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Passaic County Technical Institute Goes LED with Philips Strand Retrofit

Passaic County Technical Institute Goes LED with Philips Strand Retrofit

Passaic County Technical Institute Goes LED with Philips Strand Retrofit

WAYNE, NJ – The Passaic County Technical Institute (PCTI), an award-winning high school with a 200 course curriculum which includes their School of Performing Arts, upgraded its theatre facility recently with a Philips Strand Lighting retrofit installation that included PLFRESNEL1 and PLPROFILE4 LED luminaires along with a NEO lighting control console, Vision.net Touchscreens, an A21 Dimming System, and CD80SV Retrofit Dimmer Modules.

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d3 Technologies Names Matthew Cotter Technical Sales Specialist. Cotter is pictured here (at right) with Hans Beijer.

d3 Technologies Names Matthew Cotter Technical Sales Specialist

LOS ANGELES – d3 Technologies named Matthew Cotter Technical Sales Specialist based on the U.S. West Coast.  Cotter has been a lighting director and media programmer for the past 15 years, primarily working in television and on theme park spectaculars.  He shared an Emmy Award for “Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction for a Variety Series” with his colleagues for “Dancing with the Stars” in 2014.

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String Cheese Incident Tours with Robe BMFLs. Photo by Dave Vann

String Cheese Incident Tours with Robe BMFLs

DENVER – Lighting designer and programmer Andrew Cass has been a fan of the famously multi genre blues-rock-jam band String Cheese Incident (SCI) from Colorado since his schooldays. In April 2014 he was lucky enough to land himself in the hot-seat of designing their lighting – a long term dream job he absolutely loves.

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Nook Schoenfeld, Editor, PLSN

PLSN.com Turns the Page

[caption id="attachment_266894" align="alignnone" width="410"]Nook Schoenfeld, Editor, PLSN[/caption]

We are wrapping up the year here at PLSN. Our gift to our readers during this festive season is an updated website that we are sure you will enjoy.

I have unwittingly found myself among the people who when bored, search for interesting online news, on my phone. And to be honest, I was a bit peeved at how the majority of these sites I was visiting were slowed down because I had to constantly navigate through banners, ads and leads to other stories. We at PLSN were just as guilty as the rest of the people in the world, because we didn’t keep up with technology.

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Spring Awakening production photo by Joan Marcus

Spring Awakening: Lighting for the Deaf

The Tony Award-winning musical Spring Awakening has been revived on Broadway after six and a half years, but unlike many resurgent productions on the Great White Way, this one has had a whole extra dimension added to it. What started as a story about teenagers and adults (parents, teachers, and clergy) clashing over the way they communicate (specifically dealing with sexual repression) has now become a tale of deaf students and speaking adults at odds with each other over the same issues.

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CTC Wizard of Oz production photo by Dan Norman

Children’s Theatre Company’s ‘The Wizard of Oz’

A Look Into an Amazing Institution in Minneapolis

I just witnessed L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz last night, my fourth play at this state-of-the-art theater in Minneapolis. Once again, I cannot believe the production values I just witnessed for a children’s show. But one should expect no less from Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) as they celebrate their 50th year in existence. In 2003, they were awarded a Tony Award for an “Outstanding Regional Theater,” and they strive for excellence with every performance.

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Zac Brown Band Jekyll and Hyde Tour Photo by Steve Jennings

Zac Brown Band’s Jekyll + Hyde Tour

The Zac Brown Band winds down their seven-month tour Dec. 12 with their last show of the year in Columbus, OH. It’s been a fun ride for all involved on the visual side. The Georgia-based country act played various sized venues from stadiums to amphitheaters. The three-tiered set featured a video wall behind the band measuring 6 by 52 feet (HxW). Perched atop that were the drums, percussion and ample space for various band members to walk up stairs and ramps and play. It’s clear from the start that the 12 band members like to move around. Accurate Staging provided the set.

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Chris Cornell and Bryan Gibson perform. Photo by Debi Moen

The Higher Truth of Lighting Chris Cornell

Grunge rocker Chris Cornell, frontman of bands Soundgarden and Audioslave, is on an intimate acoustic world tour showcasing those songs and new ones from his Higher Truth CD. Perched on a stool in front of a mic on a bare stage, Cornell sings folksinger-style and from the heart. Suddenly, over his shoulder, a beam of violet hits the plain backdrop, bringing to light the appearance of a big scarlet heart.

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Dead & Company photo by Paul Guthrie

Dead & Company Hit the Road…And the Music Never Stops

While the Grateful Dead officially called it a career last fall at 50 years old, nobody really expected them to fade away. For this side project, they brought in John Mayer to take the place of the late Jerry Garcia while going by the name of Dead & Company. Guitarist Bob Weir shared the playing and singing duties with Mayer as they plowed through two sets of Grateful Dead music. Original drummers Bill Kreutzman and Mickey Hart handled the rhythm section.

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Twenty One Pilots 2015 Blurryface tour photo by Steve Jennings

Twenty One Pilots’ 2015 Blurryface Tour

Twenty One Pilots’ Tyler Joseph founded the band in 2009 near Columbus, Ohio with two college friends. The band’s name is linked to a 1947 Arthur Miller play, All My Sons. That play is based on a real-life scandal. In the 1940s, aviation company Curtiss-Wright, which traces its lineage to the Wright Brothers, was caught selling defective parts to the U.S. military. In the play, a character who at first thinks of his actions as being for the good of the company and his family takes his life after recognizing that his misdeeds caused the deaths of 21 pilots.

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