New Zealand - Singer, songwriter, and record producer Lorde has been out on her international Melodrama tour, which accompanies the new album of the same name. The show is also set to visit some of this summer's biggest festivals, and front of house engineer Philip J Harvey has been along for the ride, engineering on the first international tour on the road with the new L-Acoustics L-ISA Live multichannel immersive technology. To complement this, Harvey needed a console that could do justice to the band and L-ISA, so he chose SSL Live.
The stage set-up is relatively simple. An acoustic drum kit, guitar amp, and vocals are the main analogue sources, with two keyboard stations and triggered drum samples making up the rest. "It's a nice, quiet stage," says Harvey. "As the majority of the inputs are the keyboards, software synths, and playback, I have 34 inputs from stag

USA - Located in Reading, PA, the Santander Performing Arts Centre is home to the Reading Symphony Orchestra and hosts numerous events which have included acts such as Willie Nelson, Alice in Chains, Jerry Seinfeld, David Copperfield, Melissa Etheridge, and many more.
David Farrar, general manager for the venue was well aware of the fact that his 2,000-seat theatre was special and would require a custom approach to achieve a consistently powerful sound that show-goers would never forget. Says Farrar, “Clair Brothers provided more than I could have expected with their specifically-customised C8-TrueFit sound system.”
Beyond overcoming unique architectural nuances of an historic venue, the new Clair Brothers C8-TrueFit system had to bring out the best for a wide range of performances, from children's shows and comedians to orchestral performances and heavy metal band

Portugal - Ampco Flashlight played a major role as supplier of all lighting, rigging, video and motion systems for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest.
Preparations started as early as October 2017. The dedicated team of commercial, technical and logistics specialists, working closely together with local Portuguese partner Pixel Light, laid a solid base for a flawless production in the Altice Arena. Build-up started early April and ended with a 60-hour speed load out.
Over 2500 fixtures, almost four kilometres of truss and a huge amount of, cabling, dimmers, distro’s and a state of the art data network was used in this massive TV production attracting over 350m viewers worldwide.
Marc van der Wel, project director, commented: “It was very exciting being part of the team, and seeing how our specialists put so much effort, experience and knowledge into this proje

USA - CyberHoist by CyberMotion is on tour again, this time with Vegas native band The Killers on their Wonderful, Wonderful tour. The band finished their European leg at the end of 2017 before starting their US leg at the beginning of the year.
The primary driving visual elements on the stage were video-constructed triangles with one anchored on the stage and an inverted triangle hanging above it nicknamed ‘The Flying V’ made up of video tiles that would fly apart, turn, twist and move into different shapes utilizing the CyberHoist automated moving system. 12 active CyberHoist 1000kg and 1 MotionCue control system, all with spares, turned the Flying V into an ever-changing video spectacle. These automated hoists came from CyberMotion North America and controlled by David Diamond, the show operator and motion specialist.
Diamond explains, “Working with LD

World - Queen + Adam Lambert will complete their current year-long, 78-show world tour in July, which has seen them play sell-out shows in North America, Oceania, and over Europe. The tour provider is Clair Global, and at the heart of all things audio, is a pair of DiGiCo consoles.
FOH engineer Tom New moved into live sound when a former bandmate began promoting live shows at a small venue in Brighton asked him to help out with the sound.
“With limited knowledge, and a healthy enthusiasm, I threw myself into it, and didn’t look back,” says Tom. “Nowadays, I try to view things holistically: a show is about combining all the elements of a production, in much the same way you combine the elements of a mix, so when everything comes together in the manner that this has, it’s a huge feeling of job satisfaction.”
Tom has been with the band for nearly four

UK - Ghost Notes, a new bar and music venue in the heart of South East London’s Peckham, hosts an array of music each week, ranging from live bands and DJs, through to spoken word and speeches.
To cope with this diverse array of events and the building’s challenging acoustics, SSE Audio has installed an L‑Acoustics X Series system, providing Ghost Notes with a high-quality solution that also delivers on brand recognition, thus meeting the demands of visiting artists and engineers.
Ghost Notes, which shares its space with sister business vegetarian and vegan restaurant Wildflowers, is located within the Peckham Levels, a thriving multiuse business space with a host of facilities for local creatives and professionals. The Levels is a converted multi-storey carpark and the venue is situated within a wide, low-ceilinged, concrete room.
“Providing a system t

