Canada - Christian Life Assembly (CLA) in Langley City, 25 miles from downtown Vancouver, has grown in leaps and bounds since its humble beginning in 1937 as a sidewalk Sunday School, first moving into a tiny hall, then a succession of larger buildings as the church has attracted more congregants. The worship centre at the Langley Campus, built in 1978, was expanded to hold 2,000 churchgoers in 2008 during renovations that also readied CLA for multimedia technology. Most recently, the church has taken its audio technology to the next level with a new DiGiCo SD12 digital mixing console at front-of-house and a KLANG immersive IEM mixing system, all specified and integrated by Ellis Pro Media of Tacoma, Washington. “The SD12 has been super-flexible for anything we have wanted to do,” says CLA assistant technical director Will Lee. “I haven’t had a situation where
UK - Tower 42 in the City of London is home to Jason Atherton’s Michelin star restaurant, City Social. Situated on the 24th floor, the venue commands spectacular views across the metropolis. As well as serving an extensive range of drinks, Social 24, the venue’s bar, also hosts popular and busy DJ nights. The City Social management team faced a number of issues relating to its audio provision and consulted with integrators Excite AV and the application team at Audiologic to help determine a practical way to overcome some tricky problems. The basic brief was to deliver a new background music system that could be used as a main system for DJ events. The existing ceiling speaker system suffered from uneven sound and coverage, with 100V line speakers dotted only near the windows and above the bar. On busy nights as customers gathered on the dance floor, any lift in vo
USA - Singer-songwriter Keelan Donovan, originally from Maine and now based in Nashville and Austin, knows the road. “After I graduated Belmont University, I knew I wanted to tour. So, from 2015-16 I was playing around 200 shows a year out on the road. Anywhere, for anyone, any time - I would book the shows myself and just play, play, play. I was trying to get my name out there, but I was also learning more about my music and performing every day.” The things he learned during those intensely busy years helped him focus in on his performance style and learn to recognise the tools that make performers sound their best – and now a key piece of his successful performing regimen is the L1 Model II portable line array system from Bose that he travels with and uses at many of his gigs, including house concerts and smaller venues. “At this point, I almost think of t
Portugal - Singer, musician, and songwriter, Pedro Abrunhosa is currently on tour across the country. Known for his large, live band and penchant for straddling different genres of music, the singer’s FOH engineer, Joao Bessa, relies on an SSL L200 to make his hands-on approach to live jamming a breeze. Starting out in the studio and honing his craft for 14 years on an SSL 4000E console, Bessa eventually made what he calls the 'natural transition' to live engineering. “The transition between the studio and the road was so natural to me: in my head, it's just mixing sounds and textures, and that is the thing I like to do,” he explains. “It's a completely creative art, and it's that which really interests me. I have tech knowledge, but I am not scientific - I just need to know the tools, and to know what I am doing, then switch that off and take care of the cre
Europe - Lighting designers Roland Greil & Patrick Woodroffe of Woodroffe Bassett Design specified over 100 Chroma-Q Color Force II LED battens to provide effects lighting for Rammstein’s European stadium tour 2019. The German industrial metal band’s first-ever stadium tour - which sees them play 31 European dates this summer to promote their number one self-titled studio album - further ups the ante on their explosive and ground-breaking live shows. Working in collaboration with production designer, Florian Wieder; production director Nicolai Sabottka; lighting directors Faren Matern & Marc Brunkhardt; and set designer, Cuno Hahn, Woodroffe Bassett Design created a distinctive lighting concept which works hand in hand with the overall production design. Adopting a theatrical approach, the contrasting scenes range from bold industrial looks fitting R
USA - Rascal Flatts is out headlining the Summer Playlist Tour with a lighting package provided by Bandit Lites. With the trio celebrating their 20th anniversary next year, lighting designer Travis Shirley looked to fashion a fresh design that both honoured their two decades of touring and reinvented what audiences expect from a Rascal Flatts performance. “These guys are legends,” says Shirley. “They have done it all before: arenas, stadiums, gig shows, small shows, etc. They were looking for something fresh; something that brought the Flatts performance a bit more in the ‘spotlight.’” “It has been an honour to work with Rascal Flatts for almost two decades,” said Bandit Lites vice president Mike Golden,” and while I have also known Travis Shirley for that length of time, I had never had the opportunity to work with him until now. From the moment I
