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.
Belgium - Named to celebrate the region’s rich industrial heritage, De Factorij is a bustling new cultural centre and performing arts facility in the historic district of Zaventem, near Brussels. The centre, which opened in 2017, hosts a diverse programme of performances, exhibitions and events. Its main performance space is the 680-seat Ivo Maupertuis Theatre, a shell-shaped auditorium designed as an acoustically isolated box-in-box construction. With quality, diversity and inclusivity at the heart of the venue’s vision for the local community, the management required “fast and efficient” control of its technical systems, audio included. Belgian systems integrator and audio specialist Amptec, already installing the cabling infrastructure for the new venue, was also asked to design and implement the sound reinforcement system for the main theatre. Despite the
Europe - Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi has been filling the world's biggest halls for years with his mixture of minimalist neo-classicism and pop adaptations. This spring, the musician also visited arenas throughout Germany as part of his current world tour before journeying to Asia and North America. In order to transport Einaudi's sparkling, dynamic piano works to the furthest corners of every location in the highest degree of transparency, the German service provider satis&fy relied on an L-Acoustics configuration including K1 and K2 system along with Kara and Kiva as supplementary side-fill and near-fill loudspeakers. In contrast to his solo concerts, Ludovico Einaudi brought various musicians on stage for the current tour in order to bring his genre-defying compositions to life in an approach combining both conventional and unusual instruments
USA - Queens of the Stone Age are on an epic international tour and FOH engineer Jay Rigby (The War on Drugs, The 1975, Cage The Elephant) has specified a Solid State Logic L500 console supplied by Eighth Day Sound. The most recent QOTSA tour started last June with an SSL L500 console already specified. Rigby and the monitor engineer Francois Pare joined the tour in April this year, and Rigby decided to stick with the SSL console. "I haven't looked back," he says. "I absolutely love it." Choosing to start from scratch rather than try to adapt himself to the previous set-up, Rigby used multitracks from earlier shows to build a new show file. "I was able to go into the Eighth Day Sound warehouse and prepare as much as possible. "The first show I did with Queens of the Stone Age, and the first time I met the band, was headlining at a festival
UK - The Piccadilly Theatre in London’s West End opened in 1928 as one of the largest theatres in London. In 2017, it underwent a major refurbishment, aimed at enhancing many of its original features using modern technology, as well as meeting modern sustainability targets. Theatre owners Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) wanted to completely replace the Piccadilly Theatre’s existing house light system with low-energy LED lighting, without detracting in any way from the theatre’s Art Deco heritage. This was to include emergency lighting throughout as well as provision for the recently restored dome ceiling, including new centre-piece chandelier. Integrator White Light was engaged to install the new system. GDS supplied products from across its entire range to meet this extensive brief, including a number of bespoke special project items that avoided any compromise w
USA - The stately building at 1615 Vine - one of the first legitimate Broadway-style theatres in Hollywood - was purchased in 1999 by the Ricardo Montalbán Foundation as part of its mission to promote theatre education and the work of Latino artists. In 2005, it was renamed The Montalbán and has served as an incubator of budding theatrical talent by hosting the Chauvet Professional Student Lighting Showcase. Now in its fifth year, the annual interactive educational event, which was sponsored by 4Wall Entertainment, provides lighting students from Los Angeles-area college theatre programmes an opportunity to collaborate on design projects and have their work evaluated by noted lighting designers. This year’s group of designers included Jeff Ravitz, Matt Ford, James Schipper, Rachel Miller, Mark Devlin and Aron Altmark. Aside from having the opportunity to rec
Italy - Giudizio Universale: Michelangelo and the Secrets of the Sistine Chapel is the immersive, multimedia stage show created by Marco Balich of Balich Worldwide Shows. For the show's lighting, Balich worked alongside award-winning designers Rob Halliday and Bruno Poet who selected a range of ADB and Claypaky lighting products (see LSi June 2018 for a full production report). Now running at the Auditorium Conciliazione in Rome, the show features live theatrical performances, dance and aerial acrobatics. Vivid, 270° high-resolution projections of Michelangelo's work, created by live video design company, Luke Halls Studio are mapped across a 'vaulted' digital p
USA - From the waterfront in Portland, Maine to the West End in Portland, Oregon, America’s downtown districts are experiencing a revitalization boom. One of the most inspiring signs of this renewal can be found at 1601 Grand Boulevard in the heart of Kansas City, where the Church of the Resurrection - Downtown held its inaugural service on 2 June, making it the first new house of worship to open in Missouri’s largest city in over 80 years. A modern $10.2m structure, the new 450-seat church has a flexible LED stage lighting system that helps it meet the diverse needs of its community. Designed and installed by Stark Raving Solutions, the lighting rig features a broad collection of Chauvet Professional fixtures. “The Church of the Resurrection - Downtown was founded in 1990 and is based in the suburb of Leawood, Kansas, but it had been looking to open a satellite
