Australia - Staged annually for the last 14 years, Queensland’s Creative Generation (CGEN) event was the biggest yet, with almost 2,000 schoolchildren being given the opportunity to perform in a professional environment on an enormous arena stage measuring 20mx 18m, with a 38m x 6m rear projection screen behind it. Content delivery and projection mapping specialists IKONIX - who are based on Australia’s Gold Coast - were asked to help deliver the desired wow factor for the fifth successive year. At the heart of the solution they created were two Avolites RX8 Ai media servers to deliver images to the rear screen, and two additional units controlling projection onto the stage. Equally central to their vision of the production were Notch real time content generation and BlackTrax real time tracking system, the latter provided by Atlanta-based Visional Productions, an
USA - Fans who catch AFI on the current Mourning In Amerika tour as they open for Rise Against have no doubt what the multi-platinum band’s initials stand for. Slamming the stage with the power of a thunderbolt, and burning through their songs with reckless abandon, the iconoclastic quartet seems to be driven by some internal combustible force, or “A Fire Inside”. Matching that fire with light is an intense, sometimes foreboding and fast-moving Kelsey Gonzalez and Cort Lawrence-designed lightshow that utilises a rig supplied by Premier Global Productions. Gonzalez, who is also lighting director on the tour, works through a set list that varies each night (she has over 90 songs programmed) to reflect the music with ever-changing patterns and colours. Helping in this endeavour are the eight Chauvet Professional Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures in her rig. “We have
Philippines - Intellismart Technology recently upgraded Seda’s Vertis North hotel with a flexible networked audio system by Harman Professional Solutions. Operating nine hotels throughout the Philippines, Seda Hotels are designed to offer quality accommodations in a high-energy central location within an Ayala Land master-planned mixed-used development. A fusion of function and art, each hotel provides modern comforts and conveniences combined with the best of Filipino hospitality. Located in the up and coming lifestyle and business hub in Quezon City and a few steps away from two major malls in the city, Seda Vertis North boasts 438 guest rooms, a 450-capacity ballroom, five meeting rooms, extensive lunch and dinner buffets, a roofdeck bar, pool bar, spa, fully-equipped fitness centre, swimming pool and a Presidential Suite. The hotel’s public address sys
USA - Slamhammer recently deployed a full complement of Martin by Harman lighting fixtures to illuminate three nights of musical performances by major headlining artists at the 2018 X Games in Minneapolis. The X Games is an annual sports competition produced by ESPN that brings together the best athletes in skateboarding, BMX, motocross, snowboarding, inline skating and more. The 2018 Summer X Games were held at the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, a with three nights of official concerts at the 8,400-capacity Minneapolis Armory. In order to provide stunning visuals and immersive lighting for headlining performances by Ice Cube, Zedd and Kaskade, ESPN hired live production company Slamhammer to deploy a world-class lighting rig on the Geico Music Stage at the Armory. Slamhammer selected a full complement of Martin lighting fixtures for their versatile features, relia
Spain - The visual design for popular chart-topping Spanish singer and musician Pablo Alborán’s current Prometo tour has been created by LD Chus Fernandez working closely with artistic director Salva Alborán. It is a fine-tuned fusion of lighting, video and automation that brings a diverse look to the show, which will be on the road for at least a year on this, Alborán’s fourth studio album cycle. Chus chose to work with Robe moving lights, picking 40 x MegaPointes, 48 x Spiiders and 32 x BMFL WashBeams as the work-horses of the rig, all supplied by rental company Fluge. It is Chus’ second year as LD, lighting director and operator for Alborán, and he and Salva - who also creates the video content - worked out numerous multi-level ideas and looks to ensure that all the different visual elements had their chance to shine. With a large upstage 4.8m
UK - The BBC Proms is one of the most British of musical institutions. Founded over a century ago, it is an eight-week summer season of concerts, predominantly held at the Royal Albert Hall (RAH), with Cadogan Hall hosting chamber music, and Proms in the Park events held across the UK on The Last Night of the Proms. For this year’s series, Delta Live deployed L-ISA Hyperreal Sound, giving the system its Proms debut and audiences an intensely real audio experience. Delta Live’s association with The Proms stretches back nearly two decades with Sound by Design, now incorporated into the Delta group, first working on the events in 2000. Delta account director Stephen Hughes has worked on every season since 2004, has an intimate knowledge of the Royal Albert Hall, and has deployed many a standard stereo system there. This is not the first time L-ISA has been dep
