USA - The Setnor School of Music is located in Crouse College on Syracuse University’s main campus. Built in 1889, Crouse College is one of the oldest buildings on campus, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. This year, the college is taking a big step into the future with three Rupert Neve Designs RMP-D8 Dante-connected microphone preamps and converters provided by Sweetwater Sound with the intention of providing high-quality recording capabilities to the entire campus. “We don’t have to worry about 200ft of analogue copper running upstairs from the closet,” says Kevin Muldoon, recording engineer at Setnor. “We can run all our microphone inputs through it, and we’ll have the ability to send signal to the live board, to the recording, to the stream, everything.” With the three RMP-D8s providing a total of 24 channels of class-A microp
USA - The Knoxville Museum of Art held the 17th annual L’Amour du Vin, its primary fundraising event that features a wine dinner and auction. The soiree took place on 7 March, and Bandit Lites donated a lighting system for the event, lighting spaces ranging from the façade of the museum to multiple interior spaces and the tents into the gardens. “For these locations, we chose the Chauvet Freedom Par Quad-4 IP,” said Bandit Lites general manager Giff Swart, noting that most of the spaces had limited power available. “Another advantage of the Freedom Par is that they can be controlled wirelessly, and this keeps cables from cluttering the floor and creating trip-hazards.” “As an event planner and designer, I can attest that few other event elements have the same impact as lighting,” said event designer Carla May Paré. “It has the power to transform an e
UK - When forming special effects company, Encore SFX, George Baker and Anthony Earles, both of whom have many years’ experience in senior roles in the SFX business, decided to invest in the highest quality special effect products available, and knew exactly which company and products they wanted to partner with. “We needed great products from a reliable company who could offer not just the quality but the essential support required, and immediately thought of MDG,” says Baker. The company purchased four MDG Ice Fog Q HP low fog generators with DMX interfaces, and four pneumatic Round Floor Pockets with remote control boxes. The Ice Fog Q HP produces a thick, low-lying fog with zero residue. The award-winning Round Floor Pocket is DMX/RDM operated and can be embedded in the stage floor or set wall to conceal a fog output and deliver low fog or fog to precise lo
China - Shanghai, a metropolis with a population of more than 24 million people, has a new venue - Club Beehive. Two Eindhoven-based design companies were behind its design: multidisciplinary design studio, 250K, created the Beehive concept and commissioned The Art of Light to come up with an equally stunning lighting design for this new club venue. The partnership follows a successful first collaboration for Club Myst in Suzhou, west of Shanghai. In keeping with the Beehive theme, Mees Bouman, 250K’s set designer, developed a concept based around a tornado of hexagon shapes arrayed in a honeycomb design. An organic, tree-shaped centrepiece is sited behind the DJ booth which, in turn, is flanked by curved LED screens. The honeycomb theme is repeated throughout the entire club interior as well as across the set design and décor. The honeycombs spread up and out abov
Germany - James Blunt’s concert at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg planned as one highlight in the Telekom Street Gig series was heavily affected by the spread of the coronavirus. Respecting the demands of the coronavirus outbreak, but not wanting to disappoint invited fans and viewers, Telekom and James Blunt took the decision to continue with the concert - but to perform to an empty hall and stream the concert to the public. With Telekom already commissioning Peter Brandt and his team at Remote Recording Network to mix and record the concert, the current changes meant only minor adjustments to the production. The company has been handling the sound for the Telekom Street Gigs since 2007. To ensure the recording of the concert in excellent studio quality, Peter Brandt relied on remote mixing and his Remote Mix Room in Cologne, 400 km away from Hamburg. For on-site co
USA - Expectations were high when metal band Code Orange announced plans for their Underneath album release party. The excitement level for Sam Jimenez, their new 20-year old lighting designer and production designer was “through the roof”. Describing himself as an “extreme fan” of the band, Jimenez had sent unsolicited renderings months earlier to Eric ‘Shade’ Balderose, their keyboardist and content creator, offering his design services. Shade in turn shared them with Reba Meyers, the band’s guitarist and production manager. The dream came true! Jimenez was brought on by the band. Everything was all set, with the album release party slated for 14 March at the Roxian Theatre outside the band’s hometown of Pittsburgh. Then, just like that, everything was shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. But, with one door slammed shut, the Code Oran
