Pharos - Leaderboard - May 2024

Projects

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USA - Rising contemporary R&B star Allen Stone and his band have toured internationally and have opened for Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Hall & Oates, and the Dave Matthews Band. Stone has also appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and was recently a celebrity mentor on American Idol. Although his music draws on the rich tradition of R&B, it also offers a fresh new sound.
Stone’s powerful connection to the past and his contemporary take on R&B are evident on his current 48-city North American tour, not only through his music, but also the evocative lighting design. Blending retro and high-tech looks, the design features a versatile set piece made up of Chauvet Professional Nexus 4x4 fixtures, supplied by 4Wall Entertainment Lighting.
Designed by Sam Paine (Filament Design) and programmed/operated by lighting director Carter Adams, the design

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UK - Rick Astley, who retired from the music industry in 1993 aged 27 with a string of successful tunes to his name – is back on the road with a new album, Beautiful Life.
With many people unsure of what to expect, Astley delivered a diverse show, action-packed with the dynamics of soul, rock, R ‘n’ B, dance and more than a few hints of disco, backed by a talented band and a stage design by Andy Hurst.
HSL delivered the lighting equipment for this high-profile tour. The Blackburn based company was once again working with renowned production manager Tony Gittins, with Jordan Hanson project managing.
He commented, “It was fantastic to be on the road with Tony and his excellent team again, and we were all very impressed with the look and style that Andy’s design bought to the show”.
To emphasise the architectural parameters of the design, An

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France - Six performers from Streb Extreme Action performed a real aerial feat at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris this Autumn, with a little help from Unusual Rigging.
The event, which took place on 13-14 October, was part of a festive family weekend hosted by Theatre du Châtelet and the Musée d'Orsay, exploring Picasso's passion for the circus which is expressed in the blue and pink period of his work.
Unusual's Robin Elias has worked with Elizabeth Streb on several of her other projects over the years including performances on the London Eye and on the front of Bergdorf Goodman's New York department store as it revealed its Christmas holiday window display. He explained. "This was a fantastic project to be involved with. Our task was to help the phenomenal acrobats perform safely in the nave of the Orsay on the faces of two towers...all the while making sure that the

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Austria - Modern metal/electronic band CueStack recently released their third effort in a series of debut music videos that features a sophisticated industrial stage design packed with 170 high tech lighting units from Elation Professional. Beyond the Veil shows a dystopian vision of the new digital age and uses the intricate set-up as both performance lighting and impactful visual accompaniment.
"Big production is essential to this project and the lighting design plays an essential role,” states Martin Kames, owner of Austrian-based production company MartinKames.com and vocalist/synth player in the two-man project. “Beyond the Veil deals with modern day issues but it’s also a huge lighting-themed visual experience.” The video can be viewed at https://youtu.be/cgDFJ6P35Ec.
Kames works double duty on the video shoots, operating behind the camera on ligh

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UK - Over the past few years, Studiotech has collaborated on numerous projects alongside Wakefield based architectural practice, The Harris Partnership. The practice was responsible for the design of the new retail and leisure destination The Springs at Thorpe Park in Leeds.
Their concept included a full feature lighting scheme to the exterior of the buildings and throughout the public realm. After recently providing a full turnkey lighting solution at their White Rose leisure extension project, The Harris Partnership was confident that Studiotech were capable of delivering their concept at Thorpe Park to the highest of standards.
Studiotech designed a deliverable and achievable scheme within budget. There were a number of areas that Studiotech took responsibility for, the most obvious and eye-catching being the bespoke catenary lighting suspended above the public re

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UAE - Earlier this month, golf fans came together to watch the duel between the two Ryder Cup teammates Francesco Molinari and Tommy Fleetwood as they raced to become Europe’s No 1 at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai.The four-day event, held at Jumeirah Golf Estates marked the 10th anniversary and the final stop of the tournament.
Creative Technology (CT delivered all video aspects for the event for the 10th year running on behalf of European Tour Productions.
CT supplied four ROE CB5 outdoor screens to ensure spectators could follow the event no matter where they were. CT’s Dubai project manager, Barry Collins explains, “The ROE CB5 is a great product, the high refresh rate and high NIT levels makes it ideal for outdoor viewing, even in daylight. The custom detachable touring frames are specifically designed with outdoor applications in mind and has bee

