Turkey - J&C Joel, in conjunction with their regional distributor Eramita, received the Turkish President’s seal of approval when they were commissioned to fit the stage engineering solutions at TCCB National Congress and Cultural Centre. The Congress and Cultural Centre is one of the largest multi-purpose halls in Turkey and is located within the grounds of the Presidential Palace Complex in Ankara. The venue will be home to several types of performances ranging from concerts, operas, theatres, musicals to congresses or big meetings. J&C Joel’s engineers took on one of the company’s biggest ever installations despite being caught in the middle of an attempted military coup in the country’s capital city. The installation in the 2,042-seat theatre took around seven months to complete with a team comprising a site project manager, four UK fitters and thre
USA - Philips Lighting reports that its Philips VL6000 Beam was chosen by lighting designer Bryan Hartley to create his 'rock theatre' design for the recent winter tour by Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Hartley, who has lit the American rock band's shows for the past 18 years, found the output and appearance of the new VL6000 Beam suitable to create the searchlight effect. He says: "The VL6000 Beam has an awesome output, which more than delivered to expectations." Hartley continues: "I wanted to sync' the production with the show's story, which is about a child who wanders into an old theatre. I designed the set to be an old theatre during narrations, then during the songs the stage morphs into a rock stage. The impressive output and the look of the VL6000 Beam helped to create that old-style movie Skytracker look." Hartley adds: "I wanted lots of small lights, but al
Guatemala - Nexo’s STM Series modular line array was installed at the Cultural Centre Miguel Angel Asturias, also known as the Teatro Nacional de Guatemala. Built on the site of a former fort and, at one time, a prison, the theatre is renowned for its architecture designed by Guatemalan architect Efrain Recinos. Opened in 1978, it is now the country’s largest cultural complex, with its auditorium capable of housing audiences of 2000+, to watch up to 300 artists on the large stage, and more than 50 musicians in the orchestra pit. The theatre’s technical director Luis Tala welcomed the completion of the system installation. “This is a very special moment. I remember when I started talking about this project with Celso Papadopoulos of Nexo Latin America, more than 12 years ago.” By the time official authorisation was received, Nexo had released the compact STM M
USA - A live concert to celebrate Porsche’s new Panamera hybrid automobile was mixed on an Allen & Heath dLive S Class with S7000 Surface, DM64 MixRack and DX32 Expander. The Engine Notes concert, held at the Porsche Experience Centre in California, featured Dave Navarro, Mark McGrath and other rockers performing as The Royal Machines and was co-sponsored by Rolling Stone magazine. Shawn London mixed FOH for the concert with sound and lighting systems provided by Los Angeles based Harmony Event Productions. London, a 20-year veteran FOH engineer, has mixed for bands like Eagles of Death Metal, Jane's Addiction, 30 seconds to Mars, The Used and Fishbone. He noted, “For the Porsche event, they needed feeds for FOH but also for a video recording and cues for a lighting director, and an overall production director. And, they wanted to do two sim
UK - Sitting on the banks of the river Mersey in Liverpool, the Grade II listed Cunard Building embodies the rich maritime history of the city. Constructed in the heyday of Liverpool’s shipping industry between 1914 and 1917, the building was the headquarters of the Cunard Line until the 1960s and was also home to Cunard's passenger facilities for transatlantic journeys departing from the city. When the building’s current owners recently decided upon bolstering its evening appearance on the waterfront, they turned to local install specialists Adlib for an architectural lighting concept, who specified 24 Colorist Panel 36Qa and 14 Colorist Panel 8Qa Iluminarc fixtures to accentuate the building’s Italian Renaissance-inspired architectural aesthetic. “It was a tough task to illuminate one of Liverpool’s most iconic buildings and UNESCO World Heritage Site,”
USA - With Lana Del Rey’s most recent album, Lust for Life, prominently appearing on many critics’ top lists for 2017, the sultry singer-songwriter has been on the road in North America this January and February with LA to the Moon, her first tour since 2014. FOH mixing duties for the Sound Image-reinforced trek have been in the capable care of Kevin Madigan, perhaps best known for his work with David Crosby, Graham Nash and Steven Stills. With the task of bringing Del Rey’s dreamy, intimate pop to audiences in hockey arenas and other equally acoustically challenging venues, Madigan has two secret weapons: a well-honed ear for great, vocal-based song craft, and a passion for exceptional PAs, in this case, a DiGiCo SD5-driven L-Acoustics’ K1 system. “We’re not trying to get huge SPLs - quality is the key, and that was taken into account with th