USA - Originally established in 1853, Levi Strauss & Co. is one of the world’s largest apparel companies with 500 stores worldwide, and products available in over 100 countries.
At their flagship retail location on Market and 4th Street in San Francisco, the Levi’s brand managers wanted to heighten the consumer engagement for the 8000sq.ft retail space located one of the world’s most highly visited shopping areas. With two large windows looking out onto the busy street, Levi’s worked with their long-time digital partner Reflect, who installed two FLEXClear transparent LED video displays from PixelFLEX.
“Levi’s has been a client of ours for many years dating back to about 2013,” began Brandie Perkins, senior account manager, Reflect. “As a forerunner in the jean industry, they haven’t always played a lot in the digital space, but for their San Fra

USA - Ultra Music Festival, turned 20 this year and the occasion was marked, in part, by big beam lighting effects from an array of Elation Professional IP65-rated Proteus Beam moving heads that lined the top of the festival’s Main Stage.
Production and lighting design for the Main Stage was by The Activity, their ninth year of involvement with the festival. The Las Vegas-based production and design firm, headed by lighting veteran Patrick Dierson, wanted to do something special for the festival’s 20th year and chose the Proteus Beam for a prominent look
“Because this was Ultra’s platinum anniversary we wanted an element within the design that would specifically represent its 20 years of celebration and the Platinum Beam’s bigger brother, the Proteus, seemed like the perfect choice,” stated Dierson, who served as lighting and production designer on this ye

UK - Taking in selected venues, Tokio Myers, who stunned the judges to claim victory on Britain's Got Talent has been showcasing his genre straddling fusion of classical and contemporary musical experiences on stages across the UK.
Collaborating closely with Vision Factory show designer, Sam Tozer, the VER London operation has supported the tour with a comprehensive video, projection and lighting package that helped realise the designer’s creative vision for the shows. Set against a 9 x 4m upstage LED wall, the show blends live performance with filmed footage, cutting edge graphics and intense colour that silhouettes the artist at work.
Speaking about the show’s visual elements, Sam says: “Tokio Myers Our Generation tour design revolved around the basic idea of cinematography and immersing Tokio in a halo like parallel cube of light. I found using VER high

France - Every year, the future graduates of the French school of architecture of Tournai organise the JNDA (Journée et Nuit de l’Architecture), an event that gathers over 4,000 visitors. A disused industrial site is specially transformed to host conferences as well as artistic and cultural performances. At dusk, the venue becomes a concert hall with three stages, where renowned and emerging bands entertain the crowds until late.
For this 34th edition, the event took up residence in the former 7,000sq.m Louis Carton industrial workshop. In order to cater for an eclectic crowd, three stages - each dedicated to specific music genres - were set up in the three workshop warehouses: EDM, Urban and Alternative.
For the technical side, the organisers trusted YES Event to manage the audio set up of all three stages. The event service provider turned to French manufacturer o

USA - The brainchild of The Who’s guitarist and primary songwriter, Pete Townshend, Tommy – a rock opera that tells the story of a deaf, dumb and blind boy who achieves a personal breakthrough when he becomes an expert pinball player – was first performed on stage in 1969.
Featuring some of Townshend’s best-loved songs, including Pinball Wizard and See Me, Feel Me, Tommy has enjoyed remarkable creative longevity as a staple of The Who’s live repertoire, as well as multiple theatrical and touring productions and a celebrated film directed by Ken Russell.
For the musical component of the new production currently being staged at Colorado’s Denver Centre, director Sam Buntrock and sound designer Ken Travis had several motivating ideas in mind. “This is not to criticise some of the more recent stage productions, but we wanted to get

USA - Leading AV industry manufacturers, L-Acoustics, d&b audiotechnik, Meyer Sound, Biamp, AudioScience, Avid and Luminex have joined together to create a new network solution that “will reshape the AV networking industry and future of high-performance professional media”.
All will be revealed during a presentation and live demonstration during InfoComm 2018 next week.
The solution is a result of over 18 months of close collaboration among industry leaders under the umbrella of Avnu Alliance.
(Jim Evans)

