USA - With summer productions back in full swing, Bandit Lites has announced the hiring of Kelly Feild, Tim Keller, Hayley Elliott, and Katie Feltes as full-time, touring lighting technicians.
“Bandit is pleased to announce the addition of these four great people to our full-time team, on the career path.” says Bandit Lites chair Michael T. Strickland. “Please note that three of the four hires are women, another indication of our focus on gender equity. But do not believe that is what this is about, it is not. We bring on the best and the brightest and Kelly, Katie, Tim, and Hayley are just that – stars! We thank thme for joining the team and look forward to long, accomplished careers for each of them!”
Feild graduated from Belmont University with a BBA in Music Business before working full time as event staff for Belmont's Curb Event Center arena. Feild the

USA - The former White Stripes frontman currently wowing fans with Jack White: The Supply Chain Issues tour has 82 Ayrton Magic Blade FX fixtures delivering effects lighting on stage. Matthieu Larivee, who serves as the tour’s creative director and lighting and production designer, obtained the Magic Blade FXs from Solotech Nashville. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton lighting in North America.
The world tour celebrates two new Jack White albums, Fear of the Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive. The North American leg kicked off in Detroit in April and will wrap at the end of August in Kansas City. It then heads to South America with much of the same lighting rig, including the Magic Blade FXs. Each Magic Blade FX features seven RGBW high-output LEDs that can be individually controlled to create airborne virtual scenery or illuminate s

USA - James Suit has re-joined ACT Entertainment’s regional sales team for the New York City Metro area. Previously, he had served as northeast regional sales manager for the brands distributed by ACT.
“We’re very excited to have James back on-board and to take advantage of the expertise, values and skills that make him such a good fit for the ACT team,” says Doug Mekanik, ACT Entertainment director of sales.
Suit began his professional career in 2005 when he joined 4Wall in New Jersey as a moving light tech. He spent seven years in system integration and sales for Starlite Productions in Moorestown, New Jersey. He later moved to Ushio America where he served as regional sales manager for entertainment, covering the Eastern US for the lighting manufacturer and distributor.
“I’m happy to re-join ACT to continue building relationships with designers an

The Netherlands - A significant quantity of ADJ fixtures were supplied by production company Spectrum AV for two of the stages at the Rebirth Festival, a three-day hard dance event which took place in The Netherlands in April.
Six of the festival’s seven dance arenas were enclosed by large circus-style tents, while the final performance stage was outdoors and open to the elements. For this, ADJ’s IP65-rated Hydro Series moving heads and static LED-powered wash fixtures were utilised, ensuring that the lighting rig would be unaffected by any adverse weather, including the storm that hit the festival site during buildup.
With the tagline of ‘Reunite Again’, the 2022 Rebirth Festival was one of the first largescale outdoor dance events to take place in the Netherlands following two years of pandemic-induced restrictions. It also represented a reunion between the o

USA - Lighting and production designer Patrick Brannon selected Claypaky Xtylos, A.leda B-EYE K20s and Sharpys for country superstar Tim McGraw’s just completed McGraw Tour 2022, which played dates in the eastern half of the US. Nashville-based Premier Global Production Company was the lighting vendor and lighting services provider for the shows.
Grammy Award-winner McGraw kicked off the 17-city amphitheatre tour on 29 April in Rogers, Arkansas and wrapped 4 June in Mansfield, Massachusetts. The show featured more than 20 of the hits that McGraw has scored in 30-plus years of music making. McGraw was joined by special guest Russell Dickerson as well as Alexandra Kay and Brandon Davis.
Brannon, of StarDust Services in Nashville, has worked with McGraw for about 10 years and designed five of his tours. He hails from a rock ’n roll background tallying 21 years with B

USA - Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras declared, “There is music in the spacing of the spheres,” articulating his vision with a series of formulas and geometric patterns. Today, over 25 centuries later, his insights into the interplay between visual patterns and music is being celebrated in Coldplay’s global Music of the Spheres tour, in which the band’s performance is being supported by a production design by Misty Buckley and Phil Harvey.
Inspired by Pythagoras’ writings and diagrams, the stage design evokes the great thinker’s vision with unfolding spherical patterns extending out from the stage in multiple directions. Accentuating this panorama and endowing it with even greater moving power is a Sooner Routhier lighting design that features 192 Chauvet Professional Color Strike M fixtures.
Supplied by Upstaging, the IP65-rated mo

