UK - Award-winning lighting designer Tim Routledge and a talented team of creatives and technical specialists - working across multiple disciplines - helped deliver a slick, streamlined 2023 Eurovision Song Contest event at Liverpool Arena in the UK on 13 May.
Tim utilised over 600 Robe moving lights for his design which comprised approximately 2,500 luminaires plus 2 kilometres of LED tape, clocking up 17,500 individual light sources when counting the individual pixel cells of the various fixtures, all supplied via lighting equipment contractor, Neg Earth Lights.
For his first ESC, he collaborated closely with set designer Julio Himede, known for his work on major music broadcast shows like MTV’s VMAs and EMAs amongst others, also working on his first ESC.
Tim and his team created 37 lighting environments to showcase each delegation’s songs, keepin

South Africa - Audio engineer Simphiwe Mhlanga has acquired a DiGiCo Quantum 225 Digital Mixing console to further his craft.
Supplied by DWR Distribution, the Quantum 225 incorporates all the new design features of the Quantum 338 but in a compact, robust work surface. “I do a lot of video and audio work for many broadcast shows and live events,” comments Simphiwe Mhlanga, known in the industry as Smooth. “I’m also a touring engineer working most weekends, and every time I get behind a DiGiCo console, it’s just flawless.
“When you have to move from one console to the next over a three day period, it can become difficult, but with DiGiCo, it’s always a breeze due to all consoles sharing the same architecture. I like the workflow, it sounds amazing, and the reputation both national and international made it the correct choice.”
Simphiwe is focused

USA - Deep in the heart of Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square neighbourhood lies St. Mark’s Church. Considered one of the best concert venues in the city, the church nave is quite large, with seating for more than 450 people. Parishioners celebrated the church's first service in 1849 under the overarching timber fretwork of the great roof.
The Decorated Gothic style of the church, with vaulted ceilings, solid wood pews and stone masonry throughout, contributed to an unsatisfactory reverberation time of three seconds. Beam steering arrays from Renkus-Heinz are designed for installations requiring highly targeted audio solutions.
Church staff reached out to Joe DiSabatino, lead design engineer at JD Sound & Video, to design a new audio system for the sanctuary. DiSabatino partnered with local acoustical engineer Hadi Sumoro of HX Audio Lab to model the acoustics

USA - Tom Jones kicked off his international tour with 16 North American performances lit by Bandit Lites. Jones performed two shows at the Hollywood Bowl before making his way to Nashville, Texas, Florida, New York, Charleston and Atlantic City.
The tour relaunched a previous production design from Mark Cunniffe as well as programming from Tim Fawkes. Bandit Lites provided a floor package comprised of Claypaky B-EYE K20 fixtures and a grandMA 2 console for control.
“The Claypaky Eye K20 unit has quite a bit of versatility within itself that makes this a great unit to use as a floor light,” explained LD Keith Hoagland. “We have 29 of these doing just that: they are part of a beautifully designed floor package that has so many looks for this show.”
Jones’s Ages and Stages tour is a nostalgic turn through all his hits, and for Bandit Lites, it’

Singapore - Generation AV, who provide sales and technical support for Martin Audio across the APAC territories, recently hosted their first Martin Audio APAC distributor meeting in Singapore, with over 30 business partners from across Asia Pacific attending.
This provided an opportunity for representatives to network, connect, learn, and sample the latest products and technology from the British manufacturer - as well as share their successes and experiences.
There was an additional incentive to attend, since the meeting coincided with the launch of Generation AV’s new Experience Centre in Singapore, which will act as the main hub for all distributors and their clients to gather and be exposed to the latest products from Martin Audio. Distributors and clients alike can now immerse themselves in the company’s signature sound and experience the impeccable output tha

UK - Sennheiser is participating in The Podcast Show 2023 this week at The Business Design Centre in Islington, London.
On the first day of the show, Sennheiser teamed up with podcast specialists Adam Buxton and John Kennedy [Tape Notes], to offer two exclusive sessions, one free and one ticketed, during which Kennedy utilised their new Sennheiser and Neumann ‘live rig’ to ensure the audience experiences the high-fidelity audio needed to be able to listen to their podcast at its best.
The 'live rig' for both sessions was equipped with Sennheiser and Neumann audio equipment to deliver an exceptional sound experience. It boasts two Sennheiser EW IEM G4 sets, ensuring seamless connectivity. The Neumann BCM 104 broadcast microphone complements the setup, whilst monitoring the sound is made possible by the Neumann NDH 20 closed-back studio headphones, offering accurate

