USA - The Lesher Centre for the Arts forms a cultural cornerstone for the bustling downtown of Walnut Creek, California. Since its original construction and opening as the Nuthouse in 1967 and its subsequent reinvestment and expansion as the Lesher Centre for the Arts in 1990, the centre has attracted top theatrical talent and is considered the preeminent performance venue in Contra Costa County. Recently, local AV integration firm Premier Media Integration designed and installed a new sound system using Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers and subwoofers in the Margaret Lesher Theatre, which greatly improved intelligibility, impact, and gain-before-feedback. Of the centre’s four theatres, the Margaret Lesher Theatre is intermediate in seating capacity at 300. It’s commonly used for corporate events, musicals, and dramatic performances, with seating arrayed in a w
Sweden - Urban dance impresario Fredrik ‘Benke’ Rydman’s Varoffer performance has just completed its run at Stockholm Kulturhuset Stadsteater. Two radically different pieces made up this seminal work - the first a 40 minute ‘solo’ performance by Benke dancing with an industrial robot to a specially composed new soundtrack by Johan Liljedahl and Carl-Johan Rasmusson; and the second comprising 20 synchronised street dancers moving to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 5000 litres of water with a massive mirror suspended above the stage bouncing their images back into the audience to appreciate their symmetry and formation skills. Imaginatively lit by Palle Palme, Robe BMFL Blades, LEDWash 1200s and ColorSpot 700E ATs together with other luminaires all played a vital part in this breath-taking show which took the concept of performance art and techno
Norway - Even before Norway's inaugural Festningen festival began, event organisers Momentium, Trondheim Live and Sky Agency promised a 'magical experience' for all. Public reaction bore that out, and the event has now claimed the top spot as Central Norway's largest and most successful EDM, pop, hip hop, and urban music event, with Festningen 2019 already confirmed for next summer. The festival's venue was the 17th century fortress Kristiansten Festning in Southeast Trondheim. However, nearby residential developments meant that local concern over noise pollution was one of the organiser's big challenges. A careful consultation process between Scandec (L-Acoustics Norwegian certified provider distributor), L-Acoustics, and Momentium ensured the best sound reinforcement solution by deploying an L-Acoustics K2 system with an event-specific configuration developed to emphasize
USA - Glenn Ottenbacher couldn’t understand many of the words Sudden Rush was singing when the rock band performed before a sold-out crowd at the Muse Event Centre. But the lighting designer and owner of AGS Event Productions felt the passion of the Hmong quintet’s music, which was honed by centuries of diaspora, struggle, and an unrelenting drive to overcome adversity. Performing in their native language, the Vancouver, British Columbia-based group connected to the appreciative crowd, most of whom were part of Hmong families that fled to the US in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and related conflicts in Southeast Asia. His unfamiliarity with the band’s language notwithstanding, Ottenbacher had no trouble reflecting their performance in light with a compact, versatile rig anchored by Chauvet Professional Rogue fixtures. “This was a very enjoyable project for
UK - The award-winning, opulent grounds of 18th-century villa, Chiswick House, served as the canvas for an illuminating display where classical architecture met modern technology, care of renowned lighting designer, Nick Gray from Renegade Design. Several art installations by up-and-coming artist Finn Thomson also featured at the event, which was launched on Thursday 15 November, and ran from Thursday to Sunday until 30 December. After Dark was billed as a festive extravaganza like no other - which meant no reindeers, fake snow or Santa Clauses in sight. Instead the event organisers opted for vibrant state-of-the-art light displays that offered a sleek, modern and classy experience - as well as providing stunning picture content for snap-happy social media fans - in a breath-taking historical setting with delicious food and drink aplenty. One of the main attrac
USA - John ‘Lou’ Lousteau, chief engineer at Foo Fighters’ Studio 606, recently installed a pair of JBL Professional 7 Series master reference monitors at the recording studio. The engineer and producer has worked with the likes of Iggy Pop and Joan Jett and also records at Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins home studios, as well as his own home studio. He was so impressed by the performance of the JBL 7 Series monitors at Studio 606 that he equipped his and Taylor’s studios with them as well. “We’ve used monitors from dozens of different brands over the years, but there’s something special about the JBL 7 Series - they just speak to me,” says Lousteau. “Something about them sounds really good. They have a tightness in the low-end, and the mids and highs and really transparent and clear - they’re super accurate. As soon as I heard them, I wa