USA - ADJ is expanding its COB Cannon Series of LED wash fixtures as well as its new range of lighting products incorporating lime LED chips with the introduction of the COB Cannon LP200ST.
Featuring a powerful light engine, smooth colour mixing and wide beam angle, this flexible professional wash lighting fixture can be used for a wide variety of applications.
The COB Cannon LP200ST harnesses the power of an efficient 200W COB (Chip On Board) LED light source, which generates a potent and even output with no colour shadows. This efficient light engine combines red, green, blue, amber and lime LED chips to allow the creation of a huge gamut of colours as well as white light with a variable colour temperature of between 2300K and 9900K. The inclusion of the lime LED chip helps certain colours to appear more vivid and also boosts the CRI to in excess of 90. The LED engin

Germany - Lighting designer and operator Andreas Bünemann is using the Onyx lighting control platform from Obsidian Control Systems to run a large lighting rig for German reggae artist Gentleman and says he wouldn’t turn to any other system.
“Our choice is the Obsidian Onyx system and it will be going forward,” stated Bünemann, owner of full-service rental company Bam Bam FX of Germany. “For us, it is the future and the direction we want to go. It’s a powerful and reliable system and we will be recommending it to clients interested in user-friendly lighting control.”
Gentleman is Germany's most successful reggae artist and has been filling venues in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since 13 May in support of his latest album, Blaue Stunde. Bünemann has been handling lighting for Gentleman since early this year and runs the current show using Onyx

Mexico - Zoé won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Rock Urban Alternative Album in 2019. Although the honour was well-deserved, it told only part of this dynamic quintet’s story. The band from Cuernavaca defies easy classification, as they weave an array of global influences into their distinct sound.
Inspired by Brit Pop and Seattle grunge, Zoé has continuously refined their music since the group formed in the mid ‘90s, bringing in synth pop and psychedelic elements to create a rich mix of songs.
The band’s current Unplugged tour will include a stop at Dodger Stadium in December. Reflecting the mood of the music is a balanced and intricately layered Tony Pérez lighting design that features 42 Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied by Meridian Pro Audio company.
Playing his design off against a large video wall, Pérez showers the stage with light from his M

USA - Australian producer and DJ Hayden James recently wrapped up his North American Lifted tour with a lighting system provided by Bandit Lites.
Production designer David Fairless fashioned a lighting design that stepped out of any typical box with an asymmetrical design that would create large impact in a variety of venue sizes while fitting the desired gear in a 12ft by 6ft trailer that was limited on weight.
“It was a last-minute call to switch to such a tight space and weight restriction but by working with the team at Bandit Lites, we were able to come up with a hugely successful touring package for the limitations we had,” explains Fairless.
“The main element of the design was linear strips of Spectron that are arranged randomly floating throughout the space,” says Fairless. “With a look like this, I was able to play with the height and

UK - For the star-studded UK debut of the movie Operation Mincemeat at London’s Curzon Cinema in Mayfair, local production specialist Impact Production Services (IPS) was enlisted to create an elegant red-carpet reception.
In keeping with the storyline of the film, which involves the clever use of limited resources, IPS MD James Mason, along with client Limited Edition Event Design and lighting designer Richard Godin, were able to create grand looks that utilised the full power and performance features of their kit.
“We used 10 Chauvet Professional X4IP active LED panels for this event and they had no problem covering a pretty large area,” says Mason. “Richard Godin, who operated the lighting from a ChamSys MQ80 console with two Art-Net nodes used to distribute data signals to the main lighting areas, did a magnificent job.”
The canopy overhang o

UK - Lighting and production designer Mark Cunniffe has chosen to light Ed Sheeran’s current Mathematics world tour, with a lighting rig composed almost entirely of Ayrton IP65-rated fixtures (expect a full production report in a future issue of LSi). The design incorporates 138 Ayrton Domino LT, 48 Perseo Profile and 22 of the new Ayrton Cobra laser-sourced fixture. This is Cunniffe’s first specified use of Ayrton fixtures, and the first tour for Ayrton’s new Cobra.
The show design is a huge, in-the-round, stadium setup with an unprecedented open design, with no roof, a large circular video screen over the revolving stage and six mammoth masts held in place by a cable net system. This major feat of production design was the brainchild of Cunniffe and engineered by Jeremy Lloyd of Wonderworks and Rasti Bartek of Cundall.
“This kind of set up h

