UK - Avolites' trailblazing lighting and video integration system is 'heaven sent' for lighting designer James Bawn on his latest large-scale project, live arena spectacular Heaven on Earth, which will be touring UK arenas between 4 December 2017 and 12 May 2018.
The large-scale musical, produced by Eden International Productions, is a classic re-telling of the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. Written by Sara Jeffs and directed by Racky Plews, the musical boasts an original musical score and arrangements by Geoff Alexander.
"The story is fantastic," says Bawn, who has been developing the production's lighting and video design for the past year. "Creatively, the production has really demanded that we all push the boundaries of our own area of expertise."
Bawn, who worked closely with stage designer Jacqueline Pyle on the production, describes the creative pro

Russia - Claypaky's SharBar, the LED-based multi-beam effects light fixture, has been used to great effect on a live concert by popular Russian band, My Michelle, at the Volta Club, Moscow with lighting design by Russian designers David Misakyan and Dmitry Buryak.
Led by singer-songwriter Tanya Tkachuk, the band has enjoyed great success across Russia with its modern, soulful pop sound. For the Volta Club concert, My Michelle's producer, Pavlo Shevchuk, worked with Misakyan and Buryak to create a 'cool, club show' feel for audiences. The design played to the venue's compact 8m x 6m stage area, with a height of just 4.85m overhead to the stationary truss structures.
Misakyan explains: "When we thought about the production design we wanted something more than just truss warmers and colour washes - we needed a fixture suitable for dance pop-music, which would look good in

UK - Farnham Maltings has operated an arts and community centre for Farnham, Surrey, since the early 1970s. It offers a core of successful activities - a thriving music and theatre programme, a flourishing selection of workshops, monthly markets and regular film events. There is also a host of community users of the building - The University of the 3rd Age, Sugarcraft, Beerex and a range of voluntary groups.
In September 2015 the venue began an association with the University of Creative Arts (UCA), which now bases its acting and drama degree course on site. With investment from the University, Farnham Maltings has begun an upgrade of its technical facilities over a three-year period, with Doughty Engineering being brought on board to supply its Easydeck flooring during year one of the project.
Easydeck is a modular performance system, perfectly suited for smaller venu

UK - PRG XL Video recently supported production manager Iain Whitehead and Production North with lighting, video and rigging services for The X Factor Live tour 2017. Stopping off at 19 venues around the UK, the tour featured the stars of the 2016 series of the popular prime-time weekend television show.
Lighting designer Peter Barnes returned for his sixth X Factor Live tour to design the set, lighting and video screen layout. Peter explained the creative process behind the show: “I worked closely with creative director, Beth Honan, on her staging requirements and overall artistic look of the show. The general design complimented what the audience would be used to from the TV show.
“Although there was no particular brief given to me, with this particular show, there’s always been a video screen which opens upstage centre, and the rest just falls into place from

Germany - Berlin-based Complete Audio recently took its Martin Audio MLA system out with long-term client, KIZ on the band’s latest tour, Hurra die Welt geht unter (which translates as "Hooray the world is going down”).
André Rauhut’s company has been working with the local politically-based hip-hop band, comprising three MCs and a DJ, since they first set out playing small clubs many years ago. This was their third major tour together - and it was FOH engineer, Rainer Noll, who also happens to be one of Complete Audio’s long-time sound specialists, that specifically requested MLA.
The tour took the band through the established German arena and music hall circuit. Over the years the PA company has built a large database of MLA Venue Files - ranging from hockey arenas to city halls -and this data is available to their techs either online (or via Dropbox). This

The Netherlands - Shelter nightclub in Amsterdam is home to a new, four-point Funktion-One Evo sound system from Think! AV. The venue has quickly established itself on the international clubbing map, thanks to an uncompromising approach to quality.
Located beneath A’DAM Toren – a large tower behind Amsterdam's Central Station on the northern banks of the river IJ – Shelter is a 700-capacity, underground clubbing space. A’DAM is short for ‘Amsterdam Dance and Music’, which reflects the direction of the owners and businesses that now occupy the building. The tower was built by Shell in 1971 and was a base for the multinational oil and gas company up until 2009. When it moved out, music moved in.
Shelter’s general manager, Merijn van den Heuvel, explains the idea behind venue: “To be a clubber’s club, with sound, quality and vibe as top priorities in eve