USA - Atlanta’s House of Music Productions, an event production services company offering lighting, staging, A/V production, broadcast streaming and product rentals to a wide array of markets, has expanded its rental inventory of Claypaky fixtures and become a Claypaky partner for resale, installation and design projects in the southeastern US.
“We’re really excited about the opportunity to represent a superior brand of lighting products for rentals, purchase and design integration,” says Jeremy Ladd, owner/CEO of House of Music Productions. “Our new partnership with Claypaky is exactly what we’ve been looking to do, and we hope to help the brand gain momentum in the southeast.
“Outside of a few companies that have Sharpys, there’s been a true lack of Claypaky products in this area,” he points out. “We approached Claypaky about developing a partner

UAE - Prolights has recently upgraded the lighting system at the Privilege Club in Dubai, located on the top floor of the SLS Hotel in the Business Bay area. The club has hosted high-profile artists such as Will.I.Am and Akon, and has received recognition from the Guinness World Records for having the world's highest outdoor pool.
In collaboration with Em-Tec and lighting designer Alex Douglas, the Privilege Club decided to enhance its lighting setup to provide visitors with a visually captivating experience befitting the venue. The lighting fixtures were supplied by Pro Lab, the Prolights distributor in the United Arab Emirates, and included the Prolights ArenaCob 4FC and Air 5Fan.
With this upgrade, lighting designer Alex Douglas was able to create an immersive design that heightened the club's atmosphere, offering a wide range of visual effects. By strategically po

France - Christie has confirmed its renewed agreement with Festival de Cannes for the 17th consecutive year, to provide Christie RGB pure laser and Xenon illuminated projection solutions, for what is the prestigious celebration of cinema.
As the official projection technology partner of the 76th Cannes Film Festival16-27 May, Christie projection technology is illuminating more dedicated screening rooms and auditoriums than any other year throughout the city, including the Grand Theatre Luminere.
“We are honoured to continue our partnership with Festival de Cannes, which is a hugely important event on the global cinema calendar,” says Adil Zerouali, senior sales director, Cinema EMEA, Christie. “We will showcase this year’s outstanding line-up of films in the most visually impactful and energy-efficient manner yet.
“Throughout our trusted partnership,

USA - Connectivity is warmly evident on Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band’s current 2023 World Tour, not just in the artist’s music and stage presence, but also in a lighting design that goes more than the extra mile to join the performance and audience as one.
Jeff Ravitz, Bruce Springsteen’s long-time lighting designer, has been focusing on this special bond from the very beginning, and continues to celebrate it this year. “Bruce feeds off his audience’s energy, the same as they channel his; that’s what has always made his shows such a personal experience,” said Ravitz.
“So many people have said that Bruce brings the audience onstage. Or maybe, instead, he turns the entire arena or stadium into the performance space. That’s pretty powerful - to be drawn right into the force-field. People are singing and acting out the words to every song. Br

Italy - Claypaky and distributor Audiosales recently hosted a Patrick Woodroffe workshop at the Teatro Sociale in Bergamo.
In Lighting The Stars, Woodroffe, who has designed the lighting for the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, the London 2012 Olympic Games, and a host of other internationally important events, discussed his most significant and exciting experiences, including an emotional tribute to Michael Jackson, with whom he was working on preparing a tour just days before Michael's untimely death.
After that, in an original live hands-on exercise, he put together a lighting design for the song I wanna be your slave by Måneskin, revealing some of the secrets of his art and technique.
The workshop was organized by Claypaky and Claypaky's distributor for Italy Audiosales, with Ziogiorgio.it as media partner and AILD as sponsor. It was held on Tuesday 16


Fighting Fund - Equity has sent out a warning to theatre management that members are prepared to strike in order to secure better conditions, revealing the union now has a £1m fund to support workers taking part in industrial action. Addressing members at this year’s Equity conference, general secretary Paul W Fleming said not listening to the union would have a "serious consequence".
In his speech, Fleming listed the recent successes of the union, including securing a new pantomime agreement, and claimed "pay has risen in real terms every decade on the West End for over 50 years". Fleming said staff had "negotiated like never before, and organised like never before" and described Equity as a "powerful industrial union".
He said the union had "literally put our money where our mouth is" with a strike fund - used by unions to support members who would not oth