Italy - Prolights has debuted the EclNanoPanel TWC, the smallest member of the successful EclPanel range, containing all the features of the larger format soft lights in a compact-sized, battery-operated luminaire.
The new fixture has a 30W RGB+WW source, producing powerful 1,800-lumen output. Its colour technology is the same as the other ECL soft lights, ‘producing rich colours, high-quality white tones, colour gel matching, and onboard pixel cinema effects’. The EclNanoPanel TWC is also Spektra calibrated, matching in colour and whites as the other fixtures in the soft light range.
The EclNanoPanel TWC has three precision encoders, with multiple stand-alone control modes: CCT with +/- green shift, CCT presets, HSI, saturation and intensity, RAW RGBW mode, XY and cinema effects mode.
There are also several colour control modes available: RGBW, RGB, CMY, H

South Africa - The first major live post-pandemic corporate event staged in South Africa was organised by international services, trading and distribution company Bidvest for key clients, suppliers and staff. Taking the theme Future Now, the large and impressive show returned live after a two-year absence, staged for the first time at the Time Square Arena in Pretoria with newly appointed CEO Nompumelelo Thembekile Madisa.
Future Now was a special commission for Bidvest created and produced by the team of David Bloch of David Bloch International and choreographer Debbie Rakusin, who commissioned Gearhouse South Africa as technical supplier together with Pieter Joubert as technical director.
Stage, set and lighting design was delivered by Tim Dunn from nVisible agency, who flew in from the UK to programme and run the show lighting, which he did in close c

Saudi Arabia - The global premiere of the theatre and dance show Kan Yama Kan was staged in the Global Theatre at Riyadh’s BLVD RUH City entertainment complex, delivered by an award-winning West End and Broadway creative team, with lighting designed by Natasha Chivers, direction and choreography by Will Tuckett and auditorium, set and video design by 59 Productions, who were also technical co-ordinators for producers, Wonderjunkie and Anthology.
With a large cast, a vibrant traverse stage design, fast moving dancers, dynamic scenic items and aerial performers, Natasha - working with associate LD Andy Purves - needed to track up to 15 principal actors, dancers and aerialists all over the performance space using multiple light sources positioned everywhere on the overhead trusses, often simultaneously.
As a solution, they specified two zactrack PRO servers whi

UK - City Theatrical will demo new technology on stand B48 at ABTT Theatre Show at the Alexandra Palace (22-23 June, London). The company will present the RadioScan spectrum analyser for building better Multiverse wireless DMX/RDM broadcasts on the 2.4GHz band; the miniature QolorFLEX Multiverse wireless DMX/RDM dimmers; the LED linear lighting with QolorFLEX NuNeon and various QolorFLEX LED Tapes, and the multi award-winning DMXcat Multi-Function Test Tool.
City Theatrical’s Multiverse wireless DMX/RDM system includes the Multiverse Transmitter 2.4GHz, which has the ability to broadcast up to 10 universes of DMX data on the 2.4GHz band while using less radio energy than other single universe wireless DMX transmitters. Multiverse users can plan their wireless DMX broadcast using a RadioScan spectrum analyser as a frequency scanner, and set universes on each receiv

USA - Andrew Goedde, lighting designer for Goose since 2018 has been creating a procession of deeply evocative looks for the quintet from Connecticut as they’ve played live music venues and festivals.
The band is now playing more notable venues like Red Rocks and Radio City Music Hall, as well as major festivals in the US and Europe. For Goedde, his client’s blossoming career has opened a new world of opportunities. Not only is he touring with a larger rig that features The Chauvet Professional Color Strike M, which was supplied by Main Light, he’s also collaborating with one of its leading designer/programmers Tony Caporale.
“For the first time ever with Goose, we have the luxury of having the same tour design for almost all venues,” comments Goedde, owner of Indianapolis-based Goedde Sound & Light. “It’s really cool to have the same consistent desig