USA - Spyscape, the contemporary and interactive museum dedicated to espionage that opened in Manhattan earlier this year, shows the many facets of the spy-vs-spy game. In doing so, it also reveals how L-Acoustics’ L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound technology makes the fantastic believable. Deployed across two main rooms of the 60,000sq.ft midtown venue, the museum’s L-ISA complement comprises five dozen L-Acoustics enclosures of various models into two multi-channel setups (38.1 in one of them) that completely immerse large groups of visitors in an experiential espionage adventure, maximising storytelling and engagement. Working closely with Spyscape creative director Ross Phillips, London-based audio director Nick Ryan and technical sound designer/immersive mixing fngineer Davey Williamson were responsible for the sound design experience the museum would present to
USA - Located in New Orleans, Audubon Zoo offers visitors an exotic mix of animal encounters from around the world and are renowned for their natural habitats. With the recent addition of their latest exhibit, the zoo would be opening a 42ft, transparent flyway entitled Criaturas de la Noche filled with more than 200 short-tailed bats. Needing a nocturnal lighting design that would entice its inhabitants to come to life, the design engineers worked with LEA-Inc. who provided a combination of Chalice RGBW recessed and pipe-mounted LED luminaires from Altman Lighting. Mike Gonzales, LEA-Inc. controls specialist, comments: “We have done quite a few projects over the years with the Audubon Zoo, but nothing as unique and specific as this installation. The project was part of a $3m addition to the zoo called the Jaguar Jungle, designed to showcase animals from Sou
Europe - Currently in the midst of a busy worldwide touring schedule that includes festival appearances as well as their own shows, The Killers continue to be one of the biggest crowd-pullers in rock music. Since their formation in Las Vegas in 2001 the band have released five studio albums, all of which have topped the album charts, while their live shows help cement their reputation as one of the 21st century’s biggest rock acts. Their FOH engineer Kenny Kaiser heard about Outline’s Newton processor via the engineer’s underground network and, recognising its potential, set about acquiring one for the current run of shows. London-based Capital Sound Hire are providing a complete FOH control and mixing package for Kenny and with Newton units already in their inventory they were happy to oblige. Kaiser describes how he’s using the device: “Right now we are u
Hungary - Capital Sound met the challenge of fielding Martin Audio’s MLA for two of Hungary’s signature festivals, while simultaneously being able to deploy 318 MLA series enclosures in Hyde Park for Roger Waters’ opening night of the Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time Festival - in surround sound. The multi-genre Volt Festival takes place in Sopron, near the Austrian-Hungary border, from 26-30 June and this year featured Depeche Mode, Iron Maiden, Limp Bizkit, Clean Bandit, Steve Aoki and Hurts. The festival is organised by the same organisation that makes Sziget festival in Budapest happen. In between is another Sziget sibling and EDM festival, which took place on the picturesque lake Balaton 4-8 July. Appearing there were The Chainsmokers, David Guetta, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Martin Garrix, DJ Snake and other famous artists. All have been service
Denmark - The Danish summer tour and concert season is rocking with multiple artists on the road performing hundreds of concerts to many thousands of enthusiastic fans - many outdoors, some indoors, own headliners, festivals, taking advantage of the long daylight hours, milder temperatures and the public’s voracious appetite for live music and performance - a small country that most definitely feels the beat. Rasmus Seebach is one of Denmark’s’ best known and most popular singer / songwriter and music producers and lighting his 2018 summer tour is Jacob Baekmand who designed a spectacular set, lighting and visual performance space. The lighting rig includes 24 x Robe Spiider LED wash beams and 16 x MegaPointes - the first time Baekmand had used these - purchased for the occasion by Nordic Rentals, and these have been making a lot of impact, together with the Cope
UK - One of the most unusual deployments of RCF’s active HDL6-A line array has taken place at Sage Gateshead to coincide with the Great Exhibition of the North. The installation of 40 of these compact elements was sensitively carried out by RCF partner Nitelites, to contour the curvilinear glass and stainless superstructure of the building. Its purpose is to reproduce a newly commissioned work by Sheffield-based ‘sound sculptor’ Mark Fell, called Protomusic #1. The installation was carried out in just three days and involves bespoke mounting bracketry, manufactured in house by Nitelites, enabling each speaker to be optimised at the correct tilt angle, while remaining discreet. Fell’s soundscape of real world sounds that represent the north of England, have been reproduced by 60 traditional instruments from around the world by Royal Northern Sinfon
UK - The Nevill Holt Opera House, located in a converted 17th century stable block of the Nevill Holt Estate in Leicestershire, was officially inaugurated on 14 June for the start of Nevill Holt Opera’s (NHO) annual season. Over the last six years, NHO, backed by the David Ross Foundation (DRF), has built an opera company to support emerging British opera talent and local children and students from DRF academies. NHO’s summer opera season was previously housed in a temporary tented structure within the stable block which hid the interior of the historic structure. The limitations of the tent prompted the idea of a new permanent structure to keep out the noise of rain and wind; deliver excellent acoustics for young voices; improve the audience-performer relationship whilst preserving the intimacy of the existing space; optimise the technical equipping of the stage
