Australia - Jarrad Donovan from Juxta Design chose a full grandMA3 lighting control system for Hillsong Church’s recent Simply Christmas special production which was staged at The Hillsong Convention Centre in Norwest, Sydney.
The vibrant event was slightly different from the usual Hillsong Christmas Spectacular show, both to reflect the ‘mood of the moment’ and to comply with the current Covid protocols, which resulted in a smaller cast and a tighter timeframe for build and rehearsals. That said, the goal of achieving the same high standards and complex production values was still very much the objective for the entire team involved in creating a dynamic, memorable event that wowed both live and streamed audiences.
The six 90-minute shows took place over two days and were action-packed with a lively mix of 15 different back-to-back musical perform

UK - The National Trust team at Anglesey Abbey in the Cambridgeshire village of Lode recently opened its gates for its Winter Lights - a night-time trail through the heritage gardens of the listed Jacobean Abbey.
Pearce Hire were the clear choice for the Abbey’s events team as they designed and activated the brief for an enchanting 2km lighting and audio nature trail through the grounds and taking in the House, Mill and the aptly named Winter Garden.
“We may be better known in the industry for providing technical production support for festivals and tours, but this garden brief really got our creative side going”, says Jim Brown, general manager, Pearce Hire. “This year’s production took on another dimension and we were very happy to embrace this, and work in close collaboration with the team at Anglesey Abbey to help achieve their vision.

USA - Extreme Lighting & Sound (ELS) recently wrapped up its first season presenting Holiday Wonders at Bowie Nature Park in Fairview, Tennessee. The drive-thru holiday light show featured atmosphere-generating effects from a large amount of Elation lighting gear along with custom pixel products and proved a huge success.
ELS was approached by the city of Fairview in September to create and run the show after an initial contractor pulled out, which gave the design and production company only two short months to get everything together.
“We agreed to do the Christmas light show but knew we were on a tight schedule as opening day was scheduled for the day after Thanksgiving,” recalled ELS president Austin Grundberg about the start of the project. “We basically put the whole show together in eight weeks from design, product specification/supply and setu

Jordan - Amman Academy’s new theatre space is open for 2022, offering students and educators professional lighting with a range of Strand and Vari-Lite luminaires and control from Signify.
The private school, which is renowned in Jordan for its academic excellence, constructed the new theatre space to offer performance, rehearsal, and meetings facilities. Its lighting solution needed to be adaptable, encourage creativity and provide reliable workhorse and effects fixtures.
The Academy’s team approached Amman-based International New Technical Est. (INTE), a systems integrator specialising in theatre installations. INTE’s project manager Hashem Nazzal specified a Strand Neo console for control, with the Vari-Lite VL2600 Spot on colour-rich effects duty.
“One of the most important requirements of this project was flexibility and effects options, and the VL26

Singapore - Ayrton has announced the further expansion of its international team with the appointment of Vijay Thaygarajoo as regional sales manager for Asia Pacific. The appointment takes effect from 1 February 2022.
Vijay brings over 10 years of industry experience in the region, working with Ayrton’s local distributor and as regional sales manager for a number of industry manufacturers.
“I am very excited to be joining the amazing team at Ayrton,” says Vijay. “As the RSM of Ayrton, I will be responsible for maintaining and building relationships with current distributors as well as appointing new distributors around the APAC region, with the aim of progressing and further strengthening the Ayrton brand and image in this part of the world.
“I’ve seen the quality of Ayrton lighting over the years and am very impressed with the full range of lighting

UK - CrowdGlow has announced the next generation of the CrowdGlow phone lighting system which enables lighting designers to take live control of an unlimited number of phones at events.
This development of the system uses new CrowdNet technology to control phones with 10 times the data payload and at speeds of up to 120 times faster than before. while maintaining a range of over 250 meters per transmitter.
The extra payload and speed has enabled an array of new capabilities., including eight-bit RGB screen colour, new intelligent effect modes and more advanced LED flash control. The extra speed allows up to 120 frames per second of control, making it easier than ever to synchronise the phone light show to the music and on-stage lighting production.
With the new CrowdGlow Broadcast MacOSX app, lighting designers can now patch the audience’s phones directly into