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UK - Autograph Sales & Installations has recently supplied a number of EM Acoustics EMS-61 loudspeakers and mounting hardware along with a DiGiCo SD9T digital mixing system to Theatre Royal Stratford East.
The Grade II listed Victorian theatre’s beautiful crimson and gold interior is redolent of the era in which it was built, while much of the handsome exterior stands out amid the modern outlines of an area which has been under redevelopment (including massive investment for the 2012 Olympics) since the late 1960s. The theatre is now an acclaimed contemporary producing house with a capacity of 460 on three levels and focused on new writing and community engagement.
“n a producing venue like Stratford East, the quality and fidelity of the audio system that we’re able to offer to designers is key,” says Jeremy George, head of sound at Theatre Royal Stratford

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USA - Opportunity knocks in different ways. Eric Price was enjoying his summer last year when he got a call from his old friend David “Suge” Jun, whom he had worked with on tours in the past. The guitar tech for Taking Back Sunday, Jun told his friend that the band was looking for a lighting designer and encouraged him to contact them. Price jumped at the chance.
Price’s enthusiasm wasn’t fuelled only by his appreciation of the iconic band’s sound, but also by the creative opportunity their versatile music offers a lighting designer. Price’s design flowed with their far-ranging music on their tour with Coheed and Cambria this summer. Helping him achieve this feat was a versatile lighting rig supplied by JR Lighting Design that featured Chauvet Professional Rogue R2 Wash fixtures.
“I’ve been working with the band since summer 2017, and it’s an amazing

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Spain - The 2018 Dreambeach festival, staged near the fishing town of Villaricos in Andalucía, is a picturesque location traditionally known for its unspoiled beaches and jaw-dropping sunsets - and also for hosting the largest dance music festival in Spain.
Dreambeach welcomes 155,000 music fans to the region to enjoy five days of electronic music.
Main stage production designer Eduardo Valverde this year specified 70 x Robe MegaPointes, 50 x Spiiders and 16 x BMFL Spots - together with other lighting, all supplied by rental specialist Fluge.
For this show, the stage construction featured some serious metalwork and had an epic ‘wide’ look - characteristic of many dance style events. The set featured a series of convex video-clad semicircles protruding horizontally above the deck, resembling a giant - spacey - slot machine!
The Spiiders were positione

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Germany - Heavy metal heroes Accept rely on Allen & Heath’s dLive system for FOH and monitor duties on their current worldwide Rise of Chaos tour.
Founded in 1968, Accept are a pioneer of the German heavy metal scene and landed their first major international success in the early ‘80s. After a 10-year hiatus, they reformed in 2009 with a new lead singer and since then have achieved multiple Top 10 chart entries and regularly perform across Europe and America.
For the current tour the band decided to use an Allen & Heath dLive system for the first time. “As we mostly travel by plane to all our international shows, the complete monitor and FOH set-up needs to be extremely compact and light,” explains Oliver Tschotow (the main sound engineer for the tour).
Tschotow’s full set-up includes a dLive C1500 Surface with Waves card, a CDM32 MixRack

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USA - Tucker Wilde, the LD for Lettuce on their current fall tour, values the creative challenge of keeping up with the band’s free-wheeling style. He also appreciates another benefit that comes from working with a group that plays at prime live music venues: the opportunity to work with some great house rigs.
This point was driven home to Wilde recently when Lettuce appeared at Omaha’s Slowdown club, and he encountered Chauvet Professional Rogue R3 Spot fixtures for the first time. “I really enjoyed walking into a room with some new fixtures to try,” he said. “We have a great touring floor package, but I really rely on festival/house rigs for flown spots and profile fixtures. This was the first time I have had an opportunity to use the Rogue R3 Spot, and I really enjoyed them.”
Wilde made full use of the six Rogue R3 Spot units that were flown on centre st

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UAE - Verity Studios brought a display of dancing drones to Dubai Mall’s 10 Year Celebrations.
Titled Talisman, the show is running daily until 28 November, with 44 autonomous Lucie micro drones flying together to form clusters of light, flying strobes and even fireworks in the Star Atrium, in a choreographed performance, accompanied by projections, lasers and film.
Raffaello D’Andrea, founder and CEO of Verity Studios, comments: “The Dubai Mall show is a beautiful display of moving art - and we have created a performance worthy of the 10th anniversary. It’s been fantastic to work alongside Lune Rouge Entertainment, the new company created by Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque du Soleil, and help the team there deliver their first-ever show in the Middle East.
“Verity Studios is constantly looking to push the boundaries of drone technology as a

