Lighting

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USA - Luke Bryan’s current What Makes You Country tour includes stops at New York’s MetLife Stadium, Chicago’s Wrigley Field, and Dodger Stadium (it will be the first country act to headline there).
The tour, which resumed on 31 May before 40,000 fans at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, features a mix of familiar hits and new material. Contributing to the dynamic lighting frame for this free-flowing energetic performance are 100 Chauvet Professional Maverick MK Pyxis and ÉPIX Strip Tour fixtures, supplied by Elite Multimedia.
Justin Kitchenman, who has been Luke Bryan’s lighting designer since 2012, is using 20 floor-positioned Maverick MK Pyxis fixtures to line the thrust and B stage, as well as the upstage side of the set behind the band.
In addition to the Pyxis units, Kitchenman is deploying 80 ÉPIX Strip Tour linear fixtures. The 1-meter RGB units

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USA - When an artist tours as regularly as country music’s Luke Bryan, and returns to many of the same markets year after year, a fresh lighting design is a must. Bryan’s production and lighting designer Justin Kitchenman gives each tour its own distinct look and for 2018’s What Makes You Country tour is thrilling audiences with an innovative design that features adaptable lighting pods full of compact Elation ACL 360i beam effect lights.
Luke Bryan’s latest tour launched 31 May in Toronto with the country star playing dates in the U.S. and Canada through October, many of them large stadium shows. Nashville-based production provider Elite Multimedia Productions has supplied the lighting, LED video and IMAG video technology for the run.
While keeping past designs in mind, Kitchenman sought to give the 2018 outing an original look while incorporating a m

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The Netherlands - DMX control specialist ELC Lighting has launched the DLN8GBXSL eight-port slave node, a new concept designed “to revolutionise ethernet/DMX network distribution”.
The DLN8GBXSL serves as a substitute for a DMX splitter rack, where all DMX ports are fully programmable as output, input, merge, backup and more, as node ports. This slave node forms part of the ELC GBX Distribution System, of which the dmXLAN switch (GBx10 or GBx18) is the backbone. This switch is the master, and up to 15 slave units can be daisy chained via the ethernet ports. The system supports all open protocols including sACN, Art-Net and ShowNET.
When connected, and loaded with ELC’s advanced dmXLAN software, the system transforms how DMX can be distributed from an ethernet network. It is specifically tailored for live entertainment applications where a mixture of data protocol

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Europe - Belgian creative engineering specialists WIcreations are involved in the design and fabrication of three bespoke set elements - all optimised for air freight - to be used on a series of epic outdoor shows on Roger Waters’ current Us + Them world tour, which launched with two seminal shows in Rome and Lucca, Italy.
A pair of 16.6m-high circular PA towers grace the stage, complete with integral tracking systems on the onstage side for the rigging of 10 moving light fixtures, and on the downstage side for the sound cluster’s wind brace.
The second WI object is an industrial style stage roof - ‘roofette’ as it’s known on the tour - comprising a set of imposing cantilevered steel beams which can be fitted with clear roof skins in case of rain.
The third area in which WI is involved is a truss and beam rigging system, devised to securely rig

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USA - Maksim Chmerkovskiy, Peta Murgatroyd, and Valentin Chmerkovskiy epitomised the elegance of ballroom dancing on their recently-concluded Confidential Tour. The trio, who are noted for their roles on ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, also told moving personal stories during their 90-minute show. Supporting the choreography as well as the biographical narrative of their performance was a multi-faceted lighting design by Peter Morse that featured Chauvet Professional fixtures, supplied by RK Diversified Entertainment.
“In recent years, I have done the lighting for a number of tours produced by Faculty Management that included both the Dancing With The Stars Live tours, and Dancing With The Stars alums Derek and Julianne Hough,” says Morse. “When Faculty and Butch Allen, who did the production design for this tour, invited me to come on board, I wa

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UK - Signify reports its successful collaboration with the National Theatre’s River Stage Festival. The River Stage, which provides a diverse range of free entertainment over a five-week summer season, once again benefitted from an array of the latest stage lighting products from the Philips Vari-Lite brand, including the new VL800 BeamLine.
Built outside the National Theatre on London’s South Bank, the River Stage presents diverse entertainment from visiting companies including Sadler’s Wells, HOME Manchester and music experimentalists, Nonclassical. Using the latest fixtures from the Philips Vari-Lite and Showline brands, lighting designer Huw Llewellyn was able to provide rich and varied lighting designs for the wide variety of performance styles.
“Without Signify’s support, we couldn’t do what we do with River Stage,” says Llewellyn. “Acts ra

