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Lighting

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Czech Republic - Every 360° stage comes with its own set of knotty challenges, believes Martin Hruška. The rigging is more complex, so is cable management. Then there is the issue of positioning lighting fixtures and video panels in a way that won’t impede fan viewing angles and artist mobility.
Nevertheless, when the renowned designer’s client approved his plans to go with a costlier 360° stage for arena shows by Czech star Leoš Mareš, he was ecstatic. “The essence of Leoš Mareš is to connect with the audience,” said Hruška. “He is always going out on catwalks to connect to the audience. This is an artist who thrives on constant contact. Given this, I wanted a stage open on all sides in the middle of the arena, with two catwalks that extend out into the crowd.”
Judging from the powerfully evocative looks that are supporting Mareš on his tour thro

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UK - Version 2 has completed the asset purchase of broadcast lighting rental company Finelight.
Finelight's rental business will come under the Version 2 umbrella with immediate effect, its operations set to be consolidated into Version 2's Reading HQ during July. Communication channels for both companies will remain unchanged in the interim.
Version 2's managing director Nick Edwards comments: “We are excited to integrate Finelight's inventory into our growing operations. As a preferred supplier to the BBC, Finelight have built up an excellent reputation for quality of service. We're equally delighted to welcome Simon Perrott to our management team.”
Finelight's managing director Simon Perrott adds: “We have got to know Nick and the team at Version 2 over recent years whilst collaborating on a number of high-profile shows. We have a shared passion for gre
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North America - Coldplay have completed the North American leg of their Music of the Spheres World Tour, where Ayrton Domino and Perseo fixtures illuminated the stadium show from coast to coast. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton lighting in North America.
The tour has a sustainability theme, with each show powered exclusively by renewable, super-low emission energy.
“Misty Buckley and Phil Harvey, the co-creative directors of the tour, developed a production design and creative direction inspired by Pythagoras’s Music of the Spheres theory,” says lighting designer Sooner Routhier of Sooner Rae Creative, who began working with Coldplay in 2019 on their Everyday Life album campaign. “There’s a specific diagram that displays the arcs and movement of the solar system and its celestial bodies that we leaned on for inspiration.

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USA - Vari-Lite has announced the VL3600 Profile IP, a large-scale, high output production profile fixture with an IP65 rating. Designed to withstand inclement weather, yet with weight and size comparable with similar non-weatherproof fixtures, the VL3600 Profile IP is suitable for touring and TV productions, stadiums and arenas, and large theatres and houses of worship.
“Weather-rated moving lights are becoming highly desirable for outdoor and even indoor applications, but current IP65 fixture designs considerably increase the size-to-weight ratio compared to equivalent non-IP rated fixtures,” explains Martin Palmer, sr. product manager, Vari-Lite and Strand Luminaires at Signify. “This makes the fixtures harder to mount and heavier in the rig. The VL3600 Profile IP is the lightest in its class, meaning designers no longer need to choose between lighter non-weatherize

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UK - Robe enjoyed a successful ABTT (Association of British Theatre Technicians) show at Alexandra Palace in London, a highlight of which was the company’s win in the Lighting Product of the Year category of the ABTT Awards for its T11 fixtures.
Robe’s new stand design in the main exhibition hall featured a selection of the latest Robe and Anolis brand technologies and ran in tandem with a black box demonstration area downstairs where fixtures were shown ‘in situ’. RoboSpot workshops were also running downstairs throughout the expo for those keen to expand their knowledge of this powerful and versatile system.
The show proved to be a hub and meeting point for theatre creatives and practitioners working in all sectors, and “a fantastic opportunity to get kit in front of people in-person again,” explains Robe product and theatre specialist, Dave Whitehouse.

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The Netherlands - Pop acts Kris Kross Amsterdam, Maan, Rolf Sanchez, and others performed at the main stage of the first edition of Toverland LIVE! in Sevenum, under Infinity and Showtec lights.
Theme Park Toverland in Sevenum premiered the festival on Saturday, 21 May. Four stages were created in places where visitors could enjoy both the rides of the park as well as the live performing musicians.
The Main Stage was set up right at the Port Laguna entrance area, which served as the tropical centre of the festival. Top acts Maan, Rolf Sanchez, and Kris Kross Amsterdam created a swinging show, supported by 18 Infinity iW-1915 RGBW washes and 18 sets of Showtec DWE Audience Blinders, which were provided by production company Xymio (Geleen).
The lightshow was designed by Bas Baadjou from Imperial Lighting. The event proved a tremendous success and drew seve

