Pharos - Leaderboard - May 2024

Projects

Details
USA - An eagerly-awaited return in the world of heavy rock finally happened in December 1922 as Pantera played their first show in over two decades at Mexico's Hell & Heaven Metal Fest, with the band's new line-up featuring original members Philip Anselmo and Rex Brown plus Charlie Benante and Zakk Wylde.
Since, the band has continued to tour across North America in addition to a number of spring dates and festivals in Europe plus a number of shows opening for Metallica, to acclaim from their very loyal and international fanbase.
System engineer Alex Hollinger has been using an Outline Newton FPGA processor at the heart of his control setup - he talks about how it is configured and also how its combination with the latest digital mixing console from Midas, the HD-96, offers a technical advantage that is presently unique in the world of live sound:
“We are

Details
Australia - The sparkle and ambiance that characterised the 63rd annual TV Week Logie Awards was enhanced by the innovative lighting solutions offered by Prolights. This event, held at Sydney's The Star and broadcast by the Seven Network, is regarded as one of the highlights of the Australian television industry, attracting celebrities and industry professionals from all corners of the country each year.
The lighting setup that wowed the attendees was supplied and installed by Chameleon Touring Systems, in collaboration with Show Technology, the official Prolights distributor in Australia. The selection of luminaires was key, and the result was a lighting rig comprising approximately 150 Prolights solutions, including EclPanel TWC, VersaPar, Smart BatWash and EclPanel TWCJr.
The TWC EclPanels played a fundamental role in all the installations, illuminating not only the

Details
Belgium - The Antwerpen Sportpaleis played host to a cornucopia of projected lasers and lighting earlier this summer when promoters, Zillion presented their new immersive Iluminati dance concept.
This new design, conceived by Frank Verstraeten, who co-promoted the event with Yves Smolders, ran over two days - each with nine hours duration. A capacity 14,500 crowd immersed themselves in this purpose-built 3D ‘black box’ environment on each night.
Helping to create the magic were an abundance were GLP JDC1 and JDC Lines -some 85 x JDC Line 500 and 40 x JDC 1 hybrid strobes were deployed. “We used all of these fixtures, not only as a conventional strobe but also to create an atmospheric glow, enabling us to punch through with the other moving heads,” said lighting and set designer, Thomas Boets (from LDP). They placed 45 of the JDC Line 500 on two large trusses ab

Details
The Netherlands - This year’s Kingdance Festival and Dance4Liberation had a much in common. Both celebrated important national holidays, the King’s birthday, and the liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi occupation in the closing days of World War II. Both featured an electrifying line-up of EDM stars and other performers. And both took place on the same stage with the same lighting rig at the Wijthmenerplas lakeside park.
There was, however, one critical element that separated the two festivals: time! Kingdance ended exactly one week before Dance4Liberation began. A lot can happen outdoors in the 168 hours (or 604,800 seconds) that make up a seven-day week, especially when you’re dealing with a climate as capricious as that of the Netherlands.
But the rig shared by these two festivals performed smoothy, even though it remained in place for the entire week, th

Details
Gregg Maltby, a Las Vegas-based independent lighting designer, chose an array of Ayrton fixtures for Peter Frampton’s Never Say Never tour. Versatile Ayrton LED fixtures such as the Diablo and Eurus profiles and the Zonda 9 FX washes comprise about half the rig. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton lighting in North America.
Frampton’s North American tour kicked off in June in Huber Heights, Ohio and wrapped in Sandy, Utah in August. The artist recently extended the tour with a series of November dates starting in Louisville and finishing before Thanksgiving in Nashville. OSA International, Inc. in Nashville, the lighting vendor for the tour, provided the Ayrton fixtures to long-time customer Maltby.
“I’ve used Ayrton lights for a long time, including for Huey Lewis, Boston, and the Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly hologram tour,” says Maltby.

Details
USA - It can take a while to get a group of people to embrace a new way of doing things, and it certainly doesn’t help when a two-year-plus-long pandemic complicates the process. However, it is easier when the new way is so undeniably amazing that everyone really does embrace it. That was definitely the case when Lorin White, brought on as the monitor engineer for the precursor set of shows for Lionel Richie’s current Sing A Song All Night Long tour, was ready to take off in 2020.
The multiple Grammy Award winner and his band only managed to get one show in before the world shut down. Fortunately, White recorded that show, which became the basis for his initial experimentation with KLANG’s immersive IEM mixing system.
“During the lockdown, Group One sent me a KLANG-equipped DiGiCo SD12 so I could do some test some mixes from that recording while at home

