Since 1997, Britannia Row has masterfully deployed audio requirements to the MTV Europe Music Awards. This year’s winners included Artist of the Year, Ariana Grande; Best Live Act, BTS; and Best Song, Bad Guy by Billie Eilish – all of whom were honoured in a live televised ceremony staged in the Andalusian capital of Seville. https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpidec19_digitallr/10 Photos: DiGiCo www.britanniarow.com www.digico.biz www.l-acoustics.com www.sennheiser.com
Author: James Robertson
The impact of video on the live touring sector is undeniable. Be it projection or LED, it’s rare for an arena or stadium tour not to present visuals that go beyond a traditional IMAG or rear screen setup. Nowadays, show designers are finding even more intricate ways of incorporating dynamic visual elements into live performances. Not to mention the ever-growing sophistication of visual software. https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpidec19_digitallr/64 Photos: Universal Pixels www.unipix.tv
If you were to make a list of 2019’s most hotly tipped artists, American singer Lizzo would certainly be in contention for the top spot. With her exponential growth in popularity – and ticket sales – the artist had to adapt quickly to this higher calibre of touring. Following her Coachella performance, Lizzo’s management brought in a selection of men and women who, eight months later, have been across the globe keeping up with her relentless schedule. TPi caught up with the team on the tail end of the European Cuz I Love you Too tour. https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpidec19_digitallr/50 Photos: Shirlaine Forrest…
The year is 2008. Spain have just won the UEFA European Football Championships; Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States; Spotify is launched in Sweden and a plucky Vampire Weekend burst onto the music scene – their eponymous debut album becoming a mainstay of the Noughties indie zeitgeist. Fast-forward more than a decade and two critically acclaimed albums later and, despite a six-year absence from European stages, the New York quartet turned Cali seven-piece hit the road with a production worthy of the band’s latest US number-one album, Father of the Bride. https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpidec19_digitallr/40 Photos: Graham…
The first group to win The X Factor, Little Mix were formed during the eighth series of the show in 2011. In the following years, the popular four-piece has gone on to become one of the most successful girl groups this decade. Fronted by Jade Thirlwall, Perrie Edwards, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, and Jesy Nelson, Little Mix’s 40-date tour of Europe began on 16 September 2019 in Madrid – spanning sold-out, multiple-date arena shows in the UK and Ireland – before drawing to a close on 22 November 2019 in London. https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpidec19_digitallr/24 Photos: Callum Mills (www.callummills.co.uk), Georgie Gibbon & TPi www.little-mix.com www.modestmanagement.com…
Hailing from Cambridge, UK, Charli XCX has become a force to be reckoned with in the avant-garde pop world. Continuing to garner respect and fanfare, the singer’s third album, Charli, gave her a chance to collaborate with a selection of musicians, including Lizzo, Sky Ferreira and Haim. https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpidec19_digitallr/8 Photos: Henry Redcliffe www.charli-the-album.co.uk www.liteup.co.uk
With its thunderous rifts and unabashedly punchy choruses, Don Broco’s music gets the heart beating faster. So too does the engaging whirlwind that the red hot British rockers set in motion every time they take the stage with their hurricane force dance routines, leg kicks, human pyramids and “push up squads.” Keeping pace with the band on their first North American tour this fall was a fast-moving Steve Kosiba lighting design that featured CHAUVET Professional Rogue fixtures from Squeek Lights. “The show is very high energy,” said Kosiba. “Don Broco has a big sound with lots of changes. The band…
Optocore has announced a significant upgrade option to its M12 MADI switch, with a new feature known as ‘MADI Mirroring’. The powerful M12 MADI router originally burst onto the scene back in 2015, with its internal FPGA-based architecture allowing features to be added in the future simply by issuing new firmware. This has now been undertaken, largely at the request of Optocore customers. “We have received several similar requirements, and suggestions for implementation, and we have responded accordingly,” said Optocore’s Technical Sales Manager, Maciek Janiszewski. And Optocore director, Tine Helmle added: “We see the primary focus of this product very…
SIXTY82 has entered into an exclusive partnership with Scenos Techninis Servisas (STS) as its distributor for the Lithuanian market. This strategic partnership is based on a shared set of values of loyalty, extensive technical service, and the importance of customer relationships. “The best partnerships aren’t dependent on a mere common goal, but on a shared path of equality, desire, and a great amount of passion. Therefore we believe that STS is the perfect partner to service our customers. This agreement further iterates both the company’s enthusiasm to drive growth and extend relationships with its customers,” said SIXTY82’s CEO, Fokko Smeding.…
Sandwiched between Silver Lake and Angelino Heights, Echo Park has emerged as one of the most happening neighbourhoods in LA. Home to prospering and aspiring artists, writers, and musicians, it celebrates its community culture each year with Echo Park Rising, a sprawling festival which was recently named ‘Best Music Festival’ by LA Weekly. This year the event’s main Liberty Stage relied upon control provided by Allen & Heath dLive S5000 and C1500 control surfaces supported respectively by the processing and networking power of DM48 and CDM32 MixRack systems. Standing at the confluence of Liberty and Reservoir Streets, the Liberty Stage…
Production AV’s strong vision for concert touring services expansion is on track as the company welcomes respected video and sound technician Nathan Dunbar as Technical Project Manager. Dunbar brings vast industry knowledge