USA - The Dave Matthews Band (DMB) is on the road again in the USA promoting their latest album Come Tomorrow with another visually provocative production design by Fenton Williams. Fenton combined creative energies with Aaron Stinebrink from lighting rental specialist TMS - also the tour’s lighting vendor - on the lighting design, and the pair specified over 100 Robe fixtures to be at the heart of the show. Forty MegaPointes, 48 x Spikies, 16 x BMFL WashBeams and 10 x BMFL Spots are helping to create the vibes for this highly successful tour. Fenton has worked for DMB since 1991 taking on various job roles and has been the video and lighting designer / director for over 20 years. Aaron joined the team in 2003 and the two have worked together on lighting DMB’s dynamic and intricate live shows ever since. (Jim Evans)
Iceland - AV equipment supplier HljóðX recently deployed Harman Professional Solutions audio systems and lighting solutions at Iceland's Secret Solstice music festival, including a JBL VTX line array system, Crown amplifiers, Soundcraft digital mixing consoles and Martin lighting fixtures. Held in Reykjavík during a period of 24-hour sunlight in the Arctic Circle, the annual music festival features non-stop performances across four outdoor stages and an indoor club venue. Festival organisers hired HljóðX to provide sound and lighting systems for all five venues that could accommodate the festival‘s diverse line-up of high profile artists, including Slayer, Gucci Mane, Bonnie Tyler and Steve Aoki. HljóðX outfitted each stage with JBL VTX V-Series line array loudspeakers, Crown I-tech amplifiers, Soundcraft mixers and Martin lighting fixtures. “The event envir
Poland - Bazyliszek, a new interactive dark ride situated in the Magical Forest zone of Poland’s largest theme park, Legendia, was recently opened to the public as part of a comprehensive rebranding and overhaul. Having collaborated once before on the Antwerp Comics Station theme park, the ride’s designers, Alterface, brought in Belgian design studio Painting with Light to help create a thrilling visual backdrop for Bazyliszek. Drawing on their wealth of experience in the field of theatrical lighting, Painting with Light specified 80 Chauvet Professional mini ERS-style Ovation Min-E-10CWZ fixtures and COLORdash Par-Hex 7 units to create a multifaceted and exciting visual accompaniment to the ride, which went on to win the European Star Award for Best New Ride in 2018. Bazyliszek is a legendary folklore figure in Poland - a complex and highly venomous reptile that
UK/USA - Stereophonics released their 10th album last year, Scream Above the Sounds, which comes almost 20 years after the Welsh rockers first stormed the BRITs back in 1998 and won the award for British Breakthrough Act. The band's longevity speaks for itself: eight million albums sold in the UK alone, six number one records, a BRIT Award, three Kerrang! Awards, a pair of Q Awards, and 40 singles to their name. On the road, Harm Schopman is looking after frontman Kelly Jones and co. from side-stage using his trusted DiGiCo console, supplied by rental company Capital Sound. Although in charge of monitors for this tour, Harm has been responsible for various roles on numerous touring productions. “On Stereophonics, I originally looked after [FOH engineer] Dave Roden as the systems tech, mostly on the arena tours,” Harm explains. “It's only in the last
Germany - Under the catch-line All you need to be, Nature One called its dance-loving audience to the Pydna former rocket base in Hunsrück between 3-5 August. As in previous years, over 50,000 people joined the pilgrimage, engaging in four days and three nights of pure EDM fever, with 350 acts participating on a total of 23 floors. For the largest floor - the Open Air Floor - lighting designer Thomas Gerdon of Gerdon design produced the entire visual concept. Gerdon, who has been working on various floors of Nature One since 2003, faced a fundamental change this year: for the first time, a conventional stage was used on the Open Air Floor, and for this the designer immediately had the idea of GLP’s new modular KNV LED system of GLP in his mind. However, since the KNV system was not yet on the market at the beginning of August, GLP was able to meet the design
USA - As part of the LA-based Legends Football League, the Nashville Knights are a 7-on-7, tackle football team that incorporated into the league in 2018. Playing their inaugural season in the Nashville Municipal Auditorium, the Knights wanted to offer an in-game experience that would create a lasting connection with their fans. Needing to supplement the production gear inside the multi-purpose event venue, the Knights worked with Elite Multimedia Productions who oversaw a complete game-day audio, video and lighting design. “We try to design our in-game experience to be similar to what they do in the NFL to heighten the experience for our fans and provide a deeper connection to the action on the field,” says Candice Leisengang, operations manager. “When we started looking for production companies, we really needed someone who had the ability to do live audio, ca