USA - Céline Dion recently brought the curtain down on her residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas after more than 1,100 sold-out performances and embarked on a 12-month tour in support of her Courage album. Solotech has provided sound, lighting, video and rigging - everything except the stage - for the Courage World Tour, including multiple Solid State Logic Live L550 digital mixing consoles, one at front-of-house and two at monitors. Denis Savage, who has been Dion’s tour manager and FOH engineer for several decades, began using SSL’s Live series desk at Caesars Palace in 2013. But this tour has provided the opportunity to implement some changes that have further enhanced the performance of all three consoles on the production, he says. “Just before Christmas we switched everything to 96 kHz and the difference was incredible. Everythin
USA - Every year since 1996, Dropkick Murphys in Boston has marked St. Patrick’s Day with rollicking live performances of their irrepressible blend of Celtic, punk and rock music. This year was no different . . . almost! Given the prohibition on large public gatherings due to the coronavirus crisis, the band went digital to reach their fans on the day of Ireland’s patron saint, performing a livestreamed show. Sent out over four platforms - Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Twitch - the show was seen by over 10m fans, making it one of the most viewed livestreamed concerts in history. Lighting designer Brian Lareau conveyed the energy and excitement of a Dropkick Murphys live music venue performance with a fast moving and green-tinged lightshow that featured over 100 Chauvet Professional fixtures and video panels designed and supplied by Derry, NH-based Events United,
UK - G-SMATT has announced the launch of the P20 smart LED glass panel for displaying engaging media content in a high-definition, mobile format. Known for their innovative media glass that transforms glass facades of any type into a vast, interactive visual media canvas, G-SMATT technology has brought entire buildings to life. With the introduction of the P20, G-SMATT offers a scalable, mobile solution suitable for both interior and exterior use in a variety of formats. The freestanding P20 units are constructed from best-in-class architectural laminated safety glass that can be used for internal partitions. Offering the best definition yet of any G-SMATT product, the 20mm pitch P20 delivers extremely high light transmittance due to its ability to drive current through transparent laser etching on FTO glass, and still maintains an impressive 99.7% transparency. With t
USA - Danley Sound Labs, designer and manufacturer of unconventional loudspeakers and subwoofers, has announced that it has taken appropriate measures to work within the parameters of the new normal created by the onset of the COVID-19 virus. “At Danley, our priority has always been to create and supply unique loudspeakers coupled with dedicated and honest customer support and service,” says Jeff Pulliam, general manager at Danley Sound Labs. “We have now implemented measures to ensure the health and welfare of all our employees. However, as Danley builds its products in low-density production facilities in Georgia and North Carolina, we have the capability of providing many of our products during this unprecedented time. Our OS, GO2 and Nano lines are readily available. Wooden products will take a little longer. “As many members of our team, including our engi
Australia - In February, it rained relentlessly for the final gig of Australian pub-rock band Cold Chisel’s 2020 tour at Sirromet Winery just outside Brisbane in Queensland. This welcomed meteorological miracle capped an emotional evening and helped to finally extinguish most of the remaining fires raging from Australia’s disastrous 2019/20 bushfires, leaving the land a scorched reminder to the need for urgent climate change action. The tour’s lighting was designed by Cold Chisel’s long term LD Jeff Pavey who put Robe moving lights at the centre of the ‘big rock look’ he crafted for one of Australia’s best-loved bands whose prolific career has spanned five decades. Defining the look onstage were 40 Robe MegaPointes and 11 x BMFL Blades supplied by Gold Coast rental company Creative Productions, together with LED wash lights, weatherised beam lights, 2-li
USA - Dallas-based live event and brand experience company Freeman has made a major investment in Ayrton Ghibli LED profile spot luminaires. Almost immediately following the purchase, the Ghibli fixtures were used to light booths and corporate events at CES 2020 in the Las Vegas Conference Centre. Ayrton is distributed exclusively in North America by ACT Lighting. Like many of ACT Lighting’s customers, Freeman needed LED profiles that suited myriad environments. To highlight its products, ACT Lighting staged a shootout pitting its Ghibli units against other competitive LED products for Freeman designers at the Dallas headquarters. “We spent a year looking for the best and newest technology to offer our clients,” says John Leonard, national director of lighting services at Freeman. “These lights fit all our parameters: size, output, power consumption, and the b
