Germany - The success of Martin Audio’s new Wavefront Precision series on a global scale shows little sign of abating. Back in March, German rental company Event & Veranstaltungstechnik Enchelmaier (E.V.E.) boosted its inventory with the acquisition of a complete WPC system, along with SX218 and SX118 subwoofers - all powered by Martin Audio’s new iKON iK42 amplifiers. Already a major user of Martin Audio’s premiere line array systems since 2003, E.V.E. owner Michael Enchelmaier said, “I wanted a newer, more modern system to complement my W8LC, W8LM and WS218X, and meet the demand for new systems. With the WPC we can cover audiences of up to 3,500 people, and with a combination of W8LC and W8LM I can extend that to 8,000-10,000 people.” The system has already been out on a number of shows, including The Hollies, where E.V.E. flew two eight-element
UK - Unusual was the technical production company of choice for Artichoke when it staged the Processions march in London last month. The mass artwork took place on 10 June in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London and saw thousands of women and girls come together and march, wearing either green white or violet – the colours of the suffragette movement - creating the appearance of a flowing river of colour through the city streets. Jim Dugan, production manager at Unusual explained: “We’ve been working with Artichoke on its major events and art installations for some years now – Lumiere London and Durham, the Sultan’s Elephant, Great Fire 350 etc, so we were excited to get involved with an event that celebrated something so fundamentally important in our country’s history. “Our role on this project was to facilitate all the technical elements – from th
Australia - Horder Communication Solutions (HCS) has recently completed an upgrade of the indoor and outdoor audio systems for the South Australian Jockey Club (SAJC) at its Morphettville Racecourse in Adelaide, South Australia. The SAJC plays host to 58 days of racing action throughout the year at Morphettville Racecourse. In addition to racing on a weekly basis, Morphettville is a multipurpose venue featuring 22 function rooms able to host events of all occasions seven days a week. Early in 2017 the SAJC published an Expression of Interest (EOI) for the upgrade of the audio systems at the Morphettville Racecourse. The existing audio systems were based on a network of Media Matrix Nion controllers and primarily Lab.gruppen amplifiers, which were to be retained. The loudspeakers were a diverse collection of box and ceiling loudspeakers, of varying quality and suitabili
Belgium - Robe’s Pointes, Spikies, Spiiders, LEDWash 300s and CycFX 8s proved themselves invaluable when lighting designer Wouter Vebeke had to squeeze a somewhat ambitious lighting rig into Mercardo, Antwerp, for the band Arsenal’s new album launch. Wouter has worked with Arsenal - the name came from a World War II weapons depository adjacent to their studio in Brussels - since 2011. They are one of the most popular bands in Belgium, known for their dynamic mix of electronic music and fusion of multiple genres to create a unique sound that’s earned much international acclaim. They wanted a special location for the launch of their sixth studio album In the Rush of Shaking Shoulders, an album which explores themes and theories related to chaos v structure. After throwing many ideas about, band leader Hendrick Willemyns hit on the Mercado. Originally part of
New Zealand - ACLX recently upgraded their lighting inventory with Martin by Harman RUSH series fixtures from Show Technology to supply theatre shows, live music performances, conferences and more. "We chose the RUSH MH series because each fixture is portable and easy to deploy on small stages, yet powerful enough to hold their own on the largest stages in the country,” explained Aaron Chesham, managing director of ACLX. “The RUSH MH series was exactly what we needed - each fixture offers an impressive output with a small footprint at an affordable price. The MH fixtures have great optics, bold colours, and beautiful effects - they save us time and money without sacrificing quality. The RUSH MH series can do everything our clients need and more with fewer fixtures than the competition.” "ACLX wanted to update their lighting inventory with fixtures capable of cr
USA - No sooner had LA-based RKDE taken delivery of Ayrton Ghibli fixtures from ACT Lighting, Inc. than the LED spot luminaires were quickly dispatched to E3’s trade show floor and then to the American Idol Live nationwide tour. For nearly 30 years, RKDE has provided production for festivals, tours, automotive events, corporate conventions, television productions, private events, and religious services. The boutique company maintains an extensive inventory of lighting, staging, audio and video equipment. “We were looking for new technology – we wanted to get away from standard lamps, which are expensive to maintain and replace,” says RKDE’s owner, Ray Woodbury, a longtime production professional. “We wanted a fixture with the output and capabilities that would surpass traditional lamp fixtures and that’s exactly what Ghibli gives us. “I
Europe - Australian singer songwriter Vance Joy’s story is one of continuing success, which comes with the need for a world-class monitor engineer. For Vance, this is Mani Hammond, who has been working with him ever since August 2014. He is deploying a DiGiCo SD10 provided, along with the rest of the audio equipment, by British rental company Encore PA. Mani started his career on analogue desks, but when he made the move to digital and a DiGiCo SD9, he found the transition an easy one and when Encore purchased an SD10 two years ago Mani decided to give it a try. He has found it the perfect console for the job, siting the high fader count as one of its major benefits and has been touring it with Vance ever since. “I like having lots of faders as I don’t like changing banks,” he says. “Having 32 faders in front of you makes everything easily accessible.”
