UK - Arena Birmingham has offered audio description to its visitors for the first time at Marvel Universe LIVE!.
Following a request from a customer whose sons are visually impaired, Arena Birmingham partnered with VocalEyes to offer audio description of the action-packed show. The describers, who saw an earlier performance of the show and prepared a script, were able to offer the real-time description via headsets, making the show more accessible to those with all levels of visual impairment.
The describer’s audio is broadcast using a digital radio system, ensuring a good quality reception with a range of between 50-100m.
Claire Eccles, who wrote in to the Arena to request audio description, says: “It meant so much to my family that we were able to enjoy Marvel Universe LIVE! with audio description. My sons are both severely visually impaired and love coming to live events, but it’s often hard for them to work out what’s going on. I try my best to explain but it’s difficult.
“The smiles when they put the headsets on said it all. They can’t stop talking about the fantastic time they had - it made such a difference to their experience. I can only hope more local venues will follow suit.”
Emma Ball, operations manager at Arena Birmingham, says: “Here at Arena Birmingham and Resorts World Arena, we put a relentless focus on ensuring our world-class entertainment is as accessible as possible for our broad and varied audiences. Over the past year we’ve worked hard to introduce British sign language interpreters to
UK - Pearce Hire was selected by the Royal Variety Charity as the sole contractor for the Royal Variety Performance post-show party.
With the show taking place at the London Palladium, the after-party took place at the Intercontinental Hotel Park Lane where Pearce Hire’s project manager Jake Vernum and the Pearce Hire team were loading in a full production package including lighting, sound, AV and cameras.
Giles Cooper of Giles Cooper Entertainment is the chairman of the Royal Variety Charity, and executive producer of the Royal Variety Performance and has been in this post for the past 14 years. He states: “My working relationship with Pearce Hire is long-standing as they are our main power and lighting suppliers on a year-on-year basis for many outdoor summer events run by my own company GCE LIVE, and so I know the Pearce Hire team to be amongst the best in the business. I was delighted when the opportunity came up to work with them in my capacity as chairman of the Royal Variety Charity.”
The Pearce Hire team was given full creative control of the room with a brief to provide a high-end feel with colour and texture throughout the room, which could translate easily into lighting for a live band performance. The package included Robe Pointes, Robe LEDBeam 150s, Martin ERA 300 Profiles, and GLP JDC1 Strobes, all operated by a Chamsys MQ100 and playback wing.
The multifunctional lighting package also included CORE Lighting uplighters and the overall impact of the lighting rig was a high-end feel throughout the hotel ballroom over dinner
USA - Robert Morris University is a private institution tucked into the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that instructs close to 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Although a relative latecomer to the scene, RMU’s men’s and women’s Colonials sports teams have made up for lost time, winning 45 league championships since joining the NCAA Division I in 1976.
In support of its successful athletic programmes, RMU raised private funds to construct the new UPMC Events Centre, which includes the Peoples Court, a 4,000-seat arena for men’s and women’s basketball and women’s volleyball, an auxiliary gym, and other event and conference spaces. Local AV integration firm Horizon Information Services worked with the architect to design and install a highly-efficient, and thus value-engineered, sound reinforcement system that uses Danley Sound Labs’ patented point-source loudspeaker and subwoofer technologies to deliver highly-intelligible sound even at extreme SPLs.
“We reached out to the architect, Ross Bianco, to offer our services,” explains Jonathan Kaiser, system design and engineering specialist at Horizon. “At around the same time, RMU reached out to the architect and requested that they partner with us. As a result, we were able to get involved early and influence some of the decisions that would impact the sound reinforcement system.”
Kaiser continues: “We went with Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers, subwoofers, and amplifiers/DSP because of their very favourable cost-to-performance ratio. Danley’s patented point-source
USA - Like many passengers on the flight from Nashville to New York, Landon Bloss donned headphones soon after take off. He wasn’t listening purely for pleasure though. Instead, he was taking a crash course in the music of Billy Currington.
“I was on a load out when I received a call from Gene Jung, Billy’s PM, saying that they needed a LD to fly out the next day to start running his show immediately,” recalls Bloss. “They booked me a flight and off I went. Of course, I knew Billy’s music, but I really wanted to get deep into it, so on went my headphones.”
