USA - Elation once again had a presence on the Kaaboo festival as lighting designers Chris Lisle and Erik Parker turned to the LED-based Platinum 1200 Wash moving head to light headlining acts Foo Fighters, Imagine Dragons and Katy Perry on the main Sunset Cliffs stage.
Lisle and Parker used 12 Platinum 1200 Wash fixtures - each housing 19 x 65W LEDs with wide zoom - spread out across the mid-stage and upstage trusses primarily for general stage wash. “It’s hard to compete with the sun of course, but even during daylight they were able to lay some base colour and show up on t

UK - Adlib was the audio supplier for the Giant Spectacular show staged in Liverpool, produced by the street and outdoor theatre company Royal de Luxe.
The extravaganza attracted an estimated 1.3m people to the city centre over the weekend of 4-7 October to see this tale of epic proportions, and the fate of the much-loved oversized marionette puppets unfold. Characters comprised The Explorer, the Little Boy Giant, his dog Xolo, and a surprise appearance by the Little Girl, who re-entered the story on the Sunday for the finale.
It was the third Liverpool Giant Spect

Europe - Lights Control Rigging (LCR) has provided 20 Chroma-Q Color Force II fixtures for Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm Tour, to create a spectacular back wall wash.
The set design for the show features five individual cyc panels spaced apart, which together display the Silent Alarm album artwork. Color Force II LED battens at the top and bottom of each panel flooded the back of the stage in vibrant colour, with the units' strobe effects used during some of the faster paced songs.
LD Ryan Hopkins, who's also a director of LCR, comments: “It was great to have o

South Africa - Encounter Christian Church is a 600-seat church based on the second floor of a shopping centre in Centurion, South Africa. While looking for solutions to expand on their current audio system, the church met up with DWR Distribution, who recommended Quest and DiGiCo to accommodate the growing ministry and worship team.
Positioned on the second floor of a shopping centre in a residential area, the sound levels had to be considered. “We replaced the entire sound system with the Quest range of loudspeakers and amplifiers,” explains Kyle Robson from DWR. “The exis

USA - The Dave Matthews Band (DMB) is on the road again in the USA promoting their latest album Come Tomorrow  with another visually provocative production design by Fenton Williams.
Fenton combined creative energies with Aaron Stinebrink from lighting rental specialist TMS - also the tour’s lighting vendor - on the lighting design, and the pair specified over 100 Robe fixtures to be at the heart of the show.
Forty MegaPointes, 48 x Spikies, 16 x BMFL WashBeams and 10 x BMFL Spots are helping to create the vibes for this highly successful tour.
Fenton has wor

Iceland - AV equipment supplier HljóðX recently deployed Harman Professional Solutions audio systems and lighting solutions at Iceland's Secret Solstice music festival, including a JBL VTX line array system, Crown amplifiers, Soundcraft digital mixing consoles and Martin lighting fixtures.
Held in Reykjavík during a period of 24-hour sunlight in the Arctic Circle, the annual music festival features non-stop performances across four outdoor stages and an indoor club venue. Festival organisers hired HljóðX to provide sound and lighting systems for all five venues that could acc

Poland - Bazyliszek, a new interactive dark ride situated in the Magical Forest zone of Poland’s largest theme park, Legendia, was recently opened to the public as part of a comprehensive rebranding and overhaul. Having collaborated once before on the Antwerp Comics Station theme park, the ride’s designers, Alterface, brought in Belgian design studio Painting with Light to help create a thrilling visual backdrop for Bazyliszek.
Drawing on their wealth of experience in the field of theatrical lighting, Painting with Light specified 80 Chauvet Professional mini ERS-style Ovatio

UK/USA - Stereophonics released their 10th album last year, Scream Above the Sounds, which comes almost 20 years after the Welsh rockers first stormed the BRITs back in 1998 and won the award for British Breakthrough Act. The band's longevity speaks for itself: eight million albums sold in the UK alone, six number one records, a BRIT Award, three Kerrang! Awards, a pair of Q Awards, and 40 singles to their name.
On the road, Harm Schopman is looking after frontman Kelly Jones and co. from side-stage using his trusted DiGiCo console, supplied by rental company Capital Sound.