South Africa - This year will celebrate the sixth St Mary’s Battle of the Bands competition and for the third year DWR Distribution is a sponsor once again, prizes including a dot2 Node, DMX Dongle and training. The competition has moved on in regards to the technical rig and now includes a National Schools Lighting Competition. Barry Stydom gives feedback on the growth and interest from the children in this exciting project.
Barry Strydom is the manager at St Mary’s The Edge Theatre in Johannesburg and has been part of Battle of the Bands since the very start. “Six years ago, we started with a totally generic rig with piles of gobos and gels,” he smiles. “It has grown to a point where any professional band would be happy to perform on the set. Then in 2015 we introduced a lighting competition and while for the last two years only Johannesburg schools have been inv

Australia - The Australian TV industry’s biggest night, the 59th annual Logie Awards, were held at Melbourne’s Crown Palladium on Sunday 23 April 2017, broadcast live on the Nine Network. Always a great opportunity for the broadcaster to show off its tech capabilities, fantastic visuals were spread across three huge screens onstage, a wrap-around screen surrounding the audience, and pixel mapped to onstage fixtures and LED chandeliers.
Helming the mission-critical media server and console operation was Lynden Gare, director of Melbourne-based lighting and production company Colourblind, who relied on Green Hippo’s Hippotizer Media Servers to ensure that the show went exactly to plan.
Green Hippo is no stranger to the world’s biggest televised events, with their Media Servers used on The Eurovision Song Contest and The Academy Awards. At the heart of Lynden’s

USA - With 16 studio albums and nearly 60m records sold worldwide, the multi-platinum recording artist Alan Jackson has solidified himself as one of country music’s leading talents. In a career that spans over three decades, Jackson is still hard at work touring the nation for his dedicated fans. Needing a new production design to support the current Honk Tonk Highway Tour, the management team once again enlisted the creativity of Craig Rutherford, Blueshift Design, who in turn called upon Nashville-based tour provider Elite Multimedia.
“Since we have had such a long relationship with Alan, he is sort of ‘hands off’ when it comes to the designing of the production for his tours,” began Rutherford. “I typically start the process by reviewing the designs from previous tours, and then finding new ways to change it up to keep the tour fresh. Afterwards, I then speak

USA - Long before the cry “Drivers Start Your Engines” marked the start of the 101st Indianapolis 500 at 12:14 pm on Sunday 28 May, over 30,000 EDM fans at the speedway were already racing through some slick bangers at The Snake Pit Presented By Coors Light. Held on the track’s infield at Turn 3, this one-day festival within an auto race kicked off at 7 am and kept going until the chequered flag was waved track side.
Accenting the performances from the likes of Zedd, Marshmello, and Adventure Club at this year’s event was a Collyns Stenzel designed light and video show that relied on Chauvet Professional COLORado fixtures to help it stand out against the Indiana sun.
“This is my third year designing this show,” said Stenzel of White Light AV. “It’s fun to see all these fans have the time of their lives in a unique setting. However, there’s also a chal

UK - Richard Martin Lighting (RML) supported LD Richard Bowles in lighting one of the biggest nights in the current election campaign as Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn faced a live audience and Jeremy Paxman in May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10.
Aired live from Sky Studios on Sky News and Channel 4, Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May separately faced audience questions before being grilled by Jeremy Paxman on key issues such as Brexit, social care and the economy. With the General Election just a week away and the polls narrowing between the two main political parties, the night proved illuminating on both sides.
Lighting for May v Corbyn Live was designed by Richard Bowles, supported by RML and a vast rig was employed. As well as the interior lighting for the debate, Richard also designed the lighting that surrounded the exterior of the studio and an emphasis was

Argentina - Award winning Argentinian lighting designer Ariel del Mastro was asked to add his own touches of lighting inspiration to latest thrilling stage show created by choreographer / producer Flavio Mendoza, Mahatma, which played the summer season at the Luxor Theatre in Villa Carlos Paz, Cordoba and has now transferred to the Teatro Broadway in Buenos Aires.
The show is Indian influenced, featuring a blend of exuberant and reflective music and dance capturing the humour, colour, diversity and wisdom of the culture in a vibrant and animated performance for which Ariel chose Robe moving lights as his principal fixtures.
Fourteen Spikies, 18 Spiiders and 16 Squares were on the rig at the Luxor – the first time all of these new fixtures made their theatrical debut in Argentina.
The big challenge in lighting the show, said Ariel, was to capture the man

