UK - Designer Daniel Richardson, working for international creative practice Sinclair Wilkinson (Rob Sinclair & Andrew Wilkinson) took the role of production designer for Craig David’s recent Hold That Thought UK tour. The scope of his work included a full stage, scenic, lighting and video design, plus content direction for the star’s acclaimed tour that was rescheduled from 2020.
Richardson’s spec included Robe moving lights - BMFL Spots, BMFL Blades and a four-way RoboSpot remote follow system - which were supplied by lighting vendor Neg Earth. Matt Arthur went out on the tour as lighting director and operator.
Craig David himself was very much involved in the show creation, explained Richardson. He shared his initial ideas with Rob Sinclair and Daniel back in 2019, who refined these into workable touring options from which a concept was chosen and

Ireland - Three years in construction, the new Romanian Pentecostal Betania Church in Dublin is now ranked the largest church in Ireland. Accommodating 1,500 worshippers in its main sanctuary as well as an online following, the ambitious design required a sound system, resulting in the installation of the latest technology from DiGiCo’s recently launched compact, Quantum 225 digital mixing console.
The €8m development comprises a 2800sq.m building with large sanctuary, stage, choir and orchestra space, media pod, fellowship halls, a conference room, eight community rooms, pastoral areas, and a youth worship area. The building design and framework were established by a professional team of architects and construction specialists, but the majority of the building work was completed by skilled volunteers from the Church’s Romanian community during evenings and weekends. <

USA - Matt Ross-Spang, an American record producer, Grammy award-winning engineer and mixer has just opened the doors of Southern Grooves, a custom-designed studio in Memphis, Tennessee.
Located in what was once the Sears cafeteria on the second floor of Crosstown Concourse, a “vertical urban village”, the build started pre-pandemic, in August 2020. With the expertise of acousticians Steven Durr and Matt Schlachter, a 3,000sq.ft recording studio was designed where sound and feel are prioritised in every room.
The space consists of a live room, control room, a long hallway (for reverb) echo chamber, plus a lounge, office, tech Shop and EMT plate room. The fact that the live room has an undulating ceiling and emphasises no 90° angles or parallel surfaces, means that the sounds created gives the impression that the space is a lot bigger than it actually is.
VDC

USA - The recent opening of the 5,000-capacity Resorts World Theatre in Las Vegas, operated by Concerts West / AEG Presents, has already hosted residencies by Carrie Underwood, Katy Perry and Luke Bryan.
Resorts World Theatre is home to the first fixed install of L-Acoustics L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound technology in Las Vegas. More than 200 loudspeakers comprise an immersive aural environment that stands out on the Las Vegas Strip.
Montreal-based Scéno Plus served as the theatre designer, further overseeing the venue’s technology, while L-Acoustics certified provider (CPi) Solotech integrated the 14.1 audio system with design support from the L-Acoustics application team.
The system consists of an L-ISA Scene setup of seven arrays of 14 K2 enclosures flown across the stage width, left-right out-fill arrays of 12 Kara, plus two centre-flown arrays of eight

UAE - The recently opened Dubai Hills Mall is a destination in a popular tourist spot, offering opportunities for shopping, dining and entertainment. It is also home to The Storm, the fastest indoor rollercoaster in the city; an adventurous ride that stands 50m tall.
Showcasing the latest innovations in engineering, The Storm features a vertical launch to 50m in just five seconds. The 670m track weaves throughout the entire mall building, making it a spectacle to watch and a unique experience for riders.
Experiences operator Emaar Entertainment created the concept of the rollercoaster set into the heart of the shopping mall. They appointed engineering experts Cundall to design and deliver The Storm. As the lead design consultant, Cundall provided a range of services including structural engineering and lighting design.
To fulfil the design, Creation Gulf were bro

USA - German dubstep artist Virtual Riot brought his Simulation Album Tour to the Hollywood Palladium 22 April and electrified the sold-out crowd with his edgy brand of EDM supported by lighting effects from Elation Professional. Dallas Gasper from Paradox Productions and Design designed the rig with lighting director Lorcan Clarke on hand to run the show. Lighting gear was supplied by 4Wall with SFX/lasers provided by Owl Vision.
Clarke created laser show designs for trance, house and techno events in Ireland before moving to the San Francisco Bay area in 2020. Since, he has designed, programmed and directed lighting for Blu De Tiger’s How Did We Get Here 2021 US tour, Sidepiece’s Kiss & Tell 2022 US tour, and Deorro's 2022 Lollapalooza shows in South America. Clarke timecoded much of the Hollywood Palladium Virtual Riot show and had an Elation rig of beam lights, s