Bloss proved to be a quick study. Taking over the rig originally designed by Ian Saunders, he supported Currington’s 90-minute set on the star’s Stay Up Til Sun tour with an intense, fast-moving lightshow that showered a rainbow of colours on the stage. Helping him in this endeavour was a collection of Rogue R2 Wash fixtures supplied by 4Wall Nashville.
Featuring six truss fingers that splayed over the width of the stage, the lighting design not only covered a wide area, it also afforded a lot of opportunities to change up the looks of the show by emphasizing different sections of the set. The Rogue R2 Wash fixtures were hung two apiece on each of the truss fingers.
“I had used Chauvet Professional Mavericks before and was impressed with their output,” says Bloss. “On this tour, the Rogues impressed me too. They did an amazing job at being multi-faceted, which helped a lot on this tour. They excelled as a wash for painting colour on the band members. They al
Germany - Fans of Seeed have had to wait a long time for a new record and tour from the 11-piece Berlin-based dancehall and reggae ensemble. In fact, almost a year was spent even before the completion of this disc in the preparation. The design collective HELL, based around Nik Evers, Timo Martens and Philip Hillers, took care of the lighting, stage and content design for the tour, in support of the current album, BAM BAM.
"One year of preparation sounds like a long time ago," states Nik Evers, but this is put into perspective very quickly when considering the complexity of the design process, which included an intense rethink at different stages along the way. Timo Martens also explains the idea behind it. “A Seeed concert is very special in its own way,” he says. “The show's central elements in the stage design were two oversized box towers, with the band risers positioned between them.
“With a neon installation on the towers the band risers becoming a connective system, and this very clearly defined neon installation underlined the design of the set. To create the clear lines of the set, a lighting system had to be created that was very diffuse so as not to compete with the neon installation. The resulting neon and a matrix of powerful backlights formed the basis for a brilliant and impressive show with a great deal of impact.”
In the centre of this matrix, there is a further narrow, supplementary neon installation. "One of our first ideas was to use the impression X4 Bars from GLP," says Nik Evers. "I've enjoyed working with the
Hungary - A plethora of Ayrton lighting fixtures provided striking visual impact on the popular televised music contest, SztárbanSztár Leszek (In the Star, I’ll be the Star), on Hungary’s Tv2 television channel last month.
Lighting designer, Balázs Varga, chose Ayrton Khamsin-TC, MagicBlade-R and MagicDot-XT to delineate the complex outlines of the stage for this visual extravaganza. Balázs Varga was assisted by Bálint Marafkó, CEO and Chief LD at television and film lighting specialists, Two Men’s Show, which provided the fixtures, which were supplied by Gábor Kele, executive director of Lisys-Project, Ayrton’s exclusive distributor for Hungary.
Twenty-four MagicBlade-R fixtures were rigged on upstage trusses to outline the stylised shape of the performance area and provide a ‘top shutter’ for the cameras, with MagicBlade-R’s svelte linear shape proving an ideal, ever-changing frame for the core stage design.
Overhead and onstage, 50 MagicDot-XT were used to populate a circular truss above the main stage, and sited at stage level around the curved upper band deck. “The MagicDot fits very well into the scenery because of its small body size,” says Balázs Varga. “Because of this, many MagicDots can be stacked next to each other - the luminaires in the upper circle were almost touching each other - so running an effect is very impressive. The goal here was to give an overhead lock to the low-level cameras, but because the MagicDots were also visible on the ground and on the columns, we were able to use them a
Canada - Equipson’s Work Pro LS-Node RDM/DMX streaming device played a key role in ensuring the success of URA: A Celebration of Water, a multimedia experience installed along a one-kilometre stretch of coastline in Québec, Canada.
Designed by cadabra, the creative division of AV integration company XYZ Cultural Technology, URA is open throughout the summer and operates in both daylight and evening hours in Chandler, a place where the sea is both symbolically and economically important.
URA visitors are transported into a timeless maritime universe where they experience storms, shipwrecks, equinox high tides and even life at the bottom of the ocean with a chance to meet a host of sea creatures including a black whale. Guided by the voice of Lamia, a fantastical being descended from Basque legend, visitors spend an hour walking through eight storytelling stations where they are entertained and educated by a combination of vivid scenery and cutting-edge technology.
cadabra and XYZ worked closely with Equipson's Canadian distributor AVL Media Group to identify the right audio, video and lighting technology for this project. For seamless management of the installation's lighting, AVL recommended WORK PRO LS-Node2 DMX streamers, one of which was positioned at each of the eight stations.
