USA - Lighting designer Justin Townsend is using Elation Professional lights more and more since his first experience with them on the Broadway musical A Night with Janis Joplin. The multi award-winning and Tony-nominated LD was recently one of the first designers to use the new Artiste Picasso LED moving head, employing them along with the company’s ZW37 LED moving head on the record-breaking premiere of the musical Jagged Little Pill, featuring the music of Alanis Morissette. The world premiere of Jagged Little Pill ran for 79 sold-out performances - 5 May to 15 July - at American Repertory Theatre’s Loeb Drama Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the longest run of any production at the theatre. The show, which incorporates music from Morissette’s 1995 Grammy Award-winning album such as Ironic and You Oughta Know, is an original story tha
UK - FOH engineer Mark Kennedy has been out on the road with an SSL once more, this time for Robert Plant. Kennedy has selected an SSL L500 live console, supplied by Solotech and Britannia Row Productions. The current Robert Plant tour, according to Kennedy, has an 'organic' approach that works well. It is by no means a silent stage, with 15 monitor wedges plus side-fills in use, and in-ear-monitoring has been put aside. "It's a very real show," says Kennedy. "There's no playback, and quite a few acoustic instruments: Banjos, mandolins, acoustic guitars... And almost everybody sings." His approach to the console and mixing the show has been back-to-basics: "I turn everything off and start with a blank slate - the simplest set-up I can create. Then as I need to I turn features on - apart from the normal channel processing, I use the SSL’s Bus compressor, reverbs, dela
USA - R&B rising star R.LUM.R, played That Tent at this year’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, beneath an Elation lighting rig supplied by Genetic Productions. Most known for his breakout 2016 single Frustrated, the former classical guitarist is a multi-talented artist whose debut EP Afterimage showcases his passionate vocals and insightful lyrics. Genetic Productions served as the design firm, crew provider, and gear provider for R.LUM.R's Bonnaroo performance, a setup that included Elation Artiste DaVinci and DARTZ 360 moving heads along with IP65-rated Paladin hybrid lights and ACL Curtain battens. Genetic has been working with R.LUM.R for about four months now and Bonnaroo was their first live performance with him. “We worked with R.LUM.R and his management team to integrate a new design that utilized custom-
USA - Philips Vari-Lite VL6000 Beam luminaires have been selected to enhance the current Legacy of The Beast European tour by Iron Maiden. The VL6000 Beams are helping to convey the production’s set-piece themes and proving a complement to the heavy rockers’ richly-designed stage show. Lighting designer Robert Coleman chose fixtures to reproduce the ‘classic’ look of an Iron Maiden rock show. The production features three distinctly themed but equally spectacular sections. Beginning with War, the set then changes to a stunning cathedral interior, and finally to Hell – and the broad reflector face and punchy output of the VL6000 Beam fits the bill. Coleman makes full use of the VL6000 Beam’s heavy duty output. “They are incredibly powerful - they’ve been hitting the back wall of the stadiums,” he said. “And the beam doesn’t loo
USA - Harman Professional Solutions recently equipped Princess Cruises Golden Princess with a full complement of Martin by Harman lighting fixtures. Golden Princess is a grand-class cruise ship accommodating 2,600 passengers and 1,100 crew members. In addition to a main atrium, guest rooms, formal dining rooms, high-end restaurants, swimming pools, children’s recreation areas and a miniature golf course, the Golden Princess features multiple live entertainment venues. The 1000-capacity Princess Theatre and two intimate show lounges host a wide range of live events including musical performances, Voice of the Ocean talent shows and major original productions including several created in partnership with Stephen Schwartz - Oscar, Tony and Grammy award-winning composer of Wicked, Pippin and Godspell. Princess Cruises recently decided t
Sweden - Stockholm International Fairs and Congress Centre (Stockholmsmässan) is a expo and conference facility in Älvsjö comprising four halls, the longest of which stretches 365m, and a busy schedule of events. The venue owns a substantial amount of rigging and production technology and has a full-time staff of 25 riggers, overseen - together with crew from all the other technical departments - by head of production Fredrik Zetterberg. Over the last two years Stockholmsmässan has invested in 48 Robe moving lights - 36 x VIVAs and 12 x DL4S profiles, specified by Fredrik. When he took up the post six years ago, his predecessor had identified the need for and had made the first steps towards purchasing their own moving lights to give them a fully flexible in-house lighting rig to support the diversity of shows and events being staged. Fredrik followed