UK - Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall recently saw an Allen & Heath SQ-6 digital mixer installed to deliver the audio content of a significant work by Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera. The piece (the title of which is an ever-increasing figure reflecting the number of people who migrated from one country to another last year, added to by the number of migrant deaths recorded so far this year) involves both a large heat-sensitive floor and sound design by electronic artist Steve Goodman (Kode9). By using body heat and working with other visitors, a hidden portrait of Yousef - a young Syrian who left his home country to travel to London - is revealed beneath the floor while low-frequency sounds fill the space with an unsettling energy. In a small room nearby an organic compound in the air induces tears and provokes what Bruguera describes as “forced empathy”
Poland - Design and installation company ARAM has outfitted a new e-sports studio in Poland with a flexible Elation lighting system. The studio, at Polsat television in Warsaw, is equipped with the latest in studio-optimised LED luminaires designed to provide players and viewers with the best e-sports experience, whether watching the event on TV, online or in person. The custom Elation lighting solution includes everything from dynamic white-light LED array panels and high-quality white light ellipsoidal spots to full-colour batten, par and LED moving head luminaires that deliver a wider spectrum of chromatic and effect options. Incorporated in the rig are some of Elation's newest luminaires, including Artiste series LED moving heads. As one of the few technical production companies specialised in e-sports, ARAM has stood behind the design and technical production of
UK - Lighting designer Derek Jones utilised Chroma-Q’s Vista 3 lighting and media control system to deliver his lighting design for Sir Cliff Richard's recent tour celebrating 60 years in music. With a career spanning 103 album releases, 123 single hits and the equivalent of 20 years spent in the UK charts, the 58-18=60th The Tour saw Sir Cliff play his greatest hits across six decades in some of the UK and Ireland's leading concert halls, including two nights at the Royal Albert Hall. As a Vista user for nearly a decade, Jones was keen to utilise the next generation capabilities of the Vista 3 software for his show design. He comments: "I've been using Vista for nearly a decade now and have seen its evolution. As an LD I've always found it very intuitive and simple to use, so I was really excited to switch to Vista 3 and, after trying it out with succe
South Africa - Johannesburg’s Joburg Theatre has taken delivery of 10 Robe Robin 800 LEDWash units, supplied through DWR. The new lighting fixtures will complement vibrant productions being staged over the festive season including Snow White the fairest Panto in All the Land!, Helen O’Grady, Sati - Shivas Beloved and Mukokoli Live DVD recording. “There has been no looking back since the theatre first started investing in Robin 800 LEDWash a few years ago," says Enos Ramoroko, technical manager at the theatre. "They have really worked well for us and we are pleased to now have 34 units in total." "The Robins really are the work horses of the industry and for the theatre to have added more 800s to their stock is a game changer," says Kevin Stannett from DWR. "I would like to thank Enos and the Joburg Theatre for your valued support, and to all South African
UK - Film and TV crewing specialist Studioforce was appointed by Shiver, an arm of ITV Studios, to support the delivery of this year’s Pride of Britain Awards. The event was held at the Grosvenor House Hotel on 29 October and Studioforce provided stage hands, lighting technicians, carpenters, scenic supervisors, scenic artists and followspot operators. The company worked closely with Shiver’s freelance production designer Paul Houston, supplying a team of experienced freelancers to work alongside the lighting and set design teams to create the Pride of Britain Awards’ set and backdrop. The tight timeframe presented the Studioforce crew with its largest challenge. With just 48 hours to complete the entire project, from unloading the first piece of equipment from the truck and building the set, to running the show, completing the de-rig and the last truck le
USA - Honouring the intentions of composer Leonard Bernstein, the artistic director of the Brevard Music Centre Summer Music Festival, Keith Lockhart, set himself a task: to capture the pioneering spirit of a classic performance in a contemporary environment. Composed for the 1971 inauguration of the Kennedy Centre, Bernstein’s Mass created an entirely new kind of liturgy in both its content and technology - using quadraphonic sound. “Keith is a renowned conductor, not least as principal conductor of the Boston Pops. He had performed the Bernstein Mass once before and wanted the audience to have that quad sound experience as Bernstein had originally intended,” explains sound engineer Brady Hislop of Iris Design. “That’s all very well but the Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium is a semi-outdoor space not designed for amplified music. Roofed to provide