UK - St. Paul’s Cathedral is a venue that is steeped in tradition, even when it comes to lighting, the traditional PAR 64 has always been the fixture of choice for lighting designers. However, for the Queen’s Jubilee Thanksgiving Service, lighting director and BAFTA Award winner David Bishop stepped away from tradition, opting for an all-new LED lighting rig, with the new Martin Mac Aura PXL taking the leading role as the main lighting fixture.
Bishop explains: “For the Queen’s Jubilee, it was important to maintain the traditional feel and the natural look, yet I wanted to increase the flexibility and efficiency of the lighting rig.
“The new Martin MAC Aura PXL was ideal. The high lumen output, colour rendering, and zoom range is exceptional for such a compact fixture and perfect for this application. It allowed me to have much greater control of the colour

USA - At this year’s Experiential Marketing Summit (EMS) at the MGM Grand Las Vegas, The Verge Aero drone team flew a drone show high above the ballroom next to Harry Reid International Airport.
Taking off from the MGM Grand parking garage – situated just 100 yards from the airport tarmac - presented the Verge Aero team with a challenge. While a focus on safety and precision execution are always part of standard operating procedures, the tight confines of the flight envelope in an urban environment required extreme precision and attention to detail.
“The Experiential Marketing Summit team commissioned us to deliver an on-brand drone show to wow conference delegates, to be flown over the MGM Ballroom roof,” says Verge Aero’s Chris Lutts, who oversaw the project. “We had a tight timeline to design, program and create the show, and some interesting challenges.

UK - The Falklands Hall primary presentation auditorium at the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines (CTCRM) required an urgent replacement for their original tungsten lights, and ETC ArcSystem was chosen to upgrade the space.
The tungsten lights had come to the end of production and spare parts and bulbs were unavailable which led to a health and safety issue as they fell below the legal level required. ETC dealer, Stage Electrics, selected ArcSystem fixtures and drivers to transform the space with LED.
CTCRM, is based in Lympstone, Devon, and is the official training base for the Royal Marines. The auditorium space previously had 66 150-watt tungsten lamps which repeatedly failed and caused issues with maintenance as they were mounted over the seating rake. These luminaires were all replaced with ETC’s ArcSystem Pro One-Cell fixtures and ArcSystem Pro D4 CC Drive

Australia - Hennessy and the NBA unveiled Australia’s first floating basketball court on Sydney Harbour recently, with live music performances from ASAP Ferg and B Wise. This was part of the latest version of Courts Beyond Limits, a programme from Hennessy, the official spirit of the NBA, in celebration of the league’s 75th season.
Guests were transported out for a courtside view of the event on the Hennessy Superyatch. In addition to the celebrity hoops exhibition, they got to enjoy performances by FERG, along with AIR Award-winning hip-hop artist B Wise and other stars.
Setting the scene for the event was a courtside lighting display by Jay Productions that featured 24 Chauvet Professional Well STX 180 fixtures that the production company purchased from Showtools International, which imports Chauvet products.
Showtools International notes that it added the

Australia - After a three-year hiatus, Vivid Sydney 2022 is now underway. Millions of expected visitors will descend on the 8km Vivid Sydney Light Walk that’s packed full of large-scale projection mapping, LED screens, wayfinding and high-powered media server technology linking the Festival’s 50 installations and projection artworks from Sydney Opera House to Central Station.
Festival director Gill Minervini, who directs her first Vivid Sydney in 2022, explains: “For 12 years we’ve relied on TDC working behind-the-scenes to deploy the brightest, most powerful technology on a grand scale helping to reinvent Sydney’s urban landscape and using it as a unique and colourful canvas capturing the essence of Sydney’s soul.”
Michael Hassett, founder and managing director at TDC - Technical Direction Company - adds: “Each year, Vivid Sydney gets bigger, brighter

UAE - Adam Bassett, lighting designer and founding partner of Woodroffe Bassett Designs, specified a wealth of IP65-rated Ayrton fixtures for the entertainment lighting rig for Expo 2020 Dubai’s central venue, the Al Wasl dome. The rig included 182 Ayrton Perseo S profiles, 116 Ayrton Domino S profiles and 16 Ayrton Huracán LT long-throw profiles.
Postponed for over a year due to COVID, Expo 2020 Dubai finally ran for six months between 1 October 2021 and 31 March this year, and was the largest event ever to be held in the Arab world. The indisputable centrepiece was the Al Wasl dome, a 130m-diameter by 67m-tall arching steel trellis that also became the world’s largest 360° projection surface.
Its translucent dome crowned the central Al Wasl Plaza which, as the ‘beating heart’ of Expo 2020 Dubai, encompassed gardens and restaurants during the day and transfo

