USA - With 16 studio albums and nearly 60m records sold worldwide, the multi-platinum recording artist Alan Jackson has solidified himself as one of country music’s leading talents. In a career that spans over three decades, Jackson is still hard at work touring the nation for his dedicated fans. Needing a new production design to support the current Honk Tonk Highway Tour, the management team once again enlisted the creativity of Craig Rutherford, Blueshift Design, who in turn called upon Nashville-based tour provider Elite Multimedia.
“Since we have had such a long relationship with Alan, he is sort of ‘hands off’ when it comes to the designing of the production for his tours,” began Rutherford. “I typically start the process by reviewing the designs from previous tours, and then finding new ways to change it up to keep the tour fresh. Afterwards, I then speak

USA - Long before the cry “Drivers Start Your Engines” marked the start of the 101st Indianapolis 500 at 12:14 pm on Sunday 28 May, over 30,000 EDM fans at the speedway were already racing through some slick bangers at The Snake Pit Presented By Coors Light. Held on the track’s infield at Turn 3, this one-day festival within an auto race kicked off at 7 am and kept going until the chequered flag was waved track side.
Accenting the performances from the likes of Zedd, Marshmello, and Adventure Club at this year’s event was a Collyns Stenzel designed light and video show that relied on Chauvet Professional COLORado fixtures to help it stand out against the Indiana sun.
“This is my third year designing this show,” said Stenzel of White Light AV. “It’s fun to see all these fans have the time of their lives in a unique setting. However, there’s also a chal

UK - Richard Martin Lighting (RML) supported LD Richard Bowles in lighting one of the biggest nights in the current election campaign as Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn faced a live audience and Jeremy Paxman in May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10.
Aired live from Sky Studios on Sky News and Channel 4, Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May separately faced audience questions before being grilled by Jeremy Paxman on key issues such as Brexit, social care and the economy. With the General Election just a week away and the polls narrowing between the two main political parties, the night proved illuminating on both sides.
Lighting for May v Corbyn Live was designed by Richard Bowles, supported by RML and a vast rig was employed. As well as the interior lighting for the debate, Richard also designed the lighting that surrounded the exterior of the studio and an emphasis was

Argentina - Award winning Argentinian lighting designer Ariel del Mastro was asked to add his own touches of lighting inspiration to latest thrilling stage show created by choreographer / producer Flavio Mendoza, Mahatma, which played the summer season at the Luxor Theatre in Villa Carlos Paz, Cordoba and has now transferred to the Teatro Broadway in Buenos Aires.
The show is Indian influenced, featuring a blend of exuberant and reflective music and dance capturing the humour, colour, diversity and wisdom of the culture in a vibrant and animated performance for which Ariel chose Robe moving lights as his principal fixtures.
Fourteen Spikies, 18 Spiiders and 16 Squares were on the rig at the Luxor – the first time all of these new fixtures made their theatrical debut in Argentina.
The big challenge in lighting the show, said Ariel, was to capture the man

UK - At the end of 2016, Autograph Sales & Installations completed an extensive installation at the New Adelphi Building at The University of Salford, providing an audio system that accommodates the needs of a multipurpose, flexible venue. A DiGiCo SD9 digital mixing console adds extra versatility to the 350-seat main theatre.
The theatre has been designed to be re-configurable to allow it to host a wide variety of performances. This includes seating and stage placements that can operate in five main modes: end firing; long traverse; short traverse; thrust; and in the round; as well as a dedicated cinema set up.
The SD9 and a DiGiCo Orange Box are key to the system - which includes an extensive EM Acoustics loudspeaker system, QSC digital signal processing and Sennheiser microphones - with system inputs being fed through it as required. It is programmed as an LCR

Europe - Kiev delivered on its promise to present an awesome show and Green Hippo technology was key to the 62nd Eurovision Song Contest looking better than ever.
Bringing together a crack team of skilled practitioners, this year’s Green Hippo Eurovision team’s video production heavily featured in the visual design of the show. Highlights included a large LED wall behind the stage, LED floor, Pixel-mapped lights and a projection-mapped arch over the stage. To help ensure the polished performance the MA2 and time code-driven set-up used a total 16 Green Hippo Boreal touring Media Servers, all running Hippotizer V4.2.1 software. At any one time, up to nine of the Boreals were active, driving a complex set-up.
In addition to Green Hippo itself, various companies supplied the legion of Green Hippo Boreals: DigiGobos / Beacon Gobo Group: exclusive Green Hippo distribut