"LS-Node2 brings DMX to between four and 10 different spotlights at each location," says Garou Blancan (pictured), cadabra's lighting designer for URA. "Each station also has a video projector for video mapping and a number of loudspeakers positioned aroun
Australia - Following the successful integration of the largest TiMax TrackerD4 system to date into the TiMax SoundHub-driven spatial audio reinforcement system of The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo (see LSi December 2019 for more on this), the sound and logistical teams behind the event have also introduced its stage-tracking capabilities during its recent events in Sydney.
Staged in the ANZ Olympic Stadium, the four ‘super-sized’ shows performed to a Sydney audience which featured over 1500 international performers. The event was scaled up at every level to accommodate a smaller number of shows in a much larger arena.
The ANZ stadium presented a big step up for the team behind the Tattoo and therefore a new challenge with sound. Sound designer, Seb Frost, explains that this event was far bigger than anything previously attempted. “We pushed the TiMax TrackerD4 system to the limits of its current capabilities because the distance involved was so extreme.” For perspective the entire Edinburgh Castle site would fit onto the field of the stadium.
A base performance area of 70m by 100m, was punctuated by 16 TiMax TrackerD4 sensors positioned on poles attached to the field of play loudspeakers. The pre-installed house speaker system supplemented the on-field loudspeaker system and helped to cover the upper levels of the stadium seating. Two hundred loudspeakers in total were fed by
UK - Green Hippo’s Hippotizer media servers were behind an ambitious and hauntingly atmospheric son et lumière event to celebrate Halloween in the historic city of York. Staged over three nights in two of the city’s picturesque locations - Castle Museum and Library Square - the project was the result of a collaboration between York BID (Business Improvement District) and Polestar Productions.
The event employed Karst+ Media Servers from Green Hippo and Epson 1755 projectors, supplied by Stage Sound Services and operated by Steve Jackson of InFocusAV, to deliver the spooky media creations designed by Polestar Productions. The challenges of the project will be familiar to many. “Outdoors, in the UK, at the end of October!” summarised Jackson, adding, “On top of that, the limited setup and programming time was an additional pressure.”
Despite the inherent difficulties, Castle Museum and Library Square were temporarily transformed by sound, light and dynamic projections, with content including a suitable line-up of ghosts, ghouls and monsters. Helping the projections hit their marks were MH11L Mirror Heads from Dynamic Projection Institute, in their first large-scale use in the UK.
Driving all the content and streamlining the programming, management and control of the media were the Karst+ Media Servers. “The Hippotizer Timeline component and the MultiController were really useful,” says Jackson. “We programmed the show in a Timeline, with the MultiController component running Art-Net output to control the Mirror Head units.”
Spain - In a move to a more sustainable future, the Teatro Calderón has chosen to upgrade its lighting systems with ETC products, supplied by the company’s dealer in Spain, Stonex.
Based in Valladolid, the Teatro Calderón has long been recognised as one of the best theatres in the country. It was decided that over the next few years the theatre will renew its lighting equipment in order to allow both LED and conventional luminaires to work together as effectively as possible. In order to do this, the Calderón chose ETC’s power control and entertainment consoles.
ETC’s Sensor3 power control system and ThruPower modules were installed into the theatre, replacing a Smartrack model which was in place for the previous 20 years. The Teatro Calderón now has five Sensor3 ESR3AFN-48 power control racks, filled with ETR15AFR and ETR25AFR ThruPower modules, in addition to Net3 Conductor and Concert to manage the network, and report any faults.
Gio and Ion XE console desks were also selected to control the stage lighting in the theatre. The Eos family consoles offer powerful programming and endless options of color control in an intuitive and simple format. In addition to this, the theatre added an ETCpad which conveniently allows remote control of the luminaires and acts as an accessory for any ETC lighting system.
With the upgrade of ETC lighting equipment, the Teatro Calderón aims to become a more sustainable venue in favour of green technology, that will ultimately reduce its energy costs by up to 80%.
(Jim Evans)
South Africa - As the year draws to a close, AV Unlimited and 24 Carrots Event Design helped a leading financial services provider remind its staff that there is still a lot of fun to be had at its year-end function, held at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg.
Event manager at 24 Carrots Event Design, Mase Langa explains that the client’s brief was fairly simple - they wanted their team to have some fun. “The main idea was to deliver an event that was, above all else, about having fun after a tough year. We came up with a design that focused on colour, and the joy and elation that vibrant colour can illicit.”