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USA - A major mural unveiling took place in downtown Minneapolis recently - heralded by a weekend of celebratory events - when a new 100ft high artwork of Prince, featuring three shots of the Minneapolis musician, was revealed for the first time.
This $500,000 Crown Our Prince project, as it is known, has been under development for seven years, with the mural undertaken by Florida street painter Hiero Veiga.
For the Purple block party to coincide with the reveal, local company Slamhammer Audio were brought into handle production, including the sound reinforcement. Having been a loyal customer of Martin Audio for the past two decades, they fielded a combination of eight Martin Audio W8LC Compacts, eight WS218X subs and a pair of W8LM Mini for front-fills. For delays - set at the FOH position, and shooting back towards the rear of the crowd - they turned to a pai

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Europe - LiteNordic will no longer distribute Ayrton products in Norway, Denmark and Sweden from 31 July, the French lighting manufacturer has announced.
From 1 August, sales enquiries should be made to Matt Hallard, Ayrton’s European sales director, with LiteNordic supporting sales made before 31 July and under warranty thereafter.
“Ayrton is now actively inviting Nordic distributors and industry captains looking for an exciting new challenge to get in touch,” comments Hallard. “We are very grateful to LiteNordic for the past two years of dedication and hard work, but agree that a change in distributorship is now the way forward. We will continue to work closely with LiteNordic until 31 July to ensure a seamless transition to new distribution partnerships. There’s a wealth of stellar companies out there whom we are yet know and we look forward to meeting t

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UK - Late Friday night, as they concluded their 90-minute set on Glastonbury’s acoustic stage, headliners Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott walked out for their first encore. Evoking an earlier time in Heaton’s career, they performed a soulful version of Caravan of Love, a song that was a No. 1 hit for Heaton when he was a member of the Housemartins.
Embracing the music and enhancing its magical effect was a Patrick Sollitt lightshow that he ran on his ChamSys MagicQ MQ500M.
“Caravan of Love, was my favourite look,” said Sollitt. “It was simple, nothing very complicated, just two colours that moved together in a very gentle balanced way. I think it topped off the set perfectly.”
Working with a rig supplied by Fineline Lighting, Sollitt created a variety of other looks that captured the deep, and gently evocative mood of the 21-song set.

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Italy - Claypaky has unveiled the first product in its Volero line of LED bars - the Volero Batten Aqua.
Designed for outdoor use, the Batten Aqua’s light source is in made up of 10 60W Osram RGBW LEDs. Each LED adopts 80x80mm lenses, allowing more versatility with focussing the power of the LEDs, optimising their luminous efficiency and resolution.
Volero Batten Aqua also allows separate control of the zoom in two groups from five adjacent lenses, creating a dynamic movement of the light beam. The fixture offers Advanced Layers Management, with which the operator can choose to use different levels of effects simultaneously.
With its IP66 protection rating, optional Wireless DMX control, effects and built-in macros, the batten is designed for the touring, event, television and installation markets, and works equally well for indoor and outdoor applications.

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UAE - In September 2021, Dubai saw the opening ceremony of Expo 2020 as it began to host the world’s largest Expo event. From October 2021 until March 2022, Expo 2020 welcomed and hosted 192 participating countries to be a part of the journey.
Adam Bassett and Simon Fraser from the lighting design consultant company on Expo 2020, Woodroffe Bassett Design, chose Follow-Me remote follow-spot and performer tracking solutions to be installed and used in three of the venues, The Al Wasl Plaza, the Jubilee Stage and the Dubai Millennium Amphitheatre.
Al Wasl Plaza is a 67m-tall, 130m diameter structure with 252 video projectors and an immersive sound system. With a brief to transform the spectacular garden space into a venue, WBD designed a house lighting rig that is integrated into the structure with the clear direction not to detract from the beauty of the architecture.<

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South Africa - Cape Town-based lighting designer Marius Coetzee collaborated closely with Bradley Hilton from Pixel Nation to create a subtle and highly visual canvas and intricate high-impact projection mapped show devised for the South African launch of the Audi e-tron electric series.
Marius chose Robe moving lights - Esprites, LEDWash 600s and MegaPointes - to assist him in the task.
The fixtures were supplied by rental specialist MGG to the Night of Progress event which was created by the Full Circle agency for Audi South Africa and staged at Cape Town’s Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. This stunning building is located in the Silo district of central Cape Town and is the largest museum of contemporary African art worldwide.
The museum is part of the conversion of a 57m-tall historic grain silo, originally built in 1921 and decommissioned

