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Martin MAC Ultras in new production at The Bridge

Danny Webb and Ralph Fiennes in Straight Line Crazy at The Bridge (photo: Manuel Harlan)

Details: 06 April 2022

London-based Sparks Theatrical (Lighting) Hire has purchased seven Martin MAC Ultra Performance from UK distributors Sound Technology Ltd, which have gone straight onto the acclaimed new production of Straight Line Crazy at the influential Bridge Theatre.
The Bridge is the first theatre run by London Theatre Company which was founded by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr back in 2017. The lighting plays a prominent role in the production, lit by fast emerging LD Jessica Hung Han Yun.
Said Sparks MD, Paul Anderson, “Because I design and also run a rental company I can see in the field what the designers and technicians are working with. When we were asked to supply the next show at the Bridge I suggested the MAC Ultra Performance and Jessica said “absolutely”.
In additio

The Myrtle Beach Convention Centre hosted the Ultimate Battle cheerleading competition

Claypaky Sharpy Plus joins Ultimate Battle

Details: 06 April 2022

USA - A large complement of Claypaky’s Sharpy Plus hybrid beam lights and spotlights were something to cheer about when Richmond-based Lite-Tek Entertainment deployed them on the Spirit Sports Ultimate Battle cheerleading competition on 25 March.
The Myrtle Beach (SC) Convention Centre hosted Ultimate Battle, a one-night event showcasing the talented teams that have reached the pinnacle of cheerleading excellence and are headed to the 2022 Cheerleading World Championships in Orlando. Lite-Tek spends most of the winter months working on cheerleading events throughout the southeast; the rest of the year the company acts as a tour vendor and local lighting vendor for numerous music venues. Lite-Tek was the first company in the US to take delivery of Claypaky’s Sharpy Plus, and the fixtures have been busy ever since.
Lite-Tek founder Darren Lewis designed the rig, acte

Prolight+Sound 2022 looks towards a sustainable future

Details: 06 April 2022

Germany - Prolight+Sound 2022 will host a Green Event Day on 27 April that will offer lectures, panels and best-practice presentations on the careful use of natural resources. The programme is being developed in cooperation with the European Association of Event Centres (EVVC) and supported by the Association of Media and Event Technology (VPLT).
What impact does the EU Green Deal have on the events industry? How can sustainable event technology support the industry on its way to a greener future? What needs to be considered in terms of communication to ensure that the commitment is also noticed by visitors and partners? These and other questions will be addressed during the theme day.
Representatives from associations (EVVC, VPLT, LiveMusikKommission), companies from the entertainment technology sector (Adam Hall, Neumann & Müller, Cameo Light, DeerSoft), venues

https://www.claypaky.it/products/ultimo-hybrid/

OPUS X4 PROFILE – the most powerful LED moving head from Cameo to date

The OPUS® X4 PROFILE is the new flagship model from Cameo and is among the most powerful LED moving heads on the market. Equipped with a 1,400-watt LED white light engine, this spot profile moving head produces an enormous light output of 50,000 lm, providing powerful spot and gobo projections on even the largest stages and much more.
www.cameolight.com

The ALPD has partnered with Glyndebourne for this year's scheme I Photo: Leigh Simpson

ALPD announces Design Lumière Scheme 2022

Details: 05 April 2022

UK - The Association for Lighting Production and Design (ALPD) has opened its Design Lumière Scheme 2022 for applicants. The aim of this professional development scheme is to establish assistants who are employable by producers and lighting designers. The Lumière will gain first-hand experience as an assistant lighting designer with industry-recognised skills.
This year, the ALPD has partnered with Glyndebourne, one of the world’s most celebrated opera houses.
Charlotte Burton, ALPD’s Lumière Working Group Chair, comments: “It is a joy to be partnering with Glyndebourne for the Design Lumière Scheme in 2022. It will give the Lumière a unique experience to work in one of the world’s most renowned opera houses alongside the incredible in-house lighting team and this season’s wonderful lighting designers.
“As a former Lumière, I know that work exp

