Lighting

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Moldova - Elation dealer Eventika Grup SRL of Moldova recently finished an interesting project that the company worked long and hard to complete. After the USSR collapsed, the circus in the town of Chisinau, Moldova, disintegrated along with it, leaving behind a large circus building that had the potential to be an excellent performance space.
After years of laying idol, Eventika was able to partially restore the building on their own, without foreign investment, and held a 20th anniversary tribute concert at the venue for the Moldavian rock band Gindul Mitei (Cat’s Thoughts).
The circus building, Chisinau City Circus, opened in 1981 and was once the largest auditorium in Moldova with over 50 performances there each year. With post-communist era struggles however, the venue was abandoned in 2004. For the 2017 20th anniversary tribute concert, bands and solo artists

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France - Airstar has announced the appointment of Clément Guittet as export manager to strengthen its international presence.
With 80% of its lighting turnover generated abroad, the company is focused on supporting and growing its global network. Commented Xavier Ponson, Airstar sales director: “Our brand is already represented in 40+ countries through 12 subsidiaries and over 70 independent distributors. This role has been created to help nurture our existing relationships and further boost our international presence.”
Based in Airstar’s Headquarters near Grenoble, Clément will be responsible for Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, Russia, India and Switzerland, with the aim of supporting the existing Airstar international network and developing the company’s presence in the event, construction, industry, security, architecture and cinema sectors.
W

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USA - When Eos family console users install software v2.6, they may find that their systems get a serious boost. As announced at CUE, ETC’s professional development conference, Eos v2.6 brings major upgrades for Element consoles, and improvements to Snapshots and other programming features. The release also marks a change in the way the console family handles output upgrades for both new and existing users.
Eos v2.6 dispenses with the notion of incremental upgrades, by which customers could purchase consoles and output upgrades at a number of different levels. From now on, any upgraded console is a fully-upgraded console. Moving forward, each Eos family controller will be sold in two formats: base and unlocked. A base level Gio @5, for example, will have 4,096 (4K) outputs, while an unlocked Gio @5 will have 24,576 (24K) outputs.
If a user wishes to increase a base-l

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UK - CPL (Central Presentations) working for creative event producers Bright, took its experience and knowledge of festival productions and delivered full technical production - sound, lighting, rigging and some AV - for the 2017 OVO festival.
The event, now in its third year and a big hit with OVO’s staff, families and friends, was again staged at Mojo Active, Almondsbury near Bristol. CPL and Bright are regular collaborators and there is a great synergy between the two companies in their respective roles and end-goal of ensuring that event environments are smooth, entertaining, memorable and fun for all guests.
CPL’s project manager Mike Radford commented: “We were delighted to be involved again, and enjoyed working closely with Bright’s team led by their PM Mike Matthews. The brief was to bring all the production values of a premium festival to this event

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USA - The US capital is one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. Yet ironically, the US Travel Association’s annual IPW convention never took place in Washington until this summer, when the group held its first ever convention in the city. Making a positive impression on a select group of the convention’s 6,000 guests from 70 different countries was a lavish VIP dinner held at the majestic Washington National Cathedral.
Accenting the beauty of the towering Neo-Gothic limestone structure during this event was an enchanting and endlessly fascinating lighting design by Elizabeth A Coco that featured 160 Chauvet Professional and Chauvet DJ fixtures supplied by Atmosphere, Inc. of Silver Spring, MD.
Coco, a USA 829 union designer, relied on multi-coloured uplighting to draw attention to some of the historic building’s captivating architectural features,

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UK - After much deliberation, the theatre judging panel for the 2017 Knight of Illumination (KOI) Awards has announced this year's shortlist of lighting and video designers, recognised for their creative work in theatre. The winners will be announced at the tenth anniversary KOI Awards ceremony, to be held at London's Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith, on 17 September.
The KOI Awards was established to publicly celebrate the artistic achievements of lighting and video designers whose work has been showcased in the UK in the past 12 months in the sectors of Television, Theatre and Concert Touring & Events. Now one of the most celebrated nights in the live entertainment design industry calendar, KOI attracted more than 500 industry creatives and professionals to last year's celebrations.
The first of KOI's three shortlists to be announced, the Theatre judging panel's shor

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Belgium - British lighting console and media server manufacturer, Avolites, has appointed Fairlight as the exclusive distributor of its lighting and video network control products in Belgium. The exclusive partnership, which took effect on 1 July, follows nearly two decades of successful collaboration between the two companies.
Commenting on the relationship, Koy Neminathan, sales director for Avolites, says: "We are very satisfied with the performance of Fairlight in the Netherlands. They bring Avolites to a larger audience by undertaking numerous seminars, trainings and demos regularly. Furthermore, Fairlight always carries a large stock of Titan, Ai and Art dimming products. This is supported by their technical department who have been assessed and accredited by Avolites and thus provide the best technical assistance."
Technical service in Belgium will be provided b

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USA - t’s been said that “experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.” John Garberson, owner of Creative BackStage, picked up some valuable experience recently when he worked a Hello Arizona-produced show by Nile Rodgers.
Garberson had created a design for the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer that was built around a lot of high-energy aerial effects. At the last minute, though, he learned that he would not be allowed to use haze. With his original lighting concept severely crimped, he and his LD and programmer James Simpson reworked their plans and created a lushly coloured stage design using the 32 Chauvet Professional Rogue washes in his rig. For added good measure, they turned up the eye candy volume with the four STRIKE 4 multi-formatted fixtures on their front truss.
“Lately, we’ve become more aware of building versatility into our rigs

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UK - When lighting designer Cate Carter first conjured with Elbow appearing at the Barclaycard Summer Time (BST) annual concert series in Hyde Park this year she was immediately presented with two dilemmas.
“One was the sheer scale of the stage, that enormous wall of LED screen cannot be ignored,” she said. Supplied by Video Design, the wall has, since last year, been extended from centre stage across and right down the outside edges of the PA wings. Wrapping the entire performance platform, it measures 200ft across and 35 high, a total 650sq/m of 9mm.
“The other thing was about timing,” Carter continued. “We started supporting the new album Little Fictions, earlier this year in February/March. As it was a theatre tour we decided on no IMAG, relying instead on pure content projected onto a rear cyc. Our slot at Hyde Park made both those factors anachr

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UK - Space Spectacular, the annual space-inspired music co-production between the Royal Albert Hall (RAH) and promoter Raymond Gubbay, needed a spectacular lighting and effects show to live up to its name.
With limited time to set up and programme the extensive rig, RAH’s lighting design manager, Richard Rhys Thomas, was able to put together a stunning show in only a few hours using a Jands Vista L5 Console.
He commented: “For me it comes down to limited time availability and being able to maximise time to create the actual design looks, effects and sequences with ease. The fact that over 180 moving lights, 100 LEDs and 200 dimmers, together with all attribute controls and palettes were accessible from a single layout on a large screen meant there was complete control at any one time. This greatly speeds up the programming process and is a fantastic credit t

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UK - London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), took full advantage of the capabilities of one of MDG’s ATMe haze generators during their recent production of Rona Munro’s Scuttlers.
“The brief from the director, Hannah Eidinow, was to create the atmosphere of Manchester in the 1890s: hot, industrial, sweaty, dirty, polluted and foggy, so clearly we needed to use a hazer that was up to the job,” says guest lighting designer, Declan Randall. “And MDG’s ATMe haze generator was more than up to the task.”
Scuttlers was first performed at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre in 2015. It follows the exploits of the city’s first street gangs, set against the background of Manchester’s cotton mills and industrial expansion of the nineteenth century.
The recent production at RADA moved the setting from the 200+ seat theatre-in-the-ro

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USA/Europe - Canadian singer / songwriter The Weeknd is currently rocking plenty of style and enjoying success, critical acclaim, multiple awards and several hits from his chart-topping third studio album Starboy, propelling him a long way from his underground roots and early anonymous mixtapes uploaded to You Tube in 2010.
Lighting for 2017’s Starboy Legend of the Fall tour has been designed by Sooner Routhier who picked Robe Spikie moving lights together with BMFL Spots and WashBeams to be at the heart of the rig.
Sooner has worked with The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) since 2012. She and design business partner Robert Long of SRae Productions were contacted by his creative directors Lamar C Taylor and Drop last year and asked to assist with this tour, which involved lighting an impressively beautiful flown sculpture created by production designer, Es Devlin.

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USA - For a recent collaboration with the Cavalettes Dance Team in Austin, TX, Lake Travis High School students Max Dalton and Trenton Schoonmaker used High End Systems SolaSpot 2000s to take the group’s production Love to a new artistic level.
The technicians at the Lake Travis PAC are all students enrolled in the Technical Theatre program at Lake Travis High School, and are part of the LTHS Student Chapter of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology.
Lake Travis PAC managing director K.J. Bartosh comments: “We’ve worked hard over the last decade to transform our dance show from a very basic recital into a spectacular community event that adds a great deal of production value to the talent of our dancers, as well as to stretch the significant educational opportunities for our technical theatre students. The Cavalettes are a highly-decorated dril

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Ireland - The annual Galway International Arts Festival is one of Ireland’s largest cultural events. This year’s line-up features musical performances by Dublin’s own Gavin James, England’s Passenger, original Beach Boy Brian Wilson, and many others. Lighting for the eclectic series of nightly concerts in the festival Big Top is provided by Light Source, with data networking by ProPlex.
“We have used ProPlex cable and devices for every show over many years,” says Light Source general manager, Ciaran Donnelly. “This gig has two GBS 10-port switches, four Opto-Splitters including two Minis in the truss, and an IQ Two 1616 16-universe DMX node. Tying the system together are over 200m of ProPlex Fibre, and 200m of ProPlex Cat 5e and DMX cables.” Donnelly added, “Additionally, we are using 200 meters of ProCable Multicable, fanouts, and 16 amp TRS mains cables.

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Czech Republic - Once the steel and coal powerhouse of Czechoslovakia, the city of Ostrava in the East of the Czech Republic has transformed itself since the fall of communism in 1989 into one of central Europe’s most vibrant cultural centres. In addition to hosting one of the most famous music festivals in Europe in a disused mining complex turned UNESCO World Heritage site (Colours of Ostrava), Ostrava is home to one of the most progressive theatres in the country, Divadlo Mir.
In keeping with Ostrava’s transformative theme, the theatre – a former cinema – recently called upon Ostravská Kulturní S.R.O to upgrade its ageing lighting and audio systems. For fresh visual input, the theatre opted to install eight Chauvet Professional Ovation F-165WW and 12 Ovation F-95WW Ovation ellipsoidal fixtures, supplied by Chauvet Professional distributor, Audiomaster.
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Croatia - Lighting designer Miro Hrg from top Croatian rental company Promo Logistika chose Robe BMFL Spots, CycFX8s, LEDWash 600s and MMX WashBeams to light the main conference plenary session for the Microsoft WinDays 2017 conference, staged at the Valamar Rubin Hotel in the beautiful historical city of Poreč in Istria.
The four-day event caomprised a series of lectures, seminars, networking and interactive sessions aimed at Windows developers and administrators and involved two locations – the Rubin Hotel just outside the city centre and at the Valamar Isabella Island Resort on the picturesque Island of Saint Nicolas in Poreč Harbour.
It was the second year running that Miro has designed set and lighting for the WinDays event’s main conference room. The client was extremely happy with last year’s results and this year raised the bar on the production values.

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UK - PRG XL Video, the UK operation of Production Resource Group (PRG), has announced the addition of Luke Stevenson to its Corporate and Events team.
Reporting to director of corporate, Steve Greetham, Luke joins the team as senior account manager, bringing a wealth of experience from his time with AVC Live.
During his 11 years with AVC Live, Luke undertook several roles including venue manager; sales and operations manager; and most recently four years as technical producer, where he applied his extensive experience of delivering events on-site.
At PRG XL Video, Luke will focus on the end to end production of 360˚ events, and working with both agencies and in-house event teams.
Steve Greetham commented: “We’re delighted to welcome Luke to the corporate and events team. He brings a broad technical knowledge to PRG XL and his depth of experience compl

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UK - Opera North has called on the video division of A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) to complete phase two of their upgrade, by supplying control and transmission equipment to work alongside the existing front-end display system in the Howard Assembly Room, Leeds.
Back in 2014, Opera North approached AC-ET to supply the first part of the system upgrade - front end display. A Christie WU14K-M Series projector was selected because of its high performance, high efficiency and flexibility. At the same time, an Audipak Silencer Housing was also installed to minimise the ambient noise levels of the projector within the auditorium.
Jamie Saye, senior technician, Opera North commented: “We were so pleased with the products and support AC-ET provided for the Howard Assembly Room previously, there was no question about using them again. It is incredibly convenient th

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UK - The Robert Juliat DALIS 860 LED cyclorama batten fixture has been added to the extensive lighting inventory at White Light as technical director Dave Isherwood explains, “The decision to invest in the Robert Juliat DALIS batten lights was part of our strategy of continually updating and renewing the WL catalogue. The product is a natural progression of what has come before and, as a result, there is a vast improvement in technology. After seeing the capabilities of the Dalis I had no hesitation in placing an order through Ambersphere Solutions.”
With a total of eight coloured LED emitters (red, green, blue, royal blue, amber cyan, warm and cool white), the 860 opens the door to an extraordinarily broad palette of colour choices as Isherwood acknowledges, “This is a unique product that doesn’t really have a rival on the market. Robert Juliat have incorporated a g

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UK - Jeremy Lechterman and Jackson Gallagher of production design and creative direction partnership FragmentNine selected the dense light beams of the Claypaky Mythos2 to add texture to their lighting design for Mercury Prize-winning indie rock band alt-J in their first arena show of 2017, held at The O2 Arena in London.
FragmentNine's design has since been nominated for a prestigious Knight of Illumination award. The design was an upscaled version of the production's touring lighting design, also by FragmentNine, for The O2 Arena's 10th anniversary showcase.
"As a band, alt-J fly fairly under the radar in terms of their visual appearance and personalities; we set out to create something that wraps them and shrouds them in mystery," reveals Lechterman. "The catch phrase 'immersive' was always on the tip of our tongues, and we feel the end result is quite evocative of

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Europe - Philips Entertainment Lighting has confirmed a number of key appointments in various territories.
Shaun Robertshaw has joined the Philips Entertainment Lighting team as UK key account manager. Shaun has worked in the professional lighting business for over 25 years. His experience includes many successful years as UK sales manager with Glastonbury-based Batmink Distribution. He says: “I am delighted to be back in the industry amongst many old friends and, of course, eager to find new ones on this new venture.”
Based in Stockholm, Charlie Gustafsson is now the key account manager entertainment EMEA, and will be looking after the company’s customers throughout the Nordic region.
Charlie’s career began back in 1988, when, after finishing his military service in the special forces, he saw a job ad for a tech at an AV company. Charlie went on to form

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UK - A Zero 88 FLX lighting console has been chosen by Cardiff’s popular St David’s Hall venue, primarily to control lighting for their Foyer Stage (also known as the L3 Lounge).
The venue hosts a wide variety of shows and events encompassing all types of live performance, from R ‘n’ B, jazz, folk rock, and classical music to comedy, children’s shows, musicals, spoken word events, conferences, presentations and even darts competitions.
The FLX was selected by stage technician and main house lighting operator Emma Nicholson, who until recently was part of a technical team of five running all the in-house audio, lighting and staging requirements, which involved working with WIFI, CCTV, phone integration and other IT systems.
St David’s Hall has lighting rigs installed in all three of its main spaces and fixtures can be coloured and re-focused as needed

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Peru - He has been called the “heir to Pavarotti”. Dazzling crowds with his immaculate, crystal clear voice, he is universally regarded as “one of the greatest tenors in history” Still, even as his celebrated career has taken him from La Scala to Royal Albert Hall, Juan Diego Florez has kept his heart in Peru. So, when his homeland was struck by a series of natural disasters this spring, the famous operatic star stepped up and announced that he would hold a benefit concert to help those afflicted by these events.
On 1 July, this benefit took place at Lima’s national stadium. Produced by Tito Vattuone and Milagros Florez, Homenaje al Peru featured stirring performances by Florez and the Orchestra and Symphony Chorus for Peru. Supporting this unforgettable music was an evocative lighting design by Gianfranco Di Vitto that captured the spirit of the Peruvian la

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UK - Stone Roses completed their European tour last month, highlighted by a sold-out performance at London’s Wembley Stadium. For their 2017 tour, lighting designer Paul Normandale of Lite Alternative Design included two Solaris T-Light 85,000W Lightning Machines.
“Two were plenty,” says lighting director and programmer Glen Johnson. “These over-the-top strobes are reliable and daylight bright. We needed something for maximum impact against a huge amount of video surfaces. The back screen alone was 35 x 6 meters, with an additional seven screens of IMAG. The T-Lights provided defining moments when used and dramatically ‘altered’ the stage surface each time. Love them.”
Provided for the tour by Lite Alternative, Solaris T-Light Lightning Machines have a flash length from 1/30 to 3.5 seconds and an output of up to two million lumens.
(Jim Evans)
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  6. Rogues reflect many moods of Bruce Hornsby
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