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UK - When Maggie Rogers appeared at London’s KOKO club to support the release of her new single Give A Little, designer Ben Everett of Mirrad reflected her multifarious sound with a lightshow that was as varied and multi-dimensional as her music. Helping him in his undertaking was collection of 14 Chauvet Professional Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures, supplied by Colour Sound Experiment.
“The initial concept behind the design was to incorporate a mix of vintage looks with tungsten fixtures and more current electronic looks as a nod to both the folk and electronic genres that heavily influence Maggie’s music,” said Everett. “Budgetary constraints limited the number of tungsten fixtures we could incorporate, but we did rely very heavily on the Rogue FX-Bs to provide enough diversity to do justice to her music. When you have 14 of the FX-B as we did, you can create an e

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UK - Multi-disciplinary consultancy Plann and its director Jack Tilbury celebrated a third high-profile theatre opening in two years when Bristol Old Vic reopened in September following a £13m capital project.
Tilbury led the venue’s redevelopment working alongside chief executive Emma Stenning and artistic director Tom Morris. He was also a project director during the relocation of the Bush Theatre (completed in March 2017) and managed the construction of the Bridge Theatre (opened in October 2017). Architects Haworth Tompkins designed all three schemes.
Tilbury comments: "After spending 10 years in design meetings, it became apparent to me that the building industry is just not set up to cope with the unusual demands of a theatre scheme. The projects are architecturally complicated, can involve millions of pounds of high-tech specialist equipment, funding mileston

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UK - Signify’s new effects luminaire, the Philips Vari-Lite VL10 BeamWash, is delivering a dynamic performance for Tom Odell’s current European tour.
Lighting designer Joe Beardsmore is among the first lighting designers in the world to use the VL10 BeamWash on a touring show. With a set ranging from gentle, solo ballads to big, high-energy rock numbers, he looked for lighting fixtures capable of producing endless effects versatility. The VL10 BeamWash delivers this, along with the brightness, beam quality and colour palette typical of the Vari-Lite brand. “The VL10 honestly blew me away,” he says.
“Tom trusts me to complement his show with my best design ideas,” says Beardsmore, who has worked with Odell for two years. “For this tour, I wanted to add some more theatrical elements, to supplement some of the quieter songs in particular. On the UK leg I use

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Japan - The Tokyo development of Roppongi Hills is a large complex that incorporates office space, apartments, shops, restaurants, cafés, cinemas, a museum, a hotel, a major TV studio, an outdoor amphitheatre and parks.
Located within the development, Roppongi Hills Arena is an entertainment venue with a retractable roof that will host live entertainment as well as high-end events. In February this year, Roppongi Hills Arena underwent a major refurbishment to enable it to adapt to even more types of entertainment. With its new outdoor capability has come the imperative to decrease neighbourhood noise pollution, and thus an improved sound system and monitoring capability was required.
After auditioning many loudspeaker brands, Martin Audio’s CDD series was selected. The venue requisitioned 12 cabinets which have been installed on the round shaped truss at the top of

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USA - Nashville-based production company 44 Designs was an early adopter of Elation’s Artiste DaVinci and recently used the award-winning LED moving head spot in their production design for country music artist Jake Owen’s Life's Whatcha Make It tour. 12 of the full-featured DaVinci fixtures were put to creative use by lighting designer and production manager Chris Nathan on a successful six-month long tour that’s been on the road since last spring.
Owen played sheds and baseball stadiums around the country over the summer with a recent fall leg moving into arenas. Nathan found the Artiste DaVinci a quality spot luminaire for both the outdoor and indoor venues.
“For the first leg we used the DaVinci as overhead profiles for key light and aerials while on the fall leg they lived on side trusses and focused on the runway and thrust as well as aerials,”

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Iceland - Lava Tunnel is a spectacular lava tube tunnel - one of the longest in Iceland at 1360m. Its majestic and intricate interior collage of colours and textures is the result of massive volcanic eruptions 5000 years ago.
At the entrance, three openings in the ceiling create columns of light, while at the end, it splits into three smaller tunnels all equally imbibed with natural beauty.
All these geological masterworks are now releveled by a creative lighting installation designed by Agust Gunnlaugsson, senior lighting designer at Oslo, Norway and Reykjavik, Iceland based company EFLA Engineers, utilising 100 Anolis ArcSource LED fixtures.
The tunnel’s proximity to Icelandic capital Reykjavik had made it popular with visitors for some time, so much so that in 2016, it was closed due to vandalism, littering and health and safety concerns.
(Jim Evans)