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Estonia - Tallinn’s Nuku (Puppet) Theatre is world renowned for its inventive and creative programming and staging of around 250 performances a year across three venues, which will typically including eight new productions during each season.
Located in the heart of the charismatic Estonian capital’s Old Town area, the theatre underwent extensive renovations in 2015/16, which resulted in the new 400 capacity main Ferdinand Theatre being created. This is run together with the Small Stage with which can accommodate 200 and the Oval Hall with 80.
Head of lighting Madis Kirkmann and his team of four look after the lighting for all three venues and have had Robe moving lights in the house for some time, including 300 and 600E Spots and LEDWash 300s and 600s which are currently lighting the Small Stage.
Robe first came into the building in 2013 after all eight sta

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Europe - Laser module development company Atenlaser has joined the Laserworld Group at the beginning of August. Barcelona’s Atenlaser will remain based in Spain, but will form a laser specialists team with Munich-based Ray Technologies (RTI), where Laserworld Group’s core product development department for laser systems is located.
Jordi Luque, CEO of Atenlaser, comments: “Atenlaser has many years of experience in developing high precision laser modules with a special focus on optical components. I am very happy about getting the opportunity to join the expert team at RTI and to participate in the future development of their excellent products. It will be very exciting.”
(Jim Evans)

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Australia - Central Audio Visual are headquartered in Thebarton, a stone’s throw from Adelaide’s CBD. A family owned and operated AV company, they work in many major venues in SA, and pride themselves on providing the best gear, technicians and customer service to the corporate, events, exhibitions, broadcast, and sporting markets.
Being the in-house AV providers at prestigious venues like Adelaide Oval, Central AV needed lighting control that’s fast, flexible, robust, and reliable, which is why they’ve added a High End Systems Full Boar 4 to their existing Hog 4 inventory.
Central’s in-house lighting tech Benny Sigal is a long-term Hog user, harking back to the days of the Full Boar 3. “The Hog platform is all about the ease of patching,” observes Benny. “It’s really quick and easy to repatch from one show to the next. I love the Hog’s speed and fl

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South Africa - The team at the University of Johannesburg Arts Centre and DWR Distribution invited students to explore the world of a backstage technician with a lighting design workshop two-day class hosted earlier this year. It was aimed at UJ students who follow subjects other than theatre, with the hope that they would develop a love for the arts and possibly sign up as crew for the many festivals and productions the theatre is involved with.
“The first evening was testing the boundaries of their awareness of the industry,” said Michael Broderick from DWR who presented the course. “I think the students were a bit overwhelmed by the theory and expected to be playing with lights from the outset. To be honest, without the background and without the theory you can’t actually do anything.
“On the second night, they were a lot more prepared and their minds were

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USA - Platinum recording artists AJR got their start over a decade ago busking covers of hits by Simon and Garfunkel, Imagine Dragons and other artists in Central Park. The freewheeling band got to rekindle those improvisational skills in mid-July at the Orange County New York Fair, when the power suddenly went out during their performance. Not missing a beat, they broke into an acoustic version of their set to keep the crowd entertained.
“Dynamic Productions, the producers of the event, did a great job responding fast and restoring power quickly,” said Jason Blends, the festival’s lighting designer. “But you had to be impressed by AJR’s quick thinking.” Also impressive was the nimbleness and responsiveness of Blend’s lighting rig, which was anchored by 12 Chauvet Professional Maverick MK2 Profiles.
The county fair’s main stage hosted a mix of performe

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UK - Theatres Trust Conference 18: Adapt & Thrive will take place on Tuesday 16 October at the Lyric Hammersmith, London, exploring how changing artistic, business and operating models in the theatre sector are impacting on how we build, adapt and run theatres.
Through a mixture of inspiring plenaries and lively breakout sessions, the conference will look at how we can ensure our theatres remain viable in challenging economic times and how we can continue to invest in renewal of our theatre infrastructure.
Joining Michael Ellis MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Arts, Heritage and Tourism and Cameron Mackintosh, producer and theatre owner will be speakers from Bristol Old Vic, arguably the country’s oldest continuously operating theatre and Manchester’s Factory, probably the newest, discussing how they are adapting to new artistic and busines