Israel - Avraham Tal is one of the best known contemporary Israeli singer-songwriters and multi-instrumentalists. His 2019 tour takes a more electronic vibe than previously, and with that, he wanted fresh input on the lighting front and a spec including Robe MegaPointes, Spiiders and BMFL Spots. He wanted this to be achieved without the mechanical precision of timecode but with a more organic process. Co-designers Eran Klein & Omer Israeli of Cochavi and Klein Light Architects proposed a scheme - including Robe moving lights - which was chosen to help explore and develop this idea and these new directions for the stage presentation. Madrix programmer and tour LD / operator, Naor Bonomo also provided input. A major part of this creative chemistry was focussed on finding a new way of synching lighting and video with elements of the music, utilising MIDI over Ethernet
Spain - Catalan singer-songwriter Rosalia is setting festivals worldwide on fire with her signature flamenco-urban fusion style and sold-out shows which feature lighting by Claypaky, represented in Spain by Stonex. In support of her second studio album El Mal Querer, Rosalia’s eponymous world tour - her first - launched in the spring and has played dates in North America, Latin America and across Europe, including Lollapalooza in Argentina and Chile, Coachella in the US, Primavera Sound in Barcelona, and Gurtenfestival in Switzerland. Engagements will continue through October. Rosalia enjoys an unprecedented reception whenever she performs. Her show at La Noche Blanca del Flamenco de Cordoba seduced 10,000 fans with her lyrics and flamenco styling enhanced by dynamic lighting design by Isabel de la Mora. Now, on her world tour, Rosalia is accompanied by
Belgium - A new chapter was added to the rich and widely heralded tradition of Belgian beer making recently thanks to the discovery of a medieval manuscript. Hidden away by monks of the Grimbergen Abbey in 1798 to avoid advancing French revolutionary troops, the recipe, written in Latin and Old Dutch, was unearthed about four years ago in the monastery’s archives. This May, after much painstaking research, the monks were ready to release their resurrected brew to the world. Rolling out such a beverage after a 220-year hiatus, calls for a special celebration, which is exactly what the Grimbergen Abby monks created, putting on Grimbergen Experience Days, a debut event for their business partners and beer connoisseurs from around the world. Adding an appropriate level of visual excitement to the proceedings was a lighting design by Thomas Boets of LDP who was retained
UK - To demonstrate its support for Leeds Pride, ASDA’s head office in the Leeds city centre came out once again in the movement’s traditional bright rainbow colours, with the help of TechLED and 4-Wall. To achieve the required look, 4-Wall’s Ben Perrin specified SGM Q7 wide-angled LED flood fixtures to be distributed evenly under the eaves of the building perimeter. For the building entrance, the tighter beam angle of SGM P5 architectural LED wash lights area, highlighted the features of the entryway. Perrin’s choice was based upon the two-fold suitability of the products to the job, explaining the SGM fixtures are “really wide-angled, really soft, really bright, produce really good pastel colours and because they feature in-built wireless control, they ensure the install and removal was really quick”. SGM’s Q7 is a multi-function flood light with
France - The Grand Concert de Paris, celebrating the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, takes place every 14 July at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, in the Champ de Mars. This year, a crowd of 300,000 people assembled to listen to the concert live, while a record audience of 3m viewers tuned in to watch the spectacle on television. Specialising in the delivery of large-scale shows globally, Gilles Bouvard Events and Shows (GB4D) has been working on this event with Radio France since 2015. This year, thanks to a successful experiment, they extended the traditional site wide Optocore redundant optical fibre loop by deploying an additional 152 Optocore X6R preamps. Explaining the reason, Bouvard said, “We had conducted several experiments with Radio France prior to the event, including the recording and capture of a jazz concert at La Maison de la Radio, with im
Europe - May saw the launch of Rod Stewart’s new world tour in support of Blood Red Rose, the artist’s 30th solo album and his first release in three years. Itself a product of life on the road, the new album features a string of relaxed recordings made with Stewart’s tour band in hotel rooms and private, post-gig, backstage sessions. Helping to translate these new songs from ‘after hours’ to ‘centre stage’ is Colonel Tom Touring, who worked with lighting and production designer Mark Cunniffe to deliver a video rig for the full run of the European stadium, arena and outdoor dates. Created to be easily adaptable for the tour’s various venue types and sizes, the video package includes an impressive architrave of 300 ROE Carbon CB5 LED panels, powered by Brompton Technology Tessera SX40 LED processors, working in tandem with the manufacturer’s XD
