Belgium - Painting with Light (PWL) has created a 2km walk-through lighting and visual experience in the centre of Bruges to add atmosphere, luminosity and magic for the festive Wintergloed (Winter Glow) season. Commissioned by Bruges Plus, the organisation responsible for the town’s cultural events, PWL’s winning pitch was led by Peter van den Bosch (business unit manager for leisure & entertainment’) and lighting expert Iiris Rousku who designed the various lighting artworks with their team. It comprises a series of elegant, eye-catching, ephemeral and different lighting and projection-mapped installations, located in six different areas. Each installation was inspired by an aspect of the warmth and hospitality of the people of Bruges and its many visitors over the different generations. Different approaches were taken for each work - s
Sweden - ELC Lighting has announced that Stockholm Stadsteater (City Theatre will benefit from a new ELC Lighting network distribution system based around the dmXLAN Node8GBx range of DMX-to-network converters. The system, including 63 dmXLAN node3 units purchased from ELC Lighting distributor mLite AB via local dealer Intersonic, is being installed across multiple performance spaces as part of the Stadsteater’s technical renovation. Situated at the heart of the city in the bustling Kulturhuset cultural hub, the Stadsteater is one of Sweden’s most popular theatres, producing up to 40 productions each year on its various stages. Its new ELC dmXLAN system, which operates over Art-Net, sACN and Shownet as standard protocols and offers remote programming and monitoring via ELC’s dmXLAN software, is set to provide a new level of flexibility throughout the site.
USA - Tenth Avenue North, the multiple Dove Award-winning band recently wrapped their fan-favourite Decade The Halls tour this Christmas season, with special guests Plumb and Land of Color. , which explores the last 100 years of popular music with the costumes, set and lighting reflecting the styles of music Bandit Lites provided the lighting system for the show ranging from Christmas pageants to candlelight services. “The big directive for the tour design is it needed to contain looks that reminded audience of every decade of the music they’re hearing,” explains lighting designer Mike Marcario. “Combined with logistical directives to keep the system simple enough to be set, teched, ran and struck by a one-man lighting crew, while also living within a lower than usual weight restriction due to transportation, I believe we landed on a production design that accomplis
Czech Republic - Robe was a sponsor of the 2019 Signal Festival in Prague, the Czech Republic’s best-known multi-platform event celebrating the fusion of digital arts and technology. A series of provocative lighting and video installations turned a series of hand-picked sites, areas and buildings across the Czech Republic’s vibrant capital into temporary gallery spaces for four days, attracting a diverse and inquisitive audience eager to explore new experiences created with multiple lightsources - video mapping, large format laser projections, moving light performances, etc. This year the additional resonance of the date made it 30 years since the ‘Velvet Revolution’ which saw the peaceful transfer of power (in then Czechoslovakia) from a one-party communist system to a modern parliamentary democracy. To mark this, various festival works touched on the th
USA - Tony Award-winning lighting designer Jeff Croiter turned to Elation Professional’s Artiste Van Gogh LED wash moving head to light a new musical adaptation of Cyrano starring Peter Dinklage at the Daryl Roth Theatre in New York. The classic tale of unrequited love premiered in November and has received praise for its design. Separated into five acts, Croiter says he uses the Artiste series fixtures to fulfil a different role in every scene of the play. “Their versatility was key and that’s what made these the perfect light for Cyrano,” the designer stated. “It’s my first time using them and they’ve worked perfectly.” Croiter, who has over 25 years of Broadway and off Broadway lighting experience to his credit, uses the Van Gogh fixtures from an upstage position as the backlight system, forgoing conventionals or fixed position LED backlight
UK - High End Systems’ TurboRay automated luminaire recently made its UK TV debut on celebrity dance show Strictly Come Dancing. The fixture featured as part of a special guest appearance from Irish pop band Westlife during the show’s annual jaunt to Blackpool. “It seemed the ideal opportunity to showcase TurboRay’s possibilities,” says Strictly lighting designer, David Bishop. “Westlife were performing a medley of their hits, which allowed for full use of the fixture’s various tricks. And, being so powerful, TurboRay stood out well in the visually ‘busy’ environment of the Blackpool Tower Ballroom.” Strictly has been visiting the famous ballroom since the show first began in 2004. It’s a massive highlight of the show’s run every year and it’s the aim of many of the celebrities “to make it to Blackpool”, but relocat