UK - At the end of 2016, Autograph Sales & Installations completed an extensive installation at the New Adelphi Building at The University of Salford, providing an audio system that accommodates the needs of a multipurpose, flexible venue. A DiGiCo SD9 digital mixing console adds extra versatility to the 350-seat main theatre.
The theatre has been designed to be re-configurable to allow it to host a wide variety of performances. This includes seating and stage placements that can operate in five main modes: end firing; long traverse; short traverse; thrust; and in the round; as well as a dedicated cinema set up.
The SD9 and a DiGiCo Orange Box are key to the system - which includes an extensive EM Acoustics loudspeaker system, QSC digital signal processing and Sennheiser microphones - with system inputs being fed through it as required. It is programmed as an LCR

Europe - Kiev delivered on its promise to present an awesome show and Green Hippo technology was key to the 62nd Eurovision Song Contest looking better than ever.
Bringing together a crack team of skilled practitioners, this year’s Green Hippo Eurovision team’s video production heavily featured in the visual design of the show. Highlights included a large LED wall behind the stage, LED floor, Pixel-mapped lights and a projection-mapped arch over the stage. To help ensure the polished performance the MA2 and time code-driven set-up used a total 16 Green Hippo Boreal touring Media Servers, all running Hippotizer V4.2.1 software. At any one time, up to nine of the Boreals were active, driving a complex set-up.
In addition to Green Hippo itself, various companies supplied the legion of Green Hippo Boreals: DigiGobos / Beacon Gobo Group: exclusive Green Hippo distribut

UK - Award winning lighting designer Francis Clegg applied his imagination and magic to the latest Snarky Puppy UK tour, where his penchant for creating interesting and different visual environments is perfectly suited to the band’s improvisational instrumental jazz-pop sounds.
Colour Sound Experiment was delighted to be the lighting and video supplier for the tour. The west London based company has worked on other projects with Francis, part of creative practice design MIRRAD, including most recently, Giggs and Kano. “You know that a design will look fresh and alternative when Francis’ name is on it,” commented Colour Sound’s H (Haydn Cruickshank).
Francis worked on Snarky Puppy’s 2015 UK tour, their first with full production. He finds the fluidity and organic nature of the music and performance very inspirational. Every show is unique, and that provided

UK - “Our current count is nine Audient desks,” says Richard Liggins, technical production manager at the University of West London (UWL). “Seven ASP8024s and two ASP4816s, plus a number of ASP510 5.1 monitor controllers and an ASP800,” which puts it in the running for the facility with the most Audient desks in the world.
Most recently, London College of Music (LCM) - part of the UWL - opened Paragon Annex Studio complex, an investment of more than £1m in the development of seven new recording studios, which includes two each of these Audient consoles.
Liggins explains: “Audient desks reflect a very clear design ethic in terms of the signal flow through the desk. We teach audio studio recording from first principles, and that means an understanding of signal flow through a traditional multi-track studio as a base for all other techniques in audio recording.

UK - The Vamps recently completed a sold-out arena tour of the UK as part of the first leg of their world tour, before joining up with Little Mix as they head in to Europe. Lighting, video and rigging technology and services were supplied by PRG XL Video - with lighting design by Peter Barnes and video content direction by Stuart Merser, using the latest live image manipulation tool: VideoDust.
Created by Stuart Smith and his business partner Phil Woodhead, of Brighton based technologists Thundering Jacks, VideoDust is a user-friendly, intuitive tool for creating original video content in real-time from a live source. Stuart Merser has been the only video director outside of Thundering Jacks to use VideoDust/Cat combination on touring productions, he explained why he is such a fan: “I’ve been touring for over twenty years and VideoDust is one of the most impressive tools

USA - Flogging Molly concerts tend to be raucous affairs with plenty of moshing, sing-alongs and foot stomping energy, as this seven-piece band steamrolls its way through its unique blend of Celtic and punk music. Lighting designer Peter Therrien of JDI Productions is capturing these good time feelings on the band’s current US and European tour with a colourful, fast-moving lightshow created with Chauvet Professional Rogue and Legend fixtures.
“Lighting this band is a great experience, because they have such a strong connection to their fans and their energy is contagious,” said Therrien. “I wanted to give this show some big looks with lots of colour, aerial effects and movement to match the party atmosphere at a Flogging Molly concert. At the same time, I also wanted to be able to slow things down for when the band takes a pause to do ballads and slow jams.”