UK - Rental production company Neg Earth Lights has added the Chroma-Q Color Force II LED cyc, wash & effects light to its stockholding and is supplying the fixture for a number of high-profile concert tours, live music events and TV shows. Lighting designer Tim Routledge approached Neg Earth looking for a LED washlight for a particular project, and was impressed by the Chroma-Q Color Force II. In recent months, he has utilised the fixture on a variety of projects. These include using nearly 60 Color Force II to powerfully illuminate the entire room as a single surface for a show by a leading British pop artist inside one of The Tanks - huge concrete, circular underground rooms at the Tate Modern measuring over 30m across and 7m high. In addition, Tim has utilised nearly 40 fixtures to provide different floor lighting packages for performers during six shows in th
South Africa - The recently-opened, multi-purpose Sun Arena at the Time Square in Pretoria (see report on the venue in LSi March 2018) hosted the Extreme Fighting Championship (EFC) in December last year. With the heavyweight title up for grabs, it was lighting designer Gary Sam who was throwing the blows. In his arsenal was the in-house Robe lighting system which South African distributor DWR Distribution supplied to the new venue. The lighting included 12 Robe BMFL Spot, 6 Robe BMFL Blades, 12 BMFL WashBeam, 24 Robe Spiiders, 24 Robin Pointes, 12 Robin LedBeam 100, 42 Longman F4Up and a LeMaitre MVS. “The brief from EFC was to make the show look as spectacular as possible, using effect lighting without compromising the TV ‘key’ lighting,” said Gary. MGG Productions were the technical support at the venue and assisted with set up, while Gearhouse South
USA - Southside Baptist Church in Warner Robins, Georgia, recently upgraded its dated LCD video system with a high-resolution FLEXTour 2.8mm LED video display provided by Nashville-based LED video manufacturer PixelFLEX. Chris Clark, Southside Baptist director of media, explains: “In our previous design, we had an array of twenty-four 65-inch LCD TV’s, with a 2-inch bezel around each unit, so you can only imagine our challenges and frustrations. With the LCD display, it was impossible to create a seamless image, and it looked a bit clunky and cheap. Since I go to a lot of sporting events, I knew LED video would be an ideal solution, and we couldn’t be happier with our new high-definition, video system from PixelFLEX.” Clark continues: “During our initial research, we also thought about the possibility of using a projection system, but it’s simply not as bri
USA - Cornerstone Church in Milwaukee, WI, a portable church that converts into a large banquet hall and wedding venue, has recently upgraded to a Martin Audio Wavefront Precision Mini line array system. Wavefront Precision introduces a scalable approach to resolution and control of coverage that functions in tandem with external, dedicated multi-channel amplifiers in a uniquely flexible, upgradeable, and price-conscious system. The more cabinets with dedicated amplifier channels, the higher the resolution and scale of coverage control achievable. System designer and integrator David Price says: “The hall is in a historic building and has several acoustic challenges which explains why we chose the WPM system. The room has a mammoth 35ft. tall x 30 ft. wide curved centre channel area where tons of acoustic energy can get trapped. WPM gives us control over directivity
USA - A successful band setting up a studio is not particularly noteworthy, but when it is set up to record in DSD and features a 4K video stage, this is clearly unusual. Furthermore, this new facility is located on Nashville’s doorstep which is home to many famous studios, suggesting this is a bold move. DSD recording is relatively unusual for a conventional studio, although commonplace in the classical recording world with the majority of concert halls and opera houses being so equipped. This is no ordinary studio but, regardless of musical genre, DSD means Merging Technologies and in this case Pyramix MassCore with two Horus networked audio converters. The successful group behind this project is the Annie Moses Band, very much a family venture blending traditional American folk songs with a strong classical influence. Their live and predominantly acoustic performa
USA - Ross Dettmering, owner of D24K Sound, welcomes the scepticism he gets from clients when he tells them he'll cover their event with high-impact, high-fidelity sound using only a tiny fraction of the boxes that they're used to seeing. For example, D24K Sound recently covered a crowd of 5,000 Drexel University students who packed together to watch rapper Kehlani using only a stereo pair of Danley J3-94 Jericho Horns for full-range content, along with four Danley BC-415 and six Danley DBH-218 subwoofers. D24K is among a small, but growing number of event production companies that are standing apart from the competition by offering their clients Danley Sound Labs' “crystal-clear fidelity, honest bass, and improved sightlines”. "I first heard about Danley from a sound engineer friend who told me that Danley was building single boxes that were powerful enough to cov