The team at 24 Carrots Event Design provided the client with some renders, which showed a playful set that was designed to inspire a sense of play and whimsy. “We introduced colour and playfulness though the set, decor and lighting, and the response that we received was amazing. The client was blown away at how closely we delivered on the pre-show renders that we provided, and experienced that special magic associated with seeing their vision being realised.”
“The event was all about having fun and seasoned set designer, Dewet Meyer of JDM Unlimited delivered a highly creative set for the event,” says joint partner at AV Unlimited Guillaume Ducray.
AV Unlimited’s Renaldo van den Berg brought the light to the party and used a wide range of LED fixtures to paint the space with colour. “I used a whole lot of LED fixtures, including parcans and movers, to colour this event beautiful,” says Renaldo. “From a co
South Korea - Yeon Moo Dae Church is a church housed within a Korean Army training centre that draws from a mix of traditional and modern Christian influence. The construction of the church took 10 years to complete as it relied upon singular donations from nearly 10,000 individuals, over 600 Christian community churches and just about 600 church-related organisations.
Most recently, the church built a new sanctuary with a seating capacity that can welcome its 6,000-strong congregation. The room itself measures a generous 66m wide by 55m deep with a ceiling height of 15m. After visiting other large sanctuaries and listening to their sound systems the church committee decided that Clair Brothers was the solution for their audio requirements.
One of the locations the committee visited, the Joyful Church Training Centre, has the Clair Brothers CAT215 loudspeaker system installed. Following discussions about which combination of speakers would be best for the specific space at Yeon Moo Dae, the group calculated, along with local consultants from Clair Brothers, that the C15 “worked perfectly” in this church’s wide, open space.
The decision was made to order and install 16 C15s along with a host of other Clair Brothers gear including 12 iS218 subs, 40 kiTCurve12s for stage-fills, outer-fills and delays, eight 1AM+ and two 1.5AMs as stage monitors.
The mixing console installed was the Solid State Logic L-200. J.J. Song - head of Korean business development at Clair Brothers, comments: “The selection of the kiTCurves was made because of their
USA - Situated in the heart of New York’s Times Square, seven floors up amid the luxury of the new Edition boutique hotel, is nightclub and performance space Paradise Club. The ‘brainchild’ of Studio 54’s Ian Schrager and home to an immersive dinner theatre and modern-day cabaret called The Devouring: A Marriage of Heaven and Hell Paradise Club hosts an Elation Professional lighting rig specified by AVL design and integration firm Clair Solutions with input from Yossy Marquez of J. Marquez Consultants.
Paradise Club is a fully-immersive experience with an attention-grabbing starburst LED ceiling, depth-producing upstage video wall, enchanting décor, and atmosphere-generating dynamic lighting system. Following the multi-sensory Devouring cabaret show, performed by resident artist company House of Yes, the space transforms into a colourful nightclub with DJs spinning until the early hours.
Clair Solutions served as audio/video/lighting/control consultant and integrator on the comprehensive Times Square Edition project, which included several spaces around the boutique hotel. Michelle Caron of Clair Solutions was the performance lighting system designer and project manager for the AVL system in the building and designed the theatrical lighting and control for the 200-seat Paradise Club.
Caron says she sought flexible lighting fixtures to meet the artistic needs of many types of artists. She chose an Elation lighting system of Artiste DaVinci LED moving spots, Fuze Wash Z350 LED moving head washes, SixPar 200 LED PAR lights, and S
USA - A light rain was falling intermittently on the July evening when Citizen Cope took the stage at the Stony Creek Brewery, an outdoor music venue just off the Long Island Sound. The weather didn’t affect the large crowd that turned out to see the widely acclaimed singer-song writer who was in the middle a national tour in support of his Helicopters and Heroin album. It did however, present his lighting designer, Peter Spadaro III with an inspiration.
Seeing the mist roll in off the sea on a drizzly night, Spadaro directed his rig’s Chauvet Professional Maverick MK1 Hybrid fixtures into the crowd. Using the natural elements as a giant hazer, he filled the air around the stage with an immersive panorama of refracted light and patterns.
“The music and the atmosphere of a venue really dictate my design, so I keep things free flowing,” says Spadaro. “During this show there was some rain, and the air was nice and thick, so I was able to take advantage of the natural haze hanging in front of the stage by directing light out into the audience, even though it was still a bit bright outside. This allowed me to utilize a few positions I normally wouldn’t be able to use during daylight hours.”
