Projects

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UK - The 1975 toured in support of the release of their third album A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, which is their third consecutive number one album.
Lighting and visual designer Tobias Rylander enjoys a productive ongoing dialogue with the band - in particular lead vocalist and creative director Matthew ‘Matty’ Healy, whose thoughts and ideas are at the essence of every live show’s design.
This tour featured four dramatic moving elements – three large portrait shaped video cubes and a ‘blade’ piece derived from their logo – all of which were automated using a Kinesys system supplied by Christie Lites UK.
Tobias has worked with the band since 2013 and their first album release. At the time he was working with visual and lighting artist LeRoy Bennett at Seven Design Works in LA, and the band approached the team after liking Roy’

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New Zealand - Packed houses greeted UB40 on their 40th anniversary summer tour of the Southern Hemisphere in January and February.
The band was doing so well and having so much fun on the tour that they added a final show on 8 February at the Central Energy Trust Arena Stadium in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Sourcing local suppliers, the band’s management contacted Sight & Sound Services, which provided them with a collection of Chauvet Professional Maverick, Rogue and STRIKE fixtures, supplied by MDR Lighting. It was a choice that met with the enthusiastic approval of UB40’s LD Brock Coddington.
“I was extremely impressed by the entire rig,” said Coddington. “It went really, really well. The Mavericks provided excellent punch, and the colours were fantastic. The Rogues were a great fit on that stage. The STRIKE 4s were great LED blinders. All and all

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UK - Absolute Motion Control has returned to The Bridge Theatre for the fourth time to provide the automation for Alys Always. The show started previews on 25 February, and has its press night on 5 March 2019.
The show is designed by Bob Crowley, whose set incorporates a large stage lift, a sliding floor palette and a cloth roller. As The Bridge doesn’t have a fly tower, any full height cloths need to run on a roller. In this production a roller is used as a ‘blinder’ to hide scene changes inside a large gauze box.
For the floor palette, Absolute has rented the production a zero-fleet winch. The compact zero-fleet design allows the winch to be used in a variety of situations. All Scene All Props, the production’s scenery contractor, built two custom decks that incorporated the pulleys required. These custom sections were then simply dropped into place, r

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UK - Ministry of Sound’s [MoS] orchestral tour, The Annual Classical, reimagines the Sony Music compilation, The Annual, the top-selling dance compilation, as a live production.
The live shows, mixed on a DiGiCo SD7 supplied by RG Jones, deliver mega sounds as much-loved chart toppers receive a classical reworking. Amongst the hits are The Chemical Brothers’ Hey Boy Hey Girl; Insomniaby Faithless and Moloko’s Sing It Back. At the helm of the complex live mix is sound designer, Phil Wright.
“In the last couple of years, we’ve seen all kinds of classical dance music shows take to the stage, but the design brief from MoS was to make this a genuinely live performance, meaning no playback,” says Phil.
With the brief in place, a collaboration between Coalition Agency and Raymond Gubby Ltd, which runs the 55-piece London

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India - Technosales Multimedia Technologies recently deployed JBL Professional by Harman cinema surround systems in two theatres at the Sai Teerth devotional theme park in Mumbai to provide a more immersive spiritual experience for devotees.
Sai Teerth is India’s first devotional theme park, featuring immersive exhibits dedicated to one of the most worshipped secular saints of all time; Sai Baba. With four major audio-visual attractions, Sai Teerth is home to one of the largest cinema screens in the country, as well as an innovative 5D theatre.
After surveying the location, Technosales designed a custom cinema surround sound system that utilizes JBL Professional loudspeakers and Crown amplifiers.
“Sai Teerth asked us to provide a world-class audio system to make their exhibits more engaging and immersive,” says  Rajesh Patil of Technosales Multimedia Techn

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USA - FedExForum, one of the nation’s premier arenas in the NBA and North America, recently updated its arena lighting with a lighting package designed and installed by Bandit Lites. Home to the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies and the University of Memphis Tigers men’s basketball team, the installation comes as part of the arena’s recent updates.
Bandit Lites installed a package comprised of HES Solaframe 3000, Chauvet Rogue 3 Spots, Claypaky AXCOR 300 Beams and Chauvet Ovation E-260WW w/ 10° Barrels.
“As FedExForum was one of the earliest projects that I and Roth Edwards personally installed, I was thrilled to once again be a part of the team trusted to update their system,” says Bandit Lites director of sales and installation Chris Barbee. “Both John Cameron Carter and Roth did a phenomenal job reimagining the lighting system.”
Bandit’s team mount

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Belgium - Woven in and out of English, German, French and Dutch language fables since the early medieval period, the anthropomorphic trickster Reynaert the Fox has succeeded in eluding capture for centuries.
Keeping the legend of the fox alive was Expedition Reynaert, an immersive bike tour in Belgium that culminated in a captivating museum experience, complete with an informative exhibition and engaging performances.
Central to bringing the legend of Reynaert to life was local design studio CREATE.eu, which specified 24 Chauvet Professional Ovation E-260WW, 8 STRIKE 1 and 12 Maverick MK2 Wash fixtures as part of their comprehensive visual concept. CREATE.eu relied on lighting to reflect the varied environments that participants experience during their visit to the museum. At the same time, the studio’s designers also made sure to provide theatrical lighting support

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UK - White Light recently provided the lighting equipment for Gently Down the Stream which has opened at London’s Park Theatre.
Set at the turn of the 21st century, Gently Down the Stream is a delicate examination of the relationship between Beau; a 62 year-old piano accompanist from New Orleans, and Rufus; a 28 year old bi-polar lawyer, set over the course of 13 years in Beau’s London flat. It is written by Martin Sherman, directed by Sean Mathias and features a lighting design by Jamie Platt.
He comments: “The majority of the show is set in Beau’s apartment which is beautifully designed by Lee Newby. We wanted this to feel as real as possible so, as a result, most of the lighting for these scenes was committed to creating a totally naturalistic world. That said, Sean was very keen to make the monologues that are dotted throughout the play feel i

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USA - Professional Wireless Systems (PWS) handled all wireless microphone and IEM systems management for pre-game, half-time entertainment and post-game, along with the wireless microphone utilised by the referee, during Super Bowl LIII held in the Mercedes-Benz stadium in Atlanta.
This is the 22nd year that ATK Audiotek has tapped PWS to provide wireless support for the Super Bowl.
“It is pretty amazing to think about all of the changes that have occurred in wireless technology over the course of 22 years,” explains Jim Van Winkle, general manager, PWS. “This year was no different in that we implemented a number of new systems that helped us handle the exceedingly crowded RF environment in Atlanta - where the TV repack hasn’t even happened yet.”
As in previous years, PWS started planning back in October, with a site visit to Mercedes-Benz stadium. Van

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USA - Late January typically doesn’t bring the kind of weather associated with music festivals to central Massachusetts, but the bitter New England winter wind notwithstanding, the mood at the multi-stage Birds of a Feather Festival was as care-free as a summer beach party.
Thousands of fans crammed inside the 90-year-old Worcester Palladium for four straight hours of jam and alt rock sounds on Friday, 25 January, and although summer vibes resonated throughout the building, the reality was that being indoors, Birds of a Feather offered no visual variety beyond the stage.
With no mountain views, no surfside background, and no tall trees flanking the stage, eyes seldom wandered from the performance area. For Vin Pugliese, lighting designer for the Main Stage, which featured The Lizards, Jazz is Phish, lespecial and Pink Talking Fish, this meant focusing on creating vi

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Spain - When one of the world’s largest night clubs puts on a special season-end event, its magnitude is difficult to ignore. Open since 1993 on the Spanish island of Ibiza, this mammoth club can host up to 10,000 guests at one time. On the season’s finale evening, Privilege Ibiza made the decision to employ the Clair Brothers C12 loudspeaker system, along with an assortment of more Clair Brothers gear, to cover the entire venue.
The size of the venue allows management to redesign facilities for individual parties and artistic shows. For this event, they didn’t hold back, calling on Clair Brothers’ Spanish distribution and rental partner, VTècnics, to recommend and design a sound system worthy of this special occasion.
Josep Maria Serra, production manager at VTècnics reports: “The Clair Brothers team understands the concept and value of global sharing bet

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UK - Indie rockers The Vaccines are back on the road in the UK, continuing their world Combat Sports album tour with lighting designed by Dan Williams and equipment supplied by Colour Sound Experiment.
The Combat Sports album cycle started in April 2018 and having already played extensively around the UK last year, Dan and the band wanted to treat fans to a new visual experience and ensure that the Vaccines - known for their enthusiastic and ebullient live shows - saw something different.
Last year’s UK tour design was inspired by the album track Nightclub, yielding lots of mirror balls and a tungsteny disco vibe.
For the festival section of the tour, Williams had a gold sequined drape made up with a large logo across the middle, and this evolved into the lighting look for this leg, which bridges front the nightclub into the fight club, mat

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UK - Pointing a microphone directly at a PA speaker is likely to generate feedback, but sometimes when you are trying to achieve a particular vision, you have to tear up the rule book and see what happens. This was the situation FOH engineer Simon Honywill found himself in when he was asked to tackle sound design for a new live music and dance production called The Nature of Why.
Using a combination of DPA microphones and EM Acoustics loudspeakers positioned in a circle around the stage, Honywill pulled off the task of creating an ambient acoustic ‘bubble’ for this unusual performance in which the audience is as much a part of the show as the musicians and dancers.
“I needed to make sure all the microphones I was using were as predictable as possible,” he explains. “DPA was the obvious choice - not just because they are always my first choice but beca

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USA - Outdoor walking attractions that immerse guests in an experience have become increasingly popular, especially around the holidays. This past season south Floridians had the chance to experience NightGarden, a new enchanted walk-through experience at Miami’s Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden magically illuminated by lighting designer Chris Werner. Produced by Kilburn Live under the creative direction of Max Painter, the attraction featured such magical curiosities as talking trees, fairies, and 10ft tall dandelions.
Werner has an abundance of know-how from lighting theme parks and Halloween attractions under his belt and knows what it takes to create an immersive experience. Responsible for lighting design, specification and programming for all of the exterior spaces within NightGarden, he created a variety of visually stunning experiences using light, c

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USA - Martin Audio’s new Wavefront Precision Longbow (WPL) system was recently purchased by two US-based live event production companies - Soundworks in Richmond, and Southard Audio in Mount Crawford - the first to acquire the large format line array worldwide. Both companies, who share a cooperative relationship within the Middle Atlantic region, purchased systems that include 24 WPL cabinets, 12 SXH218 hybrid subs and 12 iK42 amps.
Officially launched at ISE 2019 in Amsterdam, WPL is designed as a complete system with external iKON multi-channel amplifiers, automated DISPLAY optimisation software and VU-NET control platform that provides financial accessibility to the higher echelons of touring and installed sound. A three-way, bi-amped system, WPL’s very high output is achieved by utilising Martin Audio’s trademark horn-loading technology across all frequency bands

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France - The Paris Institute of Political Studies, commonly referred to as Sciences Po, is a French university with seven campuses across the country. The new Grand Auditorium at its Reims site features an Alcons Audio system.
Founded in 1872, Sciences Po quickly became a highly influential academic institution for the social sciences. Currently it has 13,000 students based at its seven centres throughout France. The Reims campus opened in 2010, with just 100 students, but a recently-completed €75m expansion has meant it will be ready to accept 1600 students in September 2019. A major part of the project is the new 650-seat, multi-function Grand Auditorium, which hosts conferences, lectures, presentations by guest speakers, live music and movies in 5.1 surround sound.
At Reims, a 5.1 Alcons system was supplied by Paris-based systems integrator Audiolead and installed

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USA - On Circa Survive’s recent tour in support of their Top Ten Billboard Rock Chart LP The Amulet, lighting designer Lenny Sasso devised ‘a perception-bending asymmetrical rig’ with Chauvet Professional fixtures, supplied by Squeek Lights.
“This was my second tour with the Circa Survive guys, and this one in particular has been extremely creative and experimental,” said Sasso. “I’ve never designed a true asymmetrical rig before, so it has been an interesting journey. It definitely took me a bit to get out of a very strict symmetrical mindset. I was still tweaking things around at the end of the tour, but I feel like the asymmetrical aspect of the show gave me endless possibilities.”
Critical to Sasso’s asymmetrical design was the positioning of the nine Rogue R2 Wash fixtures in his rig. He positioned six of these units stage right in an in

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UK - December saw the ninth year of Huawei Technologies’ sponsorship of the London Winter Concert, held at London’s Royal Festival Hall (RFH) in aid of the Prince’s Trust. This event featured the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, conducted by Paul Bateman, and had a line-up led by tenor Joseph Calleja, with special guests soprano He Wu and young singing talent Beau Dermott.
Although the Winter Concert is long-established in the RFH calendar, this year saw a completely new approach to audio production, with L-ISA Hyperreal Sound delivering an extra frisson to proceedings.
Reactor Group has been supplying production management, sound design and its implementation to the Winter Concert for the past three years and, as technical director for the event, Reactor’s Jim Pollard explains they wanted to improve on its previous two, highly successful years.
“

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UK - London-born singer-songwriter and composer Ben Howard released his debut EP 10 years ago. Since then, he has won two BRIT Awards, been nominated for both the Ivor Novello Award and the Mercury Prize and had a number one album. His third album, Noonday Dream, was released in June 2018 to much critical acclaim. Now, Howard is on the road touring it, with FOH engineer Andy Magee and monitor engineer Niccolo Antonietti both working from DiGiCo SD5 consoles.
“It's very much art: Seventy minutes of non-stop music, which is never the same twice,” Magee explains. “We're all on our toes, watching each other do something a bit different every day.”
He and Antonietti work hard to recreate Howard's album with as much authenticity as possible, night after night.
“We have over 85 guitar pedals on stage, which means so many inputs, as numerous players hav

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USA - Founded in 1908, Harvard Business School in Boston is known worldwide for its MBA and doctoral programmes. With a faculty of over 200 experienced professors and entrepreneurs, the school recently opened Klarman Hall lecture auditorium.
Designed by the architectural firm William Rawn Associates, Architects, the hall needed a lighting solution that could meet strict acoustic and performance criteria, so they worked with the design firm Theatre Projects who specified PHX 150W LED profile luminaires from Altman Lighting.
“This was a new construction project and our first time working with the Harvard Business School,” says Steven Rust, Theatre Projects’ lighting designer. “In an atmosphere where people needed to hear each other clearly throughout the hall, the criteria from the acoustician was that the lighting had to be ideally convection-cooled, or near-s

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Indonesia - Socialight recently collaborated with P.T. Chayolite to utilise a Martin by Harman lighting solution to enhance GWK Cultural Park’s Garuda Wisnu Kencana statue.
Created by renowned sculptor Nyoman Nuarta, the Garuda Wisnu Kencana statue is a monument overlooking the city of Bali. Measuring 393ft tall and 213ft wide, the statue consists of 24 segments and 754 modules, and took more than 20 years to construct.
In order to visually enhance the structure, Alam Sutera Realty engaged Singapore based lighting designer, Socialight, to design and oversee the implementation of an architectural lighting solution. Socialight selected Martin Exterior Wash and Exterior Projection fixtures to illuminate the statue, which was implemented by lighting solutions specialist P.T. Chayolite.
“We wanted to highlight Balinese culture by creating an elegant atmosphere ar

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UK - Lighting and visuals design partnership, Co1ab, produced the lighting show for a recent run of gigs by The Streets, led by hip-hop raconteur Mike Skinner.
Co1ab unites the talents of Jon Trincas and Steve Hough, two respected young designers who pooled imaginative and creative resources to deliver the right look for The Streets.
They utilised 120 x Robe Spikies and 30 x Robe Spiider LED wash beams, all delivered as part of a lighting package by Blackburn based rental company, LCR.
Hough was originally contacted by The Streets’ tour manager Keith O’Neill when they played some ‘come back’ gigs in 2018, which culminated in three incendiary gigs at Brixton Academy. The interest in The Streets live resulted in this run, comprising a short UK tour with a lighting floor package, followed by five shows at Brixton, three in Manchester Apollo and three at the

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Nigeria - Seven hundred thousand people attended The Experience, an interdenominational gospel concert. With an audience estimated at close to three quarters of a million people, The Experience is an interdenominational gospel concert held annually in Lagos. Convened and hosted by Pastor Paul Adefarasin, the colossal event debuted in December 2006 and is now the largest concert in Africa.
The Experience’s 13th edition - streamed live on the House on The Rock YouTube channel to viewers around the world - featured an impressive line-up of artistes. Renowned national and international gospel artistes, who included Don Moen, Kirk Franklin, Donnie McClurkin, Timi Dakolo, Travis Greene, Nathaniel Bassey, Vicki Yohe, Chioma Jesus, Tope Alabi, Eben, Tim Godfrey, Mike Aremu, Glowreeyah, ONOS, Eno Michael, the Lagos Metropolitan Gospel Choir, Chee, JJ Hairston,

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UK - January and early February saw Britannia Row Productions start the year in robust, if slightly inverted fashion. “Within two weeks of the Christmas break we had three arena tours out and one of the UK’s most exciting acts, Jorja Smith playing festivals,” explains sales director Lez Dwight. “The clue is in the word ‘festivals’, no-one is playing festivals in the frosty Northern hemisphere right now, but along with Jorja at the festivals, Mumford & Sons and Phil Collins have all visited arenas in Australia and New Zealand.”
While the balmy reaches of the Antipodes are seeing most of the action, Brit Row is not neglecting the UK market. “We are supplying system and support for Cirque du Soleil’s annual visit to the Royal Albert Hall and we are already gearing up for the Brit Awards which has quite a fundamental new look this year.”
But it’s
  1. Adamson reinforces Edinburgh Hogmanay party
  2. Urban Brew Studios gets infrastructure upgrade
  3. Elation gets festive with Bowling for Soup
  4. Swedish metal band goes deep with SQ
  5. Linea Research amplifies Bacchus Bar
  6. ChamSys in the mood for Alton Towers fireworks
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