Spain - Barcelona-based lighting designer Ezequiel Gomez has worked on Spanish singer David Bisbal’s latest Hijos del Mar tour which has already visited Spain and Latin America. The LD chose Robe for the majority of the moving lights, with Spiiders, Pointes and LEDWash 300s key fixtures on the rig. Ezequiel, who has been working for the artist since 2009, insisted the stage and scenic design for this tour had been a collaborative effort between the artist himself, Brian Sellei from Menos que Cero, Universal Music, Barcelona-based LED specialists LEDSCONTROL and performing arts collective SomosLuz (We Are Light), of which Ezequiel is a member. LEDSCONTROL presented the initial ideas from which the stage look evolved, coming up with an idea to have partially enclosed LED ‘cabinets’ for the band risers. Ezequiel and his team at SomosLuz adapted this and made
USA - The Conga Room-LA Live isn’t photographed and videoed quite as often as the celebrities who frequent the nightlife, concert, and private event venue, but it comes very, very close. Located directly across the street from the Staples Centre, the sleekly designed 1000-capacity multi-room site regularly hosts press conferences, after parties and other functions associated with major award shows like the Grammys, Emmys, X-Games, VMAs, and ESPYs, as well as film and album releases, all of which are press magnets. Lately, the photos and videos taken at the celebrity co-owned A-list venue are looking better than ever, thanks to the installation of 34 Chauvet Professional fixtures, supplied by RAT Sound and designed by Aaron Silvie. “There has been a stunning improvement in our image quality on film and still photography as a result of these lights,” said Woody Nus
UK - The Gatecrasher Classical club night landed at Sheffield City Hall in January, with dramatic lighting controlled by Avolites consoles. Birmingham-based Stage Production provided the technical know-how for the laser and lighting spectacular, achieving that 'Gatecrasher feeling' by hitting the crowd with myriad effects. The team supplied all lighting, rigging, staging and technical production for the event and designed the light show. Stage Production managing director Jordan Lake was production director/designer for the gig, working alongside Ben Butler as lighting director/designer. The duo used an Avolites Sapphire Touch and Tiger Touch II console with Fader Wing to control the ambitious production. "Gatecrasher fans expect massive lighting shows and it was up to us to deliver," says Lake. "Gatecrasher has always understood that it takes more than a big-na
The Netherlands - One of Holland’s first installations of Nexo’s new Geo M10 mid-size line array has been completed in the Stadsgehoorzaal in Kampen, a classic 125-year old city theatre in the traditional Dutch style. The plush red auditorium of the Stadsgehoorzaal, which seats 480, has just been equipped with a Nexo line array system in a L/C/R configuration, with Nexo’s super-compact ID Series loudspeakers for fills. The design story starts with the theatre’s large central chandelier, which challenges most sound reinforcement system designs, obstructing sound from reaching the balcony. Bert Koenders, from Nexo distributor and installer Iemke Roos, worked closely with the theatre’s head of sound Larz Kemper and his installation team, coming up with a design which deployed small clusters of a pair of Nexo Geo M6 line array modules - these were ceiling-mounted
USA - The XLNT CyberHoist IITM system by CyberMotion recently finished the US leg of Fall Out Boy’s Mania tour. Sixteen CyberHoist II Intelligent, variable-speed chain hoists and one MotionCue 3D console, plus two hoists spare and one console spare were rented to Fall Out Boy management for the 2017 autumn tour. The hoists were used to float a B and C stage above the crowd with artists on top of them. The B-Stage consisted of a double layer, where the top was raised to reveal a secondary B-Stage with drum set and drummer on top. This bottom, or secondary B-Stage, would then grab onto the video skirt surrounding the B-Stage to lift the whole thing above the crowd. The C-Stage was used as a three-sided iMag screen throughout the show and it landed during the show to create the C-Stage for the lead singer and bassist. This stage then raised over the crowd so the
UK - AV provider Anna Valley provided the video technology used at the VO5 NME Awards 2018 at London’s O2 Academy Brixton on 14 February. Central to the event design created by Reality was a backdrop comprising multiple LED screens that changed configuration for each artist and award. To support this year’s visual theme of The Glitch, which featured broken-up graphics and images, Anna Valley provided three on-stage video elements: the exploding banner - comprising three LED screens in staggered positions to display captions, logos and titles; the exploding main screen – made up of five LED screens that moved independently into different configurations to form the backdrop for the main acts; and the MiStrip Lattice Gateway - interlaced video poles used to create a gateway for artists and presenters to make their entrance. Both the exploding banner and mai
