Visual Productions LLC utilises the award-winning FLEXCurtain HD LED video technology to design an energetic and dynamic visual experience for the annual Gala. Located annually inside the Galt House Hotel Grand Ballroom, Marcus Cambron and his team at Visual Productions have been creating the evening’s production design over the last 18 years working with a number of event sponsors. Knowing this year the organisers wanted to capitalise on the performance capabilities of LED video, Cambron turned to Nashville-based PixelFLEX who provided him with FLEXCurtain HD LED video technology to create an energetic and dynamic visual experience. “Every year at this…
Author: Stewart Hume
The very final leg of Barry Manilow’s One Last Time farewell tour saw the legendary singer play arenas in nine cities across the UK, culminating in a show stopping performance at London’s O2, with lighting equipment and crew supplied by Blackburn based HSL. Manilow’s long term Creative Director Seth Jackson designed and specified the rig as part of an elegant and stylish design to help ensure the star’s incredible live touring performances would stay with his enthusiastic fan-base as this seminal ‘touring’ element of his career comes to an end. Manilow is one of the most prolific and successful singer/songwriters and…
This Fourth of July, the firework display at the Moapa Paiute Travel Plaza was not the only thing illuminating the sky, as more than 70,000 fans who attended the Moapa Madness festival got to witness an intensely bright lightshow that included a collection of Chauvet Professional LED fixtures supplied by Kilroy’s Lighting and Production. Lighting Designer Steven Brody used these fixtures to wash the stage at Moapa Madness, a two-day Fourth of July celebration that featured a nonstop procession of heavy metal, glam and hardcore country music. Now in its third year, the event was headlined by former Poison frontman Bret…
For the fourth year running, Britannia Row Productions supplied all four stages and the three tent stages at the Electric Daisy Carnival. Each stage was rigged with an L-Acoustics loudspeaker system, predominantly K1’s on the main stage with K2’s being the main component at the circuitGROUND, the cosmicMEADOW and the neonGARDEN. For Project Manager Lez Dwight and his crew, this year’s gamechanger proved to be the presence of the new L-Acoustic KS28 Subs and LA12X amplifiers that graced the main stage. Officially unveiled and delivered for use in May, this was a significant enough opportunity for L-Acoustics Application Engineer, Dan…
Eighth Day Sound, headquartered in Highland Heights, Ohio, with offices in London, Sydney and Los Angeles, has taken delivery of an additional 120 Adamson E-Series and 72 S-Series loudspeakers. The purchase is designed to meet the growing demand for Adamson sound reinforcement systems world-wide. “The reason we decided to add more Adamson loudspeakers to our rental inventory is that we have found that the world-wide marketplace acceptance and demand for the E-Series continues to grow,” explained Jack Boessneck, Executive Vice President of Eighth Day Sound. “It seems that every engineer that uses the system becomes an instant fan.” Eighth Day…
As the BPM/PRO Show moves to its new home in the Genting Arena in Birmingham, Nexo is once again the choice of PA for its live performance venue. This will be the fourth year in a row, Nexo has been chosen as the main PA provider for this indoor club space, specifying a STM modular line array for the job. The system will be composed of STM M28 modules for the main cabinets, with B112 Bass modules and a very substantial quota of S118 subs, delivering the serious sub-bass levels preferred by the professional artists (including Fenton Gee, Paul Morrell, Kutski…
Glastonbury 2016 welcomed back the Experimental Soundfield, a place in which new thinking is embraced as the boundaries of sound as we know it are questioned. Funktion One’s Tony Andrews and Acid House DJ, A Guy Called Gerald, speak to TPi’s Kelly Murray about the importance of continually pushing the limits in audio experimentation… What’s your favourite Glastonbury memory? Tony: It has to be the first Experimental Soundfield we created in 1992, right on the edge of the festival. That’s when we first did surround sound. At that time we had the old Pink Floyd quadrophonic desk; four speakers in…
PlayPass has announced Standon Calling as the latest UK festival confirmed to implement its RFID cashless payments system this summer. Standon Calling, a leading UK independent festival, was the first British festival to go fully cashless in 2013 and has led the way in the successful application of this technology ever since. Visitors to the 13,000 capacity event, held on the picturesque grounds of a 16th Century Hertfordshire manor house, will – as of this year – be able to top- up funds before they arrive on site and also register for ‘Auto Top-Up’. This signature feature of the PlayPass system…
Country superstar Kenny Chesney is taking not just one, but two MIDAS PRO X digital mixing consoles on the road as part of his 2016 Spread the Love Tour, including 14 major stadiums. The consoles will provide premium-grade sound mixing for the band’s entire monitor system, and also uses four DL431 Mic Splitters and two DL451 Stage Boxes. Morris is the production company for the much anticipated Spread the Love Tour. “Morris has been a longtime supporter of MIDAS, so when they introduced the PRO X, upgrading seven of our MIDAS consoles was a natural choice for us,” said Morris CEO,…
French electropop legends, Air, have embarked on their summer festival season equipped with an Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing system to manage FOH. Specified by FOH Engineer, Dave McDonald, and supplied by Belgian PA company, Four Ears Audio, the system comprises an S5000 Control Surface with DM48 MixRack. The tour marks the first time that McDonald has toured with the new dLive system having been an avid iLive user for many years with acts such as Adele, Florence & The Machine and Frank Ocean. “The first thing I noticed was the build quality – it’s a sturdy beast –…
Production Services Ireland (PSI) – a lighting, rigging and visual production company based in Dublin and Belfast, has made a substantial investment in the new EXE-Rise 1000kg 8:1 double-braked electric chain hoists – the first off the production line in Italy, delivered to PSI by Area Four Industries through Adam Beaumont – among a total investment in over 50 new motors. These new hoists went straight out for use on the UK and European tour of Riverdance. The history of Riverdance goes back to 1994, when it was an intermission act for the Eurovision Song Contest. It was an immediate…
Held in Bela Vista Park in Lisbon, Gabisom Audio Equipment from Brazil deployed Martin Audio’s premier MLA rig on the World Stage for the first time at the five-day Rock in Rio Festival. In doing so it was the largest deployment of MLA on a single stage. The historical ties between Martin Audio’s MLA and Rock in Rio began with a system test at the US event in Las Vegas in May 2015, where it appeared on the second stage, the Mercedes-Benz Evolution. An eclectic line-up over the Rock and Pop weekends included Foster the People, Gary Clark Jr., Grave…
Allen & Heath’s dLive digital mixing system was selected for Rick Wakeman’s headline performance at the Stone Free festival held recently in the O2 Arena in London. Stone Free is a major new festival, featuring two days of classic rock music from leading artists, including Alice Cooper, The Darkness, Marillion, Therapy? and Steve Hackett. Rick Wakeman’s headline appearance comprised the debut live performance of the revised album King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which has not been performed since 1978. Supplied by Stone Free’s PA company, Capital Sound, and sub-hired through SRD Group, the dLive system comprised…
PRG XL Video, the UK operation of Production Resource Group, LLC, has announced a significant investment with Area Four Industries U.K. to upgrade its hoist stock with a large number of the new EXE-Rise 8:1 range of chain hoists. The selection of the EXE-Rise units followed extensive evaluation of different hoists by a team of PRG XL Video’s rigging experts including Chris Walker, Account Director, Q Willis, Head of Rigging Services, and Richard Gorrod, Head of Event Services. This new version evolved from the already successful EXE-Rise electric chain hoist family and is designed with a WLL of 1,000kg…
Wroclaw, Poland marked its role as one of the European Capitals of Culture for 2016 with the Flow, a series of happenings, performances, dance and musical spectacles celebrating the city and its residents. The multimedia finale of the Flow depicted the history of Wroclaw in four acts. It was delivered by 300 artists and 45 watercraft on the River Odra and watched by some 50,000 residents and visitors. Warsaw-based Prolight, a d3 Technologies reseller, provided a d3 4x4pro with Quad-DVI VFC cards and a d3 4x2pro to show producer VES, which chose d3 for the technical integration of the large-scale…
Global flightcase hardware and premium 19-inch racking manufacturer Penn Elcom has launched Penn Elcom Ireland, a new all-encompassing facility and operation that will spearhead expansion in a growing market and be headed by Rory Winston. Penn Elcom Chairman and founder Roger Willems stated: “The Irish pro entertainment industry market shows definitive signs of recovering from the economic dip, there are many installations and other projects happening and flourishing! It’s been our intention to open a base there for some time, but then circumstances converged to make this a really opportune time!” These circumstances include Winston becoming available to run Penn Elcom Ireland…
On the heels of accepting the Icon Award at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards, launching her lifestyle brand and releasing her French-language single, Encore un soir, Celine Dion, kicked off her Summer Tour at the Antwerps Sportpaleis in Antwerp, Belgium on 20 June 2016. Dion’s highly publicised tour is designed by Cirque Du Soleil’s set designer and show director, Charles Ethier and Yves Aucoin, respectively. Ethier and Aucoin enlisted veteran company, TAIT, to create an elegant, artistic yet cutting-edge experience. TAIT mass-produced 168 Nano Winches, which are compact, flexible single point hoists, which feature a conductive ribbon that transmits power and LED…
R. Kelly’s Buffet Tour is serving up a musical extravaganza, which fans are eating up in arenas across the US. Performance Lighting of Elk Grove, Illinois is providing 50 ChainMaster motor hoists and MA Lighting grandMA2 full-size and light consoles to the massive production. A.C.T Lighting is the exclusive distributor of both brands in North America. The Buffet Tour kicked off in Cincinnati in support of Kelly’s eponymous 2015 album and played to packed houses from coast to coast. ChainMaster, headquartered in Germany, manufactures lifting equipment for the events and entertainment industry. Its chain hoists and chain hoist controllers are…