UK - White Light has supplied a range of new lighting fixtures to Mountview, following the drama school’s move to its new premises in South London. Mountview offers vocational training at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate level in performance and production arts. Last year, after a 17-month build, it opened the doors to a new building in its new Peckham home. This included the creation of a new 200-seater auditorium, which required a range of lighting fixtures. As an organisation that has worked closely with Mountview for several years now, WL was approached to provide the equipment. Mountview’s senior lighting tutor Alex Cann, comments: “Moving into a new space opened up the opportunity to have the very latest technology match these state-of-the-art facilities. Whilst the new building was still under construction, we’d already started to think about
USA - One London-based lighting programmer took home a brand-new MagicQ MQ70 console as he triumphed in ChamSys’ Programmers Competition, which took place during the LDI 2019 tradeshow in Las Vegas. The contest required programmers to programme a large Chauvet Professional rig for a one to three-minute song of their choice using MagicQ with MagicVis Visualization, with the top three entrants invited to playback their entries live at the trade event. “We were blown away by his incredible work,” said the panel of judges in a statement announcing that Matt Blake had won the contest. Chris Kennedy, director of ChamSys, added: “Matt made excellent use of the different fixtures on the lighting rig, created lots of different visual effects some static, some moving and made the most of ChamSys powerful control abilities to create a stunning show. This is all th
Vietnam - Prolights has announced the appointment of Vietnam Pro AVL as its distributor for Vietnam. The developing company has been founded in Hanoi by a young and resourceful team, whose main goal is to ‘bring the highest standards throughout the Nation, focusing on the establishment of the world class brand which represent and providing to the Vietnamese clients professionalism and the best AVL solutions suitable to their needs’. Lê Mạnh Thắng, Vietnam Pro AVL president, says: "I've been following Prolights for a few years, and I was deeply impressed by the fast process of growth the company has brought to the market. When I visited their HQ in Italy, I saw up close the hard work and the long term vision of the team about the brand establishment, as well as the attention to details in the products that perfectly meet the core values we aim to bring in our e
UK - The bi-annual Classical Spectacular, held for six performances in London’s Royal Albert Hall in November, featured the first Claypaky Xtylos used in the UK. The Xtylos is the first moving head with a laser light source. The Classical Spectacular debuted in October 1988 and has been marked by perennial extravaganzas - lasers, lighting effects, fireworks - accompanying a classical music repertoire. Lighting designer Durham Marenghi joined the Classical Spectacular family 30 years ago in an era before there were moving lights. But Marenghi quickly began to introduce lighting innovations, including many lighting fixtures used in rock ’n roll but new to the concert hall. He designs a new architecture for the lighting rig every two or three years using the best technology on the market to keep pace with a production that lives up to its name in
UK - Pearce Hire was selected by the Royal Variety Charity as the sole contractor for the Royal Variety Performance post-show party. With the show taking place at the London Palladium, the after-party took place at the Intercontinental Hotel Park Lane where Pearce Hire’s project manager Jake Vernum and the Pearce Hire team were loading in a full production package including lighting, sound, AV and cameras. Giles Cooper of Giles Cooper Entertainment is the chairman of the Royal Variety Charity, and executive producer of the Royal Variety Performance and has been in this post for the past 14 years. He states: “My working relationship with Pearce Hire is long-standing as they are our main power and lighting suppliers on a year-on-year basis for many outdoor summer events run by my own company GCE LIVE, and so I know the Pearce Hire team to be amongst the best in the
USA - Like many passengers on the flight from Nashville to New York, Landon Bloss donned headphones soon after take off. He wasn’t listening purely for pleasure though. Instead, he was taking a crash course in the music of Billy Currington. “I was on a load out when I received a call from Gene Jung, Billy’s PM, saying that they needed a LD to fly out the next day to start running his show immediately,” recalls Bloss. “They booked me a flight and off I went. Of course, I knew Billy’s music, but I really wanted to get deep into it, so on went my headphones.” Bloss proved to be a quick study. Taking over the rig originally designed by Ian Saunders, he supported Currington’s 90-minute set on the star’s Stay Up Til Sun tour with an intense, fast-moving lightshow that showered a rainbow of colours on the stage. Helping him in this endeavour was a co
