Lighting

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Germany - Snap, Culture Beat, Haddaway, Captain Hollywood Project and Right Said Fred are familiar names to people who went to parties in the 1990s. These and many other artists are on tour in Germany with an event called Die MEGA 90er Live. Atlantis Audio took charge of the technical lighting equipment on behalf of Dresden-based LTI, and once again requested products from Lightpower's stock.

Among the various lights used on the tour were 16 Clay Paky Sharpys and 15 Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE K20s, in addition to two grandMA2 full-size consoles, two MA 4Port Nodes, and two MA plus MK2 Video Processing Units (VPUs).

Volkmar Kusch, the owner of Atlantis Audio, was thrilled yet again with the performance of the products, commenting, "The MA system is simply extraordinary. We built the whole setup with two full-size grandMA2 consoles. Martin Pech dealt with the show lightin

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UK - Lighting and visuals rental specialist HSL has invested again in more Martin Pro MAC Viper Wash DXs and MAC Aura XB moving lights, also more grandMA2 consoles for the latest Il Divo UK and European tour.

The tour sees the band present their smouldering Amor & Pasi

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USA - LD Freddy Thompson of JDI Productions was looking for more than speed when he put together the rig for the recent national tour by Killswitch Engage. In keeping with the hardcore spirit of his clients, who were named one of "The Greatest Metal Bands of All Time" by MTV, Thompson wanted nothing less than full throttle power from his floor package. He got this with a high force rig that relied heavily on the intense output of Rogue moving fixtures, Nexus panels, Legend 230SR Beams and Vesuvio foggers from Chauvet Professional.

"Practical things always have to be on your mind when you create a floor package," said Thompson. "So everything we did had to be quick and easy, but that wasn't our only thought. We never want to go to a venue and just add lights to the house rig, we want to have a real impact on the set by creating a more dimensional look."

Thompson did this in

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UK - It is with great sadness that the ALD has announced the death of founder member and Fellow, Francis Reid who passed away on 9th June aged 86. Reid was a much-loved and respected lighting designer, author and teacher who lit hundreds of shows and shared his knowledge and experience of lighting in many popular books and publications and with countless students throughout the world.

A statement from the ALD reads: "Francis was a founding member of the Association, playing a key role in establishing the practice of stage lighting design and the role of Lighting Designer in the UK.

He was 86, and had spent all his working life in and around theatre, but was also an inspiring teacher and a prolific author, who made lighting and the arts of theatre making come alive for several generations of practitioners, at RADA, at what is now Central St Martins, the Royal Conservatoire

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Germany - LaserAnimation's Lasergraph DSP is a laser show control solution that is in the market for many years already. The Lasergraph DSP got its reputation as a fail-safe controller and was mainly used by high end professional companies. As the Lasergraph DSP is designed as a de-central processing unit, it does not transmit demanding system control data, but can run on its own or only triggered by low-density control signals.

The Laserworld Group started the distribution of Lasergraph DSP in April 2016, and a new licensing model made the DSP show control systems more affordable. Due to "Master-Slave" licensing it is possible to combine several low priced slave-units with one master unit.

The Lasergraph DSP was known in the industry for a special user interface which may look a bit "old school". This has changed a lot with the latest release of the LG-Remote remote contr

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UK - Artistic Licence, industry experts in lighting control, is inviting visitors to stand E41 at this year's ABTT show. Visitors can enjoy a special 20% discount on nanoScope DMX testers, including the newly launched variant, nanoScope tx (a DMX transmitter designed for test, configuration and fault-finding of lighting rigs). Also on display is a demonstration of the impressive capabilities of the versaSplit DMX distribution system.

Lightweight and battery powered with a translucent plastic casing, nanoScope features a built-in 5-pin XLR connector that enables it to be attached directly to the DMX512 cable. The device lights up in different colours to indicate its findings - this provides rapid, intuitive feedback that is hands-free and visible at a distance (handy for awkward positions such as plenum spaces or hanging off a truss).

Two modes of operation exist, selected

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USA - Based in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Najafi Design Group prides itself on creating designs that truly complete the experience while immortalizing the moment. So when they were approached by Cleft Clips to create an entirely new technical design for Funny or Die, lighting and event designer Sohail e. Najafi was confident his team could completely transform The Historic Scoot Inn.

