Europe - Two years ago, after Thomson Cruises (part of TUI) had rebranded to Marella Cruises, the instigation of a refurbishment programme of the fleet saw UK technology company tedav (part of The Entertainment Department), awarded a long term contract to provide entertainment and comms systems, starting with the conversion of Mein Schiff 1 to the Marella Explorer luxury ship. Audio and networking components deployed through the many entertainment spaces and general deck areas were sourced from the Harman Professional Solutions catalogue via UK distributor Sound Technology. tedav’s successful audio design template - along with the addition of Martin from Harman lighting - was adopted and expanded when the company returned to Navantia Cadiz Shipyard in Spain 12 months later to begin work on their second project - the Marella Explorer 2. And with technology having move
USA - Rapper Logic toured 26 cities across North America this fall on his The Confessions of a Dangerous Mind tour with lighting design by Mitchell Schellenger and lighting supply by Volt Lites of Burbank, California. Schellenger employed a rig of Elation Professional Artiste Monet moving heads as the workhorse fixture in his design and says the powerful, multi-purpose LED profile was just what he was looking for. Schellenger had visited the Volt Lites shop in LA to demo the Monet and found the fixture’s multiple capabilities to his liking. “I didn’t want to use the typical wash, profile, beam configuration,” he says. “I wanted this to be a simplified look and by doing so I needed a fixture that was capable of doing a lot of things with the power and capacity to light the entire show from above. The Monet just made perfect sense.” On the Logic show,
Austria - An Allen & Heath dLive mixing system recently provided audio support for the 200th anniversary of one of the leading financial institutions in Europe, Erste Bank. Held at the Wiener Stadthalle, the event saw more than 12,000 in attendance and with nearly 80 musicians performing, including an orchestra, big band and choir, the event presented several challenges, requiring several mixing consoles with the ability to handle over 120 inputs and 44 monitor outputs to both wedges and IEMs. Additionally, an extensive Dante network was used for shared access to wedges and wireless systems, track playback via DAW and connections to the main PA. Supplied by live production company, Habegger Austria, FOH comprised a dLive S5000 surface equipped with a Dante card for stem playback and PA feeds, and a DM32 MixRack fitted with a gigaACE card for the digital split to th
Italy - The Parma Città Della Musica festival is new, but its Romanesque setting was decidedly historic. Set in the Parco della Citadella of this ancient northern Italian city, the festival’s inaugural edition had the walls of a 16th century citadel serve as the backdrop for its stage. Accenting this setting was evocative lighting from over 60 Chauvet Professional Maverick fixtures supplied by Fumasoli Audio and Lights Rental. Gustavo Boetti, lighting manager for Fumasoli, built the lighting rig with the evocative nature of the festival’s setting firmly in mind. His goal: create a rig that would lend itself to theatrical looks. The lighting designers for the festival’s co-headliners, pop icon Antonello Venditti and Italian rap star Salmo, both made use of his rig to support their clients with compelling scenic panoramas on stage. Utilising deep pools of light
UK - For the UK tour marking the 40th anniversary of Gary Numan’s career as a solo artist, lighting designer Luke Edwards called on the power and clarity of the VL2600 Profile luminaire from Vari-Lite. The tour, which completed at the end of October, played 24 UK venues. “Although this tour was to celebrate the fact that Gary has been touring for 40 years, he is still very much an artist in the present,” says Edwards. “So we’re using the newest technology, with a large video wall and stage set design for the size of venues we are playing.” Placed on tiered risers upstage, 14 VL2600 Profile fixtures created strong gobo looks through the band, as well as beam and mid-air effects. “I was looking primarily for brightness and clarity, which the VL2600 Profile handles particularly well,” he explains. “I would have thought they were a discharge lamp source,
South Korea - The largest jazz festival in East Asia has selected Amadeus’ newest speaker Series including Diva M², Maestro II, as well as bespoke stage monitors which are to be released in 2020. SSL Live L500 consoles were featured at the event as well. Jarasum Festival has hosted over 2m attendees since its inception in 2004 and featured performers from 55 countries on its stage. Over 200,000 spectators attended the 16th Jarasum Jazz Festival in October. Elan Tech is the South Korea-based production company in charge of both sound equipment and technical production for the event. Located in the Gapyeong region, northeast of Seoul, the festival site is an island surrounded by a beautiful city near the mountains and the banks of the Bukhan River. The yearly three-day festival features all types of jazz including swing, fusion, bossa nova, bebop, as well as world mus