Germany - Fans of Seeed have had to wait a long time for a new record and tour from the 11-piece Berlin-based dancehall and reggae ensemble. In fact, almost a year was spent even before the completion of this disc in the preparation. The design collective HELL, based around Nik Evers, Timo Martens and Philip Hillers, took care of the lighting, stage and content design for the tour, in support of the current album, BAM BAM. "One year of preparation sounds like a long time ago," states Nik Evers, but this is put into perspective very quickly when considering the complexity of the design process, which included an intense rethink at different stages along the way. Timo Martens also explains the idea behind it. “A Seeed concert is very special in its own way,” he says. “The show's central elements in the stage design were two oversized box towers, with the band rise
Hungary - A plethora of Ayrton lighting fixtures provided striking visual impact on the popular televised music contest, SztárbanSztár Leszek (In the Star, I’ll be the Star), on Hungary’s Tv2 television channel last month. Lighting designer, Balázs Varga, chose Ayrton Khamsin-TC, MagicBlade-R and MagicDot-XT to delineate the complex outlines of the stage for this visual extravaganza. Balázs Varga was assisted by Bálint Marafkó, CEO and Chief LD at television and film lighting specialists, Two Men’s Show, which provided the fixtures, which were supplied by Gábor Kele, executive director of Lisys-Project, Ayrton’s exclusive distributor for Hungary. Twenty-four MagicBlade-R fixtures were rigged on upstage trusses to outline the stylised shape of the performance area and provide a ‘top shutter’ for the cameras, with MagicBlade-R’s svelte
Canada - Equipson’s Work Pro LS-Node RDM/DMX streaming device played a key role in ensuring the success of URA: A Celebration of Water, a multimedia experience installed along a one-kilometre stretch of coastline in Québec, Canada. Designed by cadabra, the creative division of AV integration company XYZ Cultural Technology, URA is open throughout the summer and operates in both daylight and evening hours in Chandler, a place where the sea is both symbolically and economically important. URA visitors are transported into a timeless maritime universe where they experience storms, shipwrecks, equinox high tides and even life at the bottom of the ocean with a chance to meet a host of sea creatures including a black whale. Guided by the voice of Lamia, a fantastical being descended from Basque legend, visitors spend an hour walking through eight storytelling stati
Spain - In a move to a more sustainable future, the Teatro Calderón has chosen to upgrade its lighting systems with ETC products, supplied by the company’s dealer in Spain, Stonex. Based in Valladolid, the Teatro Calderón has long been recognised as one of the best theatres in the country. It was decided that over the next few years the theatre will renew its lighting equipment in order to allow both LED and conventional luminaires to work together as effectively as possible. In order to do this, the Calderón chose ETC’s power control and entertainment consoles. ETC’s Sensor3 power control system and ThruPower modules were installed into the theatre, replacing a Smartrack model which was in place for the previous 20 years. The Teatro Calderón now has five Sensor3 ESR3AFN-48 power control racks, filled with ETR15AFR and ETR25AFR ThruPower modules, in addition
UK - White Light and ELP Broadcast & Events (ELP B&E) have announced a strategic partnership. ELP B&E will continue the full service broadcast and events wet hire business it currently operates. The partnership commences on 6 January 2020 and reverses the position announced in November 2019 of the cessation of ELP B&E at the end of 2019. It will pave the way for the acquisition of ELP’s lighting rental business by WL during 2020. ELP B&E staff and premises in Manchester will be retained, along with the equipment stock. Additional staff, equipment and operational resources will be added from within the WL organisation, bolstering ELP B&E’s strength and ability to meet client needs. During the early months, fulfilment and despatch will continue from ELP’s base at Cardington Studios with a transfer to WL’s Wimbledon premises taking place la
USA - In a joint display with ETC, High End Systems (HES) enjoyed record success at the recent LDI exhibition in Las Vegas. HES showed a variety of new products in the 200+ fixture rig, including the SolaHyBeam 3000, TurboRay and SolaPix automated luminaires. High End Systems’ TurboRay won PLSN’s Gold Star Award for Best LED Wash Light. The fixture has already seen high profile use in many concerts, television and other live events. Automated lighting product manager Matt Stoner commented, "We are so happy that the TurboRay has been acknowledged as the ‘Best LED Wash’ by PLSN this year. It is especially gratifying that the wash capabilities of the TurboRay are recognized among its huge variety of other specialties, like its complex aerials and marvellous face look. It just affirms what lighting designers have been telling us all along, TurboRay is ‘much more than a