The Netherlands - The Mariakerk church in the small town of Oirschot, in the southern Netherlands, has been fitted with Prolights EclDisplay fixtures, a series of small LED spotlights made for fixed installations.
The retrofit included the EclDisplay DATWhite black fixtures, in 3,000K, with 25° - 50° wash lenses. The units are currently set in stand-alone mode but prepared to take a DMX data line, so it can later be controlled through the lighting protocol.
The EclDisplay series includes a 25W white LED emitter and data control through DMX, Dali T6 or knob-dimming. The series score over 90 in CRI and have a very efficient output thanks to the redesigned source and optics. “We wanted to change the older tungsten units with a more efficient source,” said Jos Tra of Muziek Service Schijndel, the company behind the installation. “The EclDisplay series looked like

UAE - Despite the pandemic, Dubai celebrated the arrival of 2022 in style, with a grand festival of events. Principal among these was the Laser & Light Show at the mesmerising Burj Khalifa, created and produced by ECA2 with Patrick Awouters (LSE) at the helm of the light and laser element of the production.
The company also drew on its inventory of PR Lighting fixtures, deploying 250 of its newly-acquired Aqua 580 Beam waterproof moving heads. These lined up alongside 60 RGB lasers, ranging from 60W up to a powerful 100W.
The fully-featured IP66-rated Aqua 580 Beam produces a powerful output from a 550W engine, housing PR's patent optics and a tight 2° beam angle. They were recommended by LSE MD Patrick Awouters, project managing the lighting with his son Nathan. The fixtures had been purchased specifically for this project.
Awouters admits that rigging th

Germany - Rental and dry hire service specialist NicLen, headquartered in Dortmund, has made a major investment in Robe moving lights - with a three-figure quantity of Fortes and iSpiiders delivered by Robe Germany which is now available from current rental stock.
The NicLen CEOs Nico Valasik and Jörg Stöppler comments: “Fortes are appearing increasingly frequently on event and artist riders and requests for this fixture have increased substantially this year since the product was launched. We ensure that our clients have the very best tools at their disposal to help achieve spectacular results.”
The Niclen team were impressed generally with Robe’s Transferable Engine (TE) LED technology which is at the core of the Forte and see it a key feature for a busy rental facility. The NicLen crew also like the colour mixing, zoom range and the overall light and image q

USA - It isn’t listed in the credits, but the city of Los Angeles skyline with the San Gabriel Mountains in the background played a key supporting role in the HBO Original series Insecure.
Many of the most memorable scenes in the multiple Primetime Emmy Award winning show, took place against this backdrop. Given the skyline’s association with Insecure, it was only fitting that Los Angeles’ Kenneth Hahn State Park, which affords 360-degree views of the city, was chosen as the site for the red-carpet event celebrating the comedy’s final season premiere.
“This beautiful and expansive park was perfect for our event,” said Barrett Hall of Invoke Entertainment, which oversaw all creative and technical aspects of the premiere screening and after party. “The site is in close proximity to the neighbourhoods where much of the series took place. Also

World - Over 1,200 people representing more than 60 countries around the world have already registered for ETC’s 2022 CUE conference. The 24-hour event is slotted for 17 February and starts in Asia at 11:00am HKT with a keynote address from ETC’s vice-president of marketing David Lincecum. This is followed by the European sessions, which will take place from 10:00am to 5:00pm GMT.
ETC staff and other industry experts follow with a series of sessions over the course of the day in multiple time zones and multiple languages including French, German and Russian. The conference wraps up in North America at 5:00pm CST.
The agenda will cover the topics impacting the live events industry. Session topics include product technology, building theat

USA - The Breakers resort nestled on 140 acres of ocean front property on Palm Beach, has been a favourite gathering spot of world leaders and celebrities since it opened its grandiose doors in 1896. Recently, a new chapter was written when The Breakers hosted a two-day private birthday celebration produced by Todd Events that began with a performance by Grammy Award winner John Legend.
Setting an appropriately glittery mood for the affair was a sophisticated lighting design by Tony Milliet that featured Chauvet Professional Maverick, Rogue and Ovation fixtures as well as MVP LED panels supplied by See Hear Productions.
Milliet worked closely with the See-Hear team: Patrick Theriot, production designer; Stephen Barnette, LD for the courtyard; and Scott Lewis, production manager; as well as Austin Breckenridge and Jeff Kurihara. Todd Fiscus, event designer and Kristin