UK - Once an essential stop on any self-respecting band’s UK tour, the Preston Guild Hall & Charter Theatre complex was threatened with demolition as recently as 2014. However, thanks to new owners The Rigby Group, it is currently undergoing a major upgrade programme. This has included the installation of a distributed audio system based on Yamaha processors and control. The project covers the 2034-capacity Grand Hall, 780-capacity Charter Theatre and a range of restaurants and other facilities. In the most recent phase, Autograph Sales & Installations was asked to supply an unobtrusive but powerful multi-zone audio system for Level, a facility providing a wide range of entertainment and activities, including a multi-screen sports bar and nightclub. Autograph’s Ben Tredwell worked closely with the venue’s technical manager James Hubbard, who was clear fro
UK - Gorillaz, the virtual band formed by Blur singer Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, was founded 20 years ago. Since then, the project has continued to evolve, as has the size of the production - it is now all about the real players (and guest stars) rather than just the animation, and Albarn and co. are often more than 20-strong when they hit the road. With such a big show comes great sonic responsibility, all of which is in the hands of Matt Butcher at FOH and Dave Guerin at monitors, both of whom rely on DiGiCo for everything. “I started with Damon [Albarn] after Parklife came out, so we go back a long way,” Butcher says. “Right at the beginning of the year, for pre-production, we wanted to not compromise on any of the audio - and that’s the way to go: don’t mess around, do it right. Because I’ve known Damon for so long, I can get quite involved
The Netherlands - International creative design practice Painting with Light was commissioned by Panasonic to produce a high-impact multimedia live show for their booth at this year’s ISE expo at Amsterdam RAI. In 2017, Painting with Light’s creative director Luc Peumans developed a show that featured simultaneous tracking and projecting onto multiple objects, resulting in a dynamic live performance piece that combined a number of cutting-edge technologies, illustrating their capabilities, together with the flexibility of Panasonic’s latest projectors. This year, Luc received a brief from Panasonic’s European product marketing manager for projectors and visual solutions, Thomas Vertommen, who wanted to take it one step further and create a more graphical show that was even more technically ambitious. Panasonic is continuously following live entertainment
USA - RMB Audio recently installed a Wavefront Precision Compact array in the Edenton Street United Methodist Church complex in Raleigh, North Carolina, adding to Martin Audio systems that already exist including MLA Mini, CDD and Ceiling Series speakers. Working closely with Edenton’s technical consultant Dave Clemmer, Matt Johnson, Wayne Sowder, Rick Null and Tobias Cannady of RMB installed WPC enclosures and SX212 subs powered by iKON amplifiers in Kerr Hall, a new 500-seat worship area on the second floor of the block long structure in downtown Raleigh. As described by RMB president Cooper Cannady, “The system was designed for a site called The Gathering that measures 80ft. deep by 80ft. wide and holds a variety of events for the millennial audience, which required a very aggressive sound system for the electric ‘praise’ bands. “The church opted fo
USA - Bass-guitarist Victor Wooten’s Victor Wooten Trio performed recently at the Caribou Room, a new live music venue just outside Boulder, CO. Pushing his bass to its creative limits, as he moved from finger tapped melodies to thunderous slapping sections, Wooten took his audience on a musical journey that wove its way through blues, jazz, fusion, rock and other genres. Keeping pace with him note for note was a Tim Farquhar lighting design that featured Chauvet Professional Rogue and Chauvet DJ Intimidator fixtures. “Victor Wooten is a great artist, so obviously my goal was to keep the centre of attention on him while still conveying emotions on stage with the lighting,” said Farquhar, who in addition to being a touring LD, is the house LD at the Caribou Room. “The Rogues and Intimidators were ideal in this regard, giving me the looks I wanted, without distractions
USA - Robert Nelson, production manager and monitor engineer for Blondie, updated his decades-old Clair Brothers wedges with the purchase of a dozen Clair Brothers 1AM+ 12-inch point source monitors. Nelson, who’s got 40 years’ experience in live sound, explains his reasoning: “I do my best to stay on top of what they need and to try and make everything happen, within reason and the laws of physics. Compared to a lot of monitor engineers, I keep things simple. If I do any processing at all, it’s modest - there’s only so much that processing can achieve. The real weak link in most monitoring situations is the monitor wedges themselves, and all the crazy processing in the world can’t fix a lousy wedge.” Nelson owns more than 20 Clair Brothers 12AM wedges that have served, and continue to serve, him and his clients well for 20 years. “For Blondie, I want