The Week in Light & Sound

Details: 05 April 2022

Grammy Awards - Olivia Rodrigo, Silk Sonic and jazz musician Jon Batiste shared the top honours at the 64th Grammy Awards. Batiste's soul record We Are won album of the year, while Rodrigo won best new artist and best pop album. Silk Sonic's soul throwback anthem Leave The Door Open took home both the record and song of the year prizes.
Apart from the awards, the ceremony saw a tribute to Foo Fighters star Taylor Hawkins, and a video plea from Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky. In a pre-taped message, he urged musicians to "fill the silence" left by Russian bombs "with your music". His speech was followed by a performance by John Legend, accompanied by Ukrainian musicians Siuzanna Iglidan and Mika Newton; and poet Lyuba Yakimchuk.
Foo Fighters won three prizes - best rock album for Medicine at Midnight, rock performance for its opening track,

Purple Patch is available now through distributors

Van Damme hits a Purple Patch

Details: 05 April 2022

UK - Following a two-year research and development programme, Van Damme has introduced the Purple Patch PPE56 2x48 bantam patchbay. Working closely with the pro-audio installation team at Langdale Technical, one by one all the current shortfalls were dealt with and modern ‘wish list’ innovations were added to the design.
The PPE56 Purple Patch is both designed and manufactured in the UK and incorporates features that cater carefully for modern day needs, including:
Fully programmable normalling options inclusive of full-normalling, half-normalling, parallel and no normalling settings, which are adjustable whilst the patch remains terminated.
Individual earthing selection for all patch points, allowing for phantom power and unbalanced signal pass through to be selected point by point.
Individual 110Ohm impedance jack modules secured to the chassis behind

The QubiQ series is equipped with a dual over-temperature protection and a fluid level detector

Showtec unveils QubiQ smoke machines

Details: 05 April 2022

The Netherlands - Showtec has introduced a new series of smoke machines, named QubiQ. Three new foggers and a fazer are featured in this series, the QubiQ S1000, QubiQ S1500, and QubiQ S2500 fog machines, and the QubiQ F1500 fazer, with more models in the pipeline. They are billed as ‘feature-rich, safe, and reliable, with a practical and unique-looking design’.
The QubiQ series of smoke machines are Showtec’s latest addition to their arsenal of FX hardware. All four of them are controlled manually, through DMX, or via remote control, offering the usual control parameters like output level (0-100 %) and timer settings. The heater temperature can be monitored in real-time on the display (in % of the normal operating temperature). This offers the possibility of adjusting the output to a level at which the vaporiser isn’t cooled down to a point where it would cause the

Case Study: Hans Zimmer Live

When award winning film composer Hans Zimmer brought his smash-hit tour Hans Zimmer Live to North America fall 2024, the show's audio team sought out to bring infrafrequency bass to the show to add new depth to the show's audio experience. The team chose Danley Sound Labs.

Red Bull Symphonic was held on three consecutive nights at Vienna’s Wiener Konzerthaus

Pop meets classics in Vienna with ChamSys

Details: 05 April 2022

Austria - Designer/programmer Niklas Fuchs was called upon to light Red Bull Symphonic, an event where ‘Austropop meets Classics’, held on three consecutive February nights at Vienna’s historic Wiener Konzerthaus concert hall. In this capacity, he would have to reflect the music of a symphonic orchestra in light, in addition to supporting the usual pop and rock artists that he typically lit.
“I was asked to light the three concerts they did with Max Steiner Orchestra conducted by Christian Kolonovits,” said Fuchs. “For me it was a new challenge to design a lighting system for an orchestra, especially challenging was lighting the orchestra and the band in a way that is suitable for a TV recording as well as a live audience.”
Helping Fuchs rise to the occasion was his ChamSys PC Wing Compact and Extra Wing Compact. “I used the Extra Wing only for Master I

