Israel - Singer-songwriter Hanan Ben-Ari is currently one of the most popular artists in a country replete with singing talent, and his new tour has just started, complete with a lively and dynamic visual design by Nesi Alfasi, who has included 12 x Robe MegaPointes at the core of the lighting rig. These are being supplied to the tour by rental company Mega Kol based in Rosh Hayain and headed by Zvika Refaelovich, which has been involved with the artist as an equipment vendor since last year and has worked with LD Nesi for many years on assorted projects. Hanan Ben-Ari's tour features a 3m diameter circular LED surface upstage made up of over 3,000 smart pixels in strips which are mapped into a series of different shapes and graphic effects throughout the set, providing a digital element that is different from a standard video playback screen. Eight of the MegaPo
UK - With less than a month to go until The Showman’s Show 2019 returns to Newbury Showground on 16-17 October, organiser Lance Show & Publications has announced that this year’s event is promising a strong contingent of international exhibitors who’ll be launching products that are new to the UK market. From a welfare perspective there’s the innovative new Lapee, it’s been created specifically for the female market, the new design, utilises the same manufacturing process as the traditional grey kros urinal, ensuring that it can be transported, maintained and cleaned in the same way. It is also stackable, to reduce carbon emissions due to transportation. In its first season, Lapee has been adopted by all largest festivals in Denmark, including Roskilde and made inroads into the French and Norwigian markets. From a production perspective, Kultour, the Ge
Czech Republic - Let It Roll is one of the world's leading drum ‘n’ bass festivals, attracting tens of thousands of ravers for a weekend at an old military airport near Prague. The event started in 2002 and by 2008 turned it had turned into a large-scale outdoor festival. A few years back, the organisers approached Slovakia-based Kvant Lasers for some ideas and solutions and the company soon became a supplier of laser displays and other multimedia and visual elements. Each year the festival production spends a big part of resources on the main stage, with Kvant Show Production supplying six Spectrum 20 full-colour laser display systems for the atmospheric effect and two LD 30 Spectrum units for the laser mapping of the spacecraft-shaped main stage this year. The
USA - In a recent production of the Alan Menken-Jack Feldman Tony Award winning musical Newsies at Pittsburgh’s State Theatre, Amanda Frazier helped call forth the play’s historic context by accentuating its evocative scenic elements with a vivid lighting design that featured Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied by Vincent Lighting. Working with Noland Jenkins, production manager of Vincent Lighting Systems, Frazier selected 15 Rogue R2 Washes for her rig. She used nine of the RGBW moving fixtures for top lighting, and six for side lighting. Drawing on the colour rendering capabilities of the Rogue units, she subtly shifted palettes throughout the play to reflect different scenes, all while underscoring the turn-of-the-century New York setting. “I assigned colours to absolute moods as themes,” says Frazier. “I went with lavenders and ambers for dream
Thailand - To deliver clear, intelligible sound for sporting events, live performances and more, Mahajak Development Co recently deployed a networked AV system at Ratchaburi Provincial Stadium. With over 10,000 seats, Ratchaburi Provincial Stadium is Thailand’s premier live event facility for sporting events, performances and more. The venue recently hired Mahajak Development to upgrade their existing sound system with a comprehensive Harman Professional Solutions networked AV system. “The customer requested an audio system that could deliver crystal-clear sound during speeches, live performances and other live events,” says Pongsakorn Kanchanachayphoom, project director, Mahajak Development Co. “Mounting a speaker on the roof of the stadium proved to be a bit of a challenge, as it needed to be specifically positioned for maximum impact throughout the seating a
South Africa - The Little Theatre, based at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, has upgraded to a grandMA3 light console as the theatre moves into its dance season, hosting various performances from ballet to contemporary. “Although our previous console served us well, it was over nine years old,” explains technical manager Leon Rossouw. “We were having issues with updating fixture libraries and the start-up time for the console was time-consuming. Software updates were no longer rolled out as the console had been discontinued a few years back already and some of the hardware was also giving me major hassles.” In 2010, the Little Theatre decided to focus on promoting theatres in schools and youth groups instead of being a money generating playhouse. While their main clientele consists of private dance studios, schools and drama groups they also host va