UK - Light Fantastic Production Services once again supported CoppaFeel with a full production package as well as taking on the overall production management mantle for Festifeel 2019. The work being done by CoppaFeel raises awareness of the signs and symptoms of breast cancer particularly amongst young people. Held at House of Vans London, deep within the arches below Waterloo Station, Festifeel is the charity’s annual music and comedy festival that flies the flag for the work they do and highlights the help they provide. Having provided a full production package, including lighting, audio, rigging and video, LFPS transformed the underground venue with a vibrant, creative mix of colour and projections throughout the urban interior. The lively look provided an appropriate backdrop to a host of musical performances that included Bombay Bicycle Club, James Bay a
USA - ZZ Top recently wrapped up a tour celebrating their 50th year as a band with a lighting package provided by Bandit Lites. Comprised of Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard and Dusty Hill, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band formed in 1969 and have sold more than 50m albums worldwide Lighting designer John Lucksinger conceived a classic par can rig made up of moving lights to give the band the authentic rock look of yester-years. “It’s been a fun time,” says Lucksinger. “Three guys on stage. No real frills. Just guys playing great music. It has been different in that the last few tours I was behind the console for where we had a lot of trucks, huge video walls, and lots of lights. This is just a plain and simple rock show. The band doesn’t like movement in the lighting, so the show is mostly big rock looks with hits of lights and colour chases. I’m just trying
Italy - At the Vittoriale degli Italiani (The Shrine of Italian Victories) it is possible to discover the bow of the Puglia cruise ship immersed in the promontory in the middle of the trees. There is also a MAS 96 anti-submarine motorboat used for the Beffa di Buccari (a military raid led by D'Annunzio in the Croatian bay of Bakar), as well as the poet's cars and the SVA biplane used in 1918 for his propaganda flight to Vienna. Overlooking the Garda Lake is the spectacular amphitheatre with about 1500 seats, designed to replicate the ancient structure of a Greek amphitheatre in a seductive setting, surrounded by the Alps. Architect Gian Carlo Maroni was sent to Pompeii to study the Greek theatre and began work in 1934, completing the building after the poet's death in 1952. In the summer months, the theatre manages a prestigious season of shows, including Tener-a-Men
USA - Building on the momentum of last year’s inaugural event, the West Coast Music Festival treated fans to a star-studded line up of hip-hop, DJ and rap artists this fall. Headlining the festival at Tucson’s Mercado district was Ice Cube. Supporting the festival, was a punchy and flexible light show created by John Garberson and his team at Creative BackStage that featured Chauvet Professional fixtures. “We built our design around a large video wall,” says Garberson. “Inter Technologies, supplied the screen and hired us to do the lighting. The wall displayed some iconic images for Ice Cube. We needed lights that would stand up to the bright wall and provide colour and movement to energize the looks for Ice Cube’s show. We also needed the fixtures to be flexible enough to create distinctive looks that reflected the music of the other artists.” Garberson
South Africa - The Joburg Zoo Festival of Lights, held in partnership with the Joburg Theatre and the City of Johannesburg, has transformed the city’s zoological gardens into a night-time wonderland for both young and old this festive season. Many of the trees at Joburg Zoo are more than a hundred years old and contribute to the city’s magnificent forest canopy. The Festival of Lights pays homage to these majestic forest giants by bathing them in light over the festive season for all to enjoy. Johnny Scholtz, architectural lighting specialist at DWR Distribution, worked with Joburg Zoo management and the City of Johannesburg to come up with a design for the temporary installation of lighting fixtures and audio equipment for this year’s festival. “There were a number of factors that we needed to take into consideration, such as the sheer size of th
UK - Hawkwind celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, releasing their 32nd album and embarking on a tour that culminated in a sold-out show at London’s Royal Albert Hall in November, supported by an Allen & Heath dLive mixing system. With special guests including Eric Clapton and Motörhead’s Phil Campbell joining the band on stage along the way, the tour saw long-time Hawkwind FOH engineer Rik Elliss behind the dLive surface. “I’ve been an Allen & Heath fan for many years and the dLive is my go-to system these days, both for my own engineering duties and for my rental company Audioworx,” explains Elliss. “For this tour I’ve been using the S5000 surface with a DM64 MixRack at FOH. The MixRack is also fitted with a Dante card, which is used for recording several of the shows.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hawkwind’s dense, layered sound provides