France - On 12 May, the historic Palais-Royal in the heart of Paris was the site of an EDM dance fest - Monumental Tour Europe - with a crowd of 2,000 raving to pulsating beats and bass drops beneath a canopy of powerful beam effects from Elation Proteus Excalibur moving heads.
Technical solutions provider Magnum provided all of the lighting, sound, power and truss for the event, including the Excalibur fixtures. Elation French distribution is by Best Audio & Lighting.
Needing an outdoor-rated beam light that could project far into the night sky, six Excalibur fixtures worked from the top of the building in a powerful and unmistakable fan of luminosity. The 20,000-lumen Excalibur features an a narrow 0.8° beam that widens to 3.5° when needed using an expander lens. Powered by a long-life Philips Platinum 500 FLEX lamp (550W), its long-throw beam acts as a

Italy - Eurovision returned to its full splendour in Turin for 2022 after the challenges of the pandemic in 2021. Even the continuing horror of war in Europe failed to affect the event, in fact, only serving to intensify the joy, the magic and the music that Eurovision brings to the world every year.
To bring a kaleidoscope of SFX to the stage in Turin, Luca Toscano, CEO of Artech teamed up with Lucas Gerritzen of Pyrofoor de Amsterdam who supplied the FX for the 2021 show in the Netherlands. Artech is a group of companies, that specialise in delivering SFX and show solutions across the globe.
Appointed by this years’ host broadcaster RAI Television as the Eurovision 2022 SFX, pyro and laser supplier, Toscano sees the event as a glorious celebration of the entertainment industry, a showcase for the best of the best. Across the two companies, more than

Europe - Currently on a 2022 theatre tour through Belgium, Dutch girl group K3’s set includes the track Giddy Up & Go which features 15 Astera Titan Tubes which are used as illuminated props in a skilful collaboration between the tour’s lighting designer, Jeroen Opsteyn of Painting with Light (PWL), choreographer Tommy Gryson, the three K3 girls and 12 dancers.
One of Jeroen’s creative objectives was to keep the dynamics and pace flowing throughout the action-packed, up-tempo set.
The lighting design and programming introduce fluidity and animation to the stage in the absence of video, as one of the early artistic decisions was to present the band in a more theatrical setting, focusing on them and making lighting central to the show’s visuality.
Jeroen and Tommy both hit on the idea of changing the shape and perception of the performance spac

USA - The Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2022 Induction Ceremony and celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Title 9 took place 11 June at the Tennessee Theatre with a lighting system provided by Bandit Lites.
“Every class, every year, is a special group of people,” said Bandit Lites chair Michael T. Strickland, a long-time member of the Hall of Fame Board. “This year in particular, board member and long-time friend Debbie Antonelli was honoured. Debbie is special to me and the Hall as she is not only a former player but is most notably a long-time basketball announcer on ESPN.”
The front of the stage was lit using the Tennessee Theatre’s conventional lekos from the cove. Bandit hung GLP X4S from a house electric to use as backlight for both people on stage and at the lectern. Elation SIXPAR 100s toned A-type towers with Spandex wraps, framing the

USA - Lighting designer and director Ethan Weber chose a large complement of versatile Ayrton Domino luminaires for Grammy Award-winner John Mayer’s Sob Rock Tour 2022 in support of his eighth studio album of the same name. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton lighting fixtures in North America.
The 23-stop arena tour kicked off in March in Las Vegas and wrapped in Boston in May. The North American schedule featured multi-day concerts in six cities. Weber, perhaps best known for his work with The Rolling Stones, obtained the Ayrton Domino fixtures from Upstaging in Sycamore, Illinois, the lighting vendor for the Sob Rock Tour.
Apart from using Ayrton MagicPanels on some festivals, Weber began using Ayrton fixtures in earnest last year. “Dave Ridgeway and Fraggle from Neg Earth suggested we swap some rain-vulnerable fixtures out for Perseo units

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

UK - SLX has opened applications for the 2022/2023 edition of its student support scheme, The Lighting Programme.
The programme aims to foster young, upcoming talent within the industry. Students joining the programme will have access to expert mentorship, along with networking opportunities with industry professionals and leading manufacturers to help prepare for the start of their careers. SLX will also provide specialist project support and an equipment package for one of their final year productions.
Live event specialists SLX, who work on high profile events like The Commonwealth Games and the West End musical Six, were recent winners of the inaugural TPi Green Award for outstanding sustainable policies. Successful candidates will have the opportunity to play a part in this change, whilst learning vital skills and practices to take forward into their caree

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