Hungary - The Lamantin Jazz Fest draws over 3,000 jazz fans and musicians to the city of Szombathely near Hungary’s western border with Austria. For the past seven years, Penna-Poor, a Budapest-based distributor and integrator has provided sound reinforcement equipment for the festival. “The Lamantin Jazz Festival celebrated its nineteenth year in June 2018,” explained Peter Danko CEO and owner of Penna-Poor. “As in the past, we were invited to provide the PA systems for the event through our partner, Mr. Laszlo Valik, who served as the chief sound engineer. The organsiers’ mission is to get the people in and around Szombathely to know and love jazz and to make the genre accessible. Now nineteen years on, Lamantin has grown into a prestigious week-long festival complemented by the annual Lamantin Improvisation Camp. It's the most complex jazz event in Hungary and
China - Hanyuan Lake, a new venue in the Shaanxi Province, has recently invested in an Allen & Heath dLive mixing system for their performances, including their regular production (organised by the Beijing FengShangShiJi Culture Media Company) of The Legend of Han Dynasty. Purchased through local distributors, EZPro Intl, the set-up comprises a dLive S5000 paired with a DM64 MixRack and Dante card for virtual soundcheck. Zhao Yangyang (main sound engineer at Hanyuan), comments: “dLive has an incredibly intuitive interface and its simple operation makes it easy and quick to learn. The integrated redundancy in dLive S Class hardware brings high reliability and safety to the system.” Yangyang adds: “dLive processing is extremely powerful, the system is very flexible and supports Dante, Waves and other audio network option cards. The integrated FX and pres
UK - Working alongside Paul Evans and the team at technical production company 808 Create, LED Creative assisted in upgrading the scenic installation at The Jonathan Ross Show. Having relocated to the recently revamped Television Centre in London’s White City, scenic designer Rudi Thackray’s vibrant ‘London city scape’ design has been faithfully recreated for this 13th season of the ITV series. To assist with the refresh, the LED Creative crew installed the company’s Sigma 60 across the stage ‘header’, whilst also adding subtle accents and detailed highlights to the scenic elements. Behind the scenes, precise, intelligent control over the installation is provided using LC Byte Controllers. These newly upgraded, in-house designed units easily handle up to 300 pixels per output or up to 2400 pixels across an eight-output unit, making them ideal
UK - New York post-hardcore band Glassjaw rocketed to success in 2000 and has had a strong European following ever since, especially in the UK. Following the release last December of their first full length album since 2002, Material Control, the band returned to the UK this summer, playing a much-anticipated show at London’s O2 Academy Brixton on 18 August. Lighting designer for a short run of European dates was Hayden Borgars (Night Flight Orchestra, The Pineapple Thief, et al.), who had an Elation lighting rig of 12 Platinum Beam Extreme beam lights and 12 Platinum Wash ZFX Pro LED moving head washes at his disposal for Glassjaw’s Academy Brixton show. Rooted in the intensity of the New York hardcore scene, Glassjaw are notorious for their exciting live shows and aggressive performance style. Their music is experimental and multi-stylistic, powerful and
Chile - Novotic has recently completed the design and installation of a public address and voice evacuation system for Nido de Aguilas International School in Lo Barnechea, Santiago de Chile, based around Community W Series loudspeakers. Nido de Aguilas was founded in 1934 as a private, co-educational, non-sectarian, non-profit day school. Today, the school has over 1,770 students from more than 50 countries, and offers a comprehensive liberal arts, college preparatory educational programme from pre-kindergarten through Grade 12. Nido de Aguilas serves the international business and diplomatic community of Santiago, as well as local students seeking an English-language, U.S.-style education. The school’s campus is located on a spacious 130-acre, park-like setting in the foothills of the Andes mountain range, just 20 minutes from downtown Santiago. As part of its secu
Portugal - With a well-received live set at the inaugural RPMM Festival in the Portuguese city of Porto, Francesca Lombardo – famous for her individual electronic sound – gave rise to a thrilling fusion of live and pre-programmed music. At front of house was live engineer Mattia Sartori, who captured the set on one of his two JoeCo BBR1B Blackbox multi-track recorders. London-based Sartori has held senior audio engineering and project management posts across the world and regularly takes his Blackbox recorders out on the road, enjoying “a totally robust and reliable recording solution with no worries about software and compatibility issues”. He acquired his first Blackbox recorder in 2016 and since then has recorded a variety of artists, from classical singer Carly Paoli at London’s Cadogan Hall, to the percussion driven, electronic quartet Penya. With perfor
