rod Stewart’s new world tour in support of Blood Red Rose, the artist’s 30th solo album and his first release in three years. Itself a product of life on the road, the new album features a string of relaxed recordings made with Stewart’s tour band in hotel rooms and private, post-gig, backstage sessions. Helping to translate these new songs from ‘after hours’ to ‘centre stage’ is Colonel Tom Touring, who worked with lighting and production designer Mark Cunniffe to deliver a video rig for the full run of the European stadium, arena and outdoor dates. Created to be easily adaptable for the tour’s various venue types and sizes, the video package includes an impressive architrave of 300 ROE Carbon CB5 LED panels, powered by Brompton Technology Tessera SX40 LED processors, working in tandem with the manufacturer’s XD
Germany - Parookaville is one of the largest electronic music festivals in the world, and this year attracted around 200,000 visitors over three days to Weeze airport, a former military base in the Lower Rhine region of Germany. This fifth edition of the event featured multiple stages, one of which was the Desert Valley Stage where Tillmann Stockschläder of service providers Entec, in cooperation with audio specialists Teqsas, deployed a Coda Audio system. The Desert Valley Stage is one of the largest at the festival, covering an area of more than 5000sq.m and Coda Audio AiRAY was used as the main PA as well as for DJ monitoring. Front-fill was taken care of by Coda Audio APS. Two hangs of 10 x AiRAY were used as a stereo application complemented by 24 Coda Audio SCP sensor-controlled subs in an end-fired cluster. Restrictions on height and load capacity were easily o
Poland - The Open’er Festival - one of the largest music festivals in Poland - has been an institution since 2002. Having welcomed international names including the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Pharrel Williams, Snoop Dogg and Coldplay, it has maintained its status in the Polish festival calendar. Open’er Festival is held annually in the seaside city of Gdynia. Tasked with overall multimedia support of the five stages was one of Poland’s largest event engineering companies, VES. Responsible for the overall design and operation of the Beat Stage, Michał ‘Kurczak’ Mazurkiewicz of VES used more than 180 lighting fixtures. Included in the package was the Prolights Arenacob4FC, a full colour LED replacement for a traditional four-cell DWE blinder alongside the Prolights Aar5FAN which stood out as the pixel-FX moving head. It allowed the designer to control the spread
USA - Halsey hit the road in May for a short run of shows in support of a new single release, Nightmare and lighting designer Jose Antunes chose Elation’s Artiste Monet and Rayzor 760 to light the special performances. Lighting vendor was DCR of Nashville. The festival and specials run included shows at Webster Hall in New York City prior to the single release along with a string of radio performances in California in early June. Antunes designed the shows around some of Elation Professional’s newest luminaires, the Artiste Monet and Rayzor 760, and was one of the first designers to use the fixtures. “The design for this run was meant to pack a lot of punch with a small compact package that would fit in a small club, but also be able to spread out on a large festival stage and fare well outdoors in regards to output,” says Antunes, who also served as pr
UK - When The Mavericks stopped at the Glastonbury Festival during their 30th Anniversary World Tour, their LD Landon Bloss did what he always does on fly dates: he walked over to look at the lighting rig that he would be running later that day. Approaching the festival’s Acoustic Stage from a distance, Bloss was impressed with the looks the festival LD was conjuring up with some large spots. “I thought for sure, given how bright their output was, that they were 1700w arc lamp fixtures,” said the Nashville-based designer. “So, I was completely surprised when I learned that these fixtures actually had LED engines.” The fixtures that astonished Bloss shared the name of the band he lights. They were Mavericks, or more precisely 16 Maverick MK3 Spot and 18 Maverick MK3 Wash fixtures from Chauvet Professional supplied by Fineline Lighting. For Bloss, his fi
Europe - This summer, Muse continued their Simulation Theory world tour through the UK and Europe. The successful North American leg of the stadium tour put crew and equipment to the test in 23 cities. “Jesse Lee Stout, the creative director for the tour, wanted the entire lighting rig and stage to feel like a spaceship straight out of the ‘80s/’90s sci-fi movies we all know and love,” explains tour lighting designer and programmer, Sooner Routhier. “Making that all-encompassing vision brighter are 176 Solaris Flare LR and 51 Solaris Flare Q+ fixtures. First, neon outlines, comprised of Upstaging Sabers, outline the sides of the truss to help turn the rig into a giant space invader. The Flare LRs provide a thicker, brighter line of light to accentuate the lines of trusses. At the tips of each truss, the structure flips up 45° with three LRs sitting s