Spain - National state-owned public-service television broadcaster RTVE recently teamed up with Antonio Banderas’ television production company, Teatro Soho Televisión (TST), to produce the 10-episode series of Las Tres Puertas, a new arts and culture show for its flagship TVE La 1 channel.
Presented by María Casado, a distinguished journalist and news presenter, and a key member of Banderas’ production team, the show featured guest interviews with luminaries from the worlds of culture, science, politics, business and sport, together with live performances by artists from Spain and around the world.
The weekly programme was produced live in RTVE’s Studio 6 in Sant Cugat, just north of Barcelona. A striking feature of the production was the stark visually arresting set, the appearance of which changed every week. In keeping with the set design, the sound

USA - After two years of waiting, fans of the Hangout Festival returned to the Gulf Shores beachfront for a weekend of live music. Headliners included Post Malone, Fallout Boy, Halsey, Tame Impala and Megan Thee Stallion. More than 40,000 fans turned out for the sold-out, three-day event, and Bandit Lites provided the festival lighting system for the main Hangout Stage and the Surf Stage.
Bandit’s vice president of production, Dizzy Gosnell, has designed the festival lighting rig for many seasons, and he meticulously works to ensure the headliners on each stage have a plethora of lighting to work with from washes, spots, beams, strips/strobes and blinders/safety lights spanning across both rigs.
“The first thing I try to get is to layer the lamps on each truss,” explains Gosnell. “For example, having lamps perched from the top chord, outrigged down from the t

UK - Located in the heart of Newcastle’s vibrant city centre, The Lofts, which opened in August last year, has already earned a reputation for being a new ‘super club’, welcoming high-profile artists and delivering some of the liveliest nights out in the city.
The 1,500-capacity venue was co-founded by directors Rob Seaman, John Dance, and Marty Smith, whose extensive nightlife experiences in the Balearics and beyond drive the ethic at The Lofts. And that ethic extends to the L-Acoustics K3, which is a key part of the overall experience, designed and installed by Adlib to deliver excellent coverage and crystal-clear audio throughout the venue.
“The club’s owners approached Adlib after we’d been recommended to them by a mutual acquaintance,” recalls Nick Whitehead, Adlib’s project manager and project lead on The Lofts. “They came to us with an ambitio

Norway - Det Norske Teatret (the Norwegian Theatre) in Oslo houses three stages in its main building in downtown Oslo, plus one more in another venue in the city run by the same team, all of which work on a busy repertory schedule. Together at least 25 original productions are created annually, in the Norwegian language of Nynorsk, and some guest works are hosted.
Also known for high production values, the theatre has recently invested in 15 Robe Esprite moving lights for its 250-capacity Scene 2.
The theatre’s resident lighting designer Torkel Skjærven, explained that they previously had Robe ColorWash 750AT Tungsten moving lights in the black box Scene 2 space, and these have worked hard and reliably for over 10 years. However, the time arrived to replace them with a more modern LED light source.
The drive to convert the theatre’s lighting to LED has bee

Europe - Gary Numan took to the road in April with a moody and ethereal lighting design created by award winning LA-based designer Dustin Snyder.
An essential objective of the design was to ensure that the fans could see Numan and his band’s expressive faces from all parts of the room and also on camera. For that reason, Snyder sought out the precise framing capability and familiar CMY colour palette of the VL2600 Wash from Vari-Lite.
Atmospheric and moody, the design is inspired by Numan’s three red stripes of facial war paint, from his portrait on the cover of the Intruder album, and centres around a heavily backlit, multi-layered, video and lighting design.
The main scenic element on stage is a huge video wall that oozes ominous, cinematic insights into a broken planet, destroyed by humanity, as Numan manifests as the planet’s own lamenting voice.