Tunisia - For this event’s thirteenth iteration, the organizers of Jazz at Carthage festival decided that the time was long overdue to upgrade the monitors on both its stages. And for that, the Clair Brothers 1AM and 1.5AM were the unanimous choices for the job. The festival theme this year revolved around the joy of celebrating springtime with music and enthusiastic artists for happiness bolstered by the notion of bunking off school and pursuing the path of musical creation. The idea being that if jazz is the underpinning of all modern music, then Jazz at Carthage brings with it a breath of fresh air alongside familiar genres and current music to crowds of youthful Tunisian fans. Mourad Mathari from Scoop Productions says, “Achieving this important vision for Tunisia and its music scene is something special and requires the best production to get t
USA - With eight locations spread across south-eastern Florida, Christ Fellowship Church is a vibrant faith community that has installed L-Acoustics sound reinforcement systems in number of its worship spaces over the years. However, when systems integrator Mankin Media was recently brought onboard to design and implement a PA at the campus in Port St. Lucie - a rapidly growing area north of Palm Beach - the approach was different at the most foundational level: it started with the specification of an L-Acoustics K2 system, which then influenced how the room would be designed. “Anyone who designs and installs audio systems for enclosed spaces knows that there are always going to be acoustic challenges that go along with the room; it’s just the nature of live audio,” says Christ Fellowship audio director Danny Dagher. “Mankin helped us turn the typical house of
Czech Republic - Vratislavice nad Nisou is a district in Liberec – the fifth largest city in the Czech Republic - and their forward-thinking municipality led by Mayor Lukas Pohanka wanted an extra special touch for its landmark Church of the Holy Trinity, a well-preserved and now protected single baroque building dating back to 1700. In recent years, a new stone road and stone steps were built and complemented by stylish lamps and benches adjacent to the church, new trees and flowers were planted around the building when it was refurbished, and. “illuminating the Church was the next logical step“ he stated. This was an intricate task to get just right. Locally based architectural lighting specialist ArchLights, was asked to propose an appropriate lighting scheme that highlighted its attractive architecture, and their team led by lighting designer Pavel Holzknecht
USA - Held each August at the Ohio Dream Park, Machine Gun Kelly’s EST Festival has a giant waterslide on its grounds. Good thing, too. A quick dunk in the massive pool was probably the only chance fans got to cool off during this two-day event. The NPi-produced festival featured the sounds of Asking Alexandria, 2 Chainz, We Came As Romans, Trippie Redd and other stars. Supporting these performances was a lighting rig created by Alex Kay that was anchored by Chauvet Professional Rogue fixtures. Machine Gun Kelly’s long-time designer, Kay ran the lightshow for every one of the festival’s acts, except for Asking Alexandria, which brought their own LD. His watchword for the entire event was “intensity.” Creating an arch upstage, he loaded it with fixtures, the better to make power statements. Kay and his techs Nino Spadaro and Jacob Thompson positioned e
Europe - This year’s tour with Jeff Beck is taking LD David “Gurn” Kaniski to some far-off lands - and some unusual venues, such as the outdoor gardens of a palace in Spain, or an ancient coliseum in Rome, for instance. “The Romans didn’t think about load-in back then!” Kaniski jokes. “Which makes it so nice that I can just carry my Full Boar 4 with me up the stairs!” It’s one of the many reasons why the LD has been a Hog console user – back since the Wholehog II days, he notes. The ease of travelling with it along with the ease of use has reduced his stress and added more time to his show day. “For this tour, especially, because I have so many changing house rigs, I’ve been really fast at changing fixture types and building my show,” he explains. “All the new software updates are great. I love the pixel mapping – it’s terrific, it’s s
Singapore - From a humble beginning in 1986, Faith Community Baptist Church has grown into one of the largest and most dynamic houses of worship in Asia. The vibrant spirit of this church was very much in evidence this August, when it hosted the G12 Asia Conference. Held at the Singapore Expo Convention & Exhibition Centre, the three-day event draws worshippers and church leaders from throughout Asia. Noted designer Nick Ho has been responsible for lighting G12 Asia since 2015. This year, he and his long-time collaborator Justin Poh took the event’s lighting to a new level of intensity and engagement with a 22-universe, multi-faceted lightshow that used over 500 fixtures. They ran the show on two ChamSys consoles: a MagicQ MQ500 Stadium and a MagicQ MQ100 Pro. “Each year, I am excited to come up with different looks based on the stage design,” said Ho. “T