Ireland - At the start of 2019, one of Ireland’s leading audio hire, sales and installations companies, Acoustik, took delivery of two DiGiCo SD10s to add to its existing stock of mixing consoles and, according to the company’s operations and systems designer Will Fitzpatrick, they are “flying out of the door”. “For the past couple of years, DiGiCo has been at the top of the list on the riders we recieve and they are our crew’s console of choice, so the decision to invest in the SD10s was without question,” says Fitzpatrick. “We also had the option to upgrade to the new 32-bit cards. They have improved the SD10s already incredible audio quality and everyone is amazed by them.” One of the Acoustik team’s favourite functions on the consoles is macros, which give “seemingly endless possibilities” according to Fitzpatrick. “And the connectivity b
UK - Wireless headphone provider Silent Disco King partnered with Cineramageddon at Glastonbury festival for a debut screening of Ibiza, The Silent Movie. Cineramageddon is curated by film director Julien Temple and returned to Glastonbury this year for its second outing after debuting in 2017. The area has the UK’s largest outdoor cinema screen and includes 60 vehicles including Mad Max style cars, classic cars, fairground bumper cars and convertibles dug into the ground, which festival goers can rent out to watch an array of cult classic movies. The activation was opened this year with the premiere of Ibiza, The Silent Movie directed by Julien Temple and music curated by Fatboy Slim. The film is an exploration of the hedonistic history of the Ibiza island and was introduced by Glastonbury’s co-creator Michael Eavis, Julien Temple and Fatboy
China - The Trophée des Champions returned to Shenzhen on 3 August, for its 24th edition, which saw Paris Saint-Germain go head-to-head with Stade Rennais. This is the second year that the French Super Cup has been held at the Shenzhen Universiade Centre. Absen was the exclusive and official LED display supplier of the event, providing 200 panels of perimeter LED and onsite support throughout the event. The game, which was attended by over 31,000 spectators, saw the defending champions Paris Saint-Germain retain their title following a 2-1 win, making it their seventh Trophée des Champions title in a row, and their ninth overall. The company in charge of onsite management, Kaisa Culture & Sports, selected Absen’s 9mm resolution LED perimeter display system for the event, which was installed around three sides of the pitch and used to play adverting and
The Netherlands - Violinist Nigel Kennedy played an engaging concert as part of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Neumünster. The violinist was accompanied by the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, which comprised young musicians from 27 nations, who were selected from 1,500 applicants through international auditions. Dutch loudspeaker manufacturer Alcons Audio teamed up with Kennedy's sound engineer Andreas Adelhofer of Headroom Media Service or the sound experience. Adelhofer, who has been working as sound engineer for Nigel Kennedy for more than five years, is responsible for all his concerts worldwide as FOH engineer. In this capacity, he is also the interface between artist and promoter or service provider in the production preparation. In part, his company also provides the complete production for European tour stops. At the concert in Neumünster Ade
UK - White Light recently provided the lighting equipment for the Apollo Nights season at the Eventim Apollo - a week of live performances from a range of music artists. The inaugural Apollo Nights season at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, London, brought together a premium VIP dining experience and a roster of headline artists for a week of shows at the landmark venue. Curated by Ollie Rosenblatt at Senbla, the season delivered an audience experience with the front stalls seating removed to create space for VIP pre-show dining with live jazz piano before opening up the full auditorium for headline shows. The first performance was by Burt Bacharach and Joss Stone and was followed by George Benson and finally Marc Almond. The lighting designer for the season was Ben M Rogers, who WL has previously worked with on the award-winning Hair musical. Rogers c
UK - Version 2 is supporting a growing number of crews with low energy solutions both in the studio and on location. Working with a number of leading lighting directors, the Buckinghamshire based lighting rental specialists have supported coverage on a selection of premier summer events with products form their low energy inventory. First up was a visit to Worthy Farm, Somerset as broadcast partners for the BBC’s comprehensive coverage of the 2019 Glastonbury Festival. Making use of a selection of V2 low energy fixtures, lighting director Oli Richards and gaffer Paul Evans made this year’s Glastonbury coverage a completely LED lit event. The Version 2 team deployed a pair of lighting trucks to help deliver the look for both the ‘live studio’ areas and the considerable number of interviews held remotely across the vast festival site. The studio set-ups mi
Europe - Having recently purchased their own Allen & Heath SQ-5 digital mixer, British rockers Don Broco chose to pair it up with a full dLive system this summer for a short festival run across the UK & Europe, including appearances at Mad Cool (Madrid), Meo Mares Festival (Porto) and Truck Festival (Oxfordshire). Supplied by SSE Audio, a DM64 MixRack fitted with gigaACE and fibreACE cards formed the core of the system; paired with a dLive S3000 surface at FOH (fitted with a Dante card), while a digital split from the gigaACE card allowed the band to use their own SQ-5 for monitor duties. Adam Boole, FOH engineer and long-time user of Allen & Heath products, comments: “When we started this project, we needed to build a system that would work with the band’s own SQ-5 on monitors, luckily it was easy to achieve by having dLive on FOH. All I/O is set up th