Australia - AV production company Novatech Creative Event Technology was involved in a large winter event in Adelaide, called Illuminate Adelaide and supplied Elation’s IP65 Proteus Hybrid moving head for a special lighting installation that left a memorable impact.
Billed as a celebration of innovation, music, art, light and technology, Illuminate Adelaide lit up the city with a programme of events. As presenting partners, Novatech was the technical supplier of the event’s signature project - Light Cycles. Illuminate Adelaide engaged Montreal-based multimedia studio Moment Factory for the creative, design and immersive content while Novatech provided all the gear and crew.
As a featured artist at the new annual event, Moment Factory took over Adelaide Botanic Gardens with Light Cycles, an outdoor digital art experience that used light and music to

USA - Metallica treated their fans to two epic concerts at San Francisco’s Chase Centre in December, celebrating 40 years of music and performance.
Lighting designer Rob Koenig collaborated closely with production designer Dan Braun whose stunning visual architecture - featuring 45 large multi-layered and overlapping video surfaces - set the visual tone for this in-the-round live retrospective. While the screens were key for showcasing playback video, interviews, artwork, and other archival material spanning the last four decades, lighting highlighted both Metallica and their audience.
Needing a powerful, dynamic, and flexible lighting solution for these shows, Rob and Dan chose 148 Robe BMFL WashBeam moving lights to be the heart of the lighting rig, plus another 16 BMFL WashBeams which were running on four RoboSpot systems.
Apart from 19 x moving LED bars, th

USA - For years now, Lightswitch has relied on Elation’s IP65 Proteus line to add dynamic flair to Enchanted: Forest of Light at Descanso Gardens in Southern California. For the recently completed 2021 iteration, the visual design group upgraded to Proteus Maximus and Proteus Lucius luminaires to add power and reimagine portions of the popular winter night time experience.
Tailor-made to enhance the historic botanical garden’s geography and flora, Enchanted: Forest of Light is an immersive, one-mile walk through colourful and dazzling lighting displays accompanied by sound and music. Lightswitch has been responsible for lighting design and creative direction since the attraction debuted in 2016.
Other garden light shows such as Illumination at the Morton Arboretum in Illinois, also a Lightswitch project, were able to pivot to a drive-thru exper

USA - Tickets for the first iHeartRadio ALTer EGO concert of 2022 at The Forum in Los Angeles were snapped up by eager fans within 20 minutes of going on sale - a thrilling response for producers Diversified Production Services, Firehouse Productions, and All Access Staging and Productions but one that also necessitated some adjustments to the stage design.
“On hearing that tickets sold out so quickly, we immediately realised that we were going to have to expand the production experience to a much wider audience, as there would be even more seating areas opened for extra ticket sales,” says Patrick Dierson of The Activity, which created the lighting rig for the Capital One sponsored concert, featuring artists like Coldplay, All Time Low, Imagine Dragons, Måneskin, and more.
To accommodate the larger crowd, the design team began angling each of the productio

Italy - Three years after releasing the successful EclPanel TWC and EclPanel TWC Jr, Prolights has released two new soft light fixtures, the EclPanel TWC Jr 4x1 and the EclPanel TWC Mini 2x1.
The new units have the same features as their bigger brothers, with an RGB+WW source, a CCT range from 2,200K to 15,000K (in film mode), colour modes like HSI, RGBW, gels, source emulation and XY coordinates, and equipped with W-DMX and CRMX. Furthermore, the newly added panels have an Ethernet connection for Art-Net and s/CAN, a 24-36VDC input for connecting to external batteries and an alternative 48VDC input for an external power supply.
In terms of size, the EclPanel TWC Jr 4x1 has the same length as its flagship version, but half the width, making it a suitable fixture for low-ceiling environments, whilst the Mini version is one-quarter of the size of the flagship fixture.

The Netherlands - Showtec has introduced six new items within their line of Pixel products. The Pixel Panel 1024 is a 64x16 RGB LED-matrix panel, the Pixeltube 32 and Pixeltube 16 are RGB LED tubes with black frosted covers, and the Pixel Bubble 75 set is an RGB-LED-ball matrix with five strings, which can be extended up to 6 metres each with Pixel Bubble Extension Strings. The Pixel Dot is a single 3-W RGB LED, intended for but not limited to fixed ceiling installation. All of them offer individual pixel control, meaning you can adjust each ‘pixel’ independently – even within the Pixel Panel 1024.
The Pixel Panel 1024 offers an impressive amount of individually controllable RGB LEDs: 1024 in a matrix of 64 by 16. For this, you need 3076 channels of Art-Net. With 30 presets, stand-alone operation is also an option, as are eight-channel control through DMX, Art-Net, and