Germany - Parookaville is one of the largest electronic music festivals in the world, and this year attracted around 200,000 visitors over three days to Weeze airport, a former military base in the Lower Rhine region of Germany. This fifth edition of the event featured multiple stages, one of which was the Desert Valley Stage where Tillmann Stockschläder of service providers Entec, in cooperation with audio specialists Teqsas, deployed a Coda Audio system. The Desert Valley Stage is one of the largest at the festival, covering an area of more than 5000sq.m and Coda Audio AiRAY was used as the main PA as well as for DJ monitoring. Front-fill was taken care of by Coda Audio APS. Two hangs of 10 x AiRAY were used as a stereo application complemented by 24 Coda Audio SCP sensor-controlled subs in an end-fired cluster. Restrictions on height and load capacity were easily o
Poland - The Open’er Festival - one of the largest music festivals in Poland - has been an institution since 2002. Having welcomed international names including the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Pharrel Williams, Snoop Dogg and Coldplay, it has maintained its status in the Polish festival calendar. Open’er Festival is held annually in the seaside city of Gdynia. Tasked with overall multimedia support of the five stages was one of Poland’s largest event engineering companies, VES. Responsible for the overall design and operation of the Beat Stage, Michał ‘Kurczak’ Mazurkiewicz of VES used more than 180 lighting fixtures. Included in the package was the Prolights Arenacob4FC, a full colour LED replacement for a traditional four-cell DWE blinder alongside the Prolights Aar5FAN which stood out as the pixel-FX moving head. It allowed the designer to control the spread
USA - Halsey hit the road in May for a short run of shows in support of a new single release, Nightmare and lighting designer Jose Antunes chose Elation’s Artiste Monet and Rayzor 760 to light the special performances. Lighting vendor was DCR of Nashville. The festival and specials run included shows at Webster Hall in New York City prior to the single release along with a string of radio performances in California in early June. Antunes designed the shows around some of Elation Professional’s newest luminaires, the Artiste Monet and Rayzor 760, and was one of the first designers to use the fixtures. “The design for this run was meant to pack a lot of punch with a small compact package that would fit in a small club, but also be able to spread out on a large festival stage and fare well outdoors in regards to output,” says Antunes, who also served as pr
UK - When The Mavericks stopped at the Glastonbury Festival during their 30th Anniversary World Tour, their LD Landon Bloss did what he always does on fly dates: he walked over to look at the lighting rig that he would be running later that day. Approaching the festival’s Acoustic Stage from a distance, Bloss was impressed with the looks the festival LD was conjuring up with some large spots. “I thought for sure, given how bright their output was, that they were 1700w arc lamp fixtures,” said the Nashville-based designer. “So, I was completely surprised when I learned that these fixtures actually had LED engines.” The fixtures that astonished Bloss shared the name of the band he lights. They were Mavericks, or more precisely 16 Maverick MK3 Spot and 18 Maverick MK3 Wash fixtures from Chauvet Professional supplied by Fineline Lighting. For Bloss, his fi
Europe - This summer, Muse continued their Simulation Theory world tour through the UK and Europe. The successful North American leg of the stadium tour put crew and equipment to the test in 23 cities. “Jesse Lee Stout, the creative director for the tour, wanted the entire lighting rig and stage to feel like a spaceship straight out of the ‘80s/’90s sci-fi movies we all know and love,” explains tour lighting designer and programmer, Sooner Routhier. “Making that all-encompassing vision brighter are 176 Solaris Flare LR and 51 Solaris Flare Q+ fixtures. First, neon outlines, comprised of Upstaging Sabers, outline the sides of the truss to help turn the rig into a giant space invader. The Flare LRs provide a thicker, brighter line of light to accentuate the lines of trusses. At the tips of each truss, the structure flips up 45° with three LRs sitting s
Ireland - At the start of 2019, one of Ireland’s leading audio hire, sales and installations companies, Acoustik, took delivery of two DiGiCo SD10s to add to its existing stock of mixing consoles and, according to the company’s operations and systems designer Will Fitzpatrick, they are “flying out of the door”. “For the past couple of years, DiGiCo has been at the top of the list on the riders we recieve and they are our crew’s console of choice, so the decision to invest in the SD10s was without question,” says Fitzpatrick. “We also had the option to upgrade to the new 32-bit cards. They have improved the SD10s already incredible audio quality and everyone is amazed by them.” One of the Acoustik team’s favourite functions on the consoles is macros, which give “seemingly endless possibilities” according to Fitzpatrick. “And the connectivity b
