USA - While many churches struggle to attract new members or keep current ones, Cascade Hills Church in Columbus, Georgia, has found success by keeping things fresh and presenting church as more than just an hour-a-week event to endure. With the knowledge that AV and dynamic lighting systems can positively impact the overall worship experience, Cascade Hills chose a flexible Elation stage lighting system to raise its profile and help grow its ministry. Cascade Hills personnel called on local Columbus-based Absolute Audio Systems for a lighting solution that would enhance both the live and broadcast aspects of their worship services. “Cascade Hills is an active church that was in need of a lighting upgrade so they could improve the look of their weekly services and TV broadcasts, as well as special events like musical performances,” explains Todd Buckner, owner of Absolu
UK - Finnish bluegrass rockers Steve ‘N’ Seagulls, have recently hit the UK for a series of shows supporting their third studio album Grainsville - released earlier this year - while accompanied by an Allen & Heath dLive Wings system. The band’s set-up comprises a dLive C1500 surface (fitted with a Waves V3 card, which is used for multitrack recording, virtual soundchecks and running plug-ins during live shows), an IP8 remote controller and a CDM32 MixRack. The Wings set-up was chosen due to the customisation options and its size - which is perfect for flying. FOH engineer, Antti Laitila, explains: “Steve ‘n’ Seagulls tour around the world all the time, so I was looking for a compact and good sounding console for fly-dates. I’d heard a lot of great things about the dLive-series from my colleagues, so I decided to give it a try. “Pete Ka
USA - Completed in 1915, St Paul, Minnesota's massive Cathedral of St Paul is the country's largest church outside of New York and Washington, D.C. Its Saint Cloud granite exterior walls are matched in grandeur by the American Travertine marble coating the 3,000-capacity interior, which reaches 175ft up to a dome nearly 100ft in diameter. It's a big, reverberant space. "If you took the Statue of Liberty off its pedestal and set it in here, it would fit under the dome," observes Randy Keeley of St Paul AV systems integrator Metro Sound & Lighting. "And everything within this space is very reflective: Travertine marble all over the walls and floors, hardwood pews, different angles, glass-you've got sound literally going everywhere." These are not friendly acoustics for any kind of amplified sound, yet a sound system is the only way every worshipper can hear what is being
USA - Comedian Nick Cannon returned to his hometown of San Diego, which presented him with a plaque and declared an official ‘Nick Cannon Day’ in America’s eighth largest city. The highlight of the visit was Cannon’s sold-out Wild ‘N Out show at San Diego State’s 12,000-capacity Viejas Arena. Featuring appearances by Eman Hudson and a bevy of other guest stars, along with games like Wildstyle and Let Me Holla from Cannon’s hit MTV programme, the show served up a full Wild ‘N Out experience, one that was made all the more intimate for his hometown fans by its open circular stage. Although the stage setup strengthened the connection between Cannon and his audience, its open design created special challenges for lighting designer/technical director Marc Wasserman of 3 with1 Grab Productions. Wasserman, who has worked on the sta
USA - ABC News’ live coverage of the nation’s Midterm Elections counted on High End Systems LED lighting to do the heavy lifting for the November 6 broadcast. LD Dennis Size of the Lighting Design Group was called in to ensure that the anchors, reporters, political consultants, statisticians and other guests were seen in their best light. To meet that requirement, Size specified 42 HES SolaFrame 750s and 12 SolaSpot 1500 automated luminaires from Main Light to supplement his conventional fixture package and to keep up with the continuously-changing action. “I’m strictly a High End guy,” the New York-based LD explains. “I was once a strong Vari-lite user, but HES has made great strides with the advances in the Sola line. That is all I specify now.” ABC’s senior production designer Seth Easter created the special two-story high set for ABC News. The
Poland - Tommex Żebrowscy Sp. J. has recently completed the design and installation of the audio system for the new Centrum Praskie Koneser in Warsaw, Centrum Praskie Koneser is a modern urban space combining restaurants, apartments, shops, commercial premises, a museum, an indoor exhibition centre and a hotel. The complex also has a large open public square, which is also used to host exhibitions and cultural events. The Centrum Praskie Koneser is a project that incorporates the revitalization and adaptation of the post-industrial buildings of the Koneser vodka factory. Once employing more than 400 people, the factory could produce a quarter of a million bottles of vodka a day, with globally recognized brands including Wyborowa, Luksusowa, Żubrówka, Żytniówka and Siwucha. In addition to the main production buildings, the original complex included warehouses, work