USA - Luke Bryan has created 20 No. 1 singles, sold over 12m albums, and is one of the most popular touring artists today. Routinely playing to sold-out houses around the world, the artist and his design team at Align Design Group are often challenged to give each tour its own unique look and feel. In planning for the 2018 What Makes You Country Tour, lead designer Justin Kitchenman wanted to create a more free-flowing visual experience, so he called the Nashville-based production provider Elite Multimedia Productions who supplied the lighting, LED video and IMAG video technology behind the design. “During our tour design discussions, we are always aware of what we have done in the past and we really try to give each tour a different visual representation,” began Kitchenman. “Over the past few years, one of our biggest production elements has been moving
Germany - Performances at the outdoor theatre in Ötigheim, near Karlsruhe, attract up to 100,000 visitors each year, thanks in part to their excellent production values. Maintaining a high standard is very important to the ‘not for profit’ owning company Volksschauspiele Ötigheim, which is why a new Yamaha mixing and audio management system was installed in time for the 2018 season. Volksschauspiele Ötigheim has been staging productions for 112 years. Throughout the summer, shows are staged at its open-air theatre, a former sand quarry which has 4000 covered seats and, it claims, the biggest permanent outdoor stage in Germany. For the past 15 years a pair of Yamaha 02R digital mixing consoles have been the reliable backbone of the theatre’s audio system. This year, they were replaced with a new system comprising two Yamaha CL5s, an MRX7-D matrix processor, Ri
Europe - With the busiest outdoor event production schedule ever, it looks like there’ll be no summer holidays for TiMax spatial audio systems this year. Alongside long-running premium West End and Broadway shows which continue to fill theatres, TiMax features in at least eight very diverse spatial sound designs across Europe - with some interesting new developments for the evolutionary spatial audio platform. First up is Maria de Buenos Aires performed by Austria’s Oper Graz in an old jail complex which is part of the city’s Kasematten castle. The venue almost resembles a conventional theatre auditorium but with an ingenious retractable roof. TiMax SoundHub and Tracker were jointly specified by acoustic consultant Fabio Kaiser of Rohde Acoustics and immersive audio specialist Volker Verner of PDV Records Og. The system was the first of a collaborative hy
USA - SNY Studios at 4 World Trade Centre, the home of the New York Mets, has one of the most impressive settings for a broadcast studio anywhere. Located on the 50th floor of 4 World Trade Centre, the studio offers breathtaking views of Manhattan below. For all its glamour and excitement, though, the skyscraper venue presents challenges when it comes to lighting broadcasts. Having enough output during the day to stand out against the open-air background without bouncing light off windows is essential to making the studio’s system work; so too is having solid low ends when broadcasting at night. Mike Grabowski of the Lighting Design Group met these and other challenges at the state-of-the-art SNY 4 studio with help from over 300 Chauvet Professional Ovation fixtures. “SNY’s Studio 42, numbered after baseball great Jackie Robinson, has a unique environment becaus
UK - One of the best-selling artists of all time, Tina Turner’s fascinating life story has now been turned into a stage show with TINA – The Tina Turner Musical. Written by Olivier Award-winning playwright Katori Hall, the show charts Tina’s humble beginnings in Nutbush, Tennesee to her transformation into the global Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll. The show is playing at the Aldwych Theatre in London’s West End and as a leading lighting supplier to some of the biggest shows in the country, White Light was called upon to provide the lighting equipment. TINA – The Tina Turner Musical is directed by Phyllida Lloyd and features a lighting design by Bruno Poet. Bruno comments: “My brief for the show was to help tell this extraordinary story and make the performers come alive within Mark Thompson’s elegant design. The set frames the actors beautifully
USA - Clearwing Productions deployed a Harman Professional Solutions audio and lighting solution made up of JBL Professional loudspeakers, Crown amplifiers and Martin lighting fixtures at Summerfest 2018. Summerfest features over 1,000 performances across 11 stages and attracts nearly one million people annually. In order to provide premium audio and lighting for the world’s top music artists, Clearwing Productions deployed rigs at multiple stages across the festival, including the JBL VTX A12 loudspeakers, and the newly-released Martin MAC Encore fixtures. “Summerfest is home to the world’s top artists and we’re thrilled to use JBL Professional and Martin lighting to provide an amazing experience for performers and audience members alike,” said Gregg Brunclik, president/CEO of Clearwing Productions. “The new JBL A12s sound incredible - they allow the artis