Spain - Electronics, lights and lots of dancing meet every year at Dreambeach in Villaricos where thousands of people gather for five days to enjoy one of the biggest musical shows in the country on the Main Stage and in the Dreams Tent. Lighting plays a leading role in electronic music events where the choice of fixtures is of paramount importance. For the last four years of Dreambeach, Eduardo Valverde from Pixelmap Studios has designed the scenarios with lighting supplied by the rental company Fluge. In his designs, the common factor is the construction of gigantic structures that create the illusion of being a temple of music. Among Valverde’s most recent credits are the stages of Love the Tuenti’s, Love the 90s, A Summer Story, HallowANTS and Red Bull Batalla de los Gallos festivals, among others. "In the case of the Dreams Tent at Dreambeach, the main c
UK - Italia Conti Academy is one of the world’s most recognisable names when it comes to performing arts education for secondary school and further education students. When Triple E were approached to supply ModTruss for one of the school’s recent productions it was an opportunity to support the young performers in more ways than one. Despite the short lead time of a month, Triple E worked with the school’s production team to provide a bespoke platform, stairs and handrails which formed a centrepiece of the stage set for the production of Life’s Just a Bowl of Conti’s for a one week run at Rhoda McGraw Theatre in Woking, Surrey. Amy Stevenson, production and stage manager at Italia Conti Academy comments, “We pride ourselves on the teaching and the production values here at Italia Conti and we only wanted the best for our students for their s
USA - During a 20-plus-year career, Gary Allan has sold over 8m albums. With a fan base that stretches around the world, the California-native is often out on the road showcasing his vocals in a raucous live performance. Readying now for the 2019 tour across North America, production designer Ben Shockley once again worked with the Nashville-based production provider Elite Multimedia Productions to supply a versatile and memorable LED video and lighting design. “As an artist, Gary typically tours all year long without a set schedule,” opens Shockley. “I have been with him for a little over two years now, and each year we try to bring something new. Since we will be playing a lot of the same venues each year, we have to have a fresh look to give the fans a slightly different experience each time.” Getting started on the new production design, Shockley understood
Mexico - Doble B is the latest nightspot in the Mexican tourist centre of Cancun. Open for lunch and then dinner as a sleek restaurant, after hours the venue transforms into a nightclub with help from more than 40 of ADJ’s professional LED-powered lighting fixtures. Attracting an up-market clientele looking for a sophisticated evening of dining, drinking and dancing, Doble B is the latest new venue to enhance Cancun’s vibrant nightlife scene. With an elegant interior design anchored by four custom-built chandeliers each featuring a myriad of tungsten-effect pixel-mapped lamps, the space features a large bar on one side and glass doors opening onto a terrace on the other. The well-established entertainment audio and lighting equipment installer Adimsa, headed up by director general Edson Rivera, was contracted to specify and install a versatile lighting system for t
UK - AV and entertainment technology company Anna Valley is the solution architect and technology provider for the mixed-reality ‘window on the world’ feature in ITV’s Rugby World Cup 2019 studio. The studio in Maidstone is the base from which the host broadcaster provides insight and analysis on the Rugby World Cup 2019 tournament, from the opening fixture on 20 September, through to the final on 2 November 2019. ITV’s Rugby World Cup 2019 studio combines live-action, augmented reality and mixed reality to provide a dynamic and engaging studio environment and the ITV Sport team enlisted a group of broadcast technology specialists, including Anna Valley, to collaborate on the technical design and delivery of the concept according to their specifications. The mixed-reality ‘window on the world’ element of the set created by Anna Valley uses high-resol
Germany - Colour Sound Experiment returned to the Olympiastadion in Berlin for the 2019 Lollapalooza festival where they were the lighting and LED screen supplier - plus all related sub-rigging - for the Perry’s (Dance) Stage. The West London-based technical specialist has been involved with the two-day event since 2015 when the Berlin edition of the popular music extravaganza started. It was the second year for Lolla Berlin at the Olympiapark site, and once again Perry’s Stage was inside the Stadium arena itself, where the line-up was headlined by Underworld on Saturday and Martin Garrix on Sundaysupported by Don Diablo, Scooter, TV Noise and others. Ricardo Lorenzini (crew chief) and Dave Ross led the Colour Sound crew, who sub hung three LX trusses from the roof plus four vertical tower trusses per side in the mid-stage area. Another lighting truss was rig