Wanting to consolidate two main elements of their typical production design, a detailed scenic backdrop and high resolution video wall for connect playback, Najafi found a new more cost-effective and dynamic solution, the FLEXCurve 8mm high resolution curved LED video wall from PixelFLEX.

"We first started designing for Cleft Clips in Los Angeles for various comedy specials over the past few years," began Najafi. "When they brought us back this year, they asked us to manage the technical produ

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South Africa - When the television audience heard that The Voice would come to South Africa, there was a huge response and expectation. For Chris De Lancey from Multi-Media who was awarded the technical supply for The Voice Angola by production Co AMPN, South Africa and Nigeria, it has been a relief to see the show raise the bar for local televised shows and to meet international standards. The show was recorded at Sasani Studios, Johannesburg.

"First tentative discussions around The Voice began late in 2013, and December of that year, draft 1 budgets were being produced. Two years later it was on us," said Chris.

"When I eventually got sign off I was both elated and terrified at the same time," Chris shares. "I don't think I slept for four days before I could speak to anyone and say, 'Right, let's start talking and dealing with this.'

Realising th

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USA - Missouri's Pleasant Valley Church has invested in 120 of the award-winning Chroma-Q Inspire colour-mixing LED house lights, to provide an immersive worship environment for its congregation, and dramatically reduce the venue's running costs.

Pleasant Valley Baptist Church (PVBC) is on the north side of the Kansas City metropolitan area, and has a weekly attendance of around 4,000 people. The Church has existed since the 1940s at various locations, but was purpose-built at its current location in 1997.

PVBC has three different styles of worship service happening every weekend in the same room - the main Worship Centre - meaning that flexibility and reliability of the lighting system is very important.

Kansas City-based worship lighting installations specialists, Stark Raving Solutions provided an LED house light 'shoot out' in collaboration with North American ligh

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UK - Since it was founded almost 40 years ago, Tara Arts has become one of Britain's most renowned theatre companies. Its productions allow diverse voices to be heard on stage, creating work that fuses East and Western cultures.

The company recently moved into a new home in Wandsworth, known as the Tara Theatre. This will house a 100-seat auditorium and a separate studio space. With its strong reputation in theatre, they approached White Light, a company local to them, to invest in the very latest lighting technology.

Tom Kingdon, technical and operations manager at Tara, comments, "We are really excited about the new Tara Theatre and the great mix of work this space will allow us to bring to audiences, both old and new. Our intention is for the building to showcase some of the most original work in contemporary theatre. Therefore, it's important that the equipment we have

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South Africa - Lighting designer Christopher Bolton from Keystone Productions used 180 Robe fixtures for the Ghoema Music Awards staged at the Joburg Theatre.

The Ghoema Awards recognises exceptional achievement in the Afrikaans Music Industry in South Africa. Chris was appointed by Joshua Cutts of Visual Frontier to light and programme the awards for their client, Idea Candy, a creative production company. As the show was recorded for Kyknet, a South African television channel, Chris worked closely with stage director Barry Pretorius and camera director Eugene Naidoo.

The Robe rig included eight Robe BMFL Blades, 24 x Pointes, 12 x Robin 800 LEDWash, 12 x Robin 600 LEDWash, 12 x Robin 1000 LEDBeam, 21 x Robin 100 LEDBeam, 22 x Robin MMX Spots and 70 x Robe LEDForce 18 RGBW Parcans. Control was on the MA platform with two grandMA2 light consoles, one MA2 NPU and one MA VPU

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USA - Before a recent performance at San Francisco's legendary Great American Music Hall, Nada Surf frontman Matthew Caws joked with the sell-out crowd about being on a "20-year tour". Since breaking through with their 1996 hit Popular the New York City-based indie rockers have (with one notable two-year exception) maintained a relentless touring schedule.

Typical of this hard-driving pace is the group's current You Know Who You Are tour, which covers 35 US cities plus stops throughout Europe. Keeping up with Nada Surf on the cross-country American leg of its tour is a collection of Rogue and Nexus fixtures from Chauvet Professional.

Packed in a trailer towed behind the band's bus, the all-Chauvet rig includes four Rogue R1 Spot moving fixtures and six Nexus 4x1 RGB linear LED washes. "They are travelling very well," said Dinah Miller, the tour's lighting designer,

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UK - Lighting designer and LSi columnist Rob Halliday remembers the late Francis Reid, who sadly passed away on 9th June, aged 86 . . .