Australia - 32 Hundred Lighting’s managing director Iain Reed has been a busy man; he’s recently overseen major installations he created during Vivid, including the gigantic Harbour Lights project that used GPS to coordinate lighting changes on commercial ships and Sydney ferries covered in LEDs as they move through the harbour. He also collaborated with artist Joe Cox on Colours of Remembrance, lighting King’s Cross’s El Alamein Fountain as part of the multiple installations and sculptures in the precinct. Both projects made excellent use of the dazzlingly bright TMB Solaris Flare IP, the IP65 rated wash that kicks out (appropriately) 32,000 lumens. The imposing Crimean War-era tower of Fort Denison was lit by two Solaris Flare IPs, while the El Alamein fountain’s 12 by 12m footprint was covered by one. “The most important thing for an
Italy - The 17,368 capacity Pino Zaccheria stadium, the home ground of Foggia soccer team located in Italy’s south-eastern Apulia region, recently underwent a major upgrade in order to meet the latest specifications for the country’s Serie B. The work included a new sound reinforcement system, supplied by Centro Cultura Musicale. Designed using Outline Open Array 3D software by the company’s senior system engineer Francesco Ferretti, the system is used to play recorded music before matches, announcements, publicity, team line-ups, announcements for the substitution of players and safety announcements. The upper tier of the roofed west stand is covered by six Outline Vegas 12 CX two-way, full-range coax speaker enclosures installed under the roof. The same format is used with four more Vegas 12 CX for the lower tier, installed under the upper tier of the stand. <
Taiwan - The 29th edition of the Golden Melody Award (GMAs) staged in the 15,000 seat Taipei Arena presented a golden opportunity for Robe’s RoboSpot remote follow spotting system to show its flexibility and scope – the first time it’s been used in Taiwan. Organised by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, the GMAs recognise outstanding singing achievements in Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka and Formosan languages in both the popular and traditional music industries, attracting artists and audience from all over Asia. Moderated by Jam Hsiao, the 2018 show was broadcast live by Taiwan national TV throughout South-East Asia. Hong Kong based LD Stanley Szeto lit the show, working for the Artesian Engineering Co Ltd. Stanley is a long-time user of Robe products, so when asked to design lighting for this event, he seized the chance to use Robe Pointes on the rig to create
Australia - Memphis may be over 10,000 miles away, but every year, the town of Forth in Tasmania (population 700) resonates with sounds reminiscent of Beal Street as it plays host to the Forth Valley Blues Festival. This year, the thousands of visitors who descended on the event were entertained by artists like Mark Seymour of Hunters & Collectors fame and Guitar Extravaganza featuring Kevin Borich, Phil Emmanuel and Tim Gaze. Setting an appropriately evocative mood for the festival was an intensely powerful and richly textured lightshow designed by Michael Westcott that featured Chauvet Professional Maverick MK2 Spot fixtures, supplied by Show Systems Australia. Westcott flew eight of the 440W moving LED fixtures over the festival’s main stage, half on upstage truss and half on midstage truss. Controlling the fixtures via sACN and drawing on features like
USA – When the San Jose McEnery Convention Centre needed a new lighting system that could support the multi-use, high-production-value conventions their clients expect, they turned to ETC. Now they have a lighting system as advanced as the industry around them. “The previous sodium light fixtures were from the ‘80s,” says Gabriel Nemeth, director of event operations. “Advances in technology and changing client demands put us behind the times.” This was particularly true for trade shows that demand a space that serves multiple functions, with some sections being used for keynotes and others for trade show booths. Clients would ask for dimmed lights over the keynote area and bright light in the tradeshow sections – something the old system couldn’t do, costing the client more money to get the effect they wanted. The sodium fixtures were also unflatt