UK - Cardiff-based events services provider 11th Hour has been appointed by Associated British Ports South Wales to supply a temporary passenger terminal in Cardiff Bay for the Marco Polo cruise ship.
The terminal comprises a 57m marquee fitted out with a bespoke interior, with the company also supplying several security elements, including bag-scanning and metal detection equipment.
Project manager Bruno Hunt is in charge of the technical aspects of the terminal, whilst business development manager Jason Venables oversees the customer-facing side of the operation.
The project overlaps with 11th Hour’s involvement in the Volvo Ocean Race, a round-the-world yacht race that arrived in Cardiff on 29 May, with the company supplying a range of facilities for the Race Village.
(Jim Evans)

USA - After recently expanding its inventory with a large complement of Claypaky Scenius Unico and Mythos2 fixtures, Elite Multimedia Productions has provided a portion of that equipment to Cole Swindell’s nationwide Reason to Drink Tour.
The country singer-songwriter kicked off his headlining tour in Allentown, Pennsylvania in February and wrapped the first leg in LA in April. He resumed the tour a month later in Austin and will continue to play dates across the country through September. Nashville-based Elite Multimedia is the production provider for lighting, LED, video and IMAG video support.
Production designer James ‘Mo’ Butts deploys 16 Claypaky Scenius Unico and 24 Mythos2 fixtures for the tour. His design for the show, in which video plays a key role in the storytelling, depicts Swindell’s evolution as an artist from playing cover songs at a c

USA - Pomona College’s Seaver Theatre is tucked away near the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains outside LA. The school’s leafy campus is reminiscent of a New England Ivy League institution, with academic standards to match having been ranked among the top 10 colleges by Forbes and US News & World Report.
The college holds an attraction for visiting designers in the form of a lighting system that’s been enhanced with greater colour-mixing and zooming capabilities thanks to the addition of 60 COLORado 2-Quad Zoom Tour fixtures and 14 Ovation B-2805FC cyc lights from Chauvet Professional.
“Excitement and joy have been the main reactions to these lights by the designers who’ve used them,” said Janelle Asti, the master electrician and sound engineer of the school’s Department of Theatre and Dance. “The designers who have come in and used our new fix

UK - Star Events’ X Stage highlights the creativity at AEG Presents’ first All Points East festival in Victoria Park, where sets from LCD Soundsystem, The XX and Bjork drew sizeable audiences this Bank Holiday weekend.
Working with Loudsound and LarMac Live, including the main East Stage, a 20m VerTech, the North Stage, with its concentric arches, the West Arena and all the requisite support structures.
An ambitious in the round experience, with a hovering DJ platform, the X Stage “puts the finest electronic talent into the heart of the audience”.
Star Events’ design team joined two 5m wide/38m span arches at the apex to bring the X Stage to life, using kit from the yard together with ‘specials’ built for the project.
Alongside its considerable lighting capacity, each leg of the structure houses an inward facing speaker configuration, whic

Europe - Singer-songwriter Adel Tawil is again on tour in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Prior to the tour, he used a number of festival appearances to present his current album So Schön Anders before embarking on an extensive theatre tour that ended with three sold-out arena shows last autumn. These included all the essential production elements of his other shows.
The man responsible for the lighting design is Bertil Mark, who wanted to implement a symbiosis of clear spaces and chaos. Production rehearsals took place over three days at Black Box Music in Berlin, where most of the band now resides, and where the lighting designer now runs his own studio.
"Since the band is well-rehearsed, we were able to use the three days in the rehearsal studio almost exclusively for the design," reports Bertil Mark with satisfaction. "I had listened to the album in adva

UK - British rock band Marillion treated fans to a series of immersive shows in April, with theatrical-style lighting controlled using an Avolites Tiger Touch II with Titan interface.
The band worked with its long-serving lighting designer Yenz Nyholm on the light show, designed to synchronise with pinpoint accuracy to video content and on-stage action.
"Each song on this tour required lighting that would act as if it were a mini-play, reflecting the stark nature of the music and immersing the audience into the experience," says Nyholm. "The design was based on beautiful, symmetrical beams of light.
"Programming with Titan was a godsend - I used the Capture Atlas Suite, which integrates with Titan, allowing me to sync the lighting with the video and performance. Pre-programming using Capture meant that my position palettes were pretty much spot-on when I got to e