USA - The Franklin Theatre first opened as a cinema in the summer of 1937, when moviegoers could see a double feature and cap the evening with an ice cream sundae on a Norman Rockwell-esque Main Street. 70 years later, the theatre underwent an $8m renovation and reopened in 2011 as the premier music and event venue in Franklin, a suburb of Nashville that is home to nearly as many musicians as Music City itself is. Seven years later, the venue has installed a DiGiCo SD12 digital console at front of house. Paired with a D2-Rack, the desk was supplied and installed in mid-August by Dan Heins of Clair Solutions, completing the Franklin Theatre’s renaissance as the entertainment centre of the city, drawing headline artists from Nashville, nationally and globally. “Although our previous digital console has served us well since the theatre reopened, it had definitely reac
Belgium - Once every two years, Brussels’ Grand Place becomes even more breath-taking as its cobblestone surface is transformed into a magnificent carpet of colour by over a half million flowers. Artfully arranged in an intricate design, the floral panorama flows gracefully, softening the gilded baroque buildings that surround it to create a vista of almost mythical beauty. Like most enchanting creations that seem to spring forth naturally, the Biannual Flower Carpet at the Grand Place is in reality the result of intensive planning and hard work. In 2018, a team of 200 volunteers laboured for six hours to install the carpet the day of the event. Illuminating their efforts and tying the floral display into the square’s historic buildings was a carefully developed lighting design by Geoffrey Oelbrandt of Studio Artfex that included Chauvet Professional Rogue R3 Wash fixtu
USA - “Versatile, sexy, bold, and effective” is how BML-Blackbird’s lighting designer and director Chris Ragan describes his work at Lockn’ Festival, for which he used a combination of cyan, purple and amber lighting. Ragan spec’d 34 Robe BMLF Spots, 38 Robe Spiiders, 24 Robe Mega Pointes, 14 Robe Color Strobes, 10 Mac Vipers, 26 Chauvet Rogue FxB, and 36 LED par - all provided by BML-Blackbird. “I thought the Robe ColorStrobes were a powerful fixture. It was my first time using them and I was pretty impressed. And, of course the Mega Pointes are great for the amazing prism features,” says Ragan. “The BMFLS are great for powerful audience sweeps as they have the ability to cover a large concert field. I rely on the Mega Pointes to frame the stage along with their prisms while the Spiiders and colour strobes are used for wash and pixel tricks.”
USA - When planning for their current tour in support of their sixth studio album, Attention Attention, hard rock band Shinedown asked their lighting designer Carter Fulghum for more saturated colours and darker looks. Fulghum created a deeply evocative lightshow with low backlight and sidelight. To balance the penetrating mood created by these fixtures, he added intensity with the help of 38 Chauvet Professional Rogue RH1 Hybrid fixtures supplied by Bandit Lites. Flying the 330W moving beam/spot fixtures on four 8ft x 9ft diamond-shaped pods, Fulghum is using them for downlighting, specials and powerful colour accents that dramatize key moments in the concert. “We have eight Rogues arranged in two rows of four in the centre of each pod,” he says. “Using them to cover the stage, we create a powerful impression. Their gobos and prisms are adding an extra s
Spain - Nexo’s STM Series made a special kind of debut in Spain as audio production company BTM Sound in Girona completed its first events with PA systems featuring its newly-purchased STM M46 main cabinets. An early adopter of Nexo’s modular line array concept and design, BTM Sound initially set up its STM Series in 2014 using the smaller STM M28 double-8” cabinet as the main module, pairing them with the STM B112 bass and S118 subs. Last year, the company increased its cabinet count by adding M28 cabinets in both 90° and 120° versions. After four successful years serving the Costa Brava’s most high-profile events, such as Festival de Portoferrada and Festival Castell de Peralada, BTM has expanded its STM inventory with a number of new STM M46 cabinets, purchased specifically for Girona’s big annual music event, the Fires de Girona. Headlined
UK - When Capital Sound successfully responded to a tender document issued by production manager Simon Barrington (Sibar Production & Design) for the ECS Season 5 finals, Capital project manager, Robin Conway won the bid by proposing Martin Audio’s MLA loudspeaker array. “Such a hi-tech event as ECS required an equally hi-tech loudspeaker solution,” he rationalised. That was back in June at the SSE Arena, when the venue, reduced to half size for the preliminary round, was serviced by two single hangs of 11 MLA enclosures. September saw the organisers of ECS, FACEIT, present the 13th CS:GO Major, the FACEIT Major, which saw the full arena filled for four days with online gaming enthusiasts all fixated on the 50m wide screen (and six repeater screens), so a different approach was needed. This time two hangs of 11 MLA elements (including two MLD Downfill boxes) were a