Columbia - Juan Luis Guerra recently kicked off his 2019 Literal Juan Luis Guerra 4.40 Tour Grandes Éxitos with a complete Robe specification for the lighting rig, which has been designed by Daniel Charif and is being operated and directed on the road by Emmanuel Ferry, who also programmed. The three-time Grammy and 21-time Latin Grammy award-winning artist, musician, singer, composer and record producer has sold over 70m records worldwide and is one of the most internationally recognised Dominican artists. His signature merengue / Afro-Latin fusion style has been distinctive, popular and successful, and for this tour he is playing alongside his band, 440, creating a diverse mix of sounds in an entertaining live show. Bogota’s new Movistar Arena provided the second stop on the tour, The show was completely sold-out with the majority of the Robe moving lights supplie
UK - A large pyramid-shaped scenic element defined the stage in the British Theatre Academy’s recent production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at London’s Compass Theatre. The pyramid succeeded in conveying a sense of time and place, but thanks to a collaboration between the BTA’s artistic director Dean Johnson and lighting designer Andrew Exeter, it also did much more. Constructed with six Chauvet Professional COLORdash Batten-Quad-12 fixtures, supplied by T&B Events, the distinctive triangular structure was used to create a flowing wave of colour changes that accentuated the powerful current of emotions running through this story of hope, betrayal, courage, and redemption. “Dean and I have worked together on many projects,” says Exeter. “His concept for the set in this production called for having this giant pyramid act
UK - White Light has supplied the lighting equipment for [BLANK] which recently ran at the Donmar Warehouse. [BLANK] is a theatrical provocation, which marks 40 years of Clean Break, a theatre company that works with women affected by the criminal justice system. Featuring over 100 unnamed scenes, [BLANK] sees the director Maria Aberg choose 30 of these in order to create the production. Featuring an all-female cast and creative team, the show has a lighting design by Jess Bernberg, who comments: “After attending meetings with Maria and Rosie Elnile (set designer), we came to the decision to keep the aesthetic quite open. Whilst part of Rosie’s inspiration for the set was mother and baby units in women’s prison, we didn’t want to create any literal space, instead choosing practical lights to break up the space and adding a sense of uniform
Denmark - Dynaudio recently constructed two fully equipped recording studios within shipping containers (one in Europe and one in the USA), installed professional producers in each and took them on the road. Unheard is Dynaudio’s mission to give something back. The company believes that not enough artists are getting a fair chance, so they created the pop-up studios to help redress the balance. The Unheard studios have been travelling the world, visiting shows and festivals and allowing unknowns the chance to record and take away their tracks. The glass-fronted containers allow the process to be shared with an audience, entertaining them as well as providing an insight into professional music-Dynaudio’s Unheard studios have been travelling the world, visiting shows and festivals making. Midem and NAMM are two of the high-profile events that Unheard has recently visited.
USA - Premier Productions recently wrapped a special 2019 USA arena tour featuring multi-platinum-selling artists Casting Crowns, Hillsong Worship and Elevation Worship. Bandit Lites provided the lighting for the concert series as each evening showcased the three acts as they gathered their fan bases for a night of worship and praise. “It takes teamwork to pull off a show of this nature and I must say each individual involved worked together in tandem to make this show look easy and beautiful,” said Bandit Lites vice president Mike Golden. “I had the pleasure of working with production manager Cory Edwards for the first time and I was extremely impressed with his professional, confident demeanour. Putting a show of this magnitude together with three very high-profile acts requires attention to detail as well as being able to adjust on the fly. Cory guided the ship on
Europe - Lithuania system integrator TVC has completed construction of an OB Trailer for Norwegian public broadcaster NRK around a Lawo IP audio infrastructure, including mc²56 mixing console, A__UHD Processing Engine and VSM control. The new vehicle with advanced equipment is an investment for NRK’s ambitious future productions and is part of a technological standardisation within the broadcast production facilities and mobile studios as NRK already uses mc² consoles in their concert hall and for news program productions. The 13.6m-long single-side expansion (4.15m expanded), 26-tonne NRK OB24 features a large interior space with 24 dedicated workplaces, high levels of both sound and heat insulation, automatic preparation for operation and transportation, and easy maintenance and reliability. It features two production rooms, slow-motion operator’s row, camera c