Details
USA - English rock band Asking Alexandria is out on tour promoting their latest album with a lighting system provided by Bandit Lites. Comprised of guitarists Ben Bruce and Cameron Liddell, drummer James Cassells, lead vocalist Danny Worsnop, and bassist Sam Bettley, the band released their eighth studio album Where Do We Go From Here? on 25 August.
Following the band’s European tour, lighting designer Corbin Alvae sought to utilise fixtures that would offer a host of functions to supply the band big, stadium style lighting that would translate to clubs and theatres.
“The band has such a groovy and heavy rock ‘n roll style that I needed to provide a design that really highlighted that and bring those moments to life on the stage even more,” explained Alvae.
“When Corbin reached out to me about his design for Asking Alexandria, I was beyond exc

Details
USA - Showing there is plenty of gas left in the tank, rockers Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard had one of the biggest grossing tours of 2022. The momentum carried into 2023 with the summer culminating in a string of U.S. stadium shows lit using Brutus and Rayzor 1960 fixtures from Elation’s IP-rated Proteus series. The bands were supported by shock rocker Alice Cooper.
Mötley Crüe lighting designer Michael Cooper has been working with the band for 10+ years and collaborated with Def Leppard LD Kenji Ohashi on the world tour design. Originally started back in 2019, the design was put on the back burner when Covid hit but eventually saw the light of day on the successful 2022 tour.
“It was the longest design process we ever had,” Cooper noted before delving into the requirements for the co-headline outing. “We wanted something that would work for both bands but

Details
UK - J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has been reinterpreted numerous times over the years, from cartoons to films to even a West End musical. First performed at Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 2007, the musical was recently revived and reimagined at The Watermill Theatre in Berkshire. The lighting designer for this new production is Rory Beaton who approached White Light (WL) to supply his lighting equipment.
“We were very conscious that, as the first ever non-replica production of the original musical, we wanted to bring something new to the table,” says Rory. “As such, we have created a brand new production that takes place both inside the actual theatre itself as well as outside in the beautiful grounds. Our version is about celebrating ‘The Shire’, the story, the phenomenal music and, of course, the beautiful Watermill Theatre. Our aim was to pro

Details
Australia - Reflecting the myriad passions in Jubin Nautiyal’s music can be a challenge for a lighting designer, but it is one that Roosevelt Dsouza, his longtime LD, excels at, thanks in part to his inspired use of colour. “Every song has its own way of conveying emotions, so I treat every song differently in terms of colour,” said Dsouza. “Colour choice is closely connected to feeling.”
Helping Dsouza create evocative palettes at many stops on Nautiyal’s tour of Australia is a collection of Chauvet Professional Color Strike M motorised strobes. Although he uses the fixture’s two bright white LED tubes for strobing and audience lighting, Dsouza relies heavily on the fixture’s RGB pixel mappable face to create colourful effects that capture the spirit of the music being performed on stage.
Dsouza divides the 16 Color Strike M fixtures in his rig evenly

Details
Albania - Prolights fixtures lit up Skënderbej Square in Tirana, setting the stage for the Ricky Martin Symphonic concert. This performance featured the Puerto Rican singer alongside the musicians of the Albanian National Opera.
Prolights local distributor, ASLV Albania, supplied the sound and light system contributing to the success of the show. Thanks to the combination of cutting-edge lighting solutions and pyrotechnic equipment, the stage execution was treated in every detail by event company Kuadr Events.
ASLV Albania’s rig comprised approximately 307 Prolights luminaires. This impressive array included the PanoramaIP Spot, PanoramaIP WBX, Stark 1000, Razor 440, Sunrise 2IP, LumiPar 12IP, LumiPix 16H, and Lumipix 15IP.
The Prolights lighting solutions played a pivotal role in shaping the concert into an immersive visual experience. Their technology and ve

Details
France - Naostage K System beaconless 3D tracking system for live events and interactive experiences, was the cornerstone of the lighting effects on the recent live tour by So Floyd, France’s leading Pink Floyd tribute act.
Created by Fabrice Di Maggio, So Floyd's musical director, and Laurent Begnis, technical director of local hire company Pan Pot, the five-part show immerses audiences in the musical universe of the progressive rock band. Enhancing So Floyd’s music is a mesmerising AVL show.
For So Floyd’s most recent concert tour, comprising 17 dates in France, the band’s technical team used Naostage K System to automatically trigger the lighting cues key to recreating the authentic Pink Floyd live experience.
“K System was ideal for automatic head-on tracking,” comments Begnis, who also served as the tour’s lighting designer and operator, accomp

Details
UK - From the smallest comedy tent to the main stage, Nexo sound systems featured exclusively at this year’s Lakefest, a family-focused four-day festival attracting over 18,000 visitors to the beautiful surroundings of Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire.
The festival organisers and Bluestone Audio brought together no fewer than 13 UK Nexo rental partners to provide sound systems on the various stages.
“Lakefest this year was a great festival for showcasing our Nexo Geo M12 line array with flown MSUB18s supplemented by cardioid pairs of RS18 subs across the front of the stage,” reports Bluestone owner Sam Brook. “We used Nexo Geo M10s for delays and Nexo P+ point source boxes as front and side-fills, and stage monitors. “When Faithless - Sister Bliss played her DJ set on Saturday night the sound and bass were amazing and had the whole arena up and dancing.”