USA - Situated in the heart of New York’s Times Square, seven floors up amid the luxury of the new Edition boutique hotel, is nightclub and performance space Paradise Club. The ‘brainchild’ of Studio 54’s Ian Schrager and home to an immersive dinner theatre and modern-day cabaret called The Devouring: A Marriage of Heaven and Hell Paradise Club hosts an Elation Professional lighting rig specified by AVL design and integration firm Clair Solutions with input from Yossy Marquez of J. Marquez Consultants. Paradise Club is a fully-immersive experience with an attention-grabbing starburst LED ceiling, depth-producing upstage video wall, enchanting décor, and atmosphere-generating dynamic lighting system. Following the multi-sensory Devouring cabaret show, performed by resident artist company House of Yes, the space transforms into a colourful nightclub with
USA - A light rain was falling intermittently on the July evening when Citizen Cope took the stage at the Stony Creek Brewery, an outdoor music venue just off the Long Island Sound. The weather didn’t affect the large crowd that turned out to see the widely acclaimed singer-song writer who was in the middle a national tour in support of his Helicopters and Heroin album. It did however, present his lighting designer, Peter Spadaro III with an inspiration. Seeing the mist roll in off the sea on a drizzly night, Spadaro directed his rig’s Chauvet Professional Maverick MK1 Hybrid fixtures into the crowd. Using the natural elements as a giant hazer, he filled the air around the stage with an immersive panorama of refracted light and patterns. “The music and the atmosphere of a venue really dictate my design, so I keep things free flowing,” says Spadaro. “D
Cyprus - A.L.A. Equipment, founded in 2001 by Andrea Piemonti and Tony Lyssiotis has been appointed distributor for Prolights in Cyprus. Andrea Piemonti, managing director for A.L.A. Equipment, comments: “I have worked in this industry for more than 30 years but when I first approached Prolights I was pleased to join a partner who shares our commitment in delivering the best solutions. It’s a well-rounded company, a breath of fresh air in the AVL market. Prolights’ wide selection of products offer enormous advantages suited to any kind of needs, from broadcast and live shows, right through to the architectural projects. I’ve seen closely the hard work behind Prolights solutions and their long-term vision of strong brand establishment. I have no doubts that the future will be bright for this brand. We’re looking forward to starting this collaboration”. Paolo A
USA - OSA has announced Mark Fetto as vice-president of lighting. Fetto will oversee the company’s new lighting division, which will be based in OSA’s Las Vegas and Nashville offices. Fetto started working as a lighting technician in 1978. Working his way through the ranks at the Obie Company and Vari-Lite, he then became a lighting designer and senior programmer. In 1989 Fetto opened Vari-Lite’s satellite office in Las Vegas. He went on to become general manager of Vari-Lite’s corporate events division and later general manager of their North American operations. Following a 16-year career at Vari-Lite, Fetto joined Stage Rigging as the national sales manager before moving to his most recent position of 14 years at Morpheus Lights. As chief operating officer at Morpheus Lights, Fetto oversaw touring systems, new inventory, infrastructure, and operational stra
USA - Bandit Lites provided the lighting for Dave Koz’ Christmas tour, featuring Jonathan Butler, Melissa Manchester, Michael Lington and Chris Walker. Koz’s tour and newest album, Gifts of the Season, features a smorgasbord of styles, ranging from an electronic rendition of Winter Wonderland, a whimsical It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas as well as an emotional Mary Did You Know and powerful original song from Koz, A Prayer for Peace. “As we sat down to begin concepting the production design, we knew that it needed to be versatile in creating moments for each of the emotions that the band is creating audibly,” explains lighting designer Erik Parker of Chris Lisle Lighting Design. To create the moments, Parker knew the rig would need to be outfitted with well-rounded fixtures that would also integrate with the vi
UK - Specialist hire and events company SLX has made a number of new stock announcements, including a £250,000.00 spend on SGM fixtures. The investment places SLX as a major stockist in the South West of the SGM IP rated LED fixtures used for professional stage lighting, broadcast lighting and architectural installations. Chief executive and owner of SLX, Alastair Currie, says: “The new roster of SGM fixtures now on the shelves of our warehouse or already out on hire include the P-6 Flood, Q-7 Strobe, G-7 Spot and even the brand new much anticipated G7 BeaSt. That’s a spotlight we’re sure will very rarely be sat on our warehouse shelves, as lighting designers and production managers around the country seem very keen to utilise it. “We’re delighted to become the biggest stockist in the region of SGM fixtures. The SGM fixtures we already had, including the P-
