USA - Hall & Oates have hit the road with Train co-headlining a North American arena tour this summer.
Lighting designer Paul ‘Arlo’ Guthrie from Minneapolis-based TOSS Film & Design has selected a large complement of Claypaky Sharpy Washes and Mythos 2 fixtures for the rig.
For the new show, Hall & Oates and Train each do a set then the bands join forces for a dynamic finale. The tour launched 1 May in Sacramento and will conclude in Seattle in mid-August.
Guthrie has designed a look for the tour that “feels modern but harkens back a bit to Hall & Oates’s legacy,” he says. “The lighting is reminiscent of rigs past with newer fixtures and more modern equipment. The video component is also larger than before.”
Downstage a front-projection screen has the form of a curved theatre proscenium. Mid-stage is an upside-down ‘U’ c

Singapore - Show production and equipment hire company The Show Company (ShowCo), supplied 120 Claypaky Scenius Unico fixtures for Katy Perry's performance at the Singapore Indoor Stadium as part of her current worldwide tour Witness: The Tour.
Designed by production designer Es Devlin and lighting designer Baz Halpin, who also produced the tour, Witness hooks in audiences with its whirlwind of rich video content, large-scale props and wide-eyed lighting effects, delivered in part by the powerful capabilities of the Claypaky Scenius Unico.
"The production is large format and makes a bold statement with its enormous 'eye-shaped' LED screen," says Halpin, "I wanted to make sure that the lighting design complemented not just the screen's shape, but was also able to compete with the incredible amount of light emitting from it."
After discussion with associa

France - In December 2017, France’s Sorbonne prepared to ring in the new year and a new era of highly intelligible audio with the installation of an L-Acoustics Syva system in the university’s Grand Amphitheatre.
The configuration was designed to address the challenges of a reverberant space while complementing the architecture of the room, originally inaugurated in 1889 and classified as a national Historical Monument since 1975.
“The events we hold in the Grand Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne range from conferences, speeches, and awards ceremonies to concerts, and are all highly prestigious,” says the venue’s AV technical manager Mathieu Miot. “However, this is a very reverberant space with few sound absorption elements. Our old system was desperately lacking in directivity and resulted in a significant loss of intelligibility. We needed a system that would

UK - Michael McIntryre’s Big World Tour is selling out arenas around the world.
With just one microphone and playback music, there is no need for a large format console, but the desk of choice needs to deliver sonic quality and extensive functionality. For Steve Carr, McIntyre’s Front of House engineer, the choice is the DiGiCo SD11, supplied by audio rental company Capital Sound for the UK and Ireland leg of the tour.
“The SD11 has all the wonderful features of the larger consoles in the DiGiCo SD range in a really compact, lightweight format, and that’s important on several levels” says Steve. “We use the SD11 because we don’t need a large surface to handle the show. It’s also great for the truck pack, it’s great for the service provider because it’s relatively inexpensive to hire out, and it offers a similar sound quality and power to th

USA - The Hangout Music Festival, a three-day event that takes place on a sandy beach on the Gulf of Mexico, served up a diverse line-up featuring The Killers, The Chainsmokers, Kendrick Lamar, The Man and a host of other stars.
Supporting the music on the popular Surf Stage was a rig that included Rogue RH1 Hybrid moving fixtures from Chauvet Professional and Ilumipanels from sister company Iluminarc, supplied by Bandit Lites. Put together by lighting designer Dizzy Gosnell and project manager Gene Brian, the rig was run by festival LD Alexandra Gagnon.
A key element of the Surf Stage design was a series of overhead curved truss structures that conveyed images of rolling waves. Riding on those “waves” and adding movement and colour to them, were 18 Rogue RH1 Hybrid fixtures. The Rogue units were arranged in groups of six, flown on the three curved truss formation

UK - The annual Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts is one of the highlights of London’s cultural season, and its VIP Preview Party is attended by the elite from the art and fashion world as well as wealthy buyers. The Burlington House courtyard is turned into a concert venue for the event, and this year, the champagne set was entertained by chart-topping singer-songwriter Anne Marie.
London-based rental house Fisher Productions provides production for the show, which presents some interesting acoustic and practical challenges. Following its success with the Nexo STM Series modular line array with Laura Mvula last summer, Ben Webb of Fisher AV decided to specify STM ground-stacks again, “for the simplest reason, we have extremely tight set-up deadlines at the Royal Academy, and we can wheel in the plug-and-play STM system and be ready to go in minutes”.