"(I wrote this five years ago, as a gift to Francis on his 80th birthday. Following the news of his passing last week, it feels like deserves a wider audience, with just a very sad change of tense...)

Every month as I sat down to write about another classic product, a wave of guilt swept across me: I was the wrong man for the job. There was someone out me who could write better, light better and, for good measure, lived through more of the products that are now classics (and many, many less good ones besides!) Maybe Classic Gear would have been better in the hands of Francis Reid. Or maybe that age, that experience means something different: that we should actually have considered Francis himself a classic!

The qualifications? Well, th

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USA - In February, ETC expanded its research efforts, creating the Advance Research Group (ARG) to uncover new technologies and boost current product capabilities. ETC has hired Wendy Luedtke to join the ARG as a product technology specialist. She will work closely with lighting professionals to identify their most important issues, helping the ARG develop technology that tackles their problems and opens new possibilities.

"The ARG facilitates innovation, allowing new ideas to be explored in every area of R&D," describes ETC CEO Fred Foster. "With Wendy coming on board, we can be certain that we're developing the right tools for lighting designers to use in the real world."

One of the first projects the ARG has been working on involves LED colour control. Last year's award-winning Eos v2.3 software upgrade is just the beginning of an initiative to revolutionise colour cont

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Belgium - Clouseau, Belgium's maverick and most successful pop / rock band are back on the road this summer with a new album Clouseau Danst, a new sonic dynamic with the addition of a four-piece horn section, plus a vibrant new set and lighting design from Painting with Light.

The production design is a collaboration between Belgium based Painting with Light's Luc Peumans and Paco Mispelters. Luc's creative relationship with the band goes back many years, and this year Luc asked Paco onboard specifically to craft the lighting, which again has introduced new ideas and perspective to the visual equation.

Paco listened to the new album which introduces a dancier groove to Clouseau's extensive and diverse existing catalogue and discussed his initial ideas with Luc.

The lighting brief included utilizing eight ribbon lifts that had appeared on the 2014 tour and proved

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Russia - Moscow's Helikon Opera has invested in almost 100 Clay Paky fixtures as part of a modernisation of the venue.

The newly restored main stage opened with a gala concert in November 2015 after many years of reconstruction and refurbishment.

Clay Paky's long term Russian distributor, DOKA Centre preprared the specification and recommended the Clay Paky fixtures to the theatre.

"This was a very interesting project to work on - the new building is fantastic and the Helikon Opera is housed in the historical center of Moscow," says Vasily Litvin, DOKA's brand manager for Clay Paky equipment.

In the new building's smaller hall, Doka specified six Alpha Profile 700 ST, six A.leda B-EYE K20; 14x Sharpy; and 18x A.leda B-EYE K10, alongside the relevant flight cases and foam shells.

In the bigger hall, DOKA supplied six Alpha Spot HPE 1200, 16x Alpha Spot QWO800, s

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USA - The Grammy-nominated band Disturbed recently hit the top of the Billboard charts with its cover of Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence.

The versatility of their 2015 Immortalised album is on full display in the North American tour supporting the LP; not just in the music performed on stage, but also in the multi-facet lightshow designed by Matt Mills with a set design by Sooner Routhier. The design conveyed a range of moods in support of the quartet's music, thanks in part to a fully articulated truss system that moved throughout the concert, and the versatility of 22 STRIKE 4 multi-formatted warm white fixtures from Chauvet Professional.

"We had lighting that could change moods and create different look to reflect the wide scope of the band's music," said Mills, who was the programmer and lighting director when the band last toured in 2010-11. "The

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New Zealand - NW Group, the trans-Tasman live production specialists with offices across Australia and New Zealand, has won a 10-year contract as full-service technical providers to PWV (Positively Wellington Venues), a business unit of the Wellington City Council that manages five major venues.

"We're providing, lighting, AV, sound, crewing, production management, IT support, and rigging," said Paul O'Brien, technical operations director and head of lighting for NW Group in Wellington. "We're setting up a new office in the city. For the NW Group this is a start-up venture. We're building a new team to service the contract. As head of lighting, I'm also overseeing all the new lighting installations."

The venues now under NW Group's technical management include two proscenium arch theatres (The St James Theatre and The Opera House), a concert hall (The Michael Fowler Centre

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UK - Lighting designer Chris Thoms working for ZEROdB Live created the lightshow for the latest live extravaganza by leading club brand Hospitality which was staged at London's O2 Academy Brixton - a project on which he utilized Robe Pointes, LEDWash 600s and MMX Spots as the main moving lights.