UK - Restaurant Sophie’s Steakhouse and its companion speakeasy lounge bar Jack Solomon recently opened in Soho, with Nexo’s compact point-source ID Series loudspeakers installed in three areas of the venues.
System control was also provided by Nexo’s DTD digital controllers and powered by DTD amplifiers.
AV design company Diamond AV specified and installed the system, which extends across three levels, including the double-height main restaurant. More than 30x ID24i cabinets have been used, carrying the same look/feel throughout the different parts of the venue. The tiny yet versatile double 4” cabinets handle a background music programme in the restaurant, jazz and club tracks in the lounge, and guest DJ mixes in a small VIP salon.
Guy Ayres is the technical director of Diamond AV who was responsible for speccing and programming the system: he is please

UK - Aurora Lighting Hire supported lighting director Gurdip Mahal on a major installation for Revolution, one of the largest entertainment sets on UK television.
SKY One took over the vast space at Cardington Studios for extreme sports show Revolution. Hosted by Jackass star Steve-O and Maya Jama, Revolution is an extravaganza of high speed action featuring BMX riders, skates and boarders going head to head across a spectacular custom designed course.
Working with award winning lighting director Gurdip Mahal for the eight-episode run, Aurora provided a vast array of lighting, control and rigging equipment to light up the large-scale production.
To achieve the intense colour applied throughout the show, a mix of over 200 Robe 1200, VariLite VL3500 and Martin Quantum Wash fixtures were installed to provide a highly controllable, vibrant

Portugal - 17 Robe RoboSpot Base Stations controlling tracking Robe BMFL fixtures provided a remote followspotting solution for production lighting designer Jerry Appelt at the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest.
The RoboSpot system was specified onto the show by Jerry and his gaffer Matthias Rau, and used extensively throughout the event’s final and two live semi-finals, which were beamed and streamed live via host broadcaster Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP), reaching a final worldwide audience of around 200 million.
The RoboSpot system was supplied by main lighting contractor Flashlight from the Netherlands, who worked in conjunction with Pixelight from Portugal.
The RoboSpots, each with individual MotionCameras, were all from Robe’s powerful BMFL series of moving lights – a mix of BMFL Blades and BMFL WashBeams. Having these on the rig for key lighting

UK - Conor Cosimini, producer and studio co-owner got a call earlier last year asking him to join English singer/songwriter Dodie’s touring team as monitor engineer.
Catapulted into the role not long after graduating from London College of Music (LCM), Conor arrived loaded with zeal, ambition and an Audient iD14, all set for her You tour in October where the audio interface was invaluable in a live setup. “The iD14 has come on both tours - and every other show I've done since - and I couldn't be happier with it,” confirms Conor in the afterglow of Dodie’s most recent Spring Tour which ended in April.
Conor admits that he was already a fan of Audient. "I use iD22 in my writing and location recording rigs all the time," he says, making the decision the to choose iD14 for Dodie’s live setup even easier. "When I’m on the road, I like to have an in

USA - Country music singer, songwriter and rising star Kane Brown is on the road opening for Chris Young’s Losing Sleep tour, and lighting designer Andrew James wanted a practical and spectacular specials rig to give the young artist’s set full impact.
He turned to Robe moving lights - 18 x Pointes and five Spikies - supplied to the tour as a specials package by 4Wall Nashville.
James’ starting point for this design was that he and production manager Tyler Oplinger wanted something different for Kane’s set which needed to look fabulous and be set up onstage and de-rigged quickly and efficiently during the changeover.
He had already started to think along cart-based ideas for movability, and he also happened to have Atari’s Q*bert in his head! This inspired the basic shape of the set which he realized would also make a great base for lamp placeme

UK - While the 2014 Disney film production of Into the Woods garnered huge amounts of attention, thanks in part to its all-star Hollywood cast including the likes of Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp, a recent UCL theatre production has succeeded in stripping down the Stephen Sondheim classic to its thematic core - exposing the eternal battle between darkness and light.
Instrumental in this exploration of desire, ambition and relationships through classic Brothers Grimm characters such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Rapunzel was a combination of Chauvet Professional Maverick MK1 Spot and MK3 Wash fixtures, specified by LD Alex Forey.
With the general concept for the lighting based around the need to support the director’s post-apocalyptic vision, the cutting and powerful effects of the Maverick combination were called upon to create the atmospherics.

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