Austria - Austrian LD Martin Kames and his crew at Martinkames.com have worked with a number of prominent musicians, including Hatebreed, Kreator, Machine Head, Parkway Drive, Heaven Shall Burn and David Hasselhoff. In 2017, Kames took his passion for blending music and light a step further, when he teamed up with guitarist Bernth Brodträger to form CueStack, a band that “intrepidly bridges the gap between sight and sound”. With Brodträger on the guitar, Kames on synths and both sharing vocals, CueStack serves up a techno-driven blend of metal and electronic music that’s tightly woven around light and video. “We fuse visuals with the music to challenge conventional boundaries,” explains Kames. Helping CueStack in this endeavor are two ChamSys MQ100 Pro consoles with one extra Wing and one Mini Wing. “I have been using ChamSys since 2005, when I e
UK - Ayrton’s Ghibli LED spot luminaire made its opera debut at the Garsington Opera Festival. Founded in 1989, the annual Garsington Opera Festival takes place over seven weeks in June and July at the Wormsley Estate, home of the Getty family, amid the beautiful natural setting of the Buckinghamshire countryside. Garsington Opera is renowned for the quality of its productions, and engages the very best performers and musicians from around the world. It is important, therefore, to match this quality of performance with the quality of the production and equipment. The aim therefore was to replace some lighting fixtures with those which made less noise during the finely tuned performances, something they were particularly keen to achieve given the peaceful surroundings. Technical manager, Stephen Hawkins and his production electrician, Sam Floyd, began
UK - Event production specialists proudly supported the team at CoppaFeel, donating a comprehensive event equipment and logistics package for Festifeel, the annual boutique music and comedy festival, held deep within the arches below Waterloo at House of Vans London. CoppaFeel are the UK’s first breast cancer charity to build awareness of the signs and symptoms amongst young people, providing invaluable support and advice aimed at driving home the importance of regularly checking your boobs - a simple procedure that could one day save their life. The team works to equip younger people with the tools and knowledge to be proactive about their own health allowing them the best possible chance of detecting cancer early and enabling them to make informed decisions about their health. Installing a full production package that included lighting and rigging plus video and pr
India - Studio Care recently installed a complete Harman Professional Solutions audio system in the Shaheed Baba Deep Singh Auditorium at Guru Nanak College. Inaugurated by President Shri Ram Nath Kovind on the school’s 42nd annual convocation day, the 7,200sq.ft auditorium houses 900 seats and is used for various student activities, cultural programmes, convocation and other ceremonies. In order to deliver clear and even audio coverage throughout the facility, Studio Care deployed an end-to-end Harman Professional audio solution made up of JBL Professional speakers, Crown amplification, BSS signal processors, Soundcraft digital mixing consoles and AKG microphones. “This is a fairly large auditorium, and the client wanted a state-of-the-art audio system that could deliver clear and uniform coverage,” said Mr. S. Kangayan, owner, Studio Care. “We chose Harman
Sweden - The final tour by Swedish disco group Alcazar concludes at Stockholm’s Cirkus venue on 31 December. Lighting designer Palle Palme applied his golden magic dust to the mix and created “a stunning lighting show with 58 x Robe MegaPointes proudly dancing to the disco-disco beat”. Palle, who works worldwide on theatre, ballet and musical shows, was asked to imagine something special for this landmark occasion. It was the first time he’s worked on an Alcazar tour and also the first time he’s specified and used MegaPointes in a design. At the start of his career as a lighting professional, he wanted to work at the Swedish National Theatre and also to light legendary singer Ulf Lundell, both of which he had achieved by 2002. After that, one of the bands he most wanted to light was Alcazar - because they took ‘disco’ to a different level and he thought t
UK - Directed by the Olivier Award-winning Marianne Elliot, Stephen Sodenheim and George Furth’s musical Company has recently returned to the West End. Playing at the Gielgud Theatre, the show has opened to critical acclaim and has already announced an extension to March 2019. White Light was called upon to supply the lighting. Company tells the story of Bobbie whose friends and family can’t understand why she isn’t married. At her 35th birthday party, she questions the pressure to find the right person and finally settle down. The show is lit by Olivier and Tony Award-winning Neil Austin, who comments: “This is actually the second time I’ve lit Company, having worked on a version in Sheffield about eight years ago with Daniel Evans. It’s a show I love and was delighted to be asked to do it again. What’s brilliant about Marianne’s version