Chris has operated and collaborated on the Hospitality Brixton production design since 2012. For this one, he and ZEROdB Live founder and production manager Rob Stanley wanted something new, fresh and different that was a departure from the hi-res 'big-telly-style' video look that has come to characterise so many events. After much brain-storming, they came up with the 'Fingers of Rock'.

Essentially the design evoked an old-school rock 'n' roll spatiality with a ceiling of lights above the artist, ticking the design brief boxes by going a bit retro and putting the emphasis firmly b

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USA - CEO of the PRG Music Group, Mickey Curbishley has announced that he will be leaving Production Resource Group as of 30 June, 2016. As CEO of PRG's Music Group, Curbishley oversaw business development and client support for concert tours, special events, television, and other music-related projects around the world.

"After 18 great years at PRG, I have decided to move on," says Curbishley. "Looking back what a fantastic journey it has been. From a tiny warehouse in West London where we spent the first week removing dead pigeons to the glamorous Hollywood Hills. I have been extremely proud of the professional and personal achievements my time at PRG has afforded me but now I feel it is time to begin a new journey in this amazing and ever-changing industry."

Curbishley also notes that he wants to thank the people that have made his journey at PRG so special. "I will mis

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France - Ayrton has introduced MagicBurst, billed as the industry's first dynamic LED strobe. The high-power graphic LED strobe offers continuous, unlimited rotation on its pan and tilt axes.

MagicBurst is the company's first strobe unit, and the world's only motorised strobe. MagicBurst's 384 x 384 mm squared face supports 3,840 high-output white LEDs grouped into 64 pixels on an 8 x 8 matrix. With a new ultra-compact 1,300W power supply, MagicBurst can deliver a peak light output of over 240,000 lumens - perfectly calibrated at 5600K - for several seconds, and put it into continuous rotation.

The strobe duration, speed and intensity of each LED pixel group can be individually controlled, and individual sections controlled to create graphic arrays, moving checker-boards, flashing letters, etc. MagicBurst also has a library of fixed images and pre-programmed dynamic effect

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UK - As a part of the company's 40th anniversary celebrations, ETC has something extra special in store for visitors to the ABTT Theatre Show at London's Alexandra Palace. For the first time in Europe, ETC will be hosting interactive training sessions with its new ColorSource consoles.

In tandem with the exhibition, ETC will be running a series of 70-minute training sessions in Suite 4 of Alexandra Palace's Palm Court. This is an opportunity to get an overview of the capabilities and benefits of the entire ColorSource range of products, followed by a more in-depth look at the current and forthcoming ColorSource consoles.

The sessions will include an interactive demonstration of ColorSource consoles; each attendee will have hands-on access to a desk, and can explore the main operational features. As an added bonus, participants will be automatically entered into a prize dra

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The Netherlands - Philips Lighting reports that its LED RGBW strobe the SL NITRO 510C is out on tour with synthpop trio Chvrches. As part of the band's brief to create 'distorted reality', the Philips SL NITRO 510C delivers special effects as part of a lighting design by Louis Oliver and James Scott of Okulus.

The design house - which also created the concept for the band's 2013 tour - specified 46 of the award-winning strobe from Philips Lighting. The units were supplied by PRG for the UK leg and Special Event Services (SES) in the States. Oliver and Scott augmented the design with 33 extra units for the larger headline shows.

The designers explain the band wanted a strong video element but without using a conventional screen. "Any video content was to look more like lighting and effects than actual high definition video," says Oliver. The solution was to create five slig

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Germany - Maisel's Weissbierfest (Maisel's Beer Festival) is as much part of Bayreuth as is the famous Richard Wagner Festival. While the Richard Wagner Festival focuses on the fine arts, Maisel's Weissbierfest stands for a good atmosphere, regional specialities and - in particular - a diverse and top-class live music programme.

This year, over 3,000 spectators witnessed seven different acts. The highlight on Saturday evening was the 80s rock legend Europe (The Final Countdown). With their riveting show, the Swedish outfit proved that they still have what it takes.

Lighting and sound at Maisel's Weissbierfest were again the responsibility of TC Showtechnik from Weilheim. The team headed by Martin Schulze relied on stands from Adam Hall Group brand Gravity for Europe's performance. "They have proven their worth," says Schulze. In addition to the fresh new appeal, the

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