UK - Award winning lighting designer Francis Clegg applied his imagination and magic to the latest Snarky Puppy UK tour, where his penchant for creating interesting and different visual environments is perfectly suited to the band’s improvisational instrumental jazz-pop sounds.
Colour Sound Experiment was delighted to be the lighting and video supplier for the tour. The west London based company has worked on other projects with Francis, part of creative practice design MIRRAD, including most recently, Giggs and Kano. “You know that a design will look fresh and alternative when Francis’ name is on it,” commented Colour Sound’s H (Haydn Cruickshank).
Francis worked on Snarky Puppy’s 2015 UK tour, their first with full production. He finds the fluidity and organic nature of the music and performance very inspirational. Every show is unique, and that provided

UK - “Our current count is nine Audient desks,” says Richard Liggins, technical production manager at the University of West London (UWL). “Seven ASP8024s and two ASP4816s, plus a number of ASP510 5.1 monitor controllers and an ASP800,” which puts it in the running for the facility with the most Audient desks in the world.
Most recently, London College of Music (LCM) - part of the UWL - opened Paragon Annex Studio complex, an investment of more than £1m in the development of seven new recording studios, which includes two each of these Audient consoles.
Liggins explains: “Audient desks reflect a very clear design ethic in terms of the signal flow through the desk. We teach audio studio recording from first principles, and that means an understanding of signal flow through a traditional multi-track studio as a base for all other techniques in audio recording.

UK - The Vamps recently completed a sold-out arena tour of the UK as part of the first leg of their world tour, before joining up with Little Mix as they head in to Europe. Lighting, video and rigging technology and services were supplied by PRG XL Video - with lighting design by Peter Barnes and video content direction by Stuart Merser, using the latest live image manipulation tool: VideoDust.
Created by Stuart Smith and his business partner Phil Woodhead, of Brighton based technologists Thundering Jacks, VideoDust is a user-friendly, intuitive tool for creating original video content in real-time from a live source. Stuart Merser has been the only video director outside of Thundering Jacks to use VideoDust/Cat combination on touring productions, he explained why he is such a fan: “I’ve been touring for over twenty years and VideoDust is one of the most impressive tools

USA - Flogging Molly concerts tend to be raucous affairs with plenty of moshing, sing-alongs and foot stomping energy, as this seven-piece band steamrolls its way through its unique blend of Celtic and punk music. Lighting designer Peter Therrien of JDI Productions is capturing these good time feelings on the band’s current US and European tour with a colourful, fast-moving lightshow created with Chauvet Professional Rogue and Legend fixtures.
“Lighting this band is a great experience, because they have such a strong connection to their fans and their energy is contagious,” said Therrien. “I wanted to give this show some big looks with lots of colour, aerial effects and movement to match the party atmosphere at a Flogging Molly concert. At the same time, I also wanted to be able to slow things down for when the band takes a pause to do ballads and slow jams.”

UK - Sunday 14 May saw the final match at White Hart Lane, home of Tottenham Hotspur, before the ground is demolished to make way for a new stadium in 2018. A victory for Spurs on the day and the atmosphere could not have been more emotional.
“The closing ceremony proved a triumph,” said Andrew Zweck of Sensible Events who helped produce the ceremony with Spurs. “Broadcast live to over 13m fans around the world, Sky Sports commentator Martin Tyler said after the ceremony, ‘this is a club that is doing everything right’ and I’m sure I heard 13m voices say, ‘Aye’.”
Zweck is a season ticket holder and as a fan was happy to help. “What we did was bring in rock and roll companies because this had to be fast and be really classy. Phil Mercer at Unipix provided an additional big screen up on Stageco towers, and all audio came from Britannia Row.”

Dominican Republic - Over the past 30 years, FOH Engineer Jose Amable Frómeta has worked with some of Latin America’s most popular recording artists. With a résumé that includes Juan Luis Guerra, Marc Anthony, Juanes and Ricky Martin, Frómeta recently added DPA Microphones’ d:vote 4099 Instrument Microphones to his arsenal of equipment.
Frómeta has been using DPA microphones for about a year now. “In a private engagement in Chile with artist Juan Luis Guerra, the local audio company provided us with DPA d:vote 4099s as replacements for the ones specified on our input list,” says Frómeta. “I wasn’t sure what to expect, having never used them before. I used them on saxophones and was so amazed with the sound that I purchased three the following week. The mics are simply great.”
One of Frómeta’s previous audio challenges has been solved with the use