South Africa - Having congregated in the Barnyard Theatre in Rivonia, and filling the venue to its maximum capacity, the CRC Church started a 10-month project to build a new 6,000-seater church in Fourways. DWR Distribution supplied and installed lighting, audio and AV equipment for the church which opened earlier this year, ranging from a grandMA3 compact console, 64 Robe lighting fixtures, an Absen DWP3.9mm screen, Prolyte trussing, L-Acoustics Kara System and a DiGiCo SD12. The CRC Church led by Pastor At Boshoff, already has two branches in Bloemfontein, a massive auditorium in Pretoria and 90 satellite meeting points where services are broadcast each week. “Pastor At is a focused man,” says Robert Izzett of DWR, who headed the install. “He is very straight, honest and doesn’t mince his words.” While the CRC buildings are similar to each othe
USA - Vampire Weekend is currently touring North America in support of its fourth studio album, Father of the Bride. Much has changed over the past six years, when the band released its previous record, Modern Vampires of the City, but one thing that hasn’t is the group’s continued use of L-Acoustics loudspeakers for its touring PA. Serving as Vampire Weekend’s FOH engineer for over a decade, Neil Heal has long been a fan of the French manufacturer’s products. “L-Acoustics is simply one of the very best systems out there, and I love the scalability of K1, K2, and Kara all sounding consistently great and working together seamlessly,” he says. “We’re primarily using K2 mains and Kara out-fills on this tour, and I also love the fact that the arrays go down so low, frequency-wise, without ever being muddy. We could almost do shows without the subs,
USA - JMT Show Concepts is a specialist in media playback systems, providing rental and operation of solutions for concert touring, corporate events and various one-off special shows. For the past year or more, the company has been an owner of Green Hippo’s Hippotizer media servers. “When we were searching for new systems for JMT, our number one priority was stability - and we found it in Hippotizer,” says company owner, Jorge Toro. “One of the most amazing things about Hippotizer, which surprised me from day one, is how user-friendly and stable it is to use.” Impressed by Hippotizer’s reliability, as much as its advanced features and workflow, Toro decided to invest in Boreal+ and Karst+ systems running Hippotizer V4. HippoSchool training was delivered in Orlando by Green Hippo product specialist Cory Froke, and Toro took his new Hippotizers straight out t
USA - On 25 May, country music star Eric Church played a special show at Nissan Stadium in Nashville. The show was extraordinary in that it marked the first stadium headlining performance in Church's 15-year career and with 56,521 fans in attendance impressively broke Taylor Swift’s previous venue record. The show was special for another reason as well. The last date of an extended spring run on the artist’s Double Down tour, lighting and production designer Butch Allen specified 135 Elation Professional IP65 Proteus Hybrids to fill the stadium in beams and effects. The multi-functional weatherproof lights were an addition to a large lighting package that also included some 420 Elation ACL 360i single beam moving heads. “We chose the fixture as it was the last show of the spring leg, outdoors and a completely different show than we normally do,” says Allen of
Sweden - Elite Park Avenue hotel is one of Gothenburg’s premier establishments, and also hosts the At PARK restaurant, run by Michelin-starred chef, Stefan Karlsson. Specialist Uppsala-based AV, lighting and multimedia systems integrator, Kreativ Teknik, was commissioned to develop a complete solution including audio and lighting automation for the restaurant and bar, and they opted for Genelec installation loudspeakers. Kreativ Teknik’s Daniel Landmark comments: “Our first priority was sound quality. We needed to achieve smooth, even coverage and a balanced soundscape at low volumes that is pleasant to listen to without being aggressive or intrusive. However, the system is running almost 24 hours a day and, during the weekend, also needs to be able to run comfortably at high SPLs for several hours when the DJ is in residence. We required a high-quality system with bot
UK - Blitz has completed its installation of a new radio mic system for the West End musical production of The Phantom of the Opera. Last weekend, Blitz’s theatre sound team installed a Sennheiser radio mic system at the production’s home of Her Majesty’s Theatre, London. Blitz has supported producers Cameron Mackintosh Ltd in delivering The Phantom of the Opera since the show opened in 1986 and holds the crown for the longest serving sound provider to the same musical production in the same location in the West End. The production has also used Sennheiser radio mics since the show began with this installation being the fourth generation of Sennheiser wireless to be instated. The new equipment included EM 6000 Digital Receivers with SK 6212 Digital Mini-Bodypacks and a Wavetool Audio Monitoring Software system. Martyn Hunt, head of th