By adjusting his show to its environment, Spadaro not only reflected Cope’s music, he also mirrored his client’s creative philosophy.
“Working with Cope keeps me on my toes, and calls for me to be very versatile,” continues Spadaro, who has been lighting the artist since February. “I allow the beauty of his songs to drive the li
UK - London-based Capital Sound, part of the newly-formed Solotech UK Group, has been successfully deploying its selection of Outline systems and processors with a diverse range of clients over the last few years.
From the multi-national classical crossover vocal group Il Divo to Welsh rocker Kelly Jones, via the polished pop of Will Young to the recreation of Pink Floyd’s stadium shows by The Australian Pink Floyd, Capital’s Outline systems have consistently delivered the goods.
James Lawford of Outline’s UK distributor CUK Audio remarks: “Tours equipped with Capital Sound’s Superfly / Mantas 28 combination have been able to play a diverse range of venues, from arenas such as Arena Birmingham and Glasgow’s SSE Hydro, to medium-sized spaces such as Ipswich’s Regent Theatre and Stoke on Trent’s Victoria Hall, each time using the same system in different combinations without having to have a second rig available.
“Outline’s lightweight enclosures enable system technicians to deploy each system as desired; for example a full hang of 16 Superfly in the New Theatre Oxford for Will Young, whilst Nick Boulton, system technician for Kelly Jones with Dave Roden at FOH, chose to deploy a mixed hang of eight Superfly and three Mantas 28 underneath in the same venue just a few weeks previously.
“Mark Edwards from TAPFS has settled on two setups depending on location, with either a 14+3 or 8+3 Superfly / Mantas 28 combination out front, with side-hangs to suit the circumstances. The 14+3 hang comes in at just 600KG and allows far gr
USA - Bandit Lites provided the lighting for Dave Koz’ Christmas tour, featuring Jonathan Butler, Melissa Manchester, Michael Lington and Chris Walker. Koz’s tour and newest album, Gifts of the Season, features a smorgasbord of styles, ranging from an electronic rendition of Winter Wonderland, a whimsical It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas as well as an emotional Mary Did You Know and powerful original song from Koz, A Prayer for Peace.
“As we sat down to begin concepting the production design, we knew that it needed to be versatile in creating moments for each of the emotions that the band is creating audibly,” explains lighting designer Erik Parker of Chris Lisle Lighting Design.
To create the moments, Parker knew the rig would need to be outfitted with well-rounded fixtures that would also integrate with the video elements as they would all share a truss. Coupled with that flexibility would be the need to fit the entire production into a single truck and bus trailer.
Parker crafted an expansive look utilising just three fixtures: The GLP X4S on the upstage and downstage edge lighting the backdrop, the band and some extra flash, Martin MAC Auras on the side to light the band and the main workhorse of the rig, the Elation Smarty Hybrid.
“The band is some of the best musicians, the artists were incredible, and I think we were able to truly bring the music to life,” Parker says. “We programmed as a team; I programmed a few songs along with Chris Lisle, Terese Fensler and Landon Blo
Europe - Coordinating with Stefan Mehnert of Rammstein’s management and production director Nicolai Sabottka as well as the production’s design teams, Solotech and SSE Audio provided the audio and video gear and services for the German industrial metal band’s 2019 stadium tour.
Solotech’s Holger Schader, senior consultant, concert touring and special events for the Live Productions division oversaw the account for Solotech and SSE Audio.
The sold-out European stadium tour supported the release of the band’s seventh album, which is the first Rammstein studio album in a decade.
The tour’s audio spec, put together by Rammstein´s longtime FOH engineer Olsen Involtini and systems engineer Andreas Vater, called for L-Acoustics speakers and Avid Venue control.
Assisting Vater was SSE audio crew Chief Nick Pain, and audio technician Nils Knecht, who oversaw the L-Acoustics’ Soundvision system and system alignment.
The control system for FOH consisted of two Avid Venue S6L systems including two S6L-32D control surfaces; two Avid Venue E6L-192 Engine for S6L; two Waves SoundGrid Server Extreme; and two Avid Venue Stage 64 stage boxes.
For the monitor system SSE Audio provided two S6L systems with matching components, which was similar to the FOH setup. To accommodate the different sized stadiums, the audio rig could be expanded. In the bigger cities production used up to four delay towers, and up to eight positions for roof delays with 12 L-Acoustics’ K2s to get rid of unwanted reflections.