Germany - Under the catch-line All you need to be, Nature One called its dance-loving audience to the Pydna former rocket base in Hunsrück between 3-5 August. As in previous years, over 50,000 people joined the pilgrimage, engaging in four days and three nights of pure EDM fever, with 350 acts participating on a total of 23 floors.
For the largest floor - the Open Air Floor - lighting designer Thomas Gerdon of Gerdon design produced the entire visual concept. Gerdon, who has been working on various floors of Nature One since 2003, faced a fundamental change this year: for

USA - As part of the LA-based Legends Football League, the Nashville Knights are a 7-on-7, tackle football team that incorporated into the league in 2018. Playing their inaugural season in the Nashville Municipal Auditorium, the Knights wanted to offer an in-game experience that would create a lasting connection with their fans.
Needing to supplement the production gear inside the multi-purpose event venue, the Knights worked with Elite Multimedia Productions who oversaw a complete game-day audio, video and lighting design.
“We try to design our in-game experience to be s

UK - Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall recently saw an Allen & Heath SQ-6 digital mixer installed to deliver the audio content of a significant work by Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera.
The piece (the title of which is an ever-increasing figure reflecting the number of people who migrated from one country to another last year, added to by the number of migrant deaths recorded so far this year) involves both a large heat-sensitive floor and sound design by electronic artist Steve Goodman (Kode9).
By using body heat and working with other visitors, a hidden portrait of

Poland - Design and installation company ARAM has outfitted a new e-sports studio in Poland with a flexible Elation lighting system. The studio, at Polsat television in Warsaw, is equipped with the latest in studio-optimised LED luminaires designed to provide players and viewers with the best e-sports experience, whether watching the event on TV, online or in person.
The custom Elation lighting solution includes everything from dynamic white-light LED array panels and high-quality white light ellipsoidal spots to full-colour batten, par and LED moving head luminaires that deliver

UK - Lighting designer Derek Jones utilised Chroma-Q’s Vista 3 lighting and media control system to deliver his lighting design for Sir Cliff Richard's recent tour celebrating 60 years in music.
With a career spanning 103 album releases, 123 single hits and the equivalent of 20 years spent in the UK charts, the 58-18=60th The Tour saw Sir Cliff play his greatest hits across six decades in some of the UK and Ireland's leading concert halls, including two nights at the Royal Albert Hall.
As a Vista user for nearly a decade, Jones was keen to utilise the next generatio

South Africa - Johannesburg’s Joburg Theatre has taken delivery of 10 Robe Robin 800 LEDWash units, supplied through DWR. The new lighting fixtures will complement vibrant productions being staged over the festive season including Snow White the fairest Panto in All the Land!, Helen O’Grady, Sati - Shivas Beloved and Mukokoli Live DVD recording.
“There has been no looking back since the theatre first started investing in Robin 800 LEDWash a few years ago," says Enos Ramoroko, technical manager at the theatre. "They have really worked well for us and we are pleased to

UK - Film and TV crewing specialist Studioforce was appointed by Shiver, an arm of ITV Studios, to support the delivery of this year’s Pride of Britain Awards.
The event was held at the Grosvenor House Hotel on 29 October and Studioforce provided stage hands, lighting technicians, carpenters, scenic supervisors, scenic artists and followspot operators.
The company worked closely with Shiver’s freelance production designer Paul Houston, supplying a team of experienced freelancers to work alongside the lighting and set design teams to create the Pride of Britain Awards’

USA - Honouring the intentions of composer Leonard Bernstein, the artistic director of the Brevard Music Centre Summer Music Festival, Keith Lockhart, set himself a task: to capture the pioneering spirit of a classic performance in a contemporary environment. Composed for the 1971 inauguration of the Kennedy Centre, Bernstein’s Mass created an entirely new kind of liturgy in both its content and technology - using quadraphonic sound.
“Keith is a renowned conductor, not least as principal conductor of the Boston Pops. He had performed the Bernstein Mass once befor

