USA - For glam rock band Warrant, the 30th anniversary of the release of their first album Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich meant pulling out all the stops and throwing a full-on party for themselves and their fans. Known for their hard-rocking performances, Warrant always puts on an intense live show, and a recent stop at the Psycho Silo Saloon for their Dirty Thirty Tour delivered the goods. Located in the middle of rural Illinois and sporting a stage made out of old semi-trailers, this outdoor venue stands out from most performance sites. Wanting to create a lighting design as fierce as the band’s hard-driving, Jeff Hinton of 815 Productions DJ Service added intensity to the house lights with a punchy package comprised of 18 Chauvet DJ fixtures. Hinton placed six Intimidator Hybrid 140SR fixtures on the back of the rig to light the band with a variety of
Finland - Established in 1872 in Helsinki, the Finnish National Theatre is the oldest Finnish-speaking professional theatre in the country. Its current venue was built in 1902 and the combination of Alcons Audio Q series and L series pro-ribbon loudspeakers means the 900-capacity main stage enjoys quality sound and coverage, without impacting on its historic decor. The horseshoe-shaped auditorium has three balconies, providing a challenge to projecting seamless, high quality sound to every seat. This was solved when sound and lighting specialists Electro Waves installed an Alcons QR series pro-ribbon system several years ago. This comprised L-C-R arrays of QR36 modular line-source array columns with QM36 modular line-source LMF array extensions. QB363 modular low-frequency array columns were added to the centre cluster, all powered and controlled by Alcons Sentinel3 and Sent
Lighting designer Yaron Abulafia was asked by director and choreographer Richard Wherlock to light his new ballet work, The Comedy of Error(z), staged at Basel Opera House (Theater Basel) in Switzerland, which “explores the themes of confusion and misunderstanding directly connected to the realities of digital lives that are also present in Shakespearean comedy”. The story also contrasted and contextualised the lives of rich and poor in countries that are financially stronger or weaker, throwing out some complex and intense messages for debate and expressing ironies of geo-fiscal imbalance via the captivating mediums of movement, music and light. Yaron had the venue’s house lighting rig at his disposal which included 40 x Astera AX1 Pixel Tubes. Ahead of the production, he started researching the available kit and thinking about how to incorporate the AX1s
Australia - The popular Spin Off festival returned in 2019 with an of over 20,000 at the massive 84m x 64m mainstage tent, presenting organisers, Five-Four Entertainment, with major technical requirements where the need for screens was paramount. To meet this demand, technical provider, Adelaide’s Novatech Creative Event Technology, employed two onstage ROE Visual Carbon 5 IMAG screens, an upstage screen, a delay screen behind FOH and two delay screens outside of the tent, controlled from two Brompton Technology SX40 processors with three Brompton Tessara XD distribution units vastly simplifying cabling requirements. “With such a big footprint, we needed to ensure that not only everyone inside the tent could see a screen but also outside,” explains Phil Pieridis, senior video project manager from Novatech. “Using many screens generates a lot of signal distribu
Hungary - Ujbuda Gyermeknap (Children’s Day) is an annual event held at Bikás park, a tranquil sea of green in the bustling Ujbuda district of Budapest. In addition to other attractions, there is also an array of musical acts performing on stage, which this year included Hungarian folk-rock singer Miklós Fenyő. Lighting the main stage, András Praksch of Mobil Audio and Lighting Kft had to create looks for a long list of unfamiliar bands. Even the popular Fenyő came without his LD, which required busking on the part of Praksch. On top of that, since the festival took place during daylight hours, options to create captivating looks were limited. Praksch met this challenge and helping him accomplish this was a collection of Chauvet Professional Maverick, STRIKE and COLORdash fixtures. “I have been doing this festival for many years with the event producer
Israel - Shlomo Artzi is one of Israel’s most successful singers, and his most recent shows hit the road with an ongoing lighting design by Gadi Spivak who has worked for the artist for over 20 years. Gadi and his lighting associate Shlomit Lola Nehama chose to use 24 x Robe Spiider LED wash beams for a key element of his lighting rig. This stage design was originated for the show around 2 years ago and has been modified and evolved as Shlomo has continued playing constantly – he is always in demand and will sell out any venue. The most important aspect of the Spiiders for Gadi is the colour mixing. “I wanted a really bright light source with smooth movement and refined CMY colour mixing and all these features I find in the Spiider,” he stated. The 24 fixtures were all hung on a semi-circular truss just downstage of a large 6mm pitch video screen,
UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) has provided Scottish Opera with a new surtitling system, utilising APIX2 by Prolights LED video panels. Founded in 1962, Scottish Opera is Scotland’s national opera company and largest performing arts organisation. With a diverse annual season of productions embracing opera’s unique blend of music, singing and theatre, it is committed to making the art form available to the widest possible audience. As well as performing its productions in mainstage and other venues across the country, Scottish Opera’s home is the Theatre Royal Glasgow, which last year celebrated its 150th year. Recently the Theatre Royal’s surtitling system was in need of an upgrade after 11 years of service. Alex Reedijk, general director of Scottish Opera approached AC-ET to discuss alternatives. Chris Beardwell, technical sales executive i
Malaysia - Singesen Technical Production and Chan Lee Sound & Light selected a combination of Powersoft’s X8 and X4L amplifier platforms for American singer-songwriter Jason Mraz, who stopped off in Kuala Lumpur for the third Asian date of his Good Vibes world tour. The main hangs at the arena were made up of 12 JBL VT-4889-1 per side, with eight JBL VT4888 flown per side as side-fill and six JBL VT4888 in the centre. The 20 JBL VT 4880 subwoofers were ground stacked at the side of the stage, while a series of Nexo PS15 wedge monitors were placed along the downstage edge. A total of six JBL VTX A8 were used as front-fill. The main system was driven by 11 of Powersoft’s X8 amplifier platforms, while a pair of the company’s latest touring product, the X4L (look out for a product review in the September issue of LSi, out next week) - were also use
Europe - German heavy rock superstars Rammstein have embarked on their European stadium tour, with lighting designers Roland Greil and Patrick Woodroffe of Woodroffe Bassett Design utilising over 100 VL6000 Beam fixtures from Vari-Lite. Woodroffe and Greil joined a creative team that also included renowned production designer Florian Wieder. In creating the show, they drew on the visual impact and large-scale performance features of the Vari-Lite VL6000 Beam to achieve extra layers of visual impact. “After a brief from the band,” says Greil, “we jumped right in and explored the Rammstein world before starting to brainstorm and create the first designs.” Discussing the main requirements for the Rammstein lighting rig, Greil explains: “We were looking for bright but versatile fixtures, that would fit into the overall design as well as into the specific R
New Zealand - When TV comedy show 7 Days Live, produced by MediaWorks NZ, visited the Queenstown Winter Festival, the festival’s production supplier TomTom Productions was on hand with its Hippotizer Karst media servers from Green Hippo. The Hippotizer enabled them to deal with the additional visual requirements of the television recording. “The brief was fairly simple,” says Hamish Edh, director of TomTom and designer of the festival’s live stage video elements. “Background eye candy that looks great on camera, as well as for the live audience, and having the 7 Days logo on the screens for the wide shots. “The design concept was based around mis-matching elements with different LED pixel pitches,” explains Edh. “To create contrast between the different pixel pitches, I use Martin Sceptron 20 battens in an array to complement the 6mm LED panels a
Australia - After its closure in 2017, Darlinghurst’s Midnight Shift club has been resurrected by Universal Hotels using Prolights fixtures. Universal Hotels, a Sydney-based hospitality group owned and operated by the Kospetas family, picked up the 1000sq.m building last June for a reported $12m and have relaunched it as Universal, a rebranded music venue and LGBTIQA+ safe place. “Universal is an evolution of the Midnight Shift, rather than a revolution,” explains owner Jim Kospetas, who plans to respect the special role that the venue has played for the LGBTIQA+ community and continue its long-held legacy of inclusivity. Kospetas contacted Show Technology with a brief requiring “masses of beams and good sight lines throughout the venue”. Tim Macfie of TDM Productions was chosen to design the lighting system. “They wanted someone who could meet
USA - Taylor Swift celebrated the release of her new album, Lover by surprising fans with a bubble-filled sky over Central Park. While Swift’s productions usually feature plenty of confetti, Swift opted for the eco-friendly Bubbleworks effect for the performance of Shake It Off live on ABC’s Good Morning America. “What a privilege to work with Taylor and a dream come true to create this moment in her show,” says Bubbleworks founder Adam Williams. “We wanted to do something big for her fans and create a theatrical bubble experience beyond her wildest dreams.” The choreographed bubble effect filled the stage and floated over the thousands of fans who lined up 24 hours early for the show. (Jim Evans)