Details
Austria - The Bregenz Festival (Bregenzer Festspiele) has been a feature of the European cultural landscape for over 75 years. Hosting a wide range of musical and theatrical events during July and August in the Austrian city of Bregenz, the jewel in the festival crown is the Seebühne in the spectacular setting of the waters of Lake Constance.
The largest floating stage in the world, the Seebühne, with its 6658-seat open-air amphitheatre, is the star venue for the festival’s musical and operatic productions, often with sets as stunning as the lacustrine backdrop. This year’s production was Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, staged on a vast 23m x 33m 300-ton set designed to represent a giant leaf of delicately creased Japanese paper.
The technical challenges involved in a production of this nature are enormous, with sound being amongst the most critical. This y

Details
USA - Over the course of his career, Scott Holthaus has created some extraordinarily impressive shows with large centre stage video screens. But sooner or later, most things in life run their course, and at this point, the designer was ready for a change.
“I have said it a hundred times... I’m bored with the big TV in the back,” remarked Holthaus, when discussing his design for Disturbed’s just concluded 36-date Take Back Your Life North American tour, which began 27 April at Bell Centre in Montreal and ended 2 September at the Ruoff Music Center outside Indianapolis.
On this tour, Holthaus achieved his vision, going outside the box (or wall!) to create a design that flowed seamlessly with the musical narrative on stage without the use of a central video wall. In place of the familiar video component were three rows of automated truss that changed positi

Details
India - The inaugural exhibition of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai, India in Fashion: The Impact of Indian Dress and Textiles on the Fashionable Imagination, was lauded both for the scale of the exhibit and its engagement value.
Kapil Thirwani, director of Munro Acoustics was tasked with fulfilling the audio brief which demanded an array of immersive soundscapes that segued from zone to zone. Calling upon the expertise of distributor, Alphatec, he quickly discovered that only the capabilities of TiMax SoundHub would meet the complexity of the audio solution in its entirety.
The exhibition is curated by Vogue’s global editor, Hamish Bowles and presents a multi-zone exploration into the impact of India on global fashion and vice versa. Thirwani was contacted to deliver the audio solution in an eye-wateringly tight timeframe. On advice f

Details
The Netherlands - Drum ‘n’ bass fans were given an event to remember when the three-day Liquicity Festival was staged recently in Geestmerambacht Park in the north of the Netherlands.
Begun in 2013 the first multiple day Liquicity took place in 2017 and today the event attracts daily attendances of up to 20,000.
Martin Audio partners DSL and Stairway Productions collectively provided several hundred enclosures, plus amplifiers and accessories, site wide. This notably included a massive deployment of WPL Wavefront Precision line arrays by DSL for the premier two performance stages - and seven separate zones in all (including the food court) spread across a site that was suitably draped and decorated for the occasion.
The main Galaxy stage saw 20x WPL left and right (in two box resolution), with 12x WPC for delays (also in two box resolution) and 21x SXH218 sub

Details
Tunisia - The 42nd Festival International de Dougga took place between 27 July and 7 August this year in Dougga in northwest Tunisia. Qualified by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1997, the city is the best preserved Roman small town in North Africa, and festivalgoers enjoy music and theatrical performances on stages dating from Roman times.
Performers at this year’s festival included Dhafer Youseef, noted for fusing eastern and western musical styles and introducing the traditional short-necked lute-type instrument the Oud into contemporary music, and Algerian Berber singer, songwriter and guitarist Souad Massi. Also appearing were Assyrian-Syrian singer Faia Younan, Mauritanian singer, songwriter and instrumentalist Noura Mint Seymali and Tunisian musician, composer and singer Zied Gharsa.
Sound for the festival was provided by local event technology specialists

Details
The Netherlands - The 10th edition of the Op Dreef music festival took place at the BillyBird Park Drakenrijk in Reuver on Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 May. Ritmo Productions supplied a large number of lights by Showtec and Infinity for the event.
The festival, which plays house, r&b, techno, urban and hip hop music, was attended by thousands of people over the course of two days and saw more than 60 artists perform across five different stages.
More than 200 lighting fixtures by Showtec and Infinity, supplied by Ritmo Productions, were in use at the festival and 175 of these were fixtures by Showtec. Bright, colourful and dynamic lighting came in the form of 14 Spectral M800 Q4 spots, 36 Helix S5000 Q4 washers, 45 Sunstrips and 80 Pixelstrip 40 lights.
The Pixelstrips were controlled by seven Showtec Pixel Controllers. Infinity added to the atmosphere with 19