South Africa - Ultra Events is a technical supply and production company based in Cape Town, South Africa, owned and run by Costa Champanis and is the latest in several rental companies in the region to invest in Robe’s MegaPointe multi-functional luminaire. Ultra took delivery of four units initially with the rest to follow soon. The company started commercial life as Ultra Sound, specialising in professional audio for assorted events markets. Immediately the Pointes were onboard, the demand was so great that they upped the initial four units to 24 in less than a year. Based on their success with the Pointes and the intense demand on riders for MegaPointes, they ordered these from South African distributor, DWR. The first event for the new MegaPointes was lighting the runway show for the two-day #COSMOFest2018 fashion extravaganza, staged at Canal Walk
Europe - “I wanted a bit of additional craziness going on behind the band,” says Prodigy lighting and set designer Tim Fawkes. He is utilising eight Kinesys Elevation motors to move four special 4m long lighting trusses up and down, just upstage of the band, for the current European leg of their No Tourists tour. The four pods in their home position made up two apex shapes to blend in with the rest of the structural trussing design. Each one is lined with four Martin Sceptron LED battens, five GLP JDC1 strobes, four Robe MegaPointe moving lights, four Showtec Sunstrips and five old-skool PAR cans with CP60 bulbs for a classic ‘ACL’ look. All lighting and rigging equipment is being supplied by Blackburn based rental company HSL. Having these pods automated on the Kinesys motors using a Vector controller enabled Tim to add lots of extra dynamics to t
USA - One thing that pretty much any experienced touring mix engineer can agree on is that you always pad your input/output number request to a certain degree because rare is the tour where those needs will not increase as the tour progresses. So it might seem odd that when the current Post Traumaticsolo tour by Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda got started, mix engineers Mike Fanuele and Kevin ‘Tater’ McCarthy were sharing a single DiGiCo SD12 mix surface. After that first show, the SD12 was shipped off for the tour’s Asian and European legs, and McCarthy, who has been associated with Shinoda for more than a decade, spec’d a pair of DiGiCo's ultra-portable SD11i desks for the promo tour that preceded the Asian dates. He says he’s fielded more than one question about why he made that choice. “A lot of people have asked me why I choose the SD11i,” he reports.
USA - New Albany High School in New Albany, Indiana, recently completed seven sold out performances of the timeless classic The Wizard of Oz and used their new rig of Elation Professional lighting fixtures to help bring the musical to life. With three top-tier theatre programmes only miles from each other, Southern Indiana is a proven mecca for high school theatre. After sister school Floyd Central High School received a lighting upgrade of Elation fixtures a couple of years ago, New Albany High School was ecstatic when their opportunity came. “When funds came around, we were next,” said New Albany High School’s resident lighting and sound designer Crit Fisher, who was employed by the school five years ago to help resurrect what he says was an increasingly neglected programme. “Although New Albany High School has roots in theatre the program was in dir
World - Keith Urban’s 2018 world tour in support of his tenth studio album, Grafitti U, kicked off in North America in June 2018. Since then the talented country/rock singer, musician, songwriter and record producer from New Zealand has covered 59 venues in six months. The tour’s production design firm, FragmentNine, chose 68 Ayrton MagicPanel-R fixtures, supplied by Upstaging, to add depth, dynamism and texture throughout this creative and dynamic show. Video designer, Jackson Gallagher and lighting designer, Jeremy Lechterman of FragmentNine explained that part of the reasoning behind their choice of MagicPanel-R was largely due to its square face and special abilities, which fit into a mostly geometric and ‘square’ design. Forty-eight panels were rigged to four custom-built pods which automated as the most upstage visual element on stage, with two mor
Europe - Swedish artist Kristian Matsson is better known under his stage name, The Tallest Man On Earth. His recent European tour, in support of his album When The Bird Sees The Solid Ground, has seen LD Anders Heberling using GLP’s impression X4 Bar 20 in his stage design. He deployed 13 fixtures as a floor package with the remaining batten in the roof, directly above the head of an artist who is known for his dynamic stage performances. The fixtures were mounted in almost completely sealed custom made boxes, allowing just small cracks for the light to shine through. According to Heberling, the inspiration for this was old barns where the sun shines through the walls. Of his choice of lighting the LD said: “I needed a pixel batten that could move but most importantly be rigged vertically to fit inside the boxes. The wide zoom was very helpful in term