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UK - Lighting designer, director and operator Jose Lorenzo uses Obsidian Control Systems’ Onyx lighting control platform on tours in the UK and recently ran a 78 show, three-month tour by 2021 Strictly Come Dancing champion Giovanni Pernice using an NX2 lighting console. The show, This is Me, toured the UK and Ireland from 1 March until 30 May and highlighted Pernice’s showmanship supported by a cast of professional dancers and singers.
Early last year, Lorenzo, who started working with Pernice in 2019, transitioned from a more established lighting control platform to Obsidian’s Onyx. “Cally Bacchus at [Elation Professional UK distributor] Entedi asked me to demo an Obsidian NX2 console and I immediately loved it,” the designer stated. “It’s powerful, reliable, compact, and doesn’t cost 50-60K. It is ideal for touring and doesn’t take up much

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USA - For the latest Broadway revival of The Music Man, the production team worked with PRG and Martin Professional to deploy an array of Martin lighting solutions, including MAC Viper, MAC Encore Performance and the new MAC Ultra Performance and Ultra Wash fixtures. Written by Meredith Willson and originally staged in 1957, The Music Man is a Broadway classic that’s won numerous Tony awards and has been staged by countless theatre companies - professional and amateur alike - in the past 75 years.
In February, a new production of musical starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster opened at the Winter Garden Theatre. Director Jerry Zaks worked with scenic and costume designer Santo Loquasto and award-winning lighting designer Brian MacDevitt to strike a balance that simultaneously felt modern while retaining the old-fashioned quality of the original production.<

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Columbia - Maluma has a global following and record sales of over 18m and the Museum of Modern Art in Medellín, his hometown, recently unveiled a statue of the Latin artist, based on the wax figure of him at Madame Tussauds in Orlando, Florida. The star showed his love for his townspeople with Medallo en el Mapa, a passionate three-hour, 35-song concert at the city’s Atanasio Girardot Soccer Stadium.
Although this landmark venue normally accommodates 45,000 fans, demand for tickets was so great that it was expanded to 54,000, making it the most attended show in the history of the big stadium. To make room for the larger crowd, a 360° stage was installed in the middle of the field, so the audience could fill the grass as well as the stands.
Invariably, an open 360ﹾ stage brings its own set of challenges, but fans were still treated to a rewarding visual experience

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Italy - Mantova-based ZaLight has been appointed to handle the Italian distribution of all products manufactured by Fantek, part of the Spanish group Equipson and manufacturer of telescopic towers, platforms, trusses and modular supports for LED walls.
"I am very happy to work with Fantek again, having launched the brand on the Italian market almost 20 years ago," says ZaLight business development manager Luca Di Donato. "In my view, Fantek's careful quality process and attention to detail are a guarantee of reliability and success. ZaLight's philosophy is to only distribute brands of the highest quality and indisputable prestige. Fantek perfectly embodies these features."
Juan José Vila, COO and CMO of Equipson, adds: "We are delighted to have a company of the calibre of ZaLight representing Fantek products. Some Fantek products are already well known in Italy but we

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UK - Nine Avolites consoles and four media servers were specified for this year’s Glastonbury. Avolites products lit nine of the main sites, including Temple, Totem, RumShack, the three Bloc9 areas, Theatre, Cabaret and Salon Carousel, and individual production teams brought in Avolites kit for additional performances on The Pyramid Stage and Other Stage.
For Avolites, the return of Glastonbury, following a pause as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, has marked the festival debut for its flagship console Diamond 9. It was the demands of Bloc9 East, hosting ICON, the epic monument which debuted at Glastonbury in 2019 and featuring a 65ft head as its centrepiece, and a number of alternative performances, that led the D9-215 to be used to control the lighting for his stage. Offering intuitive and integrated control of all visual aspects of the show, the compact version of the

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UK - For the 16th edition of the annual Performance Marketing Awards ceremony at London’s Grosvenor Hotel, Bristol-based production specialists Pytch were tasked with creating an impressive array of visuals for the awards ceremony, hosted by television personality Joel Dommett, as well as for the club-like, high energy afterparty.
Responding with a lighting concept anchored by an assortment of carefully curated Chauvet Professional fixtures, the company’s design team was able to create a colourful, immersive, and multi-level visual production that endowed the stately hotel’s ballroom with a stylish air of contemporary elegance and festiveness.
With little to no scenic elements upon the actual stage to carry the visual communication and branding of the awards ceremony, Pytch was ultimately given something of a blank canvas to work with, as the design team relied o