USA - Walnut Hill Community Church located in Connecticut, provides a combination of both in-person and online weekend services to their five-campus congregation. The central campus in Bethel, CT, has invested in top level production values and technology, which includes the purchase of a grandMA3 compact XT lighting console which is running with grandMA3 software.
Creative lighting senior intern Jonathan Martin, who designs, programmes, and operates lighting for most of Bethel’s worship service events, helped guide the team’s decision to purchase a grandMA3, backed by Walnut Hill’s production director, Christopher Ellington.
Jonathan explained how lighting was high on the agenda when the decision came to up the production stakes. “We kept coming back to grandMA3, which had the perfect combination of price point and hardware feature set,” he explained, whils

UK - The Royal Albert Hall continues to mark its 150th anniversary through special events to the end of 2023.
The venue, which hosts over 390 shows a year including classical, rock and pop concerts, ballet, opera, awards ceremonies, charity performances and banquets, many of which are televised, is now fully equipped with four MDG ATMe haze generators, supplied by TSL.
The RAH lighting team initially invested in two of the ATMe generators in July 2019 before adding another two in November of the same year. The ATMe haze generators are in almost constant use with two free-standing machines located on stage and two permanently installed in custom flight cases on the stage edges at circle level.
“Good haze is particularly important at the Royal Albert Hall,” explains RAH lighting designer, Richard Rhys Thomas. “When lighting a concert there is no scenery, and

UK - Lighting and rigging equipment and services specialists, TSL, has a diverse portfolio of clients across the live events industry. With an impressive remit that encompasses music, theatre, corporate, sporting and e-sport events, the need for reliable, versatile lighting fixtures to handle this varied field of activity is paramount.
“Last year, when we looked to evaluate and increase our range of outdoor profiles, we were intent on investing in LED fixtures which were robust and flexible enough to cope with the many demands we put upon our equipment,” explains TSL director, Loz Wilcox. “We were looking for a fixture which could support our clients on their exterior lighting projects. We tried out options from several manufacturers and chose Perseo above all others for a number of reasons. It’s a great feature-packed fixture, with all the things you’d expect from

New Zealand - Venues Ōtautahi manages five busy venues in Christchurch, including the city’s premier sporting, convention, and entertainment hubs, among them Christchurch Town Hall of the Performing Arts which has recently invested in Robe Esprite moving lights.
James Tull, a senior technician working across all five venues explained that the Town Hall was originally built in the 1970s and then rebuilt after the 2011 earthquake in which it sustained extensive damage. The building reopened in 2019 with a 2,222 capacity main auditorium and an 800-seat theatre space and was registered as a category 1 heritage building in 2020.
With all the reconstruction came the need to update and upgrade the lighting and sound, so James and his team started looking at options for modern lights that ticked all their boxes, were more sustainable, and that would make changeovers between

France - Organisers of Showlight have announced that plans are underway to reinstate Showlight 2023 which, after a two-year postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is now scheduled to take place between 20-23 May 2023. The venue for this much-loved lighting quadrennial will be the Théâtre Municipal in Fontainebleau, near Paris, France, the original destination for the postponed 2021 event.
“The Showlight committee is now planning for the next live Showlight in May 2023 and we hope this time nothing will de-rail it!” says Showlight chairman, John Allen. “We are delighted to have the continued support of our main sponsor, Robert Juliat, along with many of the sponsors who were already supporting Showlight 2021. Fontainebleau’s local administration has, once again, made the Théâtre Municipal available for us - right in the centre of the town - and, as a result, t

USA - When the state of Illinois eased its stringent lockdown rules, and Chicago’s busy outdoor events schedule resumed, one person who was primed and prepped was Matthew Brotz, who runs locally based LEC Event Technology.
Knowing that Chicago is capable of experiencing four seasons in a day, he realised that not only his large inventory of GLP product would need weather protection, but also moving heads from other vendors. GLP had the solution.
“Thankfully Matt contacted us in plenty of time,” declares GLP US president, Mark Ravenhill. “After discussing the comprehensive range of options that we offer, he settled on a combination of our Rain Covers, with different cover lengths, and a large quantity of Air Domes. Despite the current problems with the global freight system, we made it in time for all of his festival dates.”
LEC’s festival season reope

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