UK - Signify reports that its Philips Vari-Lite VLZ Profile LED luminaires were chosen to meet some specific stage lighting demands on the recent Savage tour by British electronic music pioneer Gary Numan. For special tour dates, including a showcase performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Numan and his band were joined on stage by an orchestra and choir. In response to this, the visual design, by Luke Edwards of Cue Design, successfully referenced the post-apocalyptic theme of the Savage album, while combining softer theatrical touches to complement the orchestra’s presence, both on the stage and in the music. “To light the orchestra, we needed fixtures with a really nice light quality,” said Edwards, “but with so many tuneable instruments on the stage we also needed lights that wouldn’t throw out lots of heat. The VLZ Profile was a great option: the op
UK - The Human League’s 2018 Red tour saw the band use projection mapping for the first time, with creative content and equipment supplied by Really Creative Media. The 27-date Red tour began in Brussels on 31 October, landing on UK shores at the Brighton Centre on 23 November, playing various size venues, from theatres and arenas, wrapping up at London’s Eventim Apollo on 8 December. Really Creative Media (RCM) has worked with The Human League on previous tours, supplying projection equipment and creative content and the band returned to their trusted supplier to push their visual creative offering for the Red tour. RCM supplied an MA Lighting grandMA3 Light console and OnPC Command Wing as a backup console, along with two Catalyst V6 Media Servers, six Panasonic RZ21K 20,000L laser projectors and two Panasonic RZ31K 30,000L laser projectors. These Panasoni
USA - With its intersecting patterns of light wrapping around a diamond-shaped configuration of risers, and cool colour schemes, the stage on Jacob Sartorius’ current tour evokes images of cyberspace. It is a fitting impression, since this Top 40 teenage artist found fame on the internet in 2016, when he was the ninth most frequently searched musical artist. Lenny Sasso, who lit Sartorius’ first headlining shows two years ago, came up with the futuristic concept for the singer’s 2018 tour. Helping him in this endeavour was a collection of Chauvet Professional Épix Strip Tour and Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures, supplied by Squeek Lights. Sasso arranged the linear fixtures in a matrix-like formation, filling the upstage area with light while creating a high-tech look. “I knew that I wanted to wrap the band in Épix Strips,” says Sasso. “It was just something that
Denmark - Eleven trucks of production equipment is a lot for one stand-up comedian, but delivering the nuances of live comedy in an arena format is a fine art which needs a delicate balance of style and production values and for Denmark’s leading comedian, Anders ‘Anden’ (the Duck) Matthesen, this happened to be a 25th anniversary tour, so he wanted to make a big impact. Peter Fisker has been Matthesen’s lighting designer since 2006 and in that time, the funny-man known for his multiple crazy, off-beat and appealing characters - has toured regularly as well as producing movies, DVDs and books. This particular tour was shorter than usual - the seven shows were played in Denmark’s two largest arenas - five at the Royal Arena in Copenhagen and two in the Jyske Bank Boxen Arena in Herning - reaching around 86,000 fans. Peter took up some of that truck-space with
USA - The historic Rialto Theatre in Loveland, Colorado recently received an Alcons LR7 micro line array system as part of an upgrade. The Rialto opened in the 1920s to screen silent films and vaudeville but shut in 1976, briefly reopening as a retail complex before closing again. The venue was restored in the mid-90s as a multi-purpose arts facility combining cinema, live arts venue and a community centre. The Rialto’s sound reinforcement system needed updating and technical coordinator Dave Brull was tasked with matching a small grant with sound that would match 21st century audience expectations. “Rialto’s design was fairly standard for the era, with many hard and reflective surfaces like plaster and maple,” he says. “The building is protected so there were a number of constraints to deal with, like preserving original features, and we had to try an
USA - Continuing their 30th anniversary tour with a summer run of shows across the USA, The Australian Pink Floyd (with Trevor Gilligan at FOH) took Outline’s new Superfly system with them when they crossed the pond. Paul Timmins, head of operations & sales at their long-standing audio supplier Capital Sound Hire, comments: "Outline’s Superfly cabinet is the gem of the family - it’s so compact and light (just 38kg per cabinet) that it’s a system you can offer to those tours that really do mix it up from clubs to arenas. "The Australian Pink Floyd are a regular client of ours who do exactly that and when we needed to look at new system options for their European spring tour, knowing what was coming from Outline, we talked with Trevor who had previously used the Butterfly system some 10 years earlier and he was happy to go for it. It wasn’t long before the