The company recently opened its new Evolve CX (Customer Experience) space

Evolve CX chooses Brompton for VP training

Details: 05 April 2022

USA - Evolve Technology is a video gear rental company serving the live event and virtual production industries, with offices across the U.S. The company’s ethos is built around the three equal pillars of rent, buy, and learn, where clients can get customised packages to meet their production needs, as well as hands-on education and training so that teams feel confident using any new piece of equipment. In the past several years Evolve has successfully expanded into virtual production consulting and training.
Recently, the company opened its new Evolve CX (Customer Experience) space in the Atlanta BeltLine. Evolve CX is a technology laboratory aimed at education and training specifically for the virtual production market, where professionals can gain valuable hands-on experience and creative studios can develop and demo content for their clients. The Evolve CX team, led by

Shure Microflex Complete Wireless enables the course to run smoothly

Shure Microflex meets LSE Cities challenge

Details: 05 April 2022

UK - The London School of Economics’ LSE Cities runs the Executive MSc in Cities, an 18-month modular education programme for senior urban professionals who want to better understand and deliver change in cities. The travel disruption arising from the COVID pandemic prevented almost all international students attending in person the programme’s five-week teaching modules. This challenge became an opportunity to transition the Executive MSc in Cities to a blended remote teaching format, choosing Shure Microflex Complete Wireless (MXCW) as the solution for fostering the “hybrid-flex” learning model at LSE Cities.
Microflex Complete Wireless System (MXCW), combined with the videoconferencing experience and technology of global solutions provider AVer Europe, enables all participants in the classroom to communicate and collaborate with far end participants in a natural

Atlanta club switches on to Pioneer Professional

Details: 05 April 2022

USA - The new Future Nightclub, located in the Underground Atlanta district of Atlanta, Georgia, is a crowd-favourite dance and entertainment venue for the city’s music lovers. Future Nightclub worked diligently to design an impressive production with video, lighting, and audio for the two-story venue. The Future Nightclub management team worked alongside local AV systems integration company, House of Music Productions, to accomplish this lofty goal by selecting the Pioneer Pro Audio XY Series sound system.
Future Nightclub owners Keith Young and Hoosh Mishu approached House of Music Productions in late 2019 to begin the system design process after acquiring a large, oddly-shaped, two-story retail space with a large staircase in the middle to be the club’s location. However, as renovations began to take form, the space was almost completely gutted, giving the new nightcl

G&B Productions’ newly renovated Houston studio

G&B Productions installs JBL Pro monitors

Details: 05 April 2022

USA - JEM Productions Texas upgraded G&B Productions’ newly renovated studio with three sets of JBL Professional loudspeakers and a JBL Intonato 24 monitor management and tuning system.
G&B Productions is co-owned by producers G.Luck and BDon, who have worked with a variety of high-profile artists as well as local Houston musicians. With their business growing, the production duo decided to upgrade their studio with improved acoustical design, custom lighting and enhanced sound. According to Gavin Luckett (G.Luck), the goal was threefold: to upgrade the studio’s main monitors for more transparent sound, to satisfy artists with loud and bass-heavy playback, and to create a flexible monitor management system to switch between sources and speakers.
“We were looking for a speaker system that would impress our clients,” said Luckett, co-owner, G&B Produc

Martin Audio reinforces Alfresco party

Details: 05 April 2022

UK - Bristol-based experiential and party planning specialists, PYTCH, recently supplied local event organisers, Alfresco Disco with a full Martin Audio rig for a classic warehouse-based dance party.
Comprising two stages, the sound needed to be carefully EQ’d to cope with the all-nighter’s early proceedings - when it was little more than an empty, echoey warehouse - to ramping up the volume once the venue was packed with around 2,150 revellers.
But then, according to Chelsea Hopkins at PYTCH, care had to be taken to avoid sound escape in a densely packed residential area. “Although the bass was powerful the sound was directional and well contained - resulting in minimal disruption for local residents,” she confirmed. This was assisted by a cardioid pattern sub array which reduced any troublesome low frequencies.
She added that PYTCH has been staging par