USA - Tony Award-winning lighting designer Ken Posner selected Ayrton Mistral and Diablo-S fixtures for the Broadway musical, Beetlejuice, and the Off-Broadway one-act play, Long Lost. Beetlejuice opened in April at the Winter Garden Theatre and has achieved hit status; Long Lost, by Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Marguelies, made its New York premiere at The Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I with a six-week run. Posner has many notable credits on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in American regional theatre. He was the lighting designer for Wicked and Hairspray. Posner’s use of Ayrton’s Mistral on Beetlejuice marked his first deployment of Ayrton fixtures. His associate lighting designer, Anthony Pearson, and moving light programmer, David Arch, collaborated in the decision to use the 300W spot luminaires after ACT Ligh
South Korea - To deliver arena-filling sound as efficiently as possible, TechData Co recently installed an end-to-end JBL Professional networked audio system at the Changwon NC Park baseball stadium. Changwon NC Park is a 22,000-seat baseball stadium which opened in 2019, replacing Masan Stadium as the home of the NC Dinos professional baseball team. The stadium features four tiers of seating that curve around home plate, leaving the outfield side open to the air. To deliver premium sound across every seat while minimizing sound leakage to neighbouring residential and commercial areas, Changwon NC Park required an ultra-focused, efficient and highly scalable sound system. To achieve the client’s goals, TechData designed and installed an extensive Harman networked audio system featuring JBL loudspeakers, Crown amplifiers, Soundcraft mixing consoles and BSS signal proc
USA - Nashville-based designer Chris Lisle was already working on the festival’s main and second stages when he was approached by Lollapalooza PM Brandon Sossamon about creating the Perry’s Stage rig. As is typical of EDM stages, Perry’s was dominated by video. So, Lisle and his assistant LD Erik Parker began their design by layering video panels supplied by Go Vision. Then came the critical task of filling the gaps in the Z truss configuration of those panels with lighting from Bandit Lites. A key element that held everything together in this intricate, tightly woven multi-level rig were 78 Chauvet Professional COLORado Solo Battens. “Perry’s Stage was an impressive structure, but considering all we had going on with this design, the space was relatively tight,” explains Lisle. “Much of our concept for the rig was based on Z-shaped trussing from Reed Ri
Argentina - The Alliance Group, which brings together four of the most important nightclubs in San Carlos de Bariloche, has invested in Claypaky Axcor 300 moving heads for its Cerebro nightclub. Macaio Argentina is the country’s distributor of Claypaky lighting products. The installation, carried out by the staff of Roberto Maqui, features an array of Axcor Spot, Wash and Beam fixtures. “We chose Claypaky not only for its performance and quality but also because we have known the brand for years,” says Carlos Zeiss, CEO of The Alliance Group. “Despite intensive use they usually require very little maintenance.” These attributes, combined with the fixtures’ low power consumption, contributed to the purchase of the fixtures. Roberto Maqui also performed the programming and commissioning of the Axcor fixtures. (Jim Evans)
Czech Republic - Lighting designer Jiri Roucek is enjoying a busy summer as the LD for leading Czech pop-rock band Krystof and has also created the production design for the main stage of the 2019 Ceske Hrady Festival tour, a two-day event with an identical line-up that visits eight castle and cultural locations around the Czech Republic. Krystof is headlining this year’s Ceske Hrady tour as well as playing their own shows concurrently. The tour presents the best of Czech ‘multi-genre’ rock - from psy-core favourites Dymytry to crazy punk anarchy with Visaci Zamek - to mixed, family-friendly, sold-out crowds at every stop. The format is two stages set up side-by-side and ‘flip-flopped’ both exclusively using Robe moving lights supplied by ZL Production which also supplies audio, video and staging. ZL has been servicing this event since 2013. This year,
China - A High End Systems Hoglet 4 is providing big control for a new outdoor multimedia installation in China. Two times each night, a lake in the park in Liaocheng, Shandong Province comes alive with lighting, lasers, mist, flames and fountains. The free half-hour interaction enthrals up to 10,000 spectators with the colourful, watery spectacle. LD Theo Cox - a High End Systems Hog 4 lighting console user - chose the smaller, more compact member of the Hog family for this project. “I elected to programme with a Hoglet 4, as this was the right piece of kit to leave in permanent situ after the shows were up and running,” he explains. “As well as the nightly timecode shows, there was a requirement to run a few simple cues manually, and a physical console was desired but it had to be streamlined. So with only two kinds of fixtures to program, and no need for lot