China - Communication systems from the award-winning specialist Green-GO have been chosen for Wuhan’s Han Theater Hall, part of the vast International Expo Center in the city’s Hanyang District. Developed by general contractor Wuhan Construction Intelligent Technology Co. Ltd, the Center covers 55,000 square meters, integrating conference, business, theatre, exhibition and hotel facilities, as well as residential real estate and an ecology park.
Within the complex sits the 2,350-capacity Han Theater Hall. Here the overall design of the PA system in the auditorium was the responsibility of Beijing Radio, Film & TV Design and Research Institute. EZPro was brought in to provide clear, reliable, flexible and scalable audio solutions for this landmark building. With bases across China, EZPro is one of the country’s leading distributors of professional audio and lightin

UK - Two Audient mixing desks have been installed in The Talent House - a new creative institution and joint venture between UD Music and East London Dance, which opened in Stratford to great fanfare last year. Comprising a mixture of recording studios, rehearsal space, dance studios, workstations and teaching facilities, this hub is part of a £4.1m project supporting young talent in the community.
UD has worked with countless big-name acts during its 20 years in the arts, including Mercury award winner Little Simz, Skepta, Alex Boateng (0207 Def Jam), Wretch 32, Labrinth, Devlin and more. Developing a series of talent programmes, UD aims to support aspiring singers, songwriters, producers, instrumentalists and DJs get a head start in the music industry via their talent programme, work experience and degree qualifications.
To that end, the six-room record production

Israel - The Duhl Centre is a cultural institute and auditorium located in the Hatikva district of Tel Aviv. The venue was designed and built in 1985 and since then has been an active artistic and cultural site, quickly becoming a landmark of the community, not only of the Hatikva district but of the entire south area of Tel Aviv.
Given the great social impact of the place, the venue has been recently upgraded with new lighting technologies, in order to make the centre more modern and innovative.
For the lighting system, the Duhl Center has appointed the multimedia consultant Harel Tabibi, who has chosen to rely on Prolights’ latest LED fixtures, and the gear has been supplied A.B. Electronics, distributor of the brand for the territory of Israel.
The multimedia consultant has enriched the new lighting rig with the Prolights Astra Wash 7Pix LED moving wash l

USA - Iconic a multi-media production at the Alabama Theatre in Myrtle Beach, SC, (the venue is named after the band) takes audiences on a ‘journey through the music that has shaped our sense of time and place, from country hits and Broadway show tunes, to power rock anthems and pop ballads’.
While a group of talented performers on stage told this story through music, and a large video wall supported it with vivid imagery, the shades of colours so important to its telling was provided by an enchanting rainbow of a lighting design created by Susan Rose.
Helping Rose work her magic was a collection of Chauvet Professional COLORado fixtures. “This show is very edgy and contemporary and definitely a major step up from the typical production shows,” said Rose. “It was especially fun for me to light, since I had such a wide variety of music to lig

Europe - South Germany-based band H.A.S.A. (Heiner’s All Star Attraktion) recently updated their entire live sound inventory with an Allen & Heath SQ-6 digital mixer, two AB168 AudioRacks and five ME-1 personal mixers.
Assisting with the incorporation of the ME-1 system into the band’s set-up was engineer Klaus Bröckel (whose CV features Miles Davis, Till Brönner, Klaus Doldinger and festivals including JazzOpen Stuttgart, Jazzfest Rottweil and Bayern 3 Dorffest Open Air amongst many others). As a long-term ME-1 devotee, Bröckel has introduced many artists to the personal monitoring solution and was well-placed to ensure the band enjoyed a smooth transition to the new system.
While the five members of H.A.S.A had used IEM systems previously, the move to the ME-1 units brought a welcome new level of individual control and, as Bröckel describes, the switchove

USA - The Morton Salt complex in Chicago had been in operation for nearly a century before it was closed down in 2015. Today, the complex has been transformed into a multi-purpose venue for live music and other events named The Salt Shed. Boasting modern sound and lighting systems, including a comprehensive Elation stage lighting rig from Upstaging, The Salt Shed is quickly becoming a popular performance space in Chicago.
The venue spreads over 1.5 acres of land along the Chicago riverfront and can accommodate around 3,300 people indoors and 5,000 at an outdoor performance space, which opened in the summer of 2022. The newly renovated indoor space was previously a storage facility for salt and features a distinctive A-Frame structure. Today, it boasts a performance stage and an entertainment lighting system of Elation Artiste Monet, Proteus Lucius, Proteus Rayzor 760, Fuze M