UK - Wireless headphone provider Silent Disco King partnered with Cineramageddon at Glastonbury festival for a debut screening of Ibiza, The Silent Movie. Cineramageddon is curated by film director Julien Temple and returned to Glastonbury this year for its second outing after debuting in 2017. The area has the UK’s largest outdoor cinema screen and includes 60 vehicles including Mad Max style cars, classic cars, fairground bumper cars and convertibles dug into the ground, which festival goers can rent out to watch an array of cult classic movies. The activation was opened this year with the premiere of Ibiza, The Silent Movie directed by Julien Temple and music curated by Fatboy Slim. The film is an exploration of the hedonistic history of the Ibiza island and was introduced by Glastonbury’s co-creator Michael Eavis, Julien Temple and Fatboy
China - The Trophée des Champions returned to Shenzhen on 3 August, for its 24th edition, which saw Paris Saint-Germain go head-to-head with Stade Rennais. This is the second year that the French Super Cup has been held at the Shenzhen Universiade Centre. Absen was the exclusive and official LED display supplier of the event, providing 200 panels of perimeter LED and onsite support throughout the event. The game, which was attended by over 31,000 spectators, saw the defending champions Paris Saint-Germain retain their title following a 2-1 win, making it their seventh Trophée des Champions title in a row, and their ninth overall. The company in charge of onsite management, Kaisa Culture & Sports, selected Absen’s 9mm resolution LED perimeter display system for the event, which was installed around three sides of the pitch and used to play adverting and
The Netherlands - Violinist Nigel Kennedy played an engaging concert as part of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Neumünster. The violinist was accompanied by the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, which comprised young musicians from 27 nations, who were selected from 1,500 applicants through international auditions. Dutch loudspeaker manufacturer Alcons Audio teamed up with Kennedy's sound engineer Andreas Adelhofer of Headroom Media Service or the sound experience. Adelhofer, who has been working as sound engineer for Nigel Kennedy for more than five years, is responsible for all his concerts worldwide as FOH engineer. In this capacity, he is also the interface between artist and promoter or service provider in the production preparation. In part, his company also provides the complete production for European tour stops. At the concert in Neumünster Ade
UK - White Light recently provided the lighting equipment for the Apollo Nights season at the Eventim Apollo - a week of live performances from a range of music artists. The inaugural Apollo Nights season at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, London, brought together a premium VIP dining experience and a roster of headline artists for a week of shows at the landmark venue. Curated by Ollie Rosenblatt at Senbla, the season delivered an audience experience with the front stalls seating removed to create space for VIP pre-show dining with live jazz piano before opening up the full auditorium for headline shows. The first performance was by Burt Bacharach and Joss Stone and was followed by George Benson and finally Marc Almond. The lighting designer for the season was Ben M Rogers, who WL has previously worked with on the award-winning Hair musical. Rogers c
UK - Version 2 is supporting a growing number of crews with low energy solutions both in the studio and on location. Working with a number of leading lighting directors, the Buckinghamshire based lighting rental specialists have supported coverage on a selection of premier summer events with products form their low energy inventory. First up was a visit to Worthy Farm, Somerset as broadcast partners for the BBC’s comprehensive coverage of the 2019 Glastonbury Festival. Making use of a selection of V2 low energy fixtures, lighting director Oli Richards and gaffer Paul Evans made this year’s Glastonbury coverage a completely LED lit event. The Version 2 team deployed a pair of lighting trucks to help deliver the look for both the ‘live studio’ areas and the considerable number of interviews held remotely across the vast festival site. The studio set-ups mi
Europe - Having recently purchased their own Allen & Heath SQ-5 digital mixer, British rockers Don Broco chose to pair it up with a full dLive system this summer for a short festival run across the UK & Europe, including appearances at Mad Cool (Madrid), Meo Mares Festival (Porto) and Truck Festival (Oxfordshire). Supplied by SSE Audio, a DM64 MixRack fitted with gigaACE and fibreACE cards formed the core of the system; paired with a dLive S3000 surface at FOH (fitted with a Dante card), while a digital split from the gigaACE card allowed the band to use their own SQ-5 for monitor duties. Adam Boole, FOH engineer and long-time user of Allen & Heath products, comments: “When we started this project, we needed to build a system that would work with the band’s own SQ-5 on monitors, luckily it was easy to achieve by having dLive on FOH. All I/O is set up th