Czech Republic - Colours of Ostrava (COO / Colours), the largest and most popular music festival in the Czech Republic is also now ranked among one of the ‘majors’ in Europe, with 20 performance stages offering over 350 live music acts and plenty of other creative engagement across four days, attracting a population of 50,000 fans from all over Europe. Each year, the Robe moving light count on this landmark event rises, and 2018 saw the most Robe on site to date. The organisers also invested heavily in the production and the basic festival infrastructure this year, upping the ante on every level and every stage. Site-wide technical production was co-ordinated and delivered by Josef ‘Pepa’ Zenisek and his team from SMART Production, a massive logistical exercise which involved several rental partners for sound, lighting and video, more for rigging and sta
France - Lighting design studio, LightLab, headed by lighting designer and art director Alexandre LeBrun, created a flexible and impactful lighting and stage design for French rapper Nekfeu’s summer tour based around mobile walls of light and used Elation Professional’s new multi-functional Smarty Hybrid CMY colour mixing moving head, supplied by Dushow, to realise the stunning look. Nekfeu toured across France this past summer, playing a dozen concerts including festivals such as Lollapalooza, Solidays, and Marsatac. LightLab, who also worked with Nekfeu and his S-Crew on last year’s Zenith tour, developed what LeBrun calls a “very simple yet radical” design for the 2018 summer tour. “I wanted to create a panoramic light design, horizontal and low,” he explains, “so I designed walls of light with the idea of only using it on the stage. The idea
UK - MDG enjoyed a successful PLASA London where it presented its latest products. These included the new IP55-rated Me2 WPE fog and ATMe WPE haze generators, a standard Me2 fog generator, theFAN digital fan, and the ICE FOG Compack HP low fog generator alongside two award-winning products theONE dual mode haze and fog generator, winner of the LDI Best Debut product in 2010, and the RFP (Round Floor Pocket) which won the ABTT Engineering Product of the Year 2018 in June. Alongside its regular stand, MDG had two of its new ATMe WPE weatherproof hazer generators and an ICE FOG Compack HP involved in the spectacular dance and light show on the adjacent Robe booth. Inspired by Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider movies, the show environment emulated tropical forests, caves and volcanoes. Here the ATMe WPE machines showed their true mettle as they stood for three days under torre
USA - Over 60 worship bands took to the stage at Soulfest in early August in Gilford NH. Not all of them were as famous as the festival’s headliners (a group that included for King & Country, Skillet, and Toby Mac.), but each was supported by a lightshow worthy of a star, thanks to a main stage rig that featured over 75 Chauvet Professional fixtures. “We designed this rig to be complete so it could provide big looks for the opening acts, while also complementing the floor packages brought in by the headliners,” said Tim Messina of Events United, which also supplied a “world class sound system” for the event. “As Soulfest has continued to grow over the years, Events United’s role has grown with it - from first providing production for a few smaller stages, to this year providing full production (audio, video, lighting, and backline) for the lar
Belgium - Tomorrowland, the Belgium electronic dance music festival, this year revealed the Atmosphere Stage, a new futuristic tent where L-Acoustics’ L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound delivered deeply vibrant beats as festival goers bathed in stunning visuals for a unprecedented musical experience. L-Acoustics has collaborated with the festival alongside Noizboyz, designers of Tomorrowland audio systems, since 2011. This year was no different, with over 600 L-Acoustics cabinets supplied by Phlippo Productions deployed on six stages, including the massive 115m wide Story of Planaxis Main Stage, across the vast festival site. With the Atmosphere Stage, We Are One World set out to elevate the concert experience with a festival tent stage like no other. Recognising the impact of L-ISA in creating powerful shared connections between artists and audiences,
USA - Justin Timberlake’s The Man of the Woods tour, which is scheduled to run through to early 2019, is arguably his most expansive yet from an audio perspective. Taking place over two legs of North America whilst also visiting Europe, the in-the-round production boasts winding walkways thrusted out from main stage to two satellite stages. FOH engineer Andy Meyer, who has been working with Timberlake since 2005, chose an Optocore fibre network solution to handle the complex D/A conversion necessitated by this. The sound engineer had earlier spent considerable time exploring different platforms, along with system tech Justin Lenards and fellow engineer Ozzy Giron. But having had previous experience with the Optocore environment via DiGiCo consoles, he wasted little time in venturing down this path for his signal transport. “The solution was obvious to me rig