Chile - Urdile Audio & Iluminación, PR Lighting’s Chilean distributors, are just one global partner that has been achieving extraordinary success with the Chinese manufacturer’s XR440 BWS, and its smaller sibling the XR330 BWS (denoting that these hybrid, high output moving heads combine beam, wash and spot effect).
The XR440 BWS houses a powerful Osram Sirius HRI 440W lamp, and features include an advanced colour index with CYM linear colour mixing system, with macro; colour wheel with 12 colours and CTO plus open; bi-directional rainbow effect at variable speeds; step/linear colour changer; fixed gobo wheel with 13 fixed gobos plus open, and much more.
Urdile have been working with PR Lighting for the past four years, both as a distributor, but at the same time demonstrating product durability through its rental division.
This year alone the 15,000-sea

Canada - Located within an old church building in Little Italy, Revival Bar has become a live performance hangout for the Toronto music community and fans since opening in 2000. While its designation as a Toronto historic building requires preservation of the building’s frontage, there is nothing to prevent modernization inside. That is why general manager Mathew Saturnino recently decided to upgrade the 400-capacity venue’s sound system with the Electro-Voice X1 system from the X-Line Advance line-array loudspeaker family.
"There’s a lot of competition in live entertainment, and quality of the sound system is one thing that sets one venue apart from another," notes Revival Bar general manager Mathew Saturnino. "We wanted a system that would sound great, with really good, tight sound output within the room. We did a lot of research, and the X1 from Electro-Voice seeme

Italy - Protected Paradise is a striking, 12m high, mixed media installation created by Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen, located in the garden of the Palazzio Francetti for the 2017 Biennale di Venezia (Venice Biennale) contemporary visual art exhibition.
Luc Peumans of Painting with Light was contracted to light the work, a thought-provoking piece encouraging viewers to engage and question the impact of humanity on a rapidly transforming planet.
It consists of two bronze trees, a 4m bronze chicken claw (symbolic of the human being), two eggs made out of marble and fibre respectively (the eggs of hope) and an impressive cage constructed from recycled material, made by ECO-OH!
The bottom egg is constructed from Carrara marble and weighs 12 tonnes.
The overall construction of the piece was managed by Koen Verhaert of ECO-OH!, based at Laakdal in Belgium and t

Germany - Four years after their last live appearance, German tour promoter Karsten Jahnke has brought lmusician, producer and engineer Alan Parsons and his band back to Germany, playing 13 dates throughout the country in May. A Yamaha Rivage PM10 console has taken care of the intricate Front of House mixes for these much-anticipated performances.
Playing a mixture of indoor and outdoor shows, the nine-piece Alan Parsons Live Project is being mixed by Emmy-nominated FoH engineer and production manager Ross Pallone.
The Rivage PM10 console has been supplied by Lüneburg-based audio production/installation company PM das Systemhaus für Medien- & Veranstaltungstechnik (Profi Musik), with these shows being the first time that regular Yamaha user Ross has got up close and personal with the new flagship console.
“For us, the most important thing is that the sou

Mexico - Latin American artist Ozuna recently started his world tour in support of the Odisea album. Lighting designer Alex Soto’s first choice for lighting control was two dot2 XL-F to control a set consisting of more than 100 fixtures.
Soto commented: “The dot2 is an amazing console to do any kind of show. It is fast to programme and easy to use. It is really an amazing console for a fast live show. We had a quick access to the different kind of options of the fixtures and could create different types of effects in a short time.
“We had the performance divided by scenes that took the audience to a unique experience”, continued Soto. “By this they could feel and live the music. All of this to show how much the artist has grown in a year and a half of his musical career.” The lighting equipment was delivered by PRG Mexico.
(Jim Evans)

UK - Indie rockers Circa Waves are making waves right now, and the release of their second album Different Creatures brings some more serious, hard-hitting and thought-provoking messages along with solid catchy rhythms.
Lighting designer Ed Warren started working with Circa Waves at the start of this album campaign in October 2016. Having known their management team for some time, all the circumstances and stars aligned to make it the right time for Ed to add his ideas and imagination to the stage presentation on recent UK and European legs of the tour.
Ed specified an almost entirely Robe rig including 12 x Spiiders, 12 x CycFX 8s, 36 x Halos and four DL4Ss, all supplied by CEG Hire & Productions, and operated on the road by Toby Hoggarth.
Ed was left free to create a visual stage environment after receiving the new album artwork and a few pointers fr