Details
UK - In June, Wellcome Collection hosted the Land Body Ecologies Festival - a free, four-day event exploring environmental and mental health topics by incorporating elements of sound, touch, taste and vision. The festival, which included art installations, workshops, talks, films, and performances, focused on the connections between mental health and our ecosystem.
The Land Body Ecologies (LBE) research group is led by Yorkshire, UK-based multi-disciplinary arts studio Invisible Flock and other partners, who were recipients of the Wellcome Trust’s prestigious Hub Award. The festival was produced by Unbox Cultural Futures and Invisible Flock.
"The focus of all of our work looks specifically at the natural wild and the environment: the ways in which we interact with it and the ways we perceive it - or maybe don’t perceive it," explains Invisible Flock technical direc

Details
Chile - Lighting designer Deivid Rojas used a large complement of Claypaky fixtures when reggaeton stars Zion & Lennox marked their 23rd anniversary as a musical duo with a spectacular show at the Moviestar Arena in Santiago.
“We aimed to impress the audience with a massive setup where the artists would be the center of attention,” says Rojas. “We incorporated extensive LED screens and lights, including Claypaky fixtures, to achieve a striking show. Our goal was to provide the audience with the best experience while keeping the focus on the artists.”
He designed the rig with 40 Claypaky Sharpy Plus, 30 Midi-B, 27 Sharpy and eight Alpha Wash 1500 fixtures from Iluminacion Chile.
Rojas chose the Claypaky fixtures for “the vibrant colours they offer, their focus and zoom capabilities, and their speed. They stand out with their bright and vivid colours

Details
USA - Electronic dance music pioneers Odesza launched their The Last Goodbye Tour last summer to critical acclaim and the popular duo continue to mesmerise audiences with dates on the schedule into October 2023. Lighting design is by Kyle Kegan who complements an array of captivating backdrop visuals using a rig that includes 78 Smarty Hybrid and 26 Artiste Monet moving heads from Elation Professional.
Kegan, who has been lighting the duo since 2017, works on the design process with creative directors Luke Tanaka and Sean Kusanagi, as well as artists Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight themselves. Programming started early last year and after months in pre-vis and two weeks of tech rehearsals, the first string of sold-out shows launched at Climate Pledge Arena in the duo’s hometown of Seattle last summer.
Video content is the driving visual force in the show an

Details
USA - Bandit Lites is thrilled provided the lighting for multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning Zac Brown Band on their 2023 From the Fire Tour.
Comprised of Zac Brown, Jimmy De Martini, John Driskell Hopkins, Coy Bowles, Chris Fryar, Clay Cook, Matt Mangano, Daniel de los Reyes and Caroline Jones, the Zac Brown Band recently released The Comeback (Deluxe) album which features re-recorded tracks with James Taylor, Jimmy Buffett, Marcus King and Blake Shelton.
This tour follows Zac’s 2022’s Out in the Middle Tour, where Bandit worked with Bryan Bieber and Ryan Gall of 340 Productions to provide the lighting system. It is the band’s tenth North American tour and kicked off 30 June and continues through November. With more than 30 shows, fans of the southern rock band will also be able to hear special guests on select dates throughout the tour, in

Details
USA - Cody James created the lighting and production design for Yellowcard’s current Ocean Avenue 20th Anniversary Tour.
“This design was built on two main ideas,” said James. “I wanted to have no blank space, but at the same time I didn’t want the stage to feel cluttered. Also, I wanted the whole thing to have an almost organic feel, something that felt natural and didn’t take away from the band playing their first shows in seven years.”
Anyone who sees the famed punk rockers on their current tour, which includes stops at Petco Park, Denver’s Levitt Pavilion, and the YouTube Theatre in LA, will readily agree that James has accomplished his ambitious goal in flying colours. His design fills the stage with bold, electrifying looks from three large video walls and a collection of intensely bright lighting fixtures rigged in irregular patterns at di
  1. Creative Technology immerses Edinburgh Military Tattoo
  2. Chichester Festival Theatre moves to Macula
  3. Claypaky shines on Kadim Al Sahir in Amman
  4. TDC Studios houses first VP Australian feature
  5. Genelec helps redefine work-life integration
  6. Queens of the Stone Age rock with Elation
Page 28 of 381
Robe - Large MPU
GLP - MPU - May-June 2024

Latest Issue. . .