USA - With holiday shows, tours and our personal circumstances to balance, the holiday season can pass in a blur. Each year at Bandit Lites, team members are provided funds and encouraged to take an afternoon to come together to serve their communities and children in need. “I look forward to this event every year because it brings us all together and provides Christmas wish for children in need,” says Bandit Lites HR coordinator Cori Link. Link and office manager Lisa Fodge spearheaded this year’s efforts to give back, gathering Christmas lists and dropping off the bundles to the charities. In Nashville, Erich Hudgens, Bandit Lites shop foreman spent the afternoon shuttling multiple groups out to shop for children, participating in the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree programme. After choosing a child themselves, team members fulfill the wishes as seasoned
USA - When technology design and integration company Walker Engineering was asked to assess the paging and public address systems at the sprawling Houston Methodist Hospital, they encountered an assortment of older analogue systems that were inadequate for the needs of a modern medical facility – including integration with the new Paula and Joseph C. “Rusty” Walter III Tower, a 22-story, one million-square-foot building for cardiovascular and neurosurgery. In keeping with Houston Methodist’s approach to medicine, efficient communications across all 10 downtown buildings was a critical need. Walker recommended Bosch Praesideo digital public address and emergency sound system as a scalable, flexible enterprise solution to serve the new Walter Tower and unite it with the rest of the campus. “We had previously upgraded several of the medical centre‘s suburban
USA - For a third year running, global design and BIM software solutions provider Vectorworks is sponsoring awards at the Kennedy Centre American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF). KCACTF is a national programme designed to celebrate college theatre in the United States and help students develop their creative and technical skills. This year marks the 50th anniversary of KCACTF. Every year, KCACTF hosts eight regional festivals for college theatre students across the United States. The festival activities include workshops, discussions, regional-level scholarships and award programmes. The first regional festival begins on 8 January and the last festival ends on 28 February. “As we gear up for another exciting festival season for KCACTF, once again new doors will open for a handful of students because of the connections between KCACTF and our industry-leading spons
UK - Recognising the work and achievements of National Health Service employees is the annual Celebrating Success Awards, with awards reflecting the organisation's core values of care and compassion, dignity and respect, quality, teamwork, openness, honesty and responsibility. For the recent awards, which took place at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, LD Ollie Wilkinson specified Chauvet Professional Rogue R2 Wash, Rogue R1 Spot, and Rogue R1 Beam fixtures in support of his overall lighting concept. With the night itself very much centred around the guests themselves, Wilkinson decided to focus his lighting concept accordingly, placing special emphasis on illuminating the tables with the Rogue R2 Wash fixtures, which were flown from a centrally positioned truss. “This year, I wanted to place visual emphasis upon the tables without exposing the guests to unsightly
UK - Def Leppard continued their 2018-19 Hysteria tour in UK and Irish arenas just before Christmas, celebrating 31 years since the release of their seminal Hysteria album, which was played in its entirety in track order. HSL supplied lighting equipment plus rigging, with over 100 motors including a 25-way Kinesys automation system, to the tour which features a striking lighting design by Kenji Ohashi, who has lit the band for 17 years. The lighting and rigging - which also included supplying motors for video and PA - was co-ordinated for HSL by Jordan Hanson, who comments that they “were delighted to be back working alongside production manager Chris Adamson and ‘universal’ lighting crew chief Kevin Cassidy again. It was really interesting to see Kenji’s work and the vitality and energy his lighting brought to a great looking and sounding product