Petar Graso plays Zagreb Arena (photo: LumiLas LLC)

Robe makes impact on Petar Grašo tour

Details: 05 April 2022

Croatia - Pop superstar Petar Grašo wanted to make a spectacular impact with his first post-pandemic live shows - which were also the first arena music shows in the country as pandemic restrictions were lifted – so his brief to lighting designer Sven Kučinić was to “make it absolutely awesome”.
Sven, who took on the full visual design - lighting, set and video - chose to use nearly 200 Robe moving lights to help him achieve the desired results - which were supplied to the production together with the other lighting kit by Zagreb-based rental company, Promo Logistika.
The Zagreb Arena shows were followed by performances in Split and Slovenia in this high-profile mini-tour which delighted the artist’s many fans in the region, going ahead in truly “seat of the pants” fashion as the Covid restrictions relating to large audiences were lifted on the morning of

Ghost: Nachricht von Sam is currently touring major German-speaking cities (photo: David Schmelzer)

Ayrton Diablo impresses on Ghost tour

Details: 05 April 2022

Germany - Ayrton recently received this message from lighting designer Phil Kong of Kong Design: “We just used 20 Ayrton Diablos on Ghost: Nachricht von Sam for ShowSlot and I wanted to let you know I was very happy with them for all of the things they were able to do, and how fast they were. The flat field, the gobos, the colour rendering - a lot of good things going on with them - and the size and price point are great. I was so glad to have these Ayrton fixtures on the show.”
Co-written by Glen Ballard and Eurythmics' Dave Stewart, Ghost: Nachricht von Sam is a re-telling of the film classic which is currently touring several major German-speaking cities until the end of April.
As the tour’s lighting designer, Kong rigged five of Ayrton's versatile, feature-rich, ultra-compact 300W Diablo fixtures across the downstage truss, three across the ups

Big Drop will support Backup’s range of mental health initiatives

Backup joins forces with Big Drop

Details: 05 April 2022

UK - Backup has joined forces with Big Drop, brewers of alcohol-free beer, to generate wider awareness and increased funding for the live events/entertainment technical supply chain.
“We’re all painfully aware of the devastation that the pandemic caused to our industry around the globe,” says John Simpson, Backup chairman. “The generous response to Backup’s fund-raising efforts over the past two years has been phenomenal, and we’ve been able to offer help to our colleagues in the UK who were and still are in desperate need, both financially and for the impact the situation has had on their mental health.”
As theatres open, and concerts and festivals start to re-emerge, the pandemic is viewed as being over. But it has left serious scars. Help is still needed, as it was pre-pandemic, but now even more so, to allow Backup to continue to address mental health

The NTT New Year’s Eve concert in the Grand Theatre, lit by award-winning lighting designer, Cheng-Wei Teng (© National Taichung Theater / Photographer: LIN Chun-yung & Mon Lee)

Robert Juliat Dalis 860 chosen for Taiwan’s NTT

Details: 05 April 2022

Taiwan - Robert Juliat reports that 36 of its Dalis 860 cyclorama lights, complete with mini yoke and Quickrig systems, have been supplied to the National Taichung Theatre in Taiwan by DLHG Co.
The National Taichung Theatre (NTT) has three main venues: the 2007-seat Grand Theatre, the 794-seat Playhouse and the 200-seat Black Box theatre. The main location for the Dalis 860 fixtures will be the Grand Theatre which hosts a broad programme of musicals, opera, ballet, modern dance and drama. The Dalis 860 cyclorama fixtures will be installed in truss and groundrow positions to light the venue’s impressive 18m wide x 10m high cyclorama with a smooth, even, highly controllable coverage.
“However, the mini yoke and Quickrig system make it easy for us to transfer the Dalis units to our other venues as required,” says the venue’s head of lighting, Simon Hsieh.
No

