UK - Southwest London venue Under the Bridge has benefited from the installation of a new LED wall as well as lighting and audio upgrades at its premises. “Since Under the Bridge launched in 2011, we’ve taken great pride being one of the UK’s most unique and technically-advanced, mid-sized, multi-purpose venues for hire,” says creative manager, Alan Tenenbaum. “With approximately 100 confirmed events scheduled to host for the remainder of 2019, we’re excited to share this production upgrade with our clients and audiences. The upgrade puts our intimate venue in a class of its own, beyond comparison.” The 3.9mm pixel-pitch LED screen from Absen supports a video resolution higher than Full HD (1080p), making it ideal for presentations, image projections and video content. The venue also has a new LED lighting rig, expanding the existing stock to offe
Poland - Rental and visual production company Transcolor has invested in 200 Robe Spiider LED wash beams. These have been added to their rental stock which currently owns several thousand lighting fixtures including around 1,000 Robe moving lights. The company was founded in 1992 by Lucjan Siwczyk and has enjoyed success and respect as it has become active in all areas of professional lighting and visuals, especially TV, film, touring and corporate / special events. The current facilities just outside Warsaw are the company’s headquarters. In addition to offices and warehouses, this includes five full-size studios and rehearsal rooms which are in constant use for television and movie productions, promo and advertising shots, production rehearsals and a wide range of other events. As a lot of their work is TV and film-based, the proper quality of colours i
USA - Craig Richter believes in coming out of the gate fast when lighting a concert. “When the first song hits, I like the audience to get a full immersion of sound and light all at once,” he says of his design approach. Richter’s philosophy was on full display recently when he lit Grammy-winning rockers Halestorm on their coheadline tour with Alice Cooper with a rig that featured 52 Chauvet Professional fixtures, supplied by Bandit Lites. “This is an intense, no-nonsense rock band, so I wanted our show to match that feeling in terms of its power and directness,” says Richter. “The overall idea was to create a big massive look. I always aim to give the crowd a wow moment multiple times during the show, but I also don’t want to distract from what the band is doing on stage. People paid to come see Halestorm not me. So, for this design I wanted an old-schoo
Canada - Acting as a hub for performing arts in Winnipeg, the Centennial Concert Hall has long upheld a sense of community for the people of Manitoba. With a seating capacity in excess of 2,300, the venue is the largest performing arts space in Winnipeg. When Centennial Hall decided to upgrade its lighting system to improve energy efficiency and coverage, ArcSystem stood out as a top choice. The outdated system at Centennial Hall was causing multiple problems for the staff, patrons, and performers. On top of poor lighting quality, the old system required excessive maintenance. Denis Crymble, stage electrician at Centennial Hall, says, “I never liked the feeling of the light. To me, it was always dingy. The upkeep of it was horrendous. We had little to no flexibility in the old space.” For decades, the venue had few technology upgrades. Looking to the future, the Ce
Russia - The Sound Line Agency received its first Clair Brothers speakers in the form of the 1.5AM stage monitors. For its production needs, Sound Line purchased several Clair Brothers components, including the kiTCurve12 system, 8CX front-fills, 1.5AM stage monitors, i218-Ms and CS218-Ms. “This was my company’s first experience working with Clair Brothers gear, but I had heard such positive feedback from musicians who’d had direct experience with the American brand that I already had high expectations,” explains Andrey Kabanov, owner of Sound Line Agency. “Back in 2005 I had the pleasure of seeing a Sting concert in Moscow where Clair Brothers loudspeakers were used. Since then, I’ve never heard another system of equal quality. The problem in those days was this incredible equipment was exclusive and not readily available to companies like mine.”