UK - HSL has added 100 units of Chauvet Professional’s Maverick MK3 Wash RGBW LED lights to its inventory at the LDI Show in October. By the start of the holiday season, the UK company already had the fixture out on three of its 2018-19 pantomimes, at the 2018 Liverpool Horse Show, and on the Arena Cross Tour. “The immediate response has been very positive,” says Simon Stuart, managing director of HSL. “We’ve even had a certain renowned theatre LD comment that he didn’t want any other fixture except this in the future.” He adds: “We spent a great deal of time chatting with some of our strategic partners in the USA, and with various LDs. Everyone was extremely positive about Chauvet and this fixture. We needed more large LED washes, and it became clear that the MK3 has all the bells and whistles. It’s extremely bright, is pixel mappable, has a great z
Portugal - A traditional Portuguese Fado concert held in the cloisters of 17th Century São Bento da Vitoria Monastery provided Francisco Leal, head of sound at Oporto’s Teatro Nacional São Joao, the opportunity to get up close with Out Board’s TiMax SoundHub immersive dynamic delay-matrix – and further cemented his intent to incorporate TiMax immersive spatialisation into the Teatro Nacional’s in-house productions. Leal explains: “Having followed the developments of the TiMax system for some time and wishing for the system when I met some challenging shows requiring different sound perspectives simultaneously, I finally found the opportunity this year to apply the system in a real context, in a Fado concert where movement throughout the performance is tradition.” The concert played in the covered, wooden-floored courtyard of the Monastery to a three secti
Germany - Prior to 1944, Frankfurt had one of the most beautiful and largest medieval half-timbered old towns in Germany. Recently restored, the architectural treasure was opened in September with a cultural programme that included a unique night drone show supported by lighting effects from Elation Proteus Hybrid moving head fixtures. The highlight of the three-day celebration was a spectacular production in which drones drew constellations of light in the Frankfurt sky accompanied by a visually stunning light show over the river Main. bright! GmbH was responsible for the concept and technical implementation of the production, as well as the programming of the drone show. Michael Giegerich, one of the managing directors of bright! GmbH and project manager for the constellations, developed the show concept along with lighting director Daniel Gündner. Both worked unde
The Netherlands - One of the bonuses of working with innovative and influential artists like dance music producer DJ Hardwell is that you get to work on some interesting shows. Symphony: The Global Revolution of Dance was one of those moments for lighting and visuals designer Andre Beekmans of The Art of Light and operator Jaap Kamps. The event was a live performance and collaboration between the globally popular and world leading electro DJ and multiple Grammy winning Metropole Orkest at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, celebrating 30 years of dance music. It was staged to coincide with the renowned Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) conference. Andre and his Eindhoven based creative visual practice The Art of Light - who have designed and co-ordinated Hardwell’s lighting for some years - were approached by organisers Fourmation Events and MOJO and asked to create
Mexico - October saw Papa Roach and Good Charlotte making a triumphant return to Mexico as headliners of a rock spectacular, powered by Loto Audio and Funktion-One, in the nation’s capital. Promoted by Zepeda Bros, the team responsible for a string of successful rock events, including Knot Fest Mexico - the show delivered over four hours of live rock music at the open-air gardens of the Arena Ciudad de Mexico. To ensure the audience received the full power and impact of the performances, Loto Audo supplied a complete Funktion-One Vero sound system. The system garnered praise from all the acts’ FOH engineers - providing proof positive of Vero’s abilities across all genres of music. For the opening act, Lack of Remorse, FOH duties fell to Hugo Garzon - one of the most sought-after sound engineers for metal rock bands in Mexico. Garzon comments: “I
UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) has supplied a new stage lighting rig for the indigo at The O2, a live entertainment sister-venue to The O2 Arena which regularly hosts exclusive after-show performances by superstar artists, including Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and Prince. The 2,800 capacity venue has established itself as one of the Capital's most popular settings for big events on a smaller scale, hosting live music gigs; after-show parties; sports and club nights; stand-up shows including Jimmy Carr; and TV events such as the British Comedy Awards and the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards. With such an impressive roster of artists using its production facilities, when the stage lighting rig was in need of an upgrade after 12 years of service, indigo at The O2's technical manager, Rob Burrows needed a system which was nothing less than cutting-edge to satisfy cli