Australia - A newly completed memorial to World War II submariners is the centre-piece of the 300m Submariners' Walk Heritage Trail on the Brisbane River boardwalk in Teneriffe, Queensland. The walk features a series of plaques and submarine-shaped seats commemorating the sailors and their service. The memorial itself comprises a landmark sign illuminated by Firefly’s Digital FloppyFlex RGBW LED neon.
The hollow steel sign, by Street + Garden, is painted navy grey with letters perforated in the steel, spelling out ‘Submariners’ Heritage Trail’ in classic naval stencil font. Pixel-controlled Digital FloppyFlex inside the sign illuminates the letters, giving a stunning, colour-changing glow effect that seems to move inside the monument.
The installation was up and running in time for the Teneriffe / New Farm Anzac Day dawn service, the memorial’s unofficial op

The Netherlands - Armin van Buuren played two tumultuous gigs at Amsterdam ArenA as The Best of Armin Only celebrated the conclusion of the Armin Only performance concept. Armin’s largest solo show to date in his home country of the Netherlands additionally marked 20 years of his career as a DJ / creative music producer, and it was the first time a DJ has staged a solo show at the venue, also home to Ajax Football Club.
Creating an equally awesome lighting and visual design for the occasion were Andre Beekmans of The Art of Light and Marc Heinz, who united the worlds of live events, opera and drama in a visual extravaganza to match the energy and diversity of the performance.
There were over 900 Robe moving lights to help achieve their imaginative goals which were delivered by lighting contractors Focus Amsterdam B.V. and Rent-All.
The breakdown include

UK - The success of UK singer songwriter Ed Sheeran continues with the start of a new world tour - for which a substantial Kinesys automation system was specified to assist with the daily stage set build and to facilitate the movement of lighting pods during the show.
The impressive lighting and scenography design which is helping Sheeran wow the crowds and impress the critics has been created by Mark Cunniffe.
The Kinesys system and control was recommended by Mike Oates, director of UK based Lights Control Rigging (LCR), the tour’s lighting equipment and crew supplier in combination with SES in the US.
The Kinesys equipment includes four Kinesys DigiHoist Plus (63 Amp) and eight DigiHoist (32 Amp) intelligent chain hoist controllers, 42 x Kinesys LibraCELL load monitoring cells and 12 x Liftket variable speed 500kg hoists fitted with Kinesys Elevation 1+ driv

Turks and Caicos Islands - Beaches Resorts in the Turks and Caicos Islands offers endless activities for people of all ages, not to mention convenient access to some of the Caribbean's best beaches. Lighting designer Lisa Weinshrott Kimmel, of Sharp Edge Lighting Design, was recently brought onboard to design lighting for a theatre project at the vacation resort and found an Elation rig at her disposal.
Beaches Resorts pride themselves on offering a wide variety of activities for the whole family and the new theatre shows make up another component in the resort’s entertainment package. “This was a new installation for four shows at the Beaches Resorts’ outdoor theatre on Turks and Caicos,” Lisa explains. “The challenges presented by this outdoor venue and multiple musicals performing simultaneously created an environment where reliable and versatile equipment was

USA - Beach blankets and yoga mats aren’t normally found inside the long, high-ceilinged central nave of the National Cathedral. Recently, however, the iconic church’s usual seats and pews were removed so people could lie down on these coverings to gaze at an astonishing lightshow that transformed the building’s cavernous interior into a vast and infinitely fascinating panorama of colour with help from a collection of LED fixtures from Chauvet Professional.
Elizabeth A. Coco of Atmosphere Lighting designed this transformative vista for the cathedral’s Seeing Deeper, an event its organizers say was intended to help people “find new paths for creative expression and spiritual freedom”. Live Native American flute music accompanied the two-hour lightshow to create an environment that was true to the organizers’ goals.
“Atmosphere Lighting and I have been wo

UK - Production company LarMac Live called in Setsquare Staging to reproduce hero pieces and build infrastructure for The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains, the biggest ever at the V&A.
Setsquare produced the scaled-up, walk through model of Pink Floyd’s 1965-era Bedford van which opens the show, a 9m high parallax view Battersea Power Station, representing the Animals album cover, a 7.5m model of The Wall, set opposite, and a series of beds reproduced from original Momentary Lapse of Reason LP artwork.
Created in the company’s own workshops, from 3D design through to finishing touches, Setsquare also oversaw the intricate installation process on site.
Ian Greenway, director at LarMac Live, comments: “There are more than 350 original artefacts at Their Mortal Remains and we needed scale model props to put them in a fitting conte

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