UK - The ABTT has announced a programme of free skills workshops and seminars at the upcoming ABTT Theatre Show which takes place at Alexandra Palace next month.
Promoting learning, the ABTT will be encouraging conversation and collaboration through a diverse range of free inspiring seminars and discussions educating attendees on a variety of topics, including VR, automation, sound design, AI, comms, health and safety, lighting, staging in the wilderness and mental health.
Supporting training and skills development, the ABTT has arranged a selection of free hands-on workshops including Crucial knots used in backstage roles, The importance of correct manual handling, Finding faults in the workplace and Learning how to handle, hang and store drapes. These fun taster sessions give attendees a glimpse at the importance of ongoing training while

World - Soprano Sarah Brightman’s recent tour kicked off in Las Vegas and saw her journey through Mexico and across Asia. Brightman’s final performance marked a triumphant end to a whirlwind tour that left fans both enchanted and in awe.
The tour also marked a significant milestone for Lewe Redlin, Brightman's monitor engineer of six years, as this was the first time he had used KLANG's immersive in-ear monitor mixing solution, selecting a DMI-KLANG card-equipped DiGiCo Quantum 338 monitor console supplied by Capital Sound. Incorporating the KLANG system created ample space in the monitor mix and a more manageable audio environment onstage, resulting in a much more enjoyable and natural sound.
As a seasoned touring engineer with over two decades of experience in the industry, Redlin rolled out KLANG for the musical director on the tour, Ollie Cunningham, as well as

USA - Muse hit the road with its North American tour, Will of the People, on which more than 150 Claypaky Xtylos enhance the band’s performance.
The tour is named for the band’s most recent ninth studio album, which gave Muse its seventh consecutive No. 1 on the UK albums chart and topped Billboard’s Alternative and Rock Albums tallies. The Will of the People tour began in Chicago’s United Centre on 25 February and concluded on 20 April in Salt Lake City, after which it moved on to Europe.
“The band and I really wanted to go in a very different direction from their previous tour to give this one its own identity,” notes Jesse Lee Stout, creative director and co-production designer. “We developed a post-apocalyptic, near-future world as a metaphor for our ‘New Normal’. Over the past couple of years, a pandemic wreaked havoc, an insurrect

Malaysia - Martin Audio has announced the appointment of Wavefront Culture as its distributor in Malaysia. This strategic partnership will enable Wavefront Culture to distribute Martin Audio's line of products to customers across the Malaysian market.
As part of this collaboration, Wavefront Culture will showcase Martin Audio's strongest live sound offering yet, including FlexPoint, Torus, and Wavefront Precision. For the installation sector, Wavefront Culture will supply several systems, including CDD Series, ADORN (including ceiling) speakers, SX Series, BlacklineX, O-Line, and TH series.
Wavefront Culture plans to include Martin Audio’s full suite of products in their upcoming showroom. This dedicated space will provide an immersive experience for customers, allowing them to explore and appreciate the superior quality of Martin Audio loudspeakers.
Martin Aud

USA - Visual Productions (VP) has announced that it has entered into a new distribution agreement with ACT Entertainment in the United States.
Dutch lighting control system manufacturer Visual Productions has developed a modular range of DMX and DALI light controllers that speak the language of system integrators. Products such as CueCore, B-Station and TimeCore are used in architainment, hospitality, themed environments and other fixed installations.
Maarten Engels, managing director of Visual Productions, explains the collaboration. “The rationale for joining forces with ACT Entertainment is really a story of synergy: On the one hand, VP is expanding its distribution network with the ACT organisation which consists of several offices in the US and a very strong technical support team.
“We are of course delighted that ACT's platform will make our products m

USA - Love Has No Limits - 1 Day Houston was actually a two-day event, that raised awareness and funds for community organisations in the Texas city.
The Activity’s Patrick Dierson, who led the creative team, initially planned on working with a much larger stage at The Toyota Centre. Unfortunately, but ultimately fortunately, logistics got in the way, necessitating a change in his design strategy.
“Ultimately, we were forced into having a smaller turntable, which led to a slightly tighter performance area,” said Dierson. “With things beginning to narrow, we started playing with the idea of going with a more elongated look for the project. So, we decided to base the overall design on a series of trusses that would be orientated upstage to downstage at an upward rake. This ended up giving us a much larger overall look.”
Working with this rig, Dierson and

Latest Issue. . .

Save
Cookies user preferences
We use cookies to ensure you to get the best experience on our website. If you decline the use of cookies, this website may not function as expected.
Accept all
Decline all
Analytics
Tools used to analyze the data to measure the effectiveness of a website and to understand how it works.
Google Analytics
Accept
Decline
Advertisement
If you accept, the ads on the page will be adapted to your preferences.
Google Ad
Accept
Decline