Belgium - Kozzmozz, on of Belgium’s leading EDM festivals, continues to grow after 23 years on the international calendar. Providing visual support for this year’s event was an intense and hard-edged lightshow by Vince de Schinckel that was power-driven by Chauvet Professional Maverick and STRIKE fixtures, supplied by Euro PA. De Schinckel deployed eight Maverick MK2 Washes and eight STRIKE 1 multi formatted fixtures to create a hard-hitting industrial look that reflected the festival’s music. While the term “industrial” is often used to describe the atmosphere evoked by the harsh, stoic and unforgiving beats of techno, it fit de Schinckel’s design equally well. “For the techno lighting concept, I took inspiration from the linear and angular elements within industrial architecture," said de Schinckel. "I was able to combine the different looks of my fixt
UK - India artist Diljit Dosanjh paid a visit to the UK earlier this year, playing sell-out arena shows in Birmingham, London and Leeds. His FOH engineer, Fali Damania, chose a DiGiCo SD5 to mix the shows, provided by audio rental company, Delta,a choice that was duplicated at the monitor position. “We specify either an SD10 or SD5 for Diljit’s shows,” he says. “I find the layout of both to be extremely functional and the workflow of all DiGiCo consoles makes any show, large or small, a breeze to set up and execute. In this instance, the show isn’t so big; we’re running about 48 inputs at FOH and the monitor console has around 16 Stereo Mixes.” The system included two SD-Racks and both consoles are running 96Khz sampling rate, providing the best experience for the artist, the musicians and audience. “The functionality and sonic quality of the SD5
Namibia - The 2018 Namibia Annual Music Awards (NAMAs), an annual awards ceremony set up to recognise accomplishment in the Namibian recording industry, was broadcast live on Namibian national TV and saw the work and creativity of some of the best and most talented artists, performers and music producers rewarded in 24 different awards categories interspersed with 12 live performance showcases. Production designer and technical director Micky Lehr and his team from Eventplus have been involved with the NAMAs since 2015 and were involved once again. South African LD Kurt du Preez was asked to design the lighting and around 140 Robe moving lights were prominent on the rig at the Dome in Swakopmund.
These were supplied by Namibian rental companies dB Audio and Mikel-Jes Productions plus MJ Event Gear from Johannesburg. All of these rental specialists have
USA - When Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush, the duo that is Sugarland, got together to record their new Still The Same album, they pulled out all the stops, even having Taylor Swift do some song-writing and appear in one of their music videos. Sugarland carried this enthusiasm over to planning the 2018 summer tour in support of their new album. Nettles, who had worked with lighting designer Chris Lisle on her solo tours during the duo’s time apart, called on the Nashville designer to come up with some out-of-the-ordinary festive looks for the 48-city tour. Lisle and his team at CLLD, which includes associate designer and programmer Erik Parker, obliged, conveying the excitement of the duo’s reunion in light with help from 22 Chauvet Professional Rogue RH1 Hybrids, supplied by Bandit Lites. “During an early discussion with the artists, they mention
UK - With an unclear future for tungsten lighting, the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough has taken no chances in investing in a new range of LED fixtures. The theatre’s existing lighting fixtures were in need of an upgrade, with their pre-existing tungsten dimmers on their last legs; the timing was perfect to make the transition to LED. The theatre turned to Stage Electrics, who were able to offer advice, guidance and demonstrations of the latest equipment available. “The Stephen Joseph Theatre approached us with a clear inclination that now was the right time for them to make the change to LED,” comments Andy Elsegood of Stage Electrics. “During the wake of the EU ECODesign stage lighting regulation changes, it would have been unwise to replace their longstanding tungsten equipment with new tungsten, so I was glad when they informed me they were already conside
UK - On 6 July, Roger Waters performed at Barclaycard BST in Hyde Park London. Water’s show is like BST itself, centred upon a huge widescreen presentation, but there the similarities end. “BST sees the entire stage enclosure, backwall, sides and wings totally covered with LED video; right up to roof height 94 linear metres of it,” explains Alex Leinster of Video Design who provide all the video hardware and infrastructure. “But Waters’ show needs a much flatter screen, so we were asked to move the entire backwall section downstage as a far as possible.” No simple task, Water’s show was the first night in a run of three, with the Cure headlining the very next night. “What Jeremy Lloyd of Wonderworks conceived as the solution to the BST festival set-up was flawless,” explained Waters’ video director Richard Turner. “We got pretty much just what we
