International News

PETERBOROUGH, U.K. – Key Theatre replaced its tungsten Fresnels with 36 energy-efficient Philips Selecon RAMA LED Fresnel luminaires to save on power and add functionality to the lighting system. The new fixtures were supplied and fitted by Stage Electrics, whose technical sales consultant, Andy Elsegood, recommended the RAMA LED Fresnels as a crisp, white LED solution for the theatre’s range of stage lighting requirements.

MANCHESTER, U.K. – Parklife, formerly known as The Parklife Weekender, is an independent music festival held annually in Manchester. This year’s event saw 140,000 people attend the two day festival held on June 11-12. dbn Lighting were back in Heaton Park, where they supplied lighting, rigging and LED screen to five out of the eight main performance areas – including the Main Stage, Stage 3 (The Rotunda), Stage 5 (Elrow), Stage 6 (The Colonnade) and Stage 8 which was hosted by two pumping club nights MTA and MK.

SYDNEY — For Vivid Sydney 2016, the Star hotel and casino presented roof-mounted beams from 36 Clay Paky SuperSharpys, protecting each fixture from the elements with Clay Paky Igloos. Show Technology supplied the gear, with technical manager Mike Gearin working with Bruce Dwyer to put the system together. Thirty-six IP-rated ShowPro LED Flood EX36 were positioned between the Supersharpys for color wash.

PILTON, U.K. – The the lineup of folk/roots bands performing at the Glastonbury Festival’s Field of Avalon performance area, GLS Lighting provided a rig that included a collection of Rogue and Strike 4 fixtures from Chauvet Professional. The GLS team, headed by Wil Thomas and John Curtis, flew 12 Rogue R1 Beam, 8 Rogue R2 Wash and 8 Rogue R2 Beam fixtures on the upstage truss.

NOVE MESTO na MORAVE, Czech Republic – Robe sponsored the 2016 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships held in Nové Město na Moravě, Czech Republic, part of Robe’s 2016 ‘Working with Winners’ initiative. Robe partnered with leading Slovakian rental company Q-99 for the 2016 Championships to supply over 100 of the latest Robe moving lights – Squares, BMFL Blades and BMFL WashBeams, Pointes and ColorStrobes – to the event’s entertainment stage.

MOSCOW— For Red Bull Wrong Side, a touring show featuring Jack’s Garret, a nine person modern dance troupe, LD Evgeny Romakhin worked with a Martin M6 console to provide a special mood for each moment of the original, jointly choreographed work. The six-month tour culminated in a sold out series of shows at Moscow’s Pushkin Drama Theatre. Romakhin’s Martin-controlled rig also included Martin lighting fixtures: 38 MAC Aura XBs, 18 MAC 700 Profiles, two Atomic 3000 DMXs and a MAC Viper Profile. Russia-based Laser-Kinetics supplied the gear.

MANCHESTER, UK. – HSL supplied lighting for the musical drama, Parade, staged at the Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester. The production features a lighting design by Aaron J. Dootson. Dootson’s lighting was a crucial element in creating the emotion, raw anxiety and political and moral issues of this incisive piece of theatre by Jason Robert Brown, which dramatizes the 1913 trail of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank for the murder and rape of 13 year old employee, Mary Phagan in Atlanta, Georgia.

WROCLAW, Poland  – 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 water craft on the River Odra and watched by some 50,000 residents and visitors. 

BRISTOL, U.K. – The Bristol Summer Series returned for four nights of live music, set against the backdrop of Bristol’s iconic Harborside, from June 22-25. Bristol Summer Series welcomed a host of international acts including headliners Catfish and The Bottlemen, Sigur Rós, The Last Shadow Puppets and James Bay. Once again Utopium was called upon to light up the event as well as designing and delivering architectural lighting to illuminate the Lloyds Amphitheatre building. Utopium’s Colin Bodenham and Jon Newman combined their skills to help create a stunning setting for Metropolis Music, through the supply of a comprehensive lighting production, including newly acquired equipment from Utopium’s extensive inventory.

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND —  It was never just about the music with Pink Floyd. True, the psychodelic licks laid down by the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers broke new ground, and yes their music resonates as vibrantly today as it did decades ago – but this band is remembered almost as much for its eye-popping shows as it is for its songs.  Pink Floyd’s legacy of bright, visually powerful stage productions lives on  today in New Zealand, thanks to a tribute band formed (quite fittingly) by a lighting designer who uses the color and intenstity of CHAUVET Professional fixtures to create lightshows that do the group’s legacy proud.

AALSMEER, The Netherlands —More than 100 Robe moving lights, including 40 DL7S Profile “full spectrum” LED fixtures, lit the craziness and mayhem of the latest series of Professor Nicolai & Dr. Beckand, a “mad science “-based TV quiz show recorded in Aalsmeer studios in the Netherlands and broadcast on prime-time Dutch national channel, RTL4. The show was lit by Martin Beekhuizen of lighting and visual design practice Light-H-Art, with lighting equipment supplied by Eventec, a company based at the studios and a technical service provider for the majority of programs created there.

BERLIN, Germany – LD Rick Kay of the CORE Berlin collective joined forces with local rental company Lautwerfer at the end of 2014 to help deliver the inaugural Alternative Fashion Week. The event has since outgrown its origins at local techno club E-Werk and, for the March 2016 event, expanded into Berlin’s Postbahnhof, a former railway station. Kay used  48 of GLP’s new X4 Bar 10 battens — 24 down each side of the stage — for that event.