France - One of the world’s most respected opera festivals has been transformed into a fully immersive production courtesy of Astro Spatial Audio, including the creation of highly reverberant, church-like room acoustics in an historic open-air courtyard theatre. Founded in 1948, the Festival International d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence returns to Southern France each summer with an innovative programme designed to equally challenge and delight the international opera community. Productions can range from newly commissioned pieces to bold new interpretations of the classics, filling the Théâtre de l'Archevêché with eager audiences. The theatre is literally housed within the courtyard of the former Archbishop’s palace, where some 1,600 spectators fill two tiers of seating surrounded by the walls of the palace with an open sky above. For the 2019 productio
UK - Creative Technology (CT) took on the challenge of almost doubling the size of the main stage IMAGs at Reading and Leeds Festival last month, after 25 years working on the event. Every year over the August bank holiday, festivalgoers flock to Reading and Leeds for two of the most popular festivals in the music calendar. Taking part simultaneously and sharing the same bill, Reading and Leeds Festival boasts an varied line-up with a diverse combination of musical genres with this year’s headliners including The 1975, Foo Fighters, Post Malone and Twenty one Pilots. This year saw client Festival Republic transforming the Main Stage IMAG Screens at Reading and Leeds Festival, almost doubling them in size from 145sqm to 270sqm. Each of the screens which were made up of InfiLED 5.9 measured 22.5m wide x 12m high. A custom double curve at each end allowed them to
Europe - Belgian-based visual design studio Painting with Light (PWL) celebrates 20 years of utilising multiple media and luminescent sources - including lighting, video, lasers, projection - and content to create inspiring designs and dramatic immersive environments. The journey has seen it grow from an ambitious dream to a leading international technical innovator and solutions provider. The company was founded by Luc Peumans in 1999. His vision, imagination, focus and sense of adventure have driven PWL to become the imagineering powerhouse it is today, working across multiple entertainment and leisure industry platforms with a skilled team of dynamic multi and mixed media experts. PWL’s core business started with designing lighting, video and scenic elements for music tours and festivals, television productions, a diversity of live events and theatre product
UK An accepted technical challenge of London’s outdoor theatre season are the major productions at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which run right through the summer. Working within the existing stage infrastructure, theatre lighting specialist Jon Clark helped interpret director Jamie Lloyd’s stripped back production of Evita, juxtaposing GLP’s new LED moving lights with traditional par cans. GLP’s impression X4 Bar 20 battens have been put to many creative uses since their launch and Clark managed to extend the envelope further, assigning different roles to the 24 fixtures supplied from White Light’s inventory. He also road tested GLP’s new Fusion Stick 10 while giant impression X4 XL RGBW heads took the place of follow spots in what was generally a very monochromatic design, punctuated by cold ice blues to mimic the Argentinian flag. Tim
USA - Towson University in Maryland has created an inclusive learning environment situated near the area’s prominent educational, community and cultural resources. From theatre to dance and music, the university’s performing arts programmes produce over 200 student and professional performances each year. Needing performance venues which can keep up with the busy production schedule, they called up Pennsylvania-based Illuminated Integration to renovate the 500-seat Howard J. Kaplan Concert Hall with a new lighting system including Chalice 70W recessed downlights from Altman Lighting. “We were initially brought onto the project as the antiquated lighting system in the concert hall had failed from a controls perspective, and they had decided to convert the entire space to LED as well,” begins Mike Birardi, lead design creative, Illuminated Integration. “The tar
Canada - RPM Lights is a long-time supporter of AC Lighting. Backed by a partnership between the executives of both companies, RPM Lights owners Jimmy Pappas and Glen Murphy, developed and built their vision for LED lighting in the Canadian marketplace eight years ago. With multiple decades of lighting and rigging industry experience between them, Pappas and Murphy built a reputation for their ability to adapt and utilise technology to achieve outstanding results in the markets and industries their company serves. RPM Lights is a Toronto based rental and sales supplier offering an array of LED lighting products to tradeshows, film, TV and live entertainment industries. Working with well-known trade shows such as the Canadian Auto Show, as well as on popular TV shows and films including Designated Survivor and Big Brother, RPM Lights recently adopted the new Pr