UK - Sunday 14 May saw the final match at White Hart Lane, home of Tottenham Hotspur, before the ground is demolished to make way for a new stadium in 2018. A victory for Spurs on the day and the atmosphere could not have been more emotional.
“The closing ceremony proved a triumph,” said Andrew Zweck of Sensible Events who helped produce the ceremony with Spurs. “Broadcast live to over 13m fans around the world, Sky Sports commentator Martin Tyler said after the ceremony, ‘this is a club that is doing everything right’ and I’m sure I heard 13m voices say, ‘Aye’.”
Zweck is a season ticket holder and as a fan was happy to help. “What we did was bring in rock and roll companies because this had to be fast and be really classy. Phil Mercer at Unipix provided an additional big screen up on Stageco towers, and all audio came from Britannia Row.”

Dominican Republic - Over the past 30 years, FOH Engineer Jose Amable Frómeta has worked with some of Latin America’s most popular recording artists. With a résumé that includes Juan Luis Guerra, Marc Anthony, Juanes and Ricky Martin, Frómeta recently added DPA Microphones’ d:vote 4099 Instrument Microphones to his arsenal of equipment.
Frómeta has been using DPA microphones for about a year now. “In a private engagement in Chile with artist Juan Luis Guerra, the local audio company provided us with DPA d:vote 4099s as replacements for the ones specified on our input list,” says Frómeta. “I wasn’t sure what to expect, having never used them before. I used them on saxophones and was so amazed with the sound that I purchased three the following week. The mics are simply great.”
One of Frómeta’s previous audio challenges has been solved with the use

Chile - Urdile Audio & Iluminación, PR Lighting’s Chilean distributors, are just one global partner that has been achieving extraordinary success with the Chinese manufacturer’s XR440 BWS, and its smaller sibling the XR330 BWS (denoting that these hybrid, high output moving heads combine beam, wash and spot effect).
The XR440 BWS houses a powerful Osram Sirius HRI 440W lamp, and features include an advanced colour index with CYM linear colour mixing system, with macro; colour wheel with 12 colours and CTO plus open; bi-directional rainbow effect at variable speeds; step/linear colour changer; fixed gobo wheel with 13 fixed gobos plus open, and much more.
Urdile have been working with PR Lighting for the past four years, both as a distributor, but at the same time demonstrating product durability through its rental division.
This year alone the 15,000-sea

Canada - Located within an old church building in Little Italy, Revival Bar has become a live performance hangout for the Toronto music community and fans since opening in 2000. While its designation as a Toronto historic building requires preservation of the building’s frontage, there is nothing to prevent modernization inside. That is why general manager Mathew Saturnino recently decided to upgrade the 400-capacity venue’s sound system with the Electro-Voice X1 system from the X-Line Advance line-array loudspeaker family.
"There’s a lot of competition in live entertainment, and quality of the sound system is one thing that sets one venue apart from another," notes Revival Bar general manager Mathew Saturnino. "We wanted a system that would sound great, with really good, tight sound output within the room. We did a lot of research, and the X1 from Electro-Voice seeme

Italy - Protected Paradise is a striking, 12m high, mixed media installation created by Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen, located in the garden of the Palazzio Francetti for the 2017 Biennale di Venezia (Venice Biennale) contemporary visual art exhibition.
Luc Peumans of Painting with Light was contracted to light the work, a thought-provoking piece encouraging viewers to engage and question the impact of humanity on a rapidly transforming planet.
It consists of two bronze trees, a 4m bronze chicken claw (symbolic of the human being), two eggs made out of marble and fibre respectively (the eggs of hope) and an impressive cage constructed from recycled material, made by ECO-OH!
The bottom egg is constructed from Carrara marble and weighs 12 tonnes.
The overall construction of the piece was managed by Koen Verhaert of ECO-OH!, based at Laakdal in Belgium and t

Germany - Four years after their last live appearance, German tour promoter Karsten Jahnke has brought lmusician, producer and engineer Alan Parsons and his band back to Germany, playing 13 dates throughout the country in May. A Yamaha Rivage PM10 console has taken care of the intricate Front of House mixes for these much-anticipated performances.
Playing a mixture of indoor and outdoor shows, the nine-piece Alan Parsons Live Project is being mixed by Emmy-nominated FoH engineer and production manager Ross Pallone.
The Rivage PM10 console has been supplied by Lüneburg-based audio production/installation company PM das Systemhaus für Medien- & Veranstaltungstechnik (Profi Musik), with these shows being the first time that regular Yamaha user Ross has got up close and personal with the new flagship console.
“For us, the most important thing is that the sou

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