USA - Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre is a popular five-week summer festival in Logan, Utah, that presents four fully staged works in repertory at the Ellen Eccles Theatre. Lighting designer Chris Wood, who just wrapped up his seventh season working on the festival as part of a top-notch cast and crew, had the opportunity to use Elation Artiste Picasso LED profile moving heads on this year’s productions - Newsies, West Side Story, Mary Poppins, and The Marriage of Figaro. 4 Wall in Las Vegas recommended the Picasso to Wood and although the fixture entered the lighting specification somewhat late, which didn’t give the designer much time to familiarize himself with it, he says he got better acquainted with the light through fixture documentation. “I appreciate that Elation puts out a lot of photometric data,” Wood says, “which
Germany - For Rammstein’s latest stadium tour, lighting designers Patrick Woodroffe and Roland Greil specified four grandMA2 full-size consoles, one grandMA2 light, 15 x MA NPU (Network Processing Unit) and seven MA 8Port Nodes. Roland Greil explains: “Together with our programmer Marc Brunkhardt, we made the decision to specify a proven workhorse in the form of a grandMA2 system. The reasons are its reliability, performance and all our positive previous experiences with this console. “Our concept from the beginning was to create a range of unique scenes,” continues Greil. “Our approach was quite theatrical. Obviously, the whole design needed to work hand-in-hand with the overall production design and be different to the more regular concert designs out there. Besides the very industrial look, we also wanted to create a modern aesthetic for part of the show.
USA - Although Union College in Schenectady, New York, has only 2,600 undergraduate students, the private liberal arts college’s men’s ice hockey team competes successfully with much larger schools in NCAA Division 1. The Union Dutchmen even won the 2014 national championship over such sports powers as Minnesota, Boston College, and Providence. Four years later, the Upstate New York school brought in AV systems integrators Com Tech of neighbouring Albany to update the video production systems in Frank L. Messa Rink, the home of Union’s men’s and women’s hockey teams. As Com Tech’s owner Chuck Zarriello recounts, the project grew to include designing and installing a new audio system for the venue. “The old system was inadequate, with outdated technology,” Zarriello reports. “It had been slowly failing over the years and had issues with intelligibility
UK - London-based live AV production company, JD Pro Sound, is currently taking on the UK’s theatre circuit with the Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons touring tribute show, Bye Bye Baby, and an Allen & Heath SQ digital mixing system. With more than 15 years’ experience, JD Pro Sound provides AV services for live music shows, private and corporate events, and touring theatre shows. Having worked with Bye Bye Baby since 2015, Jay Dimoff (owner and main touring engineer) has tackled audio needs for the production at 400 theatres around the UK, mixing exclusively with Allen & Heath consoles. Most recently, Dimoff decided to add an SQ-5 mixer to handle the current run of shows. “We’ve been working with Allen & Heath products since 2015 and we just love every single moment using all these fantastic desks and additional equipment,” comment
The Netherlands - The Bridges of Madison County is a musical based on Robert James Waller’s 1992 novel produced by OpusOne that is mid-way through an extensive Netherlands tour with lighting designed by Benno Barends who is using Robe DL7S Profile and ColorWash 700 moving lights at the heart of the touring lighting system which us being supplied by P3 Podiumtechniek. Benno has worked for Opus One for 10 years, starting as an intern and becoming their principal lighting designer. The Bridges of Madison County initially completed two successful runs in Amsterdam Zonnehaus and DeLaMar Theatre before hitting the road with Benno staying onboard as the lighting designer. The main challenge was adapting the lighting to ensure it was practical to tour, play one night stands and fit into a wide range of venues - although most Netherlands cities are well endowed
Europe/USA - Mark Knopfler is on the road once again, supporting the release of his new Down the Road Wherever album with an epic show presented in L-ISA Hyperreal Sound technology by L-Acoustics. Having hit venues throughout Europe and headed to North America, Knopfler has once again raised the rock bar with a 10-piece band, and a 7.1 L-ISA configuration provided by SSE Hire, part of the SSE Audio Group. Front of house engineer Dave Dixon and systems engineer Ulf Oeckel specified L-ISA technology, with Maxime Menelec – an experienced L-ISA operator - joining during production rehearsals to take over systems engineering duties from the beginning of the tour, setting up the initial design with creativity and audience impact in mind. "The idea of moving to L-ISA technology is a direct result of a request made by Mark during the last tour," Dixon recalls. "He as
