On 16 August 2022, ADJ will launch its new Future Focus Road Show series with a special social mixer event in New York City. Held at a penthouse venue in Manhattan, it will showcase ADJ’s latest new product releases, including shoot out comparisons with products from other brands. The event will also offer an opportunity for industry professionals to gather, socialise, share ideas, and start to focus on the next step in the evolution of their business or career. Following the success of ADJ’s Reunited Thru Light Tour which hit 17 cities across the US between summer 2021 and spring…
Author: Jacob Waite
Waves Open Air Festival 2022 in the water park of Wedemark near Hannover celebrated the start of the festival season with the support of Alcons pro-ribbon sound systems to treat the large audience of over 3,000 visitors to a unique sound experience. As before in 2021, when the event took place in a smaller setting, Toto Eikemeier of Eikemeier Eventsystem was again commissioned for the organisation of the complete technical implementation of the Main Stage and the Deep Forest Stage. The House and Techno Festival hosted Top DJs like Ben Klock, RØDHÅD, VRIL, Nene H, and Arman John at the…
Heightening the performances of Colombia’s Ensalsate – a celebration of salsa, produced by the 360 Design Group, was a lighting design by Milton de la Cruz that featured 22 CHAUVET Professional Rogue R3 Beam fixtures. Like the colourfully clad dancers on stage, de la Cruz’s flow of beams, spot lighting, and gobo patterns moves with deft grace as it sweeps up the audiences in a liberating whirlwind of desires and emotions. Underlying this zealous display, however, is a meticulously crafted design that pulls the entire creation together, endowing it with even greater power. For all its free-flowing fervour, Salsa adheres…
Production Designer, Jon Eddy harnessed Claypaky RGB laser source Xtylos’ tight beam and the next-generation compact moving mirror of ReflectXion to provide a unique series of looks for the North American leg of Deftones’ Ohms Tour. Eddy completely redesigned the Deftones tour, putting the COVID-19 lockdown to good use – experimenting with Claypaky Xtylos and ReflectXion units at home. “I got to spend a few months with each,” he recalled. “I used Xtylos and ReflectXion at Psycho Las Vegas. They looked amazing in the MGM Arena.” Eddy thought of Xtylos and ReflectXion again when it came time to create Deftones’…
Artistic Directors, Sophie and Sander Reneman of TWOFIFTYK and Marc Heinz helped curate a dynamic production design for Davina Michelle at Rotterdam’s Ahoy Arena. For the two sold-out shows, Heinz specified nearly 300 Robe moving lights, working closely with Assistant Lighting Designers, Jordy Veenstra and Koen van Elderen. The set concept was based on perceptions of space and proximity. A custom 10 seven metre glass riser was installed as a set centrepiece, underlit with LED sources. Custom glass risers on top were lit from above with a grid of Robe T2 Profiles and LEDBeam 350 fixtures to create a ‘cage-like’…
Lighting Designer, George Tellos and Lighting Art in Athens had the pleasure of creating the design for Desmond Child Rocks the Parthenon, a show celebrating the music of Desmond Child in front of 5,000 people at the historic Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens, Greece at the end of June 2022. Guest artists included Alice Cooper, Bonnie Tyler, Rita Wilson, Sakis Rouvas and The Rasmus, as well as Lena Hall, Kip Winger, Chris Willis, Tabitha Fair, Justin Benlolo and Andreas Carlsson. “Our work became even more important when we realised that we need to visualise these awesome songs like Kiss’…
Lighting Designer and DoP, Jerry Appelt has been a constant factor in the production of Vienna Philharmonic’s Summer Night Concert (Das Sommernachtskonzert) for five years, designing the entire space, decor and orchestra lighting. When it comes to lighting the stage, the designer has long since found his favourite rig. While GLP impression X4 was still responsible for a large part of the orchestra lighting in previous years, this time around he couldn’t resist the temptation to use the brand new GLP impression X5. No fewer than 62 of the German manufacturer’s next-generation wash lights were used, both as orchestra backlights…
Brompton Technology has secured a growth capital investment from specialist private client alternative investments business, Connection Capital. Richard Mead, Brompton Technology CEO, is clear on the benefits the investment will bring to the company. “We are seeing unprecedented growth in demand for our cutting-edge, robust, tour and virtual production-ready LED video processing products from our core industry sectors, as well as a lot of exciting potential for our technology to be applied to new markets. Whilst our focus on quality and dedication to customer service will remain the same, Connection Capital’s investment gives us the ability to scale up rapidly to…
Lightware Visual Engineering has appointed Craig Storey as CEO and Craig McQueen as Sales Director to head the UK team. Under their leadership Lightware UK will consolidate its position in the region with a new focus on growth after a successful last financial year. Craig Storey heads the Lightware UK office, overseeing all aspects of the UK business and its strategy. After joining Lightware a few weeks before COVID-19 hit, Craig has steered the company through the uncertainties of the pandemic while managing to maintain revenue for the UK through the first year [2019-20] and then grow the team who…
Meyer Sound returned to Denmark this June as the Official Sound Partner of Roskilde Festival and to celebrate the 50th presentation of Northern Europe’s largest and longest-running music festival. The Roskilde Festival is always staggering in scale, but this year’s event, held over eight days from 25 June through 2 July, was the most epic yet, showcasing more than 290 artists in music, art, and activism. Performers took to eight stages spaced throughout the sprawling festival grounds with headliners including Post Malone, Dua Lipa, Tyler, the Creator, The Strokes, Megan Thee Stallion, St. Vincent, and Haim, plus more than 130…
Britannia Row Productions has provided a full audio package and crew for the Young Voices UK tour, which saw the world’s largest children’s choir visit arenas up and down Britain for multiple, packed-out shows. The tour featured an unconventional arena setup, with the stage positioned at the back of each room and the Young Voices choir taking the place of the audience. “It’s a very different kind of show in many ways,” said FOH Engineer, Gavin Tempany. “Usually, the stars of an arena show are the band, but this time it’s the children in the choir, who are singing to a…
QSC has appointed Perry Celia to VP Global Sales and Service, David Fuller to VP Product Development, Ray van Straten to VP Brand, Marketing & Training, and Linda Lee to Sr. Director, Operations. With this leadership team in place, the company’s new Pro Audio division is primed to position the QSC brand for its next phase of growth, innovation and expansion in the global sound reinforcement market. Celia takes the reins of the division’s global sales and service functions after having served at QSC for over 14 years – most recently as Sr. Director Sales, Americas. Fuller’s 12-year tenure at…
When Cassius Creative first got its hands on GLP’s then new JDC Line 1000 some 18 months ago, the world was in lockdown and the band they were lighting – psych-pop act Glass Animals – were presented to their fans as an internet live stream only. The event was widely acclaimed, not least by Foals’ lead singer Yannis Philippakis. The outcome is that Cassius Creative (collectively Chris ‘Squib’ Swain and Dan Hill) has been brought on board for the first time to light a European tour which included four sold-out nights at London’s Olympia, and which is overseen by production…
Sebastian Rivas has joined Renkus-Heinz as Software Development and Research Engineer. Rivas will work closely with Chief Technology Officer Ralph Heinz and Engineering Manager Chad DeFranco. “I had the opportunity to speak with Harro Heinz about the role and found great value in learning about the history of the company and the innovative processes that have put them as the leader in beam steering loudspeaker technology,” said Rivas. “Renkus-Heinz is a leader in the audio solutions industry and I am fortunate to enter the company at a time to contribute to the sound revolution.” With close to 15 years in…
Show and content designer, Timo Martens was tasked with creating the video and media content for the One FM Starnight, which was celebrated on 20 May 2022 in front of 8,000 fans at the Arena de Genève, Switzerland. In addition to realising his creative designs, Martens was also responsible for ensuring the general playout would be a flawless success. He also enlisted the support of the Amsteg based media server specialists REC Tec AG for the complex show production. Michael Memmersheim and his highly experienced REC Tec colleagues were in charge of the complete show control setup for the popular…
Since COVID-19, audiences want to be amazed by new live experiences to interact with pixel-perfect information at a car launch, an eSports event or music concert where High Dynamic Range and 4K resolution permit photorealistic display. Without Lightware Visual Engineering technology many of the highest profile live performances of recent times would simply not be possible. For example, the use of LED capture volumes is providing game-changing realism for virtual production environments to truly take off. One of the key requirements for live XR environments is having a robust and reliable AV infrastructure to do the heavy lifting of uncompressed…
On 16 April 2022, 88rising descended on Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival’s main stage with performances from NIKI, Rich Brian, Warren Hue, BIBI, Jackson Wang, MILLI, CL, 2NE1 and Hikaru Utada as part of the record label’s Head in the Clouds Forever set. Production Designer, Ricardo Rojas reflects on the lighting, set, and special effects design of this landmark set. What is your history with Coachella? “Coachella has played an important role in my journey as a designer. It was the first place where I really noticed and appreciated the art of lighting and production design. I used to…
Following in the footsteps of other industries that have taken steps to raise awareness of the importance of Mental Health, Backup has created an industry specific Mental Health First Aider logo to help signpost people in need of support on a production, raise awareness and promote discussion around the subject of mental health in the live entertainment sector. Backup’s goal is to ensure that in every crew there is at least one trained Mental Health First Aider crew member for every 20 crew members. We trust that venues, promoters and production companies will engage with this and it becomes part…