The audio package’s full
UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) recently supplied tour and production management company Patchwork London with a Shure PSM 1000 wireless IEM system to provide monitor duties for the >25th Anniversary UK tour of Skunk Anansie.
Patchwork managing director, Steve White got in touch with Steve Eaton, sales executive in AC-ET’s Audio sales division after he was getting an increasing number of client requests for the Shure in-ear-monitoring system.
He comments: “We've had an increased number of enquiries for the PSM 1000, so when a three-month tour hire with Skunk Anansie came in, it seemed like a good time to expand our Shure stock. Prior to this, we had tried out wireless mic systems and Shure’s Axient system was the one which best suited our needs, so we decided to go with Shure across the board.”
The UK tour coincided with the release of a new live album marking the band’s 25th anniversary, and saw them perform sold-out shows in London, Manchester and Bristol, as well as several festival headline appearances. Extra dates were added in Brighton, Bournemouth, Cambridge, Leeds, Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham and Cardiff due to the high demand.
White adds: “It’s very important that our clients have access to high quality equipment in our hire stock, and which can be packaged for ease of transporting. Investments like the PSM 1000 means we are at the forefront of technology on stage, and being small enough to be racked in our Peli case system makes it extremely portable for any scale of tour.”
(Jim Evans)
Poland - The award-winning TurboRay fixture from High End Systems recently made its latest TV appearance on the 17th edition of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest (JESC, broadcast live from Arena Gliwice in Poland.
JESC is designed to draw people together from all over Europe and Australia through light entertainment and healthy competition. It’s an increasingly spectacular and technically complex event, transmitted live to millions of viewers. This year, 19 participants aged between 9 and 14 years old took to the stage to battle it out for the trophy.
The stage, designed by Giorgos Stylianou-Matsis, comprised a design featuring an eye-catching LED ribbon element symbolising floating kites. The ribbon gave the stage a spacious, light and simple design form. To complement the impressive stage design, a series of 26 TurboRay fixtures were positioned on stage and used in a variety of ways throughout the show.
With its radial diffusers bringing a distinctive appearance, and powerful LED system with multiple types of colour control, TurboRay offers a multitude of tools that make it ideal for events like this. “I needed a lighting fixture that would accentuate the decor on the stage,” says lighting crew head, Adam Tyska from TVP SA. “For this production and the short stature of the artists we have to operate cameras differently, and for wide shots we needed to fill a pretty large space. TurboRay units were a perfect fit for this, because in addition to their technical capabilities they look attractive in themselves.”
“It was great to ha
Norway - DJ and record producer, Alan Walker is currently out on his latest Aviation tour across China, India and Norway, along with an Allen & Heath dLive Wings system handling both FOH and monitor duties.
One of Norway’s biggest EDM music exports, Walker performs with various third-party software, as well as a live band and requires a complex setup. The engineers needed a small and lightweight system to fly around the world, which could also handle a high I/O count via several protocols, such as Waves SoundGrid, Dante and MADI in order to interface with third-party systems.
Supplied by audio production company, Sonic City AS, the FOH setup includes a dLive C1500 fitted with a Waves card for virtual sound check and multi-track recording, paired with a DM0 MixRack, which is equipped with a fibreACE card for the digital split and a Dante card to facilitate external plug-in processing through a DAW. A DX012 expander is also utilized for additional outputs at the FOH position, providing feeds to the light designer, VJ and laser operator.
FOH engineer (and Sonic City partner), Sondre Rosseland Sandhaug, comments, “We chose the dLive C1500 package as we needed a fly-rig with a really high channel count for this tour and the choice was ultimately, really simple. dLive provides everything we need; flexible routing, the Tie Lines feature, high-quality sound, reliability and an excellent range of I/O options.”
“The dLive system has worked very well on this tour and we’ve really pushed the system to its full potential, particularly in term
USA - Broadcasting globally in more than 150 countries and territories, World Poker Tour (WPT) has ignited the worldwide poker industry. WPT also hosts a number of high-profile corporate and VIP events throughout the year. Needing a design element that could accentuate the visual experience at each tournament and event, WPT global events manager Steve De Santis invested in reFLEXion LED video systems from Nashville-based PixelFLEX.
“WPT features a lot of professional and recreational players we see often who look for comfortability and reliability with tournament structures they trust from people they recognise and know,” says De Santis. “We have a footprint on six continents and our players love the quality and consistency of our events.”