USA - Harman Professional Solutions celebrated the grand opening of The Reach at the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington DC. The opening of The Reach marks the first new construction at The Kennedy Centre since its opening in 1971, and is comprised of three contiguous pavilions creating 72,000sq.ft of interior space, 4.6 acres of green space and gardens, and a pedestrian bridge over Rock Creek Parkway that connects the Kennedy Centre to Washington, DC’s other memorials. The centre describes The Reach as “a home for non-traditional programming with an emphasis on active participation and access. The open, informal spaces of the new expansion draw visitors directly into the creative process and inspire new connections and collaborations between creators of multiple genres and disciplines.” “We are very proud of our decades-old rela
USA - Hard rock band Chevelle has embarked on a summer amphitheatre tour across North America, co-headlining with Breaking Benjamin and lit by Ayrton Khamsin LED profile fixtures. Chevelle has sold over four million albums in the US and has a new record forthcoming in 2020. Production designer, Robb Jibson of Chicago-based So Midwest was searching for a 1000W LED fixture, with a shuttering mechanism that could close completely over itself in one direction. He held a shoot-out featuring ‘the top contenders’ in the category. “While all the fixtures we tested did a good job, Khamsin was the most well-engineered, the most well-polished of the group,” Jibson reports. “Its optics, clarity and perceived brightness won out. I also liked its edge sharpness, the flatness of the field and the way it physically looked.” Bandit Lites, Chevelle’s lighting vendor, invested i
France - In Paris on 4 July, Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist Ahmed Jamal performed the world premiere of his album Ballades at The Louis Vuitton Foundation, a glass-clad, Frank Gehry-designed building that takes the form of a boat’s sails. Enhancing the dramatic impact of the moment was a lighting display by Puzzle SA that featured eight Chauvet Professional Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures. Arranged in an oval-like pattern behind centre-stage, their independently controlled moving heads pointing in multiple directions, the Rogue fixtures created beguiling geometric patterns that not only reflected Jamal’s music, but also harmonized with the large angular glass sails. Seemingly pointing in every direction at once as they reach for the sky, the building’s 12 glass sails work with its other features like the prismatic yellow columns by Danish artist Olafur Eliasso
UK/USA - Pink’s Beautiful Trauma world tour started in North America in March 2018 and is set to conclude this November on the same continent. The tour, in support of the singer’s seventh studio album, Beautiful Trauma, will have taken in 157 dates across 18 countries in North and South America, Europe and Australasia. This included a weekend of sold-out shows at London's Wembley Stadium, where 150,000 fans gathered to see the rock/pop starlet dazzle with her vocals and gymnastic skills. Working in conjunction with its family of partners Clair Global and JPJ Audio, Britannia Row successfully delivered a worldwide audio feat. Britannia Row’s Dave Compton says: “Once again, we’ve really enjoyed working with Pink’s team. It’s been an amazingly popular worldwide tour where the artist and engineers have given it their all across a multit
USA - Perry Farrell recently wrapped a tour with a lighting package provided by Bandit Lites. Farrell, Jane’s Addiction front man and a founder of the Lollapalooza festival, dazzled audiences with deep cuts, popular favourites and new songs from his most recent project, Kind Heaven, his first solo album since 2001. Lighting designers Todd Erickson and Mark Janowitz created a rig that would be versatile enough to provide the classic rock look to match earlier songs as well as lower light movement look for the newer material. “The artist had some clear vision of some photographic artists that he wanted the set pieces to look like,” says Erickson. Bandit Lites supplied GLP X4S as side light across the band, casting the low-light, theatre look. GLP X4 Bar 20 provided light to the set pieces from below as well as acting a gradient light source, while V
USA - With a rich history of providing a genuine worship experience to families across the greater Orlando area, Calvary Orlando has recently set off on a new direction. Wanting to better illuminate the sanctuary as part of a complete lighting and dimming upgrade, they turned to Techni-Lux who designed and specified a new house system filled with Chalice LED downlights from Altman Lighting. “Calvary Orlando is the second largest church in the Orlando area, and it is also used as a special event and live concert facility,” says Tony Hansen, Techni-Lux head lighting designer and project specialist. “We have worked with them for a number of years, and this is a project that has really been in need for some time. The lighting system dated back to its original construction and it was very antiquated. Additionally, they were having consistent issues with the dimming system a