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The Netherlands - BOD Events from Dordrecht wanted to create an impression with the 10th edition of its annual music extravaganza, Breda Live, so they asked production specialist Unlimited Productions (also Breda based) to add an extra level of ‘experience’ to this year’s event, including spectacular lighting for the main stage.
Bert Kelchtermans led the lighting element of the Unlimited Productions team consisting of Bart Roelen as main technical producer and Gijs Mulder as the B-stage producer.
They looked at the diverse line-up and the fact that most of the acts over the two-day event would be playing in daylight and took these facts as two main parameters for the design, for which they specified over 100 Robe moving lights - 40 X MegaPointes, 56 x LEDBeam 150s and eight BMFL WashBeams.
Unlimited Productions has actually been involved in the fest

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Colombia – The 2018 Central American and Caribbean Games (CACG) kicked off with a spectacular opening ceremony at Barranquilla’s Roberto Meléndez Stadium, featuring projection mapped visuals to the stadium pitch and huge LED screens using Avolites Ai RX8 servers.
The opening ceremony’s most famous performer was Latin superstar Shakira, who was born in the Games’ host city.
During the ceremony, the 47,000-capacity crowd experienced a video concept based on a story of time travel from the future to the present, offering a perspective of Barranquilla, which highlighted local culture, folklore and its vibrant music scene. The ceremony was produced by Victor Ariza from Performa SAS. Miguel Carrillo from Foro IQ designed the stages.
The main stage was backed by video-mapped content, displayed on a 664sqm LED screen.
“We needed to manage a lot of pixels

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USA - Counting Crows’ current 25 Years and Counting tour is supported by an upbeat Mike Zielinski-designed lightshow that features STRIKE 1 fixtures supplied by Upstaging, Inc.
“With 25 years and seven albums of music, we have a very large catalogue of songs that can be played on any given night,” said Zielinski. “This creates a need for a diverse, flexible rig. I like to have a lot of colour palettes and video content to keep up. I also need versatile fixtures, which is why I like the STRIKE 1s for this rig. They fill a wide range of roles for me, like accent lighting, backlighting and blinders.”
At times Zielinski uses his STRIKE 1 fixtures with amber shift to create different moods for more reflective songs or for those moments when frontman Adam Duritz reflects on the band’s history. Zielinski also calls on the 230W LED fixtures for audience ligh

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Europe - Before making its high-profile debut on this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon, GLP’s new KNV went out on a ‘field test’ tour with German band Scooter. This gave production designer Jerry Appelt and his lighting director, programmer and board operator Marc Brunkhardt the opportunity to evaluate the new modular design with the upcoming ESC in mind.
The design team deployed 14 KNV fixtures as a massive centre effect in the middle of the Scooter stage set. Supporting these were 90 GLP X4 Bar 10, which handled the washes, and 22 impression X4 L for key and side lights. All the tour lighting was provided by PRG.
“We were very happy to get hold of the KNV - what act is better for testing such a hyper bright fixture than Scooter? They were a real eye catche,” reports Marc, who had seen the fixture for the first time at production rehearsals in Bot

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USA - The festival season continued this summer with more than 430,000 people attending the Lollapalooza Music and Arts Festival over four days.
Bandit Lites worked with C3 Presents and provided three trucks with nearly 600 fixtures and 1500ft of truss to light spaces across Grant Park. Areas included Kidsapalooza, the Merch Palace, cocktail lounges, a beer garden, VIP areas off the stage and the stunning Buckingham fountain. Bandit also supplied lighting for all areas with foot traffic, navigating the way from stage to stage.
“Our biggest challenge is always power distribution on such a large festival,” said C3 Presents production manager Tyler Crain. “A solid plan of areas to light and power necessary to accomplish this ahead of time is a necessity.”
In order to craft that solid plan, Bandit Lites began working with Crain about seven weeks ahea

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Belgium - During Bruges’ tenure as European Capital of Culture in 2002, the Concertgebouw Brugge - a concert venue and multicultural centre accommodating more than 1500 visitors - was built to provide the city’s inhabitants and many tourists with a home for some of the best classical music orchestras in the world. Taking centre stage in a recent refurbishment of the concert hall were 20 Chauvet Professional Ovation F-265WW fixtures, specified by local install specialists Sotesa.
With the main hall regularly receiving high-profile symphonic orchestras such as the Anima Eterna Brugge (artist in residence), Brussels Philharmonic, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the venue required a practical solution to provide general illumination for the musicians on stage. With their incredibly soft and even flat field of wa