Knowing the level of trust and commitment shown by the players, De Santis wanted to ensure that each event provided the most engaging gaming experience. Having previously relied upon standard graphic displays to help create the ideal environment, he now wanted to heighten the creative potential of the visual displays to match the excitement around each tournament.
“As part of our event presentation and playing environment, we had been using older graphic kiosks for quite some time which really was the impetus for our search,” continues De Santis. “As an innovator in the game of poker, WPT wanted something that was a bit more impactful and most importantly to our tour management personnel, portable. We needed a technology solution easy to transport and able to deliver a unique visual impact.”
The Netherlands - ADJ lighting and effects equipment was used exclusively to create the party atmosphere in the Tiroler tent at this summer’s vast Zwarte Cross festival in the Netherlands. Vizi CMY300 moving heads, 12P HEX IP pars and Encore FR150Z Frenels were all part of the package that illuminated the line-up of live acts performing in the tent across the four-day event.
The Zwarte Cross Festival, which takes place each year in the Dutch town of Lichtenvoorde, is the largest paid festival in the Netherlands. This event combines live music, theatre and stunt spectaculars with the biggest motocross event in the world. This year, it attracted 220,000 visitors and featured more than 150 bands and 1000 theatre artists performing across a variety of themed stages and tents. A popular regular fixture of the festival is the Tiroler tent, which is an Oktoberfest-themed area that features traditional folk musicians from across the Netherlands, Germany and Austria.
Ruud Pellemans, owner of Dutch production company TEC Audio, has worked on the Tiroler tent for a number of years. However, for the 2019 edition of the festival, his company took care of all the area’s technical requirements for the first time. Working on behalf of the festival’s overall technical supplier, Purple Group, TEC Audio were responsible for supplying, as well as operating, all of the audio and lighting equipment. ADJ fixtures were used exclusively for illumination, with over 50 units deployed to provide both a concert lightshow on the stage and atmospheric lighting throughout the tent
Spain - Singer Aitana first gained recognition in 2017 as runner-up of the Spanish reality TV music talent competition Operación Triunfo and she has enjoyed popularity and a number of hits ever since.
This past summer, the 20-year old singer released her debut album, Spoiler, which topped the Spanish charts, then launched her much-anticipated Play tour with lighting design by SomosLuz, a Barcelona-based design studio who worked with Brutal Events on the creative process. SomosLuz turned to the Elation Rayzor 760 LED moving head to create a special design element for the show - four upstage Play buttons used for dynamic beams, eye candy looks and other special effects.
Describing the show’s visual look, the design studio states: “The central element of the design is an inverted pyramidal LED screen with a staircase, which is used as a podium for choreography and spectacular entrances of the artist. It is surrounded by four totems with Rayzor 760s mounted in the shape of the digital Play button.”
Used to form the tour’s signature Play button symbol, the Rayzor 760s create a number of interesting backlight scenes. The SomosLuz studio states: “We originally thought of using another LED luminaire but rental company Ilusovi showed us the Rayzor 760, which we liked for its size and versatility. We thought it would work well to illuminate the stage to create effects like pulsating play buttons, chase effects, or splayed beam looks. Its zoom range and the possibility to pixel map were very important and we also use the fixtu
UK - Stage Electrics has supplied, installed and commissioned new LED lighting to replace the existing house lighting at Kings Place, London.
Originally opened in 2008, Kings Place is a multi-purpose venue including a concert hall as well as the home to The Guardian and The Observer newspapers. Stage Electrics were contracted by Paul Russell, technical project manager for Kings Place, to replace the lighting in Hall 1 which is the main concert hall, a system originally installed by sister company Northern Light.
The new feature Lighting in addition to general auditorium lighting provides illumination, with full colour mixing, of the acoustic void around the upper walls of the auditorium as well as the stage and seating areas. This additional feature allows the venue to offer corporate clients the ability to customise the room in their corporate colours something the venue wanted to offer to its increasing number of corporate customers as well as update their existing offering to performing artists. The final installation included fixtures from dLED Technologies and Chauvet with control and power distribution provided by ETC.
“As with any existing building, access to existing containment systems was difficult. However, to facilitate the new LED lighting specifically for the acoustic void, we had to discreetly install additional control wiring for 56 new fixtures,” says Michael Percy. “This is made more difficult because the auditorium structure at Kings place is entirely independent of the rest of the building so it’s effectivi