USA - DCR Nashville is providing Claypaky Mythos 2 and Scenius spots for American singer-songwriter Halsey’s 2018 touring schedule, including festivals and her continuing Hopeless Fountain Kingdom World Tour. The tour, in support of her second studio album of the same name, began last fall and will conclude this September. It is her second headlining concert tour. Production designers Sooner Routhier and Robert Long of S Rae Productions designed the show, which makes extensive use of LED video. Large stairs have LED video on the risers, and a large LED wall upstage is comprised of two screens split at the centre. Above the stage are five straight trusses with lighting, which mimic the stairs giving a very linear look to the overall design. Craig Rutherford is the lighting director. DCR Nashville has supplied the tour with 14 Claypaky Mythos 2 fixtures an
UK - The National Theatre's River Stage Festival is in full swing, bringing a dazzling array of acts to London’s Southbank with on-the-fly lighting by chief LD Huw Llewellyn on an Avolites Arena. Now in its fourth year, the festival runs on weekends during July and August, bringing free performances of classical music, cabaret, dance and much more, to a temporary stage in front of the National Theatre building. Avolites supplied the National Theatre with a full lighting control solution, which in addition to the Arena consists of a Tiger Touch II (TTII) and Fader Wing. “The Arena is built for festivals and theatres and we’re pretty much both during River Stage, so it’s an obvious choice,” says Llewellyn. “There are so many shows and most have little to no tech time at all. The Arena is perfect for busking with lots of faders, a great FX engine
UK - Established in 2000 and having had a five-year hiatus, the Classic BRIT Awards was held at London’s Royal Albert Hall at the end of June. Featuring both British and international classical talent, it was hosted by Myleene Klass and Alexander Armstrong, with a Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed upon Dame Vera Lynn. Other Awards included Best Male Artist and Critics’ Choice Award for 19 year-old Sheku Kanneh-Mason, two Awards two Michael Ball and Alfie Boe and Soundtrack of the Year to The Greatest Showman. DiGiCo’s native L‑ISA source control was deployed for the L‑ISA hyperreal immersive audio system, which was being deployed for the first time in the UK. Britannia Row Productions were audio providers for the show, with sound supervisor for the event Colin Pinkin in charge of coordinating audio between the artist, production, broadcast. FOH engin
Belgium - The Belgian city of Genk in Limburg recently switched on a new civic lighting installation, Genker Ster (Genk Star). The piece of light art was designed by creative lighting and visual design practice Painting with Light and enables the community to enjoy the fun and excitement of this ‘architainment’ concept all year round. The permanent lighting installation was the brainchild of Genk Mayor, Wim Dries. Ambient lighting has been part of the vibrant and forward-thinking city’s festive experience for the last decade, however the new stars can now make an atmospheric impact throughout the year. Once the project was green-lighted by the city council, a tender was issued for a concept design and specification which was won by Painting with Light. The design - comprising the 275 stars - was chosen both for its aesthetics, smart technolog
USA - The Minnesota Vikings have opened a new studio at their Twin Cities Optical (TCO) Performance Centre headquarters and practice facility. Featuring four distinct video-shooting areas, the studio, designed by Peter Provost of Provost Studio, is illuminated by a colourful lighting system created by Mike Grabowski of the Lighting Design Group that features close to 100 Chauvet Professional Ovation and COLORdash fixtures. The studio offers maximum flexibility for broadcasting during the football season and throughout the year. An example of this can be seen its main section, which has a cutting-edge acoustic wall that rises to open to a 170-seat theatre for live audience programs. With its ability to create a rainbow of realistic colours and change them quickly, the Lighting Design Group’s system supports the TCO studio’s combination of beautiful aesthetics and
USA - Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi holds a theatre summer camp each year and this year Elation Professional was a sponsor, making available both LED and discharge-based moving heads that allowed students the hands-on opportunity to work with state-of-the-art lighting gear. Camp on the Coast: Creating Leaders in Life and on the Stage is a theatre camp that teaches more than acting, lighting, props and costume design, according to Phil Johnson, lighting and technical director at the Department of Theatre and Dance at Texas A&M. “It’s an immersive experience promoting creativity, comradery and healthy competition,” he says. More than 120 of the best high school theatre students from around Texas attended the camp, an intense two-week summer programme for students. The camp usually puts on six plays in both a proscenium and black box theatre, p