USA - Rock band Alter Bridge wrapped up a four-week tour of U.S. cities in late February with lighting designer Joshua Light directing a Bandit Lites-supplied lighting system that included Elation’s Smarty Hybrid moving head. Light adopted key aspects of a design created by the late Joe Eager for the band’s 2019 European tour, a large five-truck show that included profile and beam fixtures. For the US tour’s trimmed set-up however (the band has always been more popular in Europe), Light needed a more compact package and combining fixture types in a single hybrid fixture was the way to go. “I was looking for something that could replace the profile and beam fixtures of the earlier tour,” Light said, “a hybrid light that could handle all the work of those two fixtures yet didn’t have the hotspot that other hybrids on the market have. My original fix
USA - The Posty Fest, rapper Post Malone’s second annual live music festival held 2 November in his hometown of Dallas, marked the first use of Claypaky’s Xtylos in the United States. Creative directors and designers Lewis James and Travis Brothers tapped 178 Xtylos fixtures for the event. The fixtures were utilised in conjunction with Production Resource Group (PRG), which was the lighting vendor for the production. The show also utilised 52 Claypaky Mythos 2 and 24 Claypaky Scenius Unico fixtures for the extensive lighting rig in the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas Post Malone hosted and headlined the festival whose guest line up included Meek Mill, Pharrell Williams and Jaden Smith. Malone is currently on a North America arena tour in support of his latest album, Hollywood’s Bleeding, his second No. 1 album on the Billboard 200. The show was
Finland - Wasa Teater is one of Finland’s oldest performing arts centres. Located in Vaasa on the west coast of Finland, it marked its recent centenary with an extensive makeover, updating everything from floors, walls and ceilings to the auditorium and air conditioning. The overhaul included new sound and lighting systems, with the technical refit including loudspeakers, amplifiers, mixing desks and microphones. The theatre team chose L-Acoustics Finnish certified provider distributor Audico as the contractor, which was responsible for design, installation, commissioning, programming and training. The starting point for the project, as specified by technical director for the theatre, Mats Antell, was to get the best possible sound system for the house and to ensure that its needs were met for the coming years. "Immersive sound is the hottest topic in the indu
USA - In last few years, the people of Dublin, GA on the banks of the Oconee River built its annual gala around the theme of ‘Into the Future’. Playing on this concept, John Berret of Quest Sound & Productions energised the event with celestial space exploration images that would have been right at home in a Star Wars style movie. Aiding him in this endeavour was a collection of Chauvet Professional Rogue and COLORado fixtures. “We wanted to create the look of a sci-fi movie that makes people feel excited about the future,” said Berret, who ran his lights with a ChamSys PC Wing and Extra Wing. “This was the kind of mood that the client wanted to convey, with deeply saturated colors combined in ways that suggested deep space.” Drawing on the independently controlled eight-facet prism of the eight Rogue R1 Beam fixtures in his rig, Berret cre
Japan - To ensure detailed sound with balanced, even coverage throughout Brex Arena Utsunomiya, Hibino Corporation deployed a networked audio solution from JBL Professional. Constructed in 1979, Brex Arena is Utsunomiya’s premier stadium and gymnasium. Home to the Utsunomiya Brex, a Japanese professional basketball team on the B.League, Brex Arena features two gyms with courts for basketball, table tennis, volleyball and badminton, as well as a dedicated space for practicing martial arts. To provide additional sound coverage for professional basketball games, Brex Arena was renting temporary loudspeakers to supplement their aging sound system for each event. Deciding it would be more cost-effective and significantly improve sound quality to upgrade the system, Brex Arena hired AV integrators Hibino Corporation to install a modern JBL Professional networked audio sol
Norway - In 2019, 35 years after their debut album Hunting High and Low made them global stars, Norwegian pop act A-ha set off on a world tour (see LSi December 2019 for a full production report), playing the album in its entirety alongside more of the band’s hits. In February, the 2020 leg of the tour kicked off at the Nordlandshallen in Bodø, where an Alcons Audio LR18 pro-ribbon compact mid-size line-array impressed fans as well as the band’s live sound engineer. Gøran Aamodt - who promotes Bodø’s annual Parkenfestivalen and other events in the north Norway town - wanted an audio system and supplier that he could trust would deliver at the top level. Gøran has a close working relationship with audio