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UK - Rental and installation specialists LED Creative worked with the crew at Version 2 to help illuminate the annual charity concert held in the grounds of hosts Sue and David Formosa’s Chorleywood home.
Now in its sixteenth year, Music by Twilight features a broad mix of talent, including local acts. The concerts have raised over £400,000 for the charity and this year’s show was another resounding success with all proceeds going towards the funding of TCT units in NHS hospitals.
Providing their Sigma Pulse Wands and Fairground fixtures plus Byte Controllers, the LED Creative team were able to help add colour, shape and movement to the lighting design for the event. With limited access to the site, the ‘plug and play’ Sigma fixtures were an ideal creative solution, quick and easy to incorporate into the custom-built stage with no compromise on versatil

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Italy - For the eighth year running, Music Inside Rimini (MIR) and LIVE welcomed a host of lighting companies including High End Systems to take part in the annual Italian event Live You Play. LIVE events began in 2010 with a resolution to provide visitors with the chance to experience audio, lighting, video and installation technologies from a live performance on stage. This year, there was both a virtual and a live show organised at the event.
Lighting designer Trevor Burk organised the structure of High End Systems fixtures in the virtual show whilst lighting programmer Francesco De Cave arranged the design of the same fixtures for music band ‘POP deluxe’ in the live show.
Francesco emphasised how “programming the lighting whilst showing the fixtures’ capability to the audience without losing the main focus – the show itself – was not an easy job

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USA - Formed in 1996 in Palm Desert, California, the Queens of the Stone Age developed a style of riff-oriented, heavy rock music. Their sound has since evolved to incorporate a variety of different styles and influences, including working with Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, and Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan who has been a steady contributor to the band.
For all this time Josh Homme, Troy Van Leeuwen, Michael Shuman, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore have been a constant in the worldwide Rock’n’Roll circus, touring and performing old and new songs, always dedicated to keeping the spirit of innovation and autonomy alive and moving forward.
This motivation also applies to lighting designer Emmanuelle ‘Gigi’ Pedron who has given the band a unique look onstage. Using a grandMA2 full-size as her creative tool of choice, she has also transf

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USA - It’s a 4th July tradition: the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular at the Edward A. Hatch Memorial Shell on the Esplanade along the banks of the Charles River in Boston. The event featured the celebrated orchestra, under the direction of conductor Keith Lockhart. This year, Michael Berger of LA-based Full Flood utilised Claypaky Scenius Unico and Mythos 2 fixtures, supplied by 4Wall, to support the production.
The Independence Day spectacular showcased an all-women guest line-up featuring Emmy award-winning Fight Song artist Rachel Platten, Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls, and Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards-winner, Rita Moreno.
“We needed to make the orchestra the star of the show and provide opportunities for the guest artists to shine as well,” says Full Flood’s Micahel Be

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USA - The 32-city North American leg of Erasure’s World Be Gone tour takes place on multiple levels, literally and figuratively. Made up entirely of LED linear fixtures, the matrix-like set features a collection of tiered mini-stages. Vince Clarke plays keyboard in an upper centre-stage cubicle, flanked by kinetic dancers on slightly lower portals, while his partner in the synth-pop duo, Andy Bell, holds forth on the floor, his vocals soaring above it all.
Weaving the complex set together, while supporting the full scope of Erasure’s music, is balanced Matt Waterfield-designed lightshow run on a ChamSys MagicQ MQ80 with a MagicQ Extra Wing.
Waterfield is drawing on the output of some 230 fixtures supplied by Christie Lites in his show for the tour, which is in support of Erasure’s 17th studio album. “I have been designing for Erasure since 2017,” he sa

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USA - High End Systems has announced the finalists for the 2018 Hog Factor USA Collegiate Lighting Programming Competition. First held in North America in 2015, Hog Factor has become a leading global lighting contest.
Over 60 teams registered for Phase One, each providing a performance lighting piece programmed on a Hog or Hog 4 PC. The collegiate teams were judged by a diverse panel of High End Systems and ETC employees to produce the three Hog Factor finalists.
The three finalist teams are SolaTartan from Carnegie Mellon University, The Pig Ears from California State University Long Beach and Brown Sugar from Southern Methodist University.
Phase Two will see these teams programming a performance lighting piece based on High End Systems' 2018 LDI booth design. These teams will then be invited to perform their shows live at LDI on the ETC / High End Systems booth
  1. PLASA Show reveals updated programme
  2. PLASA 2018: Elation to showcase Smarty Hybrid
  3. Philips shines at Potchefstroom music school
  4. Guquko launches new website
  5. TSL Lighting invests in Chroma-Q and Luminex
  6. Theatre De Blauwe Kei switches to LED
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