Europe - The Human League completed their 2018 UK and European tour with an eye-catching production and lighting design. Colour Sound Experiment was once again the lighting supplier, working closely with award winning lighting designer Rob Sinclair on his 10th Human League tour, the ninth in the LD hot seat. The set design was initiated by the band’s manager, Simon Watson, who takes a keen interest in production values and their stage visuality. He wanted something new and different, especially with the video element. Video has played a big part in Human League tours for the last 10 years, and on this one, he didn’t want a stage filled with LED. Instead, the concept that he and Rob developed utilised a series of aluminium framed projection cubes covered with gauze sides which were mapped to receive animated projections. This introduced a lively, highly effec
USA - For the past 15 years, the Infinite Energy Arena has served the greater Atlanta, Georgia area as a state-of-the-art venue for concerts, graduations, and sporting events of all types, from basketball to ice hockey to professional lacrosse. Depending on the nature of the event, the arena holds between 11,000 and 13,000 people. After its original sound reinforcement system fell out of date and beyond repair, the Infinite Energy Arena management chose AV integration firm Logic Systems Sound & Lighting, of St. Louis, Missouri, to install a cost-effective Danley Sound Labs system. The Danley system reuses existing wiring & rigging and far exceeds the design criteria for fidelity and sound pressure level, all while simultaneously slashing the system’s energy budget in half. “The old system relied on obsolete technology and discontinued products,” explains
USA/UK - City Theatrical’s Show DMX Show Baby 6 and QolorFLEX NuNeon products are currently being used for holiday performances and installations around the world, including The Polar Express Train Ride in Chicago and St Michael’s Parish Church of Edinburgh, Scotland. As a live Broadway-style show aboard a real Amtrak train, The Polar Express Train Ride uses Show DMX Show Baby 6 units in combination with City Theatrical’s External Weatherproof Antennas as a plug and play wireless DMX solution that transmits 760 DMX channels and one cue list from the console on each train to the boarding platform wirelessly. “The Show Baby 6 units have blown us away again this year in terms of their range and reliability in the heavily-congested downtown Chicago RF spectrum,” said Guy Rhodes, lighting designer for The Polar Express Train Ride. “We are a
USA - Dustin Bates, frontman of the Sci-Fi rockers Starset, tells a story about the quartet’s formation in 2013. The band, it seems, was created by the Starset Society, an organisation dedicated to alerting the public about “The Message,” a cyrptic signal they picked up from the outer reaches of space. A fictional tale? Perhaps, but one that certainly felt real to the fans who packed houses on the band’s recently completed European tour. Contributing to the galactic mood of the band’s shows was a time and space bending lighting design by Rodger Pugh of Dveus Designs that featured Chauvet Professional fixtures and atmospherics, supplied by Elite Multimedia. “Starset is a great group to design for, since their Sci-Fi orientation lends itself to powerful visuals,” says Pugh. “The overall idea behind our design on this tour is ‘Sci-Fi.’ We want everyone
USA - Early in his career, Zach Scott found part-time work supplying small audio and lighting packages to a local video gaming venue in Chicago. One of its managers, Brad Weir, later branched out to organise gaming tournaments across the Midwest. Weir employed Scott for a few years, but eventually the two separated, Weir to pursue his passion of video gaming tournaments, and Scott into lighting, eventually creating his own design firm, Illuminate Collective. But old connections have a way of resurfacing. Seven years after losing contact, Scott received a call from his former venue manager asking him if he’d be interested in working at this year’s Hi-Rez Expo at the Atlanta DreamHack. Accepting the offer, Scott went on to create sleek, camera-friendly stage designs for Hi-Rez Studios’ SMITE stage. A friend of his, fellow designer Dustin Derry of Stonewolf Studio
USA - Tirso Lighting has installed an all-LED Elation lighting package for another Wahi Group club opening in northern Manhattan, this time Bar 151, an upscale lounge and performance space in the neighbourhood of Inwood, a quieter and more affordable enclave of New York City that has become increasingly popular of late. Tirso Lighting has been around since 2009 and has been using Elation lighting since its inception. Nevertheless, Bar 151 was the design and integration company’s first all LED lighting project. “I was really looking forward to doing an all LED project and this was a good chance to realize that,” says Tirso Lighting owner Tirso Pelaez, who served as lighting designer on the project and suggested the green approach to the client. “Elation’s choice of products allowed us to put together an all LED lighting package for Bar 151 that can stand on its own.