USA - The NAMM Show finally made its much-anticipated return to Southern California last week with international delegates from the music production and pro sound industries coming together at the Anaheim Convention Centre.
Alongside all the booths and exhibits, visitors enjoyed a series of outdoor shows from a variety of bands and musicians on the Grand Plaza Stage, located directly outside the main convention centre entrance, with sound provided by a Nexo STM modular line array system supplied and deployed by Minnesota-based events services company Reach Communications.
Side by side hangs of 12 each STM M46 main and B112 bass extension modules with two M28 down-fills were used on either side of the stage, while six pairs of Nexo Geo M10 cabinets were used as front-fills. With other buildings in close proximity, a controlled low frequency dispersion was a particular r

UK - The new 3,500-capacity Swansea Arena forms a central part of the new £135m Copr Bay regeneration programme in the Welsh city.
The latest of Ambassador Theatre Group’s (ATG) 58 operator run venues, the venue has been equipped with a JBL VTX A8 line array, installed by Glantre Engineering following a competitive tender issued by main contractors, Buckingham Group Contracting. Consultant on the project was Neill Woodger Acoustics and Theatre Design. Glantre’s contract as system integrator was a turnkey, covering rigging, drapes, full AV (including IPTV) and lighting, as well as the audio component - not only in the main event rooms but also the meeting rooms.
However, the recommendation for JBL’s compact line array had come from ATG’s head of technical operations, Stuart Graham, who had been involved in the project from the outset. “We were able to have so

USA - Over 16,000 athletes representing 800 teams from 40 countries participated in the 2022 Allstar World Championship in Orlando this spring.
Craig Huddleston, the designer and show director, comments: “This is a competition, but it needs to be fun. We wanted to highlight the athletes and make them feel like rockstars when they ran out on stage.”
Huddleston and his team at AVOS agency succeeded in doing this in spectacular fashion. Athletes competing in 50 different divisions were greeted with a walk-on light and video display reminiscent of a NBA championship game, complete with flurries of strobing and aerial effects, as well as dynamic neon-like video wall patterns heralding their arrival.
Helping them accomplish this on the event’s main stage was a 4Wall Entertainment Nashville supplied rig that featured over 300 Chauvet Professional F 5IP LED panels

UAE - Lighting designers Travis Hagenbuch and Bob Dickinson lit the Expo 2020 Dubai Closing Ceremony and turned to Elation Professional’s powerful Proteus Excalibur beam moving head to create a spectacular finale look that brought to a close the six-month Expo journey.
The Emmy-award winning designers - who also lit Expo’s Opening Ceremony back in September - sought a compact, IP-rated beam light with power to project an impactful ring of light out of the Al Wasl Dome. “We were tasked with how to make it happen within the constraints we had,” comments Travis Hagenbuch, who notes that the brief came from Expo 2020 director-general Reem Al-Hashimi. “It was a beautiful poetic moment, simple and elegant, and a fitting way to end the Expo.”
The Expo story began during the Opening Ceremony when a young Emirate girl was given a ring, which unlocked a world of dis

UK - The eyes of the world were on the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Concert to witness a host of big-name singers perform on a specially created stage in front of Buckingham Palace. As the royal family, politicians, dignitaries and the public looked on, a show fit for a queen unfolded, backed by LED screen content driven by Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 media servers.
More than 200sq.m. of Roe Black Quartz LED screens, supplied by Creative Technology, were erected on the stage, which surrounded the famous Victoria Memorial statue in front of the Palace. These were split into one large LED screen upstage centre, and eight LED pillars edging out toward the audience.
Tasked with media server programming was Matthew Lee, who was approached by lighting designer for the event, Nigel Catmur. “We had two Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 servers, one main and one backup,” says Lee. “LED sc

UK - Britannia Row Productions is providing equipment and personnel for Scottish rock royalty Simple Minds as they play an extensive world tour consisting of over 80 shows across more than 18 countries.
Simple Minds’ 40 Years of Hits Tour (see LSi June 2022 for an in-depth feature on the production), which included a homecoming show at Glasgow’s OVO Hydro, celebrates an impressive four decades in music for the genre-defying band and features a set spanning their back catalogue.
Britannia Row Productions - Simple Minds’ audio supplier of choice since 2012 - re-joined the band for this ambitious arena run to provide a full PA system, FOH and monitor consol

UK - Great Britain marked the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's reign with thousands of events and street parties over a long weekend, including a large-scale live concert at Buckingham Palace. 22,000 spectators gathered in front of the three stages, where Queen & Adam Lambert, Rod Stewart, Alicia Keys and Ed Sheeran played, among many others, and another 13.4 million watched the BBC's mega-event live on TV. For the lighting of the main stages, Buckingham Palace and the Tree of Trees sculpture designed by Heatherwick Studio, Version 2 Lights supplied more than 600 cameo spotlights, including over 60 of the new hybrid outdoor all-rounder Otos H5.
The forecourt as well as the Palace itself was staged by 62 Otos H5, 156 Zenit W600, 392 Flat Pro 7 G2 and 72 Flat Pro 12 G2. The lighting design was done by Nigel Catmur, who used the Cameo spotlights for the numerous live

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