India - AM Integrated and Crescendo AV recently outfitted The Piano Man Jazz Club in Gurugram with a complete Harman Professional Solutions sound reinforcement system. The Piano Man Jazz Club is a full-service restaurant, bar and music venue founded in 2015 by classically-trained pianist and entrepreneur Arjun Sagar Gupta. The first location in Delhi was so successful, Gupta decided to open a second location in the bustling city of Gurugram. In addition to being one of the few venues in India that showcases live jazz music, The Piano Man Jazz Club also features diverse acts from young singer-songwriters to international brass bands. The venue hired AM Integrated and Crescendo AV to design and integrate end-to-end Harman Professional audio and lighting systems, including solutions by JBL, AKG, Soundcraft and Martin Professional. “We wanted premium audio soluti
UK - More d&b audiotechnik loudspeakers than ever before delivered the strums, beats and vocals of Glastonbury this year, as KSL made its debut on The Other Stage and Y- and V-Series graced The Acoustic Stage. Glastonbury veteran, Skan - which has been providing PA systems for the festival’s second stage since 1989 - supplied the d&b KSL System for The Other Stage, where headliners included Tame Impala, Chemical Brothers and Christine and the Queens. “The stage size and technical demands increase every year, and we have increased the spec and system requirements alongside this growth,” says Skan senior designer Matt Vickers. “We beta-tested the GSL System at Glastonbury in 2017 and that experience has contributed to the stunning results we can get from both GSL and KSL Systems. “‘Punchy, tight and so clean’ were words thrown around by vario
UK - Communications solutions specialist, Surfhire, has provided essential services for UK Athletics (UKA), the governing body of athletics in the UK, for the 10th consecutive year. Responsible for overseeing the governance of athletics events in the UK as well as its athletes, their development, and athletics officials, the UKA hosts a programme of key events throughout the British summer. For the 2019 season, Surfhire deployed a considerable amount of kit, including walkie talkies, matrix intercom, commentator systems and extensive networking services across six events. The comms, radios and networking infrastructure - with comms for the UK Athletics Sport Presentation being run by head of comms, Paul Carter - is a multi-faceted operation. A central control area and several remote locations, as well as interfacing to the host broadcaster, The BBC, all come un
Hungary - This year’s annual seven-day-long Sziget Festival on Hajógyári Island, north of Budapest, was the event’s biggest yet, breaking attendance records on the day that Ed Sheeran appeared. Capital Sound, the event’s long-standing main stage sound reinforcement supplier, now has the logistics down to a fine art, hauling Martin Audio’s MLA loudspeaker array family across Europe in a two-truck arrangement and ‘topping up’ with assistance from Hungarian-based MLA partner, BG Event. The latter, in turn, provided its own Martin Audio inventory for two dedicated EDM dance stages. Both partners were equal to the demands of this event which last year alone saw an aggregated 565,000 visit the picturesque location on the Danube. Capital account manager Robin Conway comments: “This year, we made changes to the field delays on main stage and upgraded the
Belgium - Throughout the summer Pioneer Pro Audio XY-Series systems have appeared at a host of festivals across Europe. For the most part the systems have been used at leading electronic music events but from time to time, XY Series has stepped outside the traditional festival model into something completely different. As well as an immersive three-day arts and music event, the Horst Festival extends to a two-month long exhibition which features in-situ art installations in public spaces. This year the exhibition was based on the ASIAT site in Vilvoorde, north of Brussels, a former military base complete with six hectares of urban space, 20 warehouses within a maze of corridors and two huge cooling towers. It was inside one of these towers that artist Emeka Ogboh placed his renowned installation The Way Earthly Things Are Going and KAGE Audio deployed Pioneer Pro Audi
USA - Growing up in northeastern Louisiana, country star Tim McGraw was familiar with the kind of hot, humid night he encountered when he took the House of Power Stadium stage as the headliner presented by Orange Motorsports and Entertainment and House of Power Production at the at the Orange County Fairgrounds. On stage, McGraw relied on his team, including long-time lighting designer Patrick Brannon, to bring the kind of production associated with a multi-Grammy winning icon. Although the House of Power Stadium stage was not nearly as large as many that McGraw performs on, Brannon was able to give him comfortably familiar production-style looks with help from a rig that featured a collection of Chauvet Professional fixtures, including the new Maverick MK3 Profile, supplied by Dynamic Productions. “When I design for a full production tour, it’s exactly that. The t
Canada - Hit reality TV Show Big Brother Canada wrapped up its seventh season in early May, with an Allen & Heath dLive mixing system handling audio for the live studio audience segments. For this season, the production team turned to AV and entertainment technology company, Solotech, to assist in upgrading the audio console. Working with Allen & Heath’s Canadian partners Erikson Pro, Solotech’s full set-up featured a dLive S5000 surface, paired with a DM64 MixRack, fitted with superMADI and Dante networking cards. “For the past few years, we’d been using an older model console that had a larger footprint and less features, so this year provided a good opportunity to upgrade to dLive,” adds Phil Hornung (audio technical advisor - live productions at Solotech). “Erikson Pro, a division of Jam Industries, provided support that exceeded expect