Europe - Claypaky Mythos 2 fixtures have accompanied British alternative rock band Nothing But Thieves (NBT) on their extensive tour around Europe and the USA. The band’s long-term lighting designer Steve Bewley specified the Mythos 2 for the fixture’s versatility to help him to deliver a dramatic and dynamic set. “I’ve used Claypaky on many occasions and I knew the Mythos 2 would be a great fit for the NBT show,” says Bewley. “I needed a multifunctional hybrid light to get as many looks out of the rig as possible. I used them to create bold beam looks, as well as spot and wash looks throughout the show.” In spotlight mode, the Mythos 2 has a 4-50˚ electronic zoom range, while its advanced colour system consists of a CMY system based on three gradually fading colour wheels, plus 14 colour filters on three wheels and two CTO filters to offer designers bot
Nigeria - Based in Port Harcourt, Chicoco Studios is housed in The Shed, a community space built by the young residents of the city’s waterfront slums. The studio was designed and installed by the Collaborative Media Advocacy Platform (CMAP) in conjunction with the musicians from Chicoco Collective and is home to both recording and radio broadcast spaces. Directed by ex-BBC engineer Ana Bonaldo, with technical mentoring and support from another ex-BBC engineer Colin Neal, Chicoco Radio is powered by a pair of Allen & Heath XB-14-2 compact broadcast mixers chosen, according to Neal for their “incomparable value and versatility. We found no other desk at this price point which features broadcast functions such as TELCO channels with clean feed, talkback and remote starts for playout channels.” While Chicoco Radio was devised to give the residents of Port Harc
UK - The team at LSi will be taking a break now until the 2nd January 2019. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank all our readers for following LSI Online news throughout 2018 and wish you a very happy holiday season - however you might be celebrating. The daily online news will resume on Wednesday 2nd January. Merry Christmas! (LSi Online)
USA - The announcement by American rapper Post Malone that he intended to stage his own festival at the Dos Equis Pavilion in Dallas, Texas recently, featuring himself, Tyler, the Creator and Travis Scott, created a wave of interest. LD Ben Dalgleish has been using 36 of GLP’s X4 XL moving LED heads for Post Malone’s worldwide festival tour that started back in June, and he was keen to return to the brand, this time specifying 133 of the X4 Bar 20 battens as the feature light for Posty Fest. Working with creative director Lewis James, whom he said “provided excellent creative direction on the look he envisaged for Post Malone’s performance”, Dalgleish said that the aim was to have the artist stand out as the headline act. “Other acts had a large LED screen, but this was removed during the changeover and revealed a large structure lined with GLP’s X4 20 B
Canada - For Canadian shows celebrating the 10th anniversary of Protest the Hero’s Fortress album, lighting operator/programmer Michael ‘Herk’ Herkimer deployed a comprehensive suite of Elation lighting fixtures. Provided by Hamilton-based Soundbox Productions of Canada, the rig was comprised exclusively of Elation ACL 360 Matrix panels, Cuepix Battens, Fuze Pars and ZW19s. To say Herk maintains a busy schedule is an understatement. In mid-October 2018 he’d been touring for roughly 29 months, splitting his time between Rise Against, Billy Talent and Protest the Hero (PTH). With his previous knowledge of the PTH gig, Herk knew he’d require a lighting rig that was economical and utilitarian, with every fixture offering a high degree of flexibility. In all, the PTH light show consists of roughly 2,300 cues and Herk’s approach is to build intensity constantly
UK - Back in the late 1530s, Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries that had been familiar fixtures on the English landscape prior to the Reformation. Most of the stately buildings were destroyed, their material scavenged for other purposes. But one survived thanks to the intervention of Augustine Steward, Mayor of Norwich, who convinced the king to deed the impressive friary in his city to the people, so it could be used for fairs, feasts and other public functions. Today, almost 500 years later, the monastery complex (the oldest surviving one in the UK), is still thriving as The Halls, a community cultural centre with architectural features that provide a dramatic backdrop for a variety of events. Among these performances was a recent high school choral concert sponsored by Norfolk Music Hub that was animated by an evocative lighting design featuring Chauvet Professional Ov
UK - Swedish rapper Yung Lean has recently completed his biggest UK headline show to date - Wings of Desire at London’s O2 Academy in Brixton, accompanied by an Allen & Heath dLive Wings set-up. The full audio set-up - owned by FOH engineer Gustav Brunn - is used for both FOH and Mon duties and features a dLive C1500 surface fitted with a Waves 3 card at FOH position in conjunction with a CDM32 MixRack, fitted with a Dante card, and an IP6 Controller at stage position. Brunn comments: “I was looking for a fly-in rig that we can take anywhere in the world when A&H released the new dLive series. It’s such a competent rig and really suits my needs - I can bring it with me anywhere on the planet.” On stage, a DJ performs alongside the artists using Ableton Live with the outputs sent to the CDM32 via Dante. The IP6 is used to allow the producti