USA - The Franklin Theatre first opened as a cinema in the summer of 1937, when moviegoers could see a double feature and cap the evening with an ice cream sundae on a Norman Rockwell-esque Main Street. 70 years later, the theatre underwent an $8m renovation and reopened in 2011 as the premier music and event venue in Franklin, a suburb of Nashville that is home to nearly as many musicians as Music City itself is.
Seven years later, the venue has installed a DiGiCo SD12 digital console at front of house. Paired with a D2-Rack, the desk was supplied and installed in mid-August by D

Belgium - Once every two years, Brussels’ Grand Place becomes even more breath-taking as its cobblestone surface is transformed into a magnificent carpet of colour by over a half million flowers. Artfully arranged in an intricate design, the floral panorama flows gracefully, softening the gilded baroque buildings that surround it to create a vista of almost mythical beauty.
Like most enchanting creations that seem to spring forth naturally, the Biannual Flower Carpet at the Grand Place is in reality the result of intensive planning and hard work. In 2018, a team of 200 voluntee

USA - “Versatile, sexy, bold, and effective” is how BML-Blackbird’s lighting designer and director Chris Ragan describes his work at Lockn’ Festival, for which he used a combination of cyan, purple and amber lighting.
Ragan spec’d 34 Robe BMLF Spots, 38 Robe Spiiders, 24 Robe Mega Pointes, 14 Robe Color Strobes, 10 Mac Vipers, 26 Chauvet Rogue FxB, and 36 LED par - all provided by BML-Blackbird.
“I thought the Robe ColorStrobes were a powerful fixture. It was my first time using them and I was pretty impressed. And, of course the Mega Pointes are great for the

USA - When planning for their current tour in support of their sixth studio album, Attention Attention, hard rock band Shinedown asked their lighting designer Carter Fulghum for more saturated colours and darker looks.
Fulghum created a deeply evocative lightshow with low backlight and sidelight. To balance the penetrating mood created by these fixtures, he added intensity with the help of 38 Chauvet Professional Rogue RH1 Hybrid fixtures supplied by Bandit Lites.
Flying the 330W moving beam/spot fixtures on four 8ft x 9ft diamond-shaped pods, Fulghum is using them f

Spain - Nexo’s STM Series made a special kind of debut in Spain as audio production company BTM Sound in Girona completed its first events with PA systems featuring its newly-purchased STM M46 main cabinets.
An early adopter of Nexo’s modular line array concept and design, BTM Sound initially set up its STM Series in 2014 using the smaller STM M28 double-8” cabinet as the main module, pairing them with the STM B112 bass and S118 subs. Last year, the company increased its cabinet count by adding M28 cabinets in both 90° and 120° versions.
After four successful years s

UK - When Capital Sound successfully responded to a tender document issued by production manager Simon Barrington (Sibar Production & Design) for the ECS Season 5 finals, Capital project manager, Robin Conway won the bid by proposing Martin Audio’s MLA loudspeaker array. “Such a hi-tech event as ECS required an equally hi-tech loudspeaker solution,” he rationalised.
That was back in June at the SSE Arena, when the venue, reduced to half size for the preliminary round, was serviced by two single hangs of 11 MLA enclosures. September saw the organisers of ECS, FACEIT, pres

Austria - Austrian LD Martin Kames and his crew at Martinkames.com have worked with a number of prominent musicians, including Hatebreed, Kreator, Machine Head, Parkway Drive, Heaven Shall Burn and David Hasselhoff.
In 2017, Kames took his passion for blending music and light a step further, when he teamed up with guitarist Bernth Brodträger to form CueStack, a band that “intrepidly bridges the gap between sight and sound”. With Brodträger on the guitar, Kames on synths and both sharing vocals, CueStack serves up a techno-driven blend of metal and electronic music that’s

UK - Ayrton’s Ghibli LED spot luminaire made its opera debut at the Garsington Opera Festival.
Founded in 1989, the annual Garsington Opera Festival takes place over seven weeks in June and July at the Wormsley Estate, home of the Getty family, amid the beautiful natural setting of the Buckinghamshire countryside.
Garsington Opera is renowned for the quality of its productions, and engages the very best performers and musicians from around the world. It is important, therefore, to match this quality of performance with the quality of the production and equipment.

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