Belgium - Main stage artists at the 2019 Ghent Jazz Festival were illuminated by 86 Robe moving lights - including 35 new T1s - in a slick lighting design created by Bart Weyts of company L&L Stage Services, who provided technical production, including lightning, audio and video, for that stage. The event was located in the attractive surroundings of De Bijloke, a charismatic historic site formally a hospital that now houses the Ghent Music Centre in the Belgian city. L&L has been involved in the main stage technical production for the last few years, working directly for the organisers. This year, L&L purchased T1s with this and other projects in mind from Robe’s Benelux distributor Controllux, adding to their ever-growing rental inventory of Robe moving lights which is now around the 650 mark. He wanted to use them on the Jazz festival because they are
USA - Jackson Browne is back on the road for the next leg of his tour with a lighting package supplied by Bandit Lites, and while the singer-songwriter’s last few tours featured big, saturated looks and backdrops, lighting designer Steve Comer designed this year’s run around beams rather than a set. “I chose to do ladders behind the band and some side trusses at a downward angle to wrap around the band and provide beams of light that surrounds them,” Comer explaines. “It was 12 years ago now that Jackson himself with designer David Davidian led the charge to go to a more earth friendly approach to lighting using a 90% LED based system,” says Bandit production director Dizzy Gosnell. “Back then it was 160 LED Par 64s. Jackson’s house had been off the grid a long while before, and he was intensely interested in pushing LED on his lighting systems. It wa
Japan - Uplink’s Tokyo cinemas can be described as mini theatres, including the city’s smallest such venue, which is located in the city’s Shibuya district. The company has embarked on a quest to offer cinema goers the best indie and foreign films in a country where Japanese blockbusters are becoming increasingly popular at the expense of both Hollywood movies and foreign arthouse titles. Over the last decade, the number of mini theatres has declined as multiplexes have flourished, but Uplink and its president, Takashi Asai, have remained true to their belief that the future is bright for arthouse mini theatres in Tokyo. The way to ensure this, in their opinion, is to offer a pristine AV experience to their customers. As a result, Uplink has chosen Powersoft amplifier platforms to drive the bespoke audio systems in its venues in the Kichijo-ji area, one of the c
Canada - Corey Hart has sold more than 16m records worldwide and earlier this year was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. The singer-songwriter recently undertook his first full arena tour of Canada since 1986, having twice taken long sabbaticals from the road during his 35-year career. The hotly anticipated Never Surrender tour demonstrated that he has lost nothing of his ageless star quality and reviews of the shows praised his skill, showmanship and the quality of his powerful eight-piece band. Supplying audio for the shows was production specialist Solotech and its choice of Coda Audio’s compact AiRAY system to deliver the Corey Hart message to his fans proved a great success. Front of House engineer Gary Stokes (k.d. lang, Adam Lambert) enjoyed his first experience with the system and was in no doubt about its qualities. “Usually, the bigges
Switzerland - Around every 20 years, the ‘once in a generation’ Fête des Vignerons takes over the Swiss town of Vevey for a month in July and August. Featuring nearly 6,400 performers, musicians and singers, 2,000 lighting fixtures, 612 loudspeakers and over 300 channels of wireless microphones, 11 networked Yamaha digital mixing systems were needed for the centrepiece production of the 2019 event. Fête des Vignerons is a spectacular event which pays homage to the centuries-old traditions of the Brotherhood of Winegrowers, which covers the area from Pully to Vevey, in the Lavaux region of Switzerland. The centrepiece production takes place in a temporary arena, built on the banks of Lac Léman (Lake Geneva) and depicts a year in the life of the vineyard over 20 scenes. Taking place from 18 July to 11 August, this year’s production comprised 23 shows, plus the c
UK - White Light supplied the lighting equipment for the UK premiere of the Broadway musical Amélie, which completed its UK tour. Originally performed on Broadway, Amélie is based on the 2001 romantic comedy film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and tells the story of an astonishing young woman who lives quietly in the real world but loudly in her mind. This UK premiere is directed by Michael Fentiman, stars Audrey Brisson and Danny Mac and features a lighting design by Elliot Griggs. Griggs explains: “Amélie is unlike anything I’ve ever worked on before. The film itself actually broke a lot of traditional concepts, with the central character being largely passive and the story being told through short vignettes, which together create a rich tapestry of 90s Paris, but also highlight its loneliness and isolation. “Trying to encompass this successfully