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Croatia - HUST has installed over 1,000 Apart and Community loudspeakers as part of new audio and video systems at the Valamar Girandella Resort. The complex, located in Rabac on the Adriatic coast of northern Croatia, comprises the Girandella Family Hotel, the Girandella Maro Suites - Kinderhotel, the Girandella adult hotel, the Girandella Premium Villas, the Bellevue hotel and the Sundance Beach Club.
In the system design, HUST chose Apart loudspeakers for background music zones, while Community loudspeakers were used for AV and conferencing and in the pool areas where all-weather capability was essential. To ensure maximum versatility, the complex has over 40 independent audio zones, which can be further divided into separate areas in several facilities. To provide this level of zoning, and control with ease of use, HUST installed a Biamp TesiraFORTÉ system with Tesira T

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USA - My Bloody Valentine has a well-earned reputation as one of the loudest bands on the road. Faced with the problem of how to mix at the group’s excessive levels without doing long-term damage to his own hearing, FOH engineer Philip J. Harvey found a solution: Sensaphonics 3D AARO in-ears with Active Ambient technology.
“The fans get free earplugs with their tickets, but I’m out there every night and definitely at risk,” notes the Amsterdam-based engineer. “I’ve tried everything, including regular IEMs and custom earplugs, but the 3D system is really the only thing that lets me do my job effectively. It’s basically replaced my headphones out at FOH.”
My Bloody Valentine shows hit 110 dB and can sometimes exceed 120 dBA SPL towards the end of the show. “It’s sort of a trademark for the band, and definitely part of my job description,” says Harve

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Switzerland - Powersoft amplification has been selected as a key component in the newly installed audio system at Roadhouse Luzern - a bustling venue at the heart of the city’s party scene.
Roadhouse hosts jam sessions, live concerts, special events and parties. The venue originally sought a company to perform a general service on its existing audio setup, in addition to replacing a handful of defective or outdated components. After an exhaustive inventory - and with the future in mind - it became clear that a more comprehensive overhaul was the way to go.
Swiss company Skuma AG - a sound reinforcement specialist with over 40 years of experience - was awarded the contract for its Dante-capable overall concept, with the Powersoft gear distributed by Go Wild AG.
During the implementation period, the venue’s restaurant was to stay open seven days-a-week, with

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UK - SXS Events recently used Current RMS’ Open API to create a number of integrations to streamline workflow. The Open API is available for any of their software users to access and build with, for them to develop exciting and useful integrations that utilise their data within Current RMS.
Established in 1998, UK-based SXS Events specialises in event production and dry hire, and has grown to be a multi-million pound event production company. Using the Current RMS Open API, they created X Hire, a platform for their clients to view products directly on their website and hire them. Built to work alongside their normal website, this space allows them to pull across products and key information from Current RMS and onto a platform their new and existing clients can easily access and view.
“The website is a great tool for both the office team and clients. Instead of t

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Denmark - Popular Danish band Nephew reunited this year after a four-year hiatus, announcing two major gigs in October 2018 at the Jyske Bank Boxen Arena in Herning and the Royal Arena in Copenhagen. Over 30,000 tickets sold out in a day.
Lighting designer Theis Wemuth of design company Create This was tasked with the production design - lighting, video and set - for the shows. He specified 149 x Robe MegaPointes as the main moving light fixtures.
The fixtures were chosen for their multifunctionality and brightness which Wemuth knew would be a perfect complement and contrast to the 420sq.m widescreen video backdrop that was central to the look and aesthetics of the stage.
Eight BMFL Spots were on the front truss, six working as remote follow spots in conjunction with six Robe RoboSpot systems, together with other lights, all of which were supplied by Copenhagen-b

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USA - The new 200,000sq.ft Texas Live! entertainment complex features an array of dining, live music, and other entertainment options - and, next year, the first Live! by Loews boutique hotel.
Backed by the Texas Rangers and City of Arlington, among others, the $250m complex recently celebrated its grand opening, an event heard loud and clear via Kara and Kiva II systems in two of its primary performance spaces networked via AVB and processed by the Lone Star State’s first installed P1 digital audio processor.
The performance venues include a 5,000-capacity outdoor event pavilion, Arlington Backyard, and the Live! Arena, a 35,000sq.ft, two-level concert and festival space featuring a gourmet burger restaurant owned by Dallas Cowboys icon Troy Aikman. Both venues now sport L-Acoustics systems specified and designed by Las Vegas-based consultant Coherent Design, instal
  1. Robe in the Prime Circle
  2. W-DMX in control at Novomatic Forum in Vienna
  3. Merging Technologies lands in Paradise City
  4. Imogen Heap goes global with dLive
  5. Luminex debuts AVB at Roskilde Festival
  6. MLA makes its mark at Foynhagen
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