The church opted for a fan-shaped house design

L-Acoustics refreshes audio at Bogota church

Details: 05 April 2022

Colombia - The Suba district of Colombia’s capital city of Bogotá is celebrated for its inclusiveness, home to all social classes and Colombia’s indigenous peoples. It’s also where Iglesia El Lugar de Su Presencia wanted to make sure its message would be clearly heard and understood by everyone filling the nearly 4,000 seats of its newest church location.
Following an onsite comparative evaluation of four brands of loudspeaker systems -and later witnessing the L-Acoustics K2 arrays in use at Christ Fellowship Church in Port St. Lucie, Florida - El Lugar de Su Presencia chose L-Acoustics for its Suba campus, which celebrated its grand opening on 20 February.
Bogotá-based AVCOM, an L-Acoustics certified provider for install (CPi), integrated a full complement of L-Acoustics K, A, and X Series loudspeaker systems at the new church, which was constructed on the sit

The Vari-Lite VL10 BeamWash created far-reaching aerial light effects I Photo: Thomas Haywood Photography

Vari-Lite is out of this world on Wondrous Woods’ Woodyfest

Details: 05 April 2022

UK - Spectacular sell-out lighting trail Woodyfest saw Vari-Lite VL2600 Profile fixtures from Signify deliver stunning projections, punchy colour-rich washes and breakup patterns on the rear façade of Scotland’s finest stately home, Hopetoun House in South Queensferry. These effects were augmented by far-reaching aerial light effects, created by the Vari-Lite VL10 BeamWash, which reportedly attracted the local community’s attention some distance away, and even caused some to speculate that the aliens were coming!
Woodyfest, produced by Wondrous Woods, with creative design and technical production from 21CC Group, ran for the second year within the magnificent woods and grounds surrounding Hopetoun House. The popular, and celebrated, annual lighting event took audiences on a magical journey along winding pathways, each of which led to exciting and dynamic

Production AV provided cameras, screens, servers and crew for the event at the Royal Albert Hall.

Production AV delivers for Teenage Cancer Trust concerts

Details: 05 April 2022

UK - Stars including The Who, Yungblud, Paul Weller, Liam Gallagher and Ed Sheeran took to the stage at London’s Royal Albert Hall in March in support of the Teenage Cancer Trust, backed by Production AV’s cameras, screens, servers and crew.
Taking place over seven consecutive nights, the series of live music and comedy gigs were performed as fundraisers for the Teenage Cancer Trust (TCT), which provides care for people aged 13-24 with cancer. It was the second time Production AV supplied kit and crew for the events.
This year’s set up comprised Production AV’s Desay M6 LED panels as a central 8m x 4.5 screen flown above The Royal Albert Hall’s iconic stage and a large, curved 23.2m x 0.9m banner of LED screen across the back of the main stage, to help drive donations. This was supported with a camera package for the relay of real-life stories and live perfor

Broadweigh 2.4 wireless load cells were used to carry out preliminary testing

BroadWeigh up In The Air at Spazzio Bizarro

Details: 05 April 2022

Italy - When Spazio Bizzarro, a red and white big top circus tent in Casatenovo, Milan, launched its latest project In The Air, it turned to BroadWeigh for its load monitoring requirements. The project, which was conceived in 2012, is a cultural sports and social centre, offering annual courses and workshops in contemporary circus and performative arts, including street art, music, theatre and dance.
Nicola Bruni, director of Spazio Bizzarro explains: “We knew we would need a reputable partner for this venture and selected Monkey Rigging to help us devise a rigging structure for our new indoor space, Il Delado. Working with Monkey Rigging’s Andrea Mammolenti, we came up with a solution that would give us a safe system for both the big top and Il Delado - the training spaces for this project.”
Andrea adds: “The challenge was to design a structure for th

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