Russia - Feduk, a young Russian hip-hop singer, recently wowed fans at Moscow’s Adrenaline Stadium, presenting his new concert programme, One Love, in support of his new album. Feduk prepared a number of surprises, including a completely new visual show that was developed and implemented by Alexey Zhuravlev and Anton Orlov, lighting designers from gst.moscow, who took full advantage of the creative potential of GLP’s award-winning LED fixtures. The creative team had been invited onto the project by Dmitry Yakovlevsky, the concert producer. Right from the outset all three men had reached a common understanding of the visual component, and the main concept of the show. They merely had to further refine their concept in order to implement it on stage. The centrepiece of the scenography consisted of three vertical screens, visually extended by the powerful arra
UK - The Silverstone Experience is an immersive visitor attraction at the famous motorsport circuit in Northamptonshire. Developed over a seven year period at a cost of £20m, the Experience opened its doors to the public in 2019 and features a host of artefacts that help to tell the exciting tale of motor sport at Silverstone. Located inside a former World War Two aircraft hangar, the attraction welcomes a wide range of visitors, from school parties to lifelong motor sport enthusiasts, taking them on an experiential, educational journey. The Ultimate Lap is one of the 10 elements that comprise the Experience tour and delivers an exhilarating end to a visitor’s day. Key to the success of this special-effects cinema is the audio provision, which complements startling visuals to immerse the occupants of its forty-five seats in the recreation of some of the circuit’s
UK - Celebrating a decade of terrifying people worldwide, Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s cult horror phenomenon Ghost Stories returned to the Lyric in Hammersmith last April (see LSi March for more on the audio aspects of the production). On a nationwide tour following a triumphal return to the West End in October, the new production took advantage of advances in theatrical technology to increase the tension to almost unbearable levels. Sound designer, Nick Manning remained faithful to his original choice of EM Acoustics, but this time with the addition of EM’s newest product, the Reference Series R10. “Sound is such a critical part of how stories are told,” reflects Manning. “The use of sound to
USA - Vheissu was the fourth of California quartet Thrice’s 10 albums to date. It not only redefined the band with its deeply introspective, brooding sound, but also influenced an entire style of alt rock music. On the US tour celebrating the 15th anniversary of the seminal LP, which concluded 29 February with a show at The Novo in Los Angeles, Lenny Sasso reflected the mood of Vheissu in all its complexity with an evocative lightshow marked by beguiling silhouettes and unexpected angles of backlighting. Helping him create these looks was a versatile touring rig that featured Chauvet Professional Maverick MK2 Spot fixtures supplied by Squeek Lights. Positioning five of the 440W LED fixtures across the deck behind the band, he used them to light the artists from ground level angles, suggestive of the “underworld” tones of the ancient Vheissu legend.
Portugal - Beauty and cosmetics giant, L’Oréal, has established L’Oréal Academies across the world to train hairdressers in the latest techniques and trends, and on how to utilise the latest L’Oréal products. One of the most recent academies is situated in the vibrant Portuguese capital of Lisbon. Thanks to integration specialists, Garrett Audiovisuais, the L’Oréal Academy, Lisbon, has become the group’s first digital academy, and the first to deploy Genelec loudspeakers throughout their training rooms. “Previously L’Oréal used to rent in equipment for all of their events,” explains Garrett’s Carlos Melo who was closely involved in the project. “However, after discussions with us, they decided that it would be better to have their own in-house solution rather than having to rely on external AV companies, as it would be cheaper in the long term
UK - In early March leading artists came together to put on a benefit concert at London’s The O2 Arena to raise vital funds for The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. Sir Tom Jones, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Tyler and Van Morrison were amongst a formidable line up that took to the stage performing their greatest hits, raising close to one million pounds for The Royal Marsden’s new treatment and research facility; the Oak Cancer Centre in Sutton, Surrey. To complement the star-studded benefit, video rental company Universal Pixels (UP) deployed Brompton Technology’s LED processing power to provide a visually stunning show. Tasked with realising the project, UP chose Brompton's Tessera SX40 processor together with Tessera XD data distribution units to achieve the ambitious concept. UP provided 152.5m2 of INFiLED ER5 LED tiles, which comprised five upstage totem LED screens,