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Estonia - The Estonian Traditional Music Centre (ETMC) is a venue which hosts international concerts, conferences, receptions, dinners, and parties.
Situated next to the historical Viljandi Castle ruins, the former 18th century granary was transformed into a contemporary concert hall and cultural hub almost 15 years ago. It incorporates two concert halls - the Grand Hall with a capacity of 400, and the Chamber Hall with seating for 80 - and boasts an extensive concert programme, including the renowned Viljandi Folk Music Festival. To celebrate the return of live events, ETMC has recently invested in a selection of new gear, including High End Systems SolaFrame Studio fixtures and an Ion Xe console from ETC.
In 2019, more than 100 concerts featured on ETMC’s roster, and it hosted an additional 250 events arranged by visiting organisations. Naturally, the pandemic led

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USA - Country artist Kane Brown returned to his hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, on May 7 to play his first-ever stadium show at the Finley Stadium. Lighting and production design for the sold-out show was by Trevor Ahlstrand who used Elation lighting on the milestone event, including the company’s popular IP-rated powerhouse luminaire Proteus Maximus, all supplied by DCR Nashville.
Brown’s popularity has grown exponentially since debuting only a few years ago. Ahlstrand has collaborated with the artist since the first headlining arena tour, Live Forever in 2019, and served as lighting designer and programmer on the stadium show. Nick Chang served as lighting director.
Following the Live Forever tour, Brown managed to get in six shows with a new design from Ahlstrand before everything shut down due to COVID. The current touring design, which contin

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The Netherlands - Jeroen van Geffen is a Dutch lighting designer with the multidisciplinary broadcast and event specialist company Chain. For a live TV broadcast production in a 360° degree venue, Jeroen chose to use a Follow-Me 3D SIX System. From his previous experience with the overall scalability and flexibility of the Follow-Me systems, including fixture independence, he knew that this would be the right choice for enabling his creative and challenging lighting design.
Jeroen first used the Follow-Me 3D remote follow-spot and performer tracking solutions about three years ago for the ZappAwards, the Dutch kids television series awards show broadcast from De Vorstin concert hall in Hilversum. Since then, Chain has overseen the Follow-Me 3D SIX system installation into the Studio 11 event location in Almere. It is here that Jeroen has recently been working with Follow-Me

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USA - Multiplatinum selling pop group New Kids On The Block (NKOTB) continues to wow fans with their MixTape Tour 2022 featuring friends Salt-N-Pepa, Rick Astley and En Vogue as special guests. Lighting designer Cat West of Flash and Trash Works, Inc. selected 108 Ayrton Intellipix R Creative Solutions as a central part of the high-energy, party look of the show.
Boston natives, the quintet NKOTB has sold more than 80m albums worldwide. Their 2019 tour by the same name - their biggest since reuniting in 2008 – was a huge success and pioneered the concept of a super-sized show with multiple guest acts. The new arena-based MixTape Tour is scheduled to play more than 50 dates across the US from its kick-off in Cincinnati in May to its finale in Hawaii in August.
Cat West programmed the band’s MixTape Tour 2019 and their Fenway Park and Merriweather Post Pavillion even

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Europe - The 2Cellos duo of Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser is currently playing their Dedicated world tour - billed as their ‘final’ as 2Cellos, the format in which they shot to fame and prominence in 2011 with lighting designed by their long-term LD, Crt Birsa.
Crt has worked with the band since 2014 and wanted this design to be completely different to anything that had gone before. Rather than the full-on rock ‘n’ roll of the previous tour, this sees a more architectural approach with the lighting, which includes Robe MegaPointes and Spiiders at the heart of the rig.
“It’s all about defining the performance space and creating a series of shapes and different areas rather than bashing out dramatic lighting for effect! My thinking started with creating environments and rooms in which they play,” he explained. He presented a couple of different co

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Romania - Lighting designer Andre Beekmans of TAOL, in collaboration with Andrei Predut of Apart in Bucharest, used a large complement of Claypaky fixtures to light the We Are One concert in the city’s National Arena to benefit humanitarian causes in the region.
The day-long concert on 12 March drew an estimated 50,000 people to the stadium and more watched the YouTube livestream and broadcasts on Romanian TV and radio. Organised by SAGA Festival, Pro TV, KISS FM and the City Hall of Bucharest, the event featured local and international artists, including Armin van Buuren, Tom Odell, Jamala and INNA. It raised more than €750,000 for the Red Cross.
“Quick thinking and fast problem solving are a given at any time in this line of work, but for this particular project everything needed to be on steroids given the virtual no heads up regarding what would be hap
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  5. Claypaky fixtures light McGraw Tour 2022
  6. Chauvet creates spherical looks for Coldplay
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