UK - Cineworld Eastbourne has become Europe’s first all-RGB laser cineplex after opting for Christie RealLaser technology. The UK cinema’s eight auditoriums have all been fitted with Christie’s CP2315-RGB and CP2320-RGB offerings. Christie RGB laser projection systems have also been installed at a brace of other UK Cineworld-owned locations, further demonstrating the exhibitor’s commitment to RGB laser technology. “We’re delighted to offer our customers a fantastic visual cinematic experience with Christie RealLaser technology, which has become known for its excellent performance and reliability,” says Kiril Enikov, head of technical for Cineworld. “We aim to provide the best place to watch a movie, and by investing in the latest high performance technologies, we feel we are continuing to deliver on this goal.” The CP2315-RGB and CP2320-RGB give exhib
South Africa - DWR Distribution’s SOS Charity Fund is once again supporting the Hilton Arts Festival to be held from the 13-15 September at the Hilton College in Hilton, KwaZulu Natal. The sponsorship includes bussing 30 children from the local community to the festival, and in addition, contributing R10,000 towards the production Cellist with Rabies. “I have been involved with Hilton Arts Festival for over 20 years and it’s always such an honour to work with Sue Clarence, her team, and Black Coffee, the technical supplier of the event,” comments Michael Taylor-Broderick of DWR Distribution and the SOS. “DWR Distribution always looks forward to the festival, supporting our products used on the show, and more importantly, seeing the artistic talent South Africa has to offer.” (Jim Evans)
UK - Carnival UK has selected Point Source Audio microphones as their new fleet-wide standard for all their onboard productions, supplied by Point Source Audio’s UK distributor, Autograph Sales & Installations. The decision to standardise on Point Source Audio (PSA) was led by Dave Cowell, lead sound designer and programmer for Carnival UK. Point Source Audio’s body-worn microphones will support the fleet’s performance venues which are in use a standard 15-hours a day, 365 days a year. Carnival UK (which incorporates Cunard Cruise Line and P&O Cruises UK) is part of Carnival Corporation & plc, the world’s largest leisure travel company, with a cruise fleet of 102 ships operating in North America, England, Europe and Australia. “The cruising industry is one of the harshest environments for product delivery I have worked in. When microphones
Germany - Udo Lindenberg, one of Germany’s most enduring rock stars, is back on the road with Live 2019, another trademark spectacular touring production. This time around, lighting designer Günter Jäckle has included 22 VL6000 Beams from Vari-Lite in his touring rig. Described by Jäckle as, “like a rock and roll circus, revue, craziness, freak-show, rock show”, an Udo Lindenberg performance is a busy visual extravaganza, with up to 50 performers on stage. To deal with all this activity, Jäckle balances theatrical lighting techniques with supercharged rock and roll show lighting. “The first thing for me is to be a director,” he says, “to allow the audience to see what they should see, and not what they should not.” Discussing his design priorities, he says, “The star must be in the foreground - not the lightshow. Also, we don’t make effects becau
UK - The historic headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has completed a full AV system upgrade, with 10 channels of Shure’s ULX-D Digital Wireless installed and deployed, along with a selection of Shure’s high-end headset, lapel and gooseneck microphones. This first phase is part of an ambitious four-year plan to improve the overall audio at RIBA, commenced with the expandable 284-400-seat auditorium and took three months to complete. Established in 1834, RIBA is situated at 66 Portland Place, Marylebone, London, which is a Grade II listed building. The organisation is the professional body for UK architects, founded for the advancement of architecture, supporting its members and introducing new people to the world of creative architectural design. Work on the project began with consultation between RIBA’s in-house AV team, AV sp
Europe - German rock band Rammstein have just finished their European stadium tour, with Claypaky HY B-EYE K25, Scenius Unico, Mythos 2 and Sharpy lighting fixtures, selected by lighting designers Ronald Greil and Patrick Woodroffe of Woodroffe Bassett Design, accompanying the show across the continent. Neg Earth Lights was the lighting vendor. Rammstein began the stadium tour in Germany in May and wrapped in Vienna in August. The band will resume the tour next spring. “Our brief was to keep the lighting in line with the Rammstein aesthetics built over 25 years of touring,” says Greil, who marked his first time working with the band. “It wasn’t just another pop or rock show; it was more like a rock opera, all perfectly staged. We kept the focus on the band creating the canvas for them to perform on, which featured unique staging and architecture, a rig with ove