USA - Sandwiched between Silver Lake and Angelino Heights, Echo Park has emerged as one of the most happening neighbourhoods in LA. Home to prospering and aspiring artists, writers, and musicians, it celebrates its community culture each year with Echo Park Rising, a sprawling festival which was recently named ‘Best Music Festival' by LA Weekly. This year the event’s main Liberty Stage relied upon control provided by Allen & Heath dLive S5000 and C1500 control surfaces supported respectively by the processing and networking power of DM48 and CDM32 MixRack systems. Standing at the confluence of Liberty and Reservoir Streets, the Liberty Stage featured a plethora of bands including many of the festival’s must-see acts. “The level of activity at Liberty Stage can best be described as that which you’d expect from what just may be the ultimate block party,”
USA - Red Rocks Amphitheatre has attracted the attention of some of the greatest musical acts in the world since 1941. Everyone from The Beatles and the Rolling Stones to U2, James Taylor, and the Eagles has played Red Rocks. Nestled just outside of Denver, Colorado in the tiny town of Morrison, where the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains, two giant rocks jut out from the earth creating an open-air performance venue that is nearly acoustically perfect. These monoliths not only create the perfect natural sound stage, but also provide a mesmerizing background for some impressive lighting effects. In the spring of 2019, Barbizon Light of the Rockies completed the installation and programming of an upgraded lighting package at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Until 2019, large 400 W mercury-vapor lights lit the historic rocks and eight outdoor PAR 64s lit the audience.
France - The eyes of the global gaming community were focused on the spectacular final of Riot Games’ League of Legends World Championship in November as teams battled to be crowned the 2019 winners. An estimated 100m people live streamed the tournament, with a capacity 20,000 in attendance at the AccorHotels Arena in Paris. With due modesty, Riot Games CEO Nicolo Laurent described the final as “the biggest event in the history of esports”. A grand opening ceremony kickstarted proceedings, with new projection technology simulating immersive holographs interacting with real-life singers and dancers. TSL Lighting worked with production company Concom and lighting designers Arnold Serame of Serame Design and LeRoy Bennett of Seven Design Works to supply, deliver and man a full lighting and control system comprising more than 1,000 fixtures. Eight trucks
Germany - From 4-10 November, Berlin was transformed into an open-air exhibition and event venue as part of a large-scale festival. Used to illuminate a 150m long artistic Skynet along Straße des 17. Juni, as well as a large festival-ending stage show at Brandenburg Gate, were Elation weatherproof Proteus and Paladin series luminaires. celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall The city honoured the peaceful revolution of the autumn of 1989 with numerous exhibitions, events and art projects. One of the most interesting was a Skynet of approximately 120,000 ultra-light, partially reflective flags onto which 30,000 people from all over the world had inscribed with handwritten messages and memories of the events of 30 years ago. Installed on behalf of the Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH, the Skynet was the creation of Patrick Shearn and his team at the American
Robe equipment was chosen to be part of a new permanent multimedia spectacular, From Dusk to Dawn, which is projected onto the western slope of Masada Mountain near the Dead Sea in Israel. The area is operated by Israel Nature and Parks, a government organisation that manages nature reserves and national parks across the country. This environment is also a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site. Robe BMFL Blades and IP rated Robe ColorStrobes are now a main part of the light show designed by Eran Klein & Ben Alon from Cochavi & Klein light architects which supports the new large format (approx. 120m wide and 60m high) video images which are mapped onto the mountain’s rugged terrain. The lighting supports the moving images and the narrative as it covers this vast canvass with a series of special lighting and effects, complete with a dramatic soundtrack
UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) has supplied Dynamic Audio Device (D.A.D.) loudspeakers to The Point venue in Eastleigh, to deliver high-fidelity performance for its annual programme of outdoor events and other offsite activities. The Point attracts British & international artists in contemporary dance, theatre, comedy & film. In 2015 it became one of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations - recognising its cultural importance to the creative community. Each year The Point’s outdoor pop-up live music, festival, cinema & family events are held in the venue’s grounds and nearby public spaces, bringing together the local and creative communities. When the venue’s technical manager, Tim Slater was looking to invest in new PA loudspeakers for future outdoor events, he contacted Steve Eaton, sales executive in AC-ET’s
![BLANK] played to sell out audiences at the Donmar Warehouse (photo: Helen Maybanks)](/images/118680/blank-1-helen-maybanks-tn.jpg "BLANK] played to sell out audiences at the Donmar Warehouse (photo: Helen Maybanks)")