UK - London's hit new immersive experience, SOMNAI, is tripping out visitors with its dreamlike visuals mapped onto a perspective bending dome at the heart of the production using Avolites Ai's Autoblend feature. SOMNAI is the latest project from dotdotdot, in collaboration with a host of video content and AV specialists including long-time Ai expert, GaiaNova. The British 360° dome mapping specialist acted as the production's dome system integrator. "We knew that Avolites' Ai Infinity R6 media server was the right choice for this project, loaded with v10 software and its essential Autoblend feature," says Ben Stern from GaiaNova. "Autoblend is a complete game-changer in how you map domes. It simplifies the entire process and the results are amazing. It's so good that trying to do it any other way is unthinkable - I wouldn't map a dome using anything els
USA - With headliners like Eminem, The Killers, Muse, Sheryl Crow, Paramore and Kaskade, the 17th annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival offered plenty of great music to enjoy. But North America’s largest outdoor festival has always been about sights as well as sounds. This year’s edition, which ran from 7-10 June, pumped up the visual excitement even more than usual with a massive off-stage lighting display that wrapped around the stages and surrounded the audience in a sea of changing colours. Looking like a magical tale come to life, the outdoor display, which was designed by David Weiner of David Weiner Design, swept up visitors with its rainbow of coloured trees, making it easy for them to set their imaginations free. Creating this captivating colour-scape were 1000 Chauvet Professional COLORado fixtures, supplied and installed by The Design Oasis.
Italy - For the recent Jovanotti tour, Lorenzo Live 2018, which has been playing sport arenas in the main Italian cities, prominent British lighting designer, Paul Normandale, requisitioned 44 GLP impression X4 Bar 20 from rental company Agorà, to light both A and B stages during the show. These formed the anchors of what he describes as “an immersive design of the whole room, with moving stages, screens and set”. The designer set 14 X4 Bars in a line on the back of the main stage, behind the musicians, another 14 on the front of the main stage, eight on Stage B (two per side) and the remainder in strategic positions on the main stage. During the show, the X4 Bars had a key role to play, especially when Lorenzo played on Stage B, which elevates 5mfrom the ground, in a DJ set. Paul Normandale commended the X4 Bar 20s as being “clear low prof
South Africa - The South African State Theatre’s Opera House has recently opened its doors to new musical genres, in particular jazz, and needed a new audio system that could meet the varied demands now placed on it. At the end of last year, an L‑Acoustics Kara system was installed, bringing the Opera House’s audio bang up to date with a solution that can handle the diversity of productions the theatre hosts in a rider-friendly format. Originally opened in 1981, the South African State Theatre was the major force behind establishing the performing arts in South Africa and is a national flagship. It has six theatres sited on the huge State Theatre complex in Pretoria. The Opera House is the largest of these and has always been the country’s premier opera venue, as well as hosting a wide variety of theatre productions. The design and installation of the Op
Belgium - Light Moves was a stunning indoor 'son et lumière' (sound and light) installation designed and produced by Koert Vermeulen, an award-winning lighting designer and founder of Belgium-based international lighting design agency ACTLD. Appearing for one night only in the Gothic remains of an abandoned church in the centre of Brussels, the installation featured the Claypaky Sharbar as star product, amongst a range of other fixtures from the Italian brand. Originating in France, son et lumière shows focus on historic architecture and places of interest, with light shows set to music. For Light Moves, Vermeulen brought the outside in, drawing from his knowledge of the relationship between light and human emotion to create an intimate, ten-minute show for his guests. "I know the kinds of sensation you can bring using light," says Vermeulen, wh
USA - Operating out of 11 offices across the US, The Sextant Group is a leading firm of technology consultants, providing innovative solutions to a wide range of client needs. Over the past few years, they have embraced the advantages of Alcons Audio loudspeakers for an increasing number of high profile projects. The Sextant Group’s Joe Hammett is one of its senior systems designers. “I first learned of Alcons in late 2014,” he says. “The following year a co-worker recommended that I take a look at them, because we had a project where we needed to recess multiple subwoofers in a small space. I visited the company’s booth at InfoComm 2015, listened to the loudspeakers there and was immediately impressed. Then the real research began.” He continues, “On many of my projects there is a fine balance between room aesthetics and the size of the loudspeakers requ