Portugal - Rock in Rio is still one of the biggest music festivals in the world, and its latest edition, held in Lisbon in early July, relied on DiGiCo consoles supplied by Brazilian rental company Gabisom. Gabisom has been sound provider for the festival since 2001 and has worked with the organisers in Rio, Lisbon, Madrid and Vegas, specifying and designing the audio system for 17 of its editions. DiGiCo consoles were chosen as house desks across the site, along with a Martin Audio MLA PA. FOH ‘baby-sitting’ duties fell to Gabisom’s Peter Racy and Eder Moura, with Thiago Borges manning monitors. “We decided to use the SD7as the master console on the World Stage, the main stage for the festival, because of its superb sound quality, which we knew the guest engineers would be happy with,” says Racy. “It’s also really robust with dual engines, dual power s
UK - Liverpool’s famous Cavern Club has moved into the digital age by retiring its long-serving Soundcraft analogue desks on its two main stages in favour of a Vi3000 and Si Performer 2. Director Paul Jones expressed the desire to remain with the familiar Soundcraft topography and emphasised that the iconic Cavern Club (including the organisation’s third venue, the Cavern Pub) will remain exclusively a Soundcraft house. “We have replaced both our MH3 and GB4 [analogue desks], which have been here since well before I arrived six years ago,” he confirmed. “The MH3 still sounded brilliant, but it was time to move into the digital age.” The order for both consoles, along with Vi Stagebox, expanding the capacity to 64 mic/line inputs and 32 analogue line outputs, was placed with local dealers Adlib, with whom they have had a close relationship since the la
Spain/UK - Television lighting specialists Aurora Lighting is supporting LD James Tinsley and the crew on the latest season of Love Island for ITV2. Following the success of the previous series, the team has returned to the villa to build the setting for the latest batch of Islanders. Colourful and intense, the look created for the show provides the perfect backdrop to the on-screen twists and turns of the relationships evolving between the singles seeking love and a possible share of the £50K prize. Working closely with lighting director James Tinsley and his team, Aurora has delivered a full location package to assist in creating the show’s setting. Along with a selection of Fresnels and PARs used for ambient illumination, of particular note is the creative mix of vibrant RGB LED flex and practical fixtures including the 2000m of festoon that frames the sur
UK - Harman Professional Solutions has been selected as the official audio supplier for Tottenham Hotspur FC at its new stadium. The Premier League football club will soon be moving to its new 62,000-capacity home, which features a retractable pitch, cutting-edge video screens, a museum and club shop. To deliver an enhanced audio experience, Tottenham Hotspur has selected an integrated Harman Professional audio solution made up of JBL Professional loudspeakers, Crown amplification, and a Soundcraft digital mixing console. The installation includes 156 JBL VLA-C2100 loudspeakers, 54 JBL VLA-C125 subwoofers, 196 JBL AWC82 all-weather loudspeakers, 140 Crown DriveCore Install amplifiers, and more than 3,500 JBL Control Contractor speakers installed across the facility. Audio will be mixed on a Soundcraft Vi2000 digital console and monitored via JBL LSR 305 reference moni
Having already completed his own European headline tour this year, Jamie Lawson has recently headed back out on the road supporting Ed Sheeran on stadium shows across the UK and Europe. This year’s gigs see him showcasing songs from his latest album, Happy Accidents, released on Sheeran’s Gingerbread Man Records label. For both the headline and support tours Lawson’s front of house engineer Rob Simpson (NUB Sound) has opted for Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing systems, which he describes as having “unique clarity and headroom - and the best ergonomics in the business”. The arena shows see Simpson behind a dLive S3000 surface (with Waves v3 audio networking card) at FOH, in conjunction with a DM48 MixRack. The same MixRack model is used by engineer Mark Ellis for monitoring, with a dLive S5000 surface fitted with M-DANTE card for virtual soundchecks and
UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies, a Patron of the British Racing Drivers' Club (BRDC), supplied the event lighting for the club's annual British Grand Prix party at Silverstone Circuit. Staged within the grounds of the BRDC Farm as part of the Formula 1 Rolex British Grand Prix weekend, the occasion attracts high-profile members and motorsport personalities. AC-ET has been a patron of the BRDC’s Young Driver Programme for over a decade, and supplied the lighting design for the Party ever since. AC-ET worked closely again with the BRDC to create the lighting theme for the event, which this year saw the Club celebrate 90 years, and the upcoming 70th British Grand Prix at Silverstone Circuit. To commemorate it, the Farm grounds featured displays of historic cars which have played a key part in the history of Silverstone and Formula 1 over the past seven decades.
