News

AUSTIN – On Jan. 20, Grammy award winning musician Christopher Cross recorded a PBS Pledge Special at ACL Live at The Moody Theater. The concert will be broadcast on PBS and was produced by KLRU-TV, Austin PBS. To augment the visuals on camera, veteran Lighting Director Walter Olden specified the use of four High End Systems DLHD fixtures.

NASHVILLE – Even with the chill of winter still hanging in the February air, the Music City Center was abloom with more than 150 exhibitors of gardens, lantiques and guest speakers from the design world for the Antiques and Garden Show of Nashville. The keynote speaker for the multi-day event was Academy Award winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow. Bandit Lites provided the lighting package for the horticultural happening with Chris Lisle Lighting Design.

ERLANGER KY. – tvONE is offering two training classes, CORIO2/Magenta training and CORIO3 training. The next sets of back-to-back training days are set for April 6-7 and May 4-5, 2016, with more sessions planned well into 2016.

LOWELL, MA – Designer Brian Lynch of AE Event Systems in Chelmsford, MA lit up the Merrimack riverfront in Lowell, Massachusetts recently. The setup included 60 COLORado 1-Tri IP fixtures and 16 COLORado 2-Quad Zoom IP fixtures from Chauvet Professional. Using over 2,000’ of conduit, Lynch spaced the fixtures 30’ apart over a distance of 800’ running from Merrimack Canal through Lucy Larcom Park in downtown Lowell.

BOZEMAN, MT – Brantley Gilbert’s current world tour may be called “The Blackout,” but he hasn’t been performing in the dark. Instead, Howard Jones and Nate Alves co-designed his show using an array of Clay Paky fixtures known for their brightness, including 16 brand-new Scenius fixtures, 34 Mythos units and 13 Stormy Strobes. The Blackout tour’s North American leg began Jan. 28, ran through March 4, then resumes April 14-30. The LDs used two grandMA2 Light consoles networked together to control the lighting and video elements.

AUSTIN – Together with High End Systems, LightConverse is issuing an invitation for participants in their 2016 Lighting Challenge. Entries are accepted throughout the month of March and winners will be featured at Prolight + Sound in early April. The top prize: a High End HedgeHog4 X console and LightConverse Unlimited software.

NASHVILLE — Ted Emmit Mellencamp, 62, died March 4, 2016 at his home in Nashville, surrounded by family. He was a tour manager for his older brother John Mellencamp and other well-known artists.

CHICAGO — Hard rock band Disturbed returned to the stage after a lengthy hiatus with a show last August at the House of Blues in Chicago. It heralded the band’s sixth studio album, Immortalized, released the same day. This year, the hard rock band has embarked on its first world tour in five years, hitting 60 cities in the U.S., Canada and Europe and teaming up with co-headliners Rob Zombie and Breaking Benjamin along the way. LD Matt Mills, who worked with the bands’ last tour in 2011, deployed a Christie Lites rig centering on Martin fixtures — MAC Quantum Washes, MAC Viper Profiles and Atomic 3000 LEDs — along with High End Systems ShapeShifters.

NASHVILLE – For the University of Tennessee’s first ‘State of the University’ event at St. Thomas West Hospital, Bandit Lites provided the lighting for the event at no cost in an ongoing effort to give back to its local community. Bandit provided LED pars and complemented the auditorium’s house rig for the event.

SALT LAKE CITY – Along with plans to give USITT attendees a close look at product innovations such as the ETC Source 4WRD LED unit, pictured with a Source Four fixture here, ETC has big plans to celebrate their 40th anniversary at USITT with other recent product introductions, such as the company’s latest additions to its ColorSource product line, ETC’s new Irideon FPZ framing projector, and a sneak peek at a forthcoming expansion of the company’s control offerings. The latter brings the company full circle, in a way, because the company got its start with a control product back in 1975.