Israel - Moshe Kimchi Lighting Design has recently invested in Robe technology, with an initial purchase of 60 x Halo RGB LED rings, quickly followed by 18 x MegaPointes. The purchases were made via Robe’s Israeli distributor, Danor Theatre and Studio Systems.
Company owner Moshe Kimchi is an Israeli lighting designer whose work typically involves designing the project as well as supplying the lighting kit. He used the Robe fixtures for his Journey into Space installation at the 2017 Festival of Light in Jerusalem where he was one of the contributing artists. The Halo RGBs were an integral element of a symbolic giant spaceship that he created, complete with lighting effects synced to a soundscape.
Kimchi also used them to help light a large sculptural, illuminated menorah (nine-branched candelabrum) built at the Jerusalem municipality square for the Hanukkah h

UK - Live coverage of the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was viewed by millions worldwide - and ‘attended’ by four Hogs.
UK lighting designer and programmer Bill Peachment, Gaffin Riley and Will Plenty supplied four High End Systems Road Hog 4 consoles for Sky News’ live coverage of the 19 May event in Windsor.
It was a marathon for everyone watching and for the media covering it. While Peachment’s day started at 4am and stretched to midnight, he’s used to long days and was “proud to be a part of it." Activities surrounding the wedding were scripted to the minute, but anything could happen at a live event. Peachment wasn’t worried. He’s trusted Road Hog 4 consoles to see him successfully through his career of television and musical events in the UK.
"Live TV is a fast-moving environment," says Peachment. "We don’t get rehearsal t

Europe - A-ha are currently out for an extensive tour of the UK and Europe, running from early June till late August, playing a variety of headline shows in UK stadiums and European festival appearances.
With the band revisiting their original trademark electronic sound, show designer Stu’ Farrell has conceived a thought provoking staging for the band that sees specialist supplier Video Design provide some unusual LED and a distinct degree of autonomy for Julien Hogg, Farrell’s long-time collaborator and custodian of all things video.
“The visual concept is intended to make the audience think about what they are seeing,” Hogg began. “Stu’s design sees three long strips of LED on the front of double wide risers approximately three-foot tall, one for each band member. The Vanish25 panels we have from Video Design are chosen to allow the lighting behind to shi

UK - Rumoured to have cost £20m to develop, the opulent new Hide Restaurant in London’s Mayfair, is the brainchild of chef, Ollie Dabbous in collaboration with Hedonism Wines.
With spectacular views over Green Park from the three-storey building on Piccadilly, it features a sound system infrastructure comprising matched Harman components, specified and installed by Penguin Media Solutions.
The three floors, swathed in an earthy combination of antique oak, bronze mirrors and aged brass, are linked visually by a spectacular pressed-oak spiral staircase, and audibly by background music, routed by BSS Soundweb, delivered by an array of JBL ceiling speakers and processed in Crown’s advanced multi-channel DCi network amplifiers. Two amp racks - one in the basement and one on the Mezzanine - are connected via BSS’ proprietary BLU-Link, with all channels fully assigned.

USA - After performing more than 70 concerts so far this year, Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats continue their 2018 tour for fans in Europe and North America with monitor engineer Davy Gleeson using an Allen & Heath dLive S Class to mix the band’s in-ear monitors. “They started with wedges,” he said. “But the in-ears help Nathaniel balance his voice with the band. And, the boys like to boogie on stage so this keeps it clean for them.”
Gleeson, who also acts as production manager and stage manager on the tour, had used an Allen & Heath GLD when he worked at Black Box Pro Audio of Glasgow, Scotland. “We were very impressed with the GLD’s sonic quality and user-friendliness,” he said. “So, when the dLive came out, I put it on the rider for Rateliff’s tour. It’s got the same work flow as the GLD but pumped up on steroids. And, I’ve AB’d i

Poland - Production company PogoArt, owner of the largest Nexo PA system in Poland and a recent investor in Yamaha’s new Rivage PM7 digital mixing system, has helped Wroclaw Opera to stage an epic production of Guiseppe Verdi’s Nabucco. The sell-out performances of one of the most recognisable operas in history was presented outdoors, with the Wroclaw Opera building itself featuring in a special stage design capable of accommodating up to 350 artists.
Wroclaw Opera is accustomed to outdoor performance, but the production of Nabucco in Wroclaw’s central Plac Wolnosci was a most challenging one, featuring a 700sq.m stage with three levels for orchestra, ballet dancers, soloists and the Wroclaw Opera Choir. Marcin Nałecz-Niesiołowski, director of the Wroclaw Opera, who was conducting the performances, admitted that large productions are always a compromise

Australia - Novatech Creative Event Technology has given its 12 Elation Proteus Hybrid fixtures some serious punishment over the last few months. First, they left them outside for five weeks in February in Adelaide, copping the full heat of a SA summer. They then migrated north for four weeks on the beach at The Gold Coast for the Commonwealth Games.
The Adelaide Fringe Festival’s Parade of Light saw projection art from creatives including The Electric Canvas and Illuminart light up the heritage-listed buildings along Adelaide’s North Terrace, while Novatech’s Proteus stock beamed colours and break-ups.
“We had the Proteus out in three pods of four, controlled from a PC,” said Ashley Gabriel, director of sales and marketing at Novatech. “We were projecting across a major six-lane road onto buildings, while fighting lots of ambient light and a backgro

USA/UK - The latest incarnation of The Killers’ stage set owes much to the band’s Nevada heritage. As the band originally emerged from 20th Century Las Vegas, the design was to reflect an image of the small towns that straddled the American West.
Long-time Killers LD, Steven Douglas explains the process, “Our set designer, Josh Zangen from Fireplay had already put in place a large water tower stage right that harked back to the original look of the small American town and we felt something was required to balance that look on stage left.”
“We talked about something that was reminiscent of old Las Vegas signage and casino awnings. Josh came back with the initial drawings of large lit arrows pointing at a downward angle; the band loved them.” The design was put out to Jon Perry of Perry Scenic who, in turn, subcontracted the project to Specialz.
Specia

UK - Field Day 2018 celebrated its short move from Victoria Park, Hackney, to Brockwell Park in Brixton by spectacularly overcoming the noise pollution issues with which both these sites have traditionally been dogged.
PA specialists, Capital Sound, ended up equipping all seven stages, with their account manager Paul Timmins able to declare an astonishing SPL of 100dB(A)15 on main stage - thanks to the deployment of Martin Audio’s MLA, with its unique ability to limit offsite noise thresholds while maintaining unprecedented levels in the main bowl.
Residentially bordered on all sides, Timmins was mindful of Lambeth Council’s restrictions on sound escape at the nearby Clapham Common. But with careful orientation of the stages, and strong focus on rear rejection - coupled with some inspired optimisation programming in the Martin Audio software - they were able to del

Australia - Bloom - a new 24-hour underground club in Geelong, Australia - boasts an international-grade Funktion-One sound system, designed and installed by Full Throttle Entertainment.
At first glance, the sleepy seaside town of Geelong, 75km southwest of Melbourne, may seem an unusual choice of location for a club targeted at Australia’s clubbing cognoscenti. For the creative team behind the project, however, new venue Bloom is a perfect fit.
Bloom’s owners Ayman Muhor and John Kennedy - working with Aaron Cashion, Luke Jeantou and Adam Metwally - are well versed in the local club scene, having established and run a succession of the town’s best-loved venues and club nights. In creating Bloom, their aim was to take things to the next level: to provide a world-class club where music lovers could come together and lose themselves for the night - a venue that ha

Australia - Over 6,600 athletes and team officials from more than 71 nations and territories descended on Australia’s Gold Coast to compete in the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games in April.
Audio production specialist and official sponsor Norwest Productions deployed over 500 L‑Acoustics cabinets, including 124 K2, in 22 sporting venues.
“With the Games being held in our backyard, we’d always set our sights on being involved,” says Norwest’s Gra Whitehouse. “But the ceremonies audio project was an open tender, with all the usual pre-qualifying requirements, specifically around workplace safety processes and, of course, competency for the actual delivery of an audio project of that scale and nature. We knew we would need a watertight plan and some strategic investment.”
With their eyes set firmly on the prize, at the end of last year Norwest Pr

UK - While the 2014 Disney film production of Into the Woods garnered much attention, thanks in part to its all-star Hollywood cast including the likes of Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp, a recent UCL theatre production has succeeded in stripping down the Stephen Sondheim classic to its thematic core - exposing the eternal battle between darkness and light.
Instrumental in this exploration of desire, ambition and relationships through classic Brothers Grimm characters such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Rapunzel was a combination of Chauvet Professional Maverick MK1 Spot and MK3 Wash fixtures, specified by LD Alex Forey.
With the general concept for the lighting based around the need to support the director’s post-apocalyptic vision, the cutting and powerful effects of the Maverick combination were called upon to create unique and harrowing atmospheri

Poland - Centrum Spotkania Kultur (Centre for the Meeting of Cultures) - ‘CSK’ for short - in the heart of Lublin, Poland’s ninth largest city, is a performance and culture venue that opened in 2016.
Its main auditorium is now the second largest stage in Poland, and there is also a chamber space and a cinema hall with a programme of new, classic, reimagined and experimental works by creatives from all over Poland and across Europe.
CSK has 70 x Robe luminaires in the main stage space - a combination of LEDWash 800s, BMFL Spots, Pointes and ParFect 100s - which were specified by CSK’s head of technical, Bart Pyczek.
He was involved in the specification process early-on, when the initial equipment schedules were being proposed by Lublin-based theatre consultant Boleslaw Stecmach. “His practice is involved in many important buildings all over Poland, howev

UK - Hofesh Shechter Company celebrated its 10th anniversary and kicked off the first day of Brighton Festival in May with a performance of Grande Finale, the latest original dance work from award-winning choreographer Hofesh Shechter.
Signature to any Shechter production is the ‘Hofesh Haze’, a distinctive thick haze with an even, creamy look that remains consistent throughout the performances. To achieve this effect, Adam Hooper, head of production at Hofesh Shechter, relies on MDG haze and fog generators which are hired locally at each venue, or brought along by the company if there is no local availability. “Because haze is such a large part of Hofesh’s productions, we only use MDG haze and fog generators and specify them on every rider, with no substitute,” he says.
In Grand Finale, the set in Tom Scutt’s design consists of seven rolling

Sweden - When the 2018 World Team Table Tennis Championships were held 29 April-6 May in Halmstad, Sweden, the tournament attracted a worldwide viewer audience of 400 million. Lighting and sound rental company Tylösound AB served as the official technical supplier to the Championships and used Elation Professional’s Fuze Wash 575 cool-white LED PAR moving head luminaires to meet the strict illumination requirements.
Held at Halmstad Arena, with roughly 3000 live spectators each day, the event featured eight days of live TV and was streamed live. Light levels onto three centre courts - and every area of each court - were carefully monitored. “We required a measurement of at least 1600 lux on each 9 x 20m court,” stated Paul Aladin, owner of Tylösound AB, supplier of lighting, sound, smoke and LED screens for the event.”
Working with Elation, Aladin initially b

USA - This year’s Festival International de Louisiane in Lafayette, Louisiana attracted over 300,000 festival goers with a world-wide audience listening to an FM and streaming broadcast from the festival’s Main Stage mixed on an Allen & Heath dLive C Class C3500 digital mixing system with DM0 MixRack.
Paul McCasland of Show And Tell Productions mixed the live broadcast from a temporary studio in the nearby Lafayette Science Museum. “I’ve been doing this particular event for over 15 years,” he says. “And, this year, we had a 48-channel Dante split from the Main Stage fed directly to us over a fibre network.”
McCasland mixed down to a stereo pair fed to another temporary studio in the museum where radio station KRVS combined the four festival stages with live commentary and interviews using an Allen & Heath SQ5 digital mixer also supplied by

UK - Roedean School, an independent girls school in Sussex, delivered a production of Oliver, enhanced with the recent investment of four new Chauvet Maverick fixtures.
In the weeks before the production, Roedean School got in touch with Stage Electrics looking to expand their theatre’s front of house lighting solution. Stage Electrics’ regional sales manager Paul Roughton, liaised with the school to establish exactly what they wanted. “The school were clearly after a lighting solution that could deliver ultimate artistic precision whilst combining top quality colour mixing and exceptionally bright LED,” explained Paul. “After looking at several different possibilities they decided on Chauvet’s Maverick MK2 Profile and Spot fixtures.”
After investing in two of both the Maverick MK2 Profile and Spot’s, Roedean wasted no time in putting these fixtu

USA - For automobile enthusiasts, history buffs, and anyone who’s generally curious, the Gilmore Car Museum is the place to go. Located on 90 acres in the rural town of Hickory Corners, Michigan, the museum opened in 1966 with just 35 cars from the personal collection of founder Donald Gilmore.
Success and interest led to even more interest and success, and partnerships with other classic car organisations helped to grow the collection to nearly 400 cars that are displayed in an ever-growing number of outbuildings.
Local AV integration firm Crookston Audio installed a paging system a decade ago centred on an Ashly amplifier that is still going strong. However, so much expansion has happened since then that the museum called the company back to extend it. Crookston obliged with new Ashly amplification and DSP, using Dante to feed signal to the more remote outbuildings

Latest Issue. . .

Save
Cookies user preferences
We use cookies to ensure you to get the best experience on our website. If you decline the use of cookies, this website may not function as expected.
Accept all
Decline all
Analytics
Tools used to analyze the data to measure the effectiveness of a website and to understand how it works.
Google Analytics
Accept
Decline
Advertisement
If you accept, the ads on the page will be adapted to your preferences.
Google Ad
Accept
Decline