Projects

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UK - It is 35 years since Dreamgirls first hit Broadway. It was a sensational success then and the latest production at London’s Savoy Theatre is equally so.
Sound designer, Richard Brooker, wanted an analogue sound to the audio, in keeping with the show’s 1960s/70s setting, but also wanted to benefit from today’s digital technology. He specified a DiGiCo SD7T to handle Front of House mix duties, which has the warmth of sound he was looking for with all the advantages of the digital domain and the theatre-specific functions of DiGiCo’s ‘T’ software.
“No other manufacturer has put the time and effort into understanding the strange idiosyncrasies of the theatre world,” says Richard. “The SD7T has functions that are imperative when you’re working on musicals and that’s because the guys at DiGiCo talk to us, the people that use them, and make t

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USA - Allen & Heath dLive Digital Mixing Systems were in use on multiple Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival stages in support of a diverse line-up of musical acts and production needs.
Launched in 1999, Coachella has grown into a premier music and arts festival, grossing over $114m and drawing over 250,000 attendees annually. Coachella 2018 saw a large number of dLive artists on the line-up, including BØRNS, Hayley Kiyoko, Nile Rodgers & Chic, Nothing But Thieves, PVRIS and The Neighbourhood.
Praised for its intuitive workflow and tiny footprint, the dLive C1500 Control Surface was a popular choice across Coachella festival stages. The C1500 is the first rack-mountable surface for the dLive system. Packed in a diminutive frame are 12 faders over 6 layers, built-in audio I/O, an audio networking port and a 12" capacitive touchscreen. All dLive Control Su

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Europe - British Electronic Dance Music (EDM) pioneers, Orbital, reunited last year to the delight of music fans world-wide after five years apart following separate projects. Brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll are currently touring their reunion show across Europe.
Lit and stage designed by the band's long-term lighting designer Jonny Gaskell, the show features an array of lighting effects from the Claypaky A.leda B-EYE K20 and Claypaky Stormy CC.
Known and loved for their moments of on-the-spot improvisation during live shows, Orbital can be a challenging act to light for even a seasoned designer. However, Gaskell has worked with the brothers for over 25 years and is confident in optimising the lighting for their performance style, as well as realising their creative input.
"We know each other well and are able to bounce ideas off one another to really develop the

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USA - Veteran lighting designer Kelly Easterling of Quantum Creative Studios recently deployed Martin by Harman MAC Encore Performance fixtures to create an intricate lighting design for The Secret Silk a Broadway-style musical which debuted on the Princess Cruises ship Royal Princess in February.
The Secret Silk was brought to life by a talented team of industry veterans, including Director John Tartaglia, executive producer Stephen Schwartz (creator of Wicked, Pippin and Godspell) and supervising producer Jayson Raitt from Quantum Creative Studios. The stunning set design was created by three-time Tony Award nominee Anna Louizos, with lighting design by Easterling, video and projection design by Aaron Rhyne, costumes by Tony Award-winner Clint Ramos, and animal puppets created by the Jim dHenson Creature Shop.
Based on a Japanese fo

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USA - Launched in February 2018, Brilliant! is the latest addition to the popular Neon Museum Las Vegas, featuring an augmented-reality A/V system designed, installed, and programmed by Earth Water Sky of Las Vegas.
Combining art, history, and technology, the innovative Brilliant! neon experience, featuring 40 historic neon signs from the museum’s collection, is highlighted by Earth Water Sky’s 360-degree laser video projection system, a 24-channel 3D audio system with multitrack 3D audio soundtrack, and outdoor lighting system with automated show control. DMX signal distribution for the entire production is handled by ProPlex Opto-Splitters and Data Cables.
“ProPlex was selected as a critical component to handle all of the DMX signal distribution needs for this complex installation,” says John Humphries of Earth Water Sky. “We are avid proponents of P

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USA - Silverdale Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, recently acquired an Allen & Heath dLive Digital Mixing System for its church campus in Ooltewah. A second dLive, in the church’s Creekside campus, will be installed at FOH soon. And, the church is in the planning stages for a third dLive to be installed in its main Bonny Oaks campus.
Matt Johnson, Silverdale’s technical director and Mark Randolph, the church’s media minister, considered several digital mixers but chose the dLive after an on-site demo at Bonny Oaks. “The more we listened to it and played with it, the more we loved it,” says Johnson. He adds, “All Silverdale campuses have a band on the stage and the Bonny Oaks campus typically has a 30-40 person choir. But, our congregation is diverse. So we meet in the middle between traditional and contemporary styles. The dLive fit our worship needs

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Denmark - Theis Wermuth of lighting design company Create This has been handling the live visuals for Scarlet Pleasure since 2015. The Danish musical trio’s popularity is on the rise with the band recently playing its largest concerts to date, a pair of one-off shows that Wermuth lit using an automated lighting rig that included striking effects from rows of Elation Professional ACL 360 Bar moving battens.
Scarlet Pleasure has topped the Danish charts recently with a string of hits that cover soft ballads to more energetic dance songs and the band has toured with success the last two years, selling out clubs and smaller live music venues across Denmark. The two recent shows – one at the Forum Black Box in Copenhagen and the other at the Scandinavian Congress Centre in Aarhus – marked a milestone for the band. “Both shows took place in larger venues and both were sol

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USA - The good times never slow down for fans of The White Panda, the masked DJ duo described by Entertainment Weekly as a “veritable party machine”. The infectious energy of their performance comes not only from their pulsating sound, which puts a sassy EDM twist on throwback classics, but also from their immersive stage shows, a mixture of theatrics, eye candy and pure intensity.
On their recent tour of the northeast US, The White Panda added an extra futuristic flourish to their performance with an expansive lighting and video design by Antic Studios that featured Chauvet Professional Rogue fixtures. Strategically positioned around the set’s rows of video panels, the moving lights added a sense of continuity and dynamic movement to the stage.
“We used the Rogues to connect the video panels visually by filling in the space between them with a lot of m

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UK - Alton Towers Resort has turned up the heat for the new theme park season with its £16m thrill attraction, the Wicker Man, featuring real fire and stunning 'fire' effects created using a ProLights AlphaPIX video system plus various lighting supplied by A.C. Entertainment Technologies Ltd. (AC-ET).
Wicker Man is the first wooden rollercoaster to be built in the UK for 21 years, with the thrill of fire. Burning embers light the ride's path as it speeds towards a six-story (17.55m) Wicker Man structure, who spectacularly bursts into flames as the coaster races through its chest three times.
To complement real flames on the structure and get flame-like effects even closer to the riders, the resort's entertainments technical manager, Alex Tweedie approached longstanding technology vendor, A.C. Entertainment Technologies to assist with specifying and supplying a solutio

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UK - Black Panther, the record-breaking new superhero film produced by Marvel Studios. For the film's star-studded European première event at London's Hammersmith Apollo, lighting designer Luke Edwards selected Avolites Titan and Ai lighting and video integration to control his 'super' design.
Attending the event was Black Panther's cast, including Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan and Lupita Nyong'o, as well as music stars Stormzy and the Black Eyed Peas. To illuminate the stars, Edwards took inspiration from the film's poster branding, using its yellow, white and blue tones for the auditorium and red carpet lighting.
"There are a few aspects we had to look at in lighting this event," says Edwards. "Firstly, the auditorium needed to look good and immediately give people that 'wow' factor when they walked in. At the same time, the lighting needed to be functi

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USA - American singer Andy Grammer spread his refreshing brand of feel-good music across North America this spring on his The Good Parts tour, a club outing of mostly sold out shows in support of his latest release.
Lighting design and programming was by Joshua Koffman of Interrobang, Inc., who used a combination of Elation ACL 360 Bar moving battens and Platinum Beam 5R moving head beams to light the show. Lighting vendor for the tour was RK Diversified Entertainment of Claremont, California.
Koffman, who has worked with Grammer on one-off shows in the past, says that the lighting rig’s flexibility was key as tour venues varied a great deal. “When we were planning the stage design for this tour we needed to accommodate a wide range of venues, both in stage size and height,” he explains. “Some places had existing rigs, some didn't. Some had high ceiling

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USA - It’s 8,504 miles from the island of Manhattan to the South Pacific’s Solomon Islands, but now anyone in the Big Apple can experience this underwater treasure and a host of other nautical wonders right in their own backyard by visiting National Geographic Encounter: Ocean Odyssey.
Located in Times Square, this 60,000sq.ft multi-media experience digitally takes visitors on an entertaining and immersive adventure across the ocean, from the South Pacific to the coast of California, where guests can get up close with dozens of species, including mischievous sea lions, sharks up to 20’ long, a 50’ Humpback whale, a battle between two ferocious Humboldt squids, and much more.
Adding to the immersive environment in the multi-room experience is an elaborate and detailed lighting design by Lightswitch that features a collection of over 200 Chauvet Professio

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Europe/USA - The Gorillaz tour in support of their latest album Humanz grew to be the band’s most successful and the hot ticket of 2017 in the USA and Europe. Part of that success is down to some nurturing tour-craft by production manager Joel Stanley.
“The tour started off with some warm ups in little venues,” says Stanley. “Eventually that grew as we added flown scenic elements of video, more lights and ultimately a completely new, and to my mind, quite remarkable PA system. I know Matt [Gorillaz FOH engineer] is really enjoying using it.”
Matt Butcher has been Gorillaz FOH since the band’s inception. Accompanied by Dave Guerin on monitors, neither are shy when it comes to extolling the virtues of their new d&b audiotechnik GSL System as provided by Brown Note Productions of Denver, Colorado. “It is quite a major step forward,” says Butche

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UK - In October 2017, former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher released his debut solo album As You Were. The record went straight in at number one in the UK, and went gold in its first week, outselling the rest of the top 10 of the UK Albums Chart combined. It has since been certified platinum. Though the record is outstanding and has received much critical acclaim, Gallagher is in his element in the live arena. The guys responsible for helping make that happen are FOH engineer Shan Hira and monitor man Jon Simcox, both of whom are dependent on their DiGiCo mixing consoles.
It was when playing in bands as a young man that Shan developed an interest in the technical side of the music industry, which began in the recording studio.
“I was fascinated by recording and took an interest in what was going on; that's where my love of mixing desks and outboard was born,

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UK - Triple E’s heavy-duty curtain and scenery track took the weight for a new multi-function ‘innovation space’ at The Crystal, Siemens’ recently-completely sustainable UK headquarters on Royal Victoria Dock.
Rigid enough to serve as a suspension joist, UniBeam can be curved to a minimum radius of 2m and has the same dimensions and component range as UniTrack. As a result, The Crystal project benefitted from Triple E’s full range of accessories and carriers, capable of taking up to 385kg.
Commissioned by Siemens to create the space, design agency Jotta tasked Shape Studio with the build, specifying materials such as Bencore, a lightweight/light-permeable, honeycombed panel, custom moulded in Italy, to reflect The Crystal’s unique architecture and environmentalism.
Moving those elements, together with the other components, securely and efficiently,

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USA - Resourcefulness runs deep on the high arid plains of West Texas. One way this quality has manifested itself is in the impressive tributes to faraway famous structures that locals here have erected, from the Globe of the Great Southwest (modelled after Shakespeare’s original Globe Theatre in London), to the popular Stonehenge Replica at Odessa’s state college.
The leaders of Life Challenge United Pentecostal Church weren’t trying to duplicate a famous house of worship when they opened their new campus on the city’s Grandview Avenue earlier this year, but they did want to emulate best practices from around the world, which is why they opted to add more colour to their stage and sanctuary lighting.
“Colour rendering has come a long way since our church last installed a lighting system,” said Gabriel Loera, the technical director of Life Cha

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UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) went back to its roots to support the town of Aylesbury and its Friars music club with their David Bowie statue in the local Market Square, created as a permanent tribute to the location of his 1970s live performances at the club.
Designed by Andrew Sinclair for Friars Aylesbury Community Projects, to celebrate David Bowie's music and local legacy in a permanent way, Earthly Messenger features Bowie as Ziggy Stardust and other characters from his career. A Bowie track is played at random on the hour every hour above the statue.
Unveiled on 25 March 2018, the statue also received extensive local, national and international media interest. It was followed by a special fundraising concert featuring Friars Aylesbury local heroes Marillion, Howard Jones, John Otway and the Dung Beatles.
David Stopps, music promoter

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Turkey - High-end restaurant The Galliard has opened a second venue in the north of Istanbul, complete with a Funktion-One sound system.
After five successful years’ operating in the affluent Etiler district of Istanbul, The Galliard restaurant was recently joined by a sister venue, located in the new Vadistanbul development in the northern suburbs of the city. While the new Galliard Brasserie maintains the same emphasis on culinary excellence, it offers a more relaxed setting than its sibling, one which - towards the end of the night - shifts into a DJ-led bar/club mode, powered by the Funktion-One sound system.
Taking its name from a Renaissance dance that swept through France, Spain and Italy in the 16th century, The Galliard family of restaurants waltzes its patrons through a rich menu of western European flavours. Walls decked with the works of respected artists

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USA - WADE - Music for River and People is a music experience that has been installed on the centre span of the John R. Siegenthaler Pedestrian Bridge in Nashville. The project is part funded by the Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission and free to the public.
Expanding the definition of what is considered songwriting in music city, interactive music composer Aaron Hoke Doenges uses Nashville area rivers and the movement of people to compose constantly evolving and interactive music. Shifting notes and volumes are created in the work using the waters’ changing depths and speeds. To achieve this, Doenges downloads live data about local rivers from the United States Geological Survey website and translates the information into music.
The music moves to reflect the changes in the waters’ flow as the online data is updated. Data from the USGS sensors in the Cum

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USA - The much-anticipated new Broadway musical Mean Girls, based on the hit film, premiered at the August Wilson Theatre on Broadway in April. Responsible for the production's video sets is British video design team FRAY Studio, who worked closely with director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw and set designer Scott Pask to create the sophisticated, fast-paced and at times, surreal worlds of North Shore High's famous students.
"I love a gratuitously long fade but this was not the show for those," says Finn Ross, co-founder of FRAY Studio on Mean Girls' insta-fast scene changes. "Casey had an absolute stage vision for the show. He sees the video as part of the choreography, so that content moves and changes to the same beats and counts as the performers. The choreography on stage is very detailed, very fast and Tina Fey's script can change location in a beat. O

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USA - A little over two years ago, lighting designer Peter Spadaro III dropped in at a local pub outside New York City. He left with a future client, one who would help push his career in new creative directions. His new friend was Matisyahu, a fiercely independent artist who has blazed new paths since he arrived on the music scene in 2004 by blending his Orthodox Jewish heritage with a mix of reggae, beatbox and alternative rock sounds.
Matisyahu, who reached the Billboard Top 40 with his single King Without a Crown, happened to be looking for a lighting designer at the time of their meeting. Spadaro, who was designing an upcoming show at the iconic Capitol Theatre, was seeking a new creative challenge. The two hooked up. In March, the latest chapter in this history was on display, as Spadaro unleashed an intense razor-sharp lightshow for his client at the New Orlean

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USA - Over the last two years, American rock band Kansas has toured the country performing their five-time platinum album Leftoverture in its entirety in honour of its 40th anniversary. Following more than 80 tour dates and on the heels of its impending closure this summer, the band has now thrilled fans with the announcement of The Point of Know Return anniversary run.
“We have been blown away by the positive fan response,” comments Kansas guitarist and original member Richard Williams in a press release announcing the tour. Our hope is that fans will enjoy this tour just as much, and hopefully even more.”
Bandit Lites has supplied the lighting for the Leftoverture anniversary tour, crafted by lighting designer Scott Pearson, which features Martin MAC Viper Profiles as the primary spot fixture with half in the air and half in the deck. Pea

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Portugal - A range of top Portuguese singers, such as Paulo Gonzo, Diogo Piçarra, D.A.M.A, C4 Pedro and Marco Paulo converged on Gondomar´s Pavillion for Radio Festival Party, the biggest such event in the country.
Brought in to energise the nearly 8000-strong crowd at this year’s Radio Festival Party in Porto were over 64 NEXT-proaudio’s loudspeakers supplied by Mega Ensaio Rental Company.
These NEXT-proaudio systems included arrays of 20 LA212x three-way enclosures for main reinforcement. For low-end, 16 NEXT LAs418 subwoofers stacked by pairs of two units below the main arrays. Two-way Active Line Array LA122A cabinets were deployed as both side-fills, in arrays of four enclosures per side with four LAs118A Active Subwoofers.
The monitoring included 12 active 14” stage monitors LAm114xA while the front-fill comprised four LA122A. The entire setup was p

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UK - London-based Capital Sound Hire has added yet further to its Outline inventory with the addition of the Italian company’s latest multi-role processor, the Newton.
Officially launched at Prolight+Sound in Frankfurt recently, the flexibility of Newton offers “a new level of convenience and system integration possibilities to professional users throughout the audio industry”.
Capital’s Paul Timmins reports, “We were introduced to the concept by the Outline team when we were buying into the Outline GTO C-12 system during late 2015 and early 2016. We took an immediate interest and, having then followed its development over the last two years, we are incredibly excited we have received our first production units.”
Robin Conway adds, “My interest was immediately piqued during my first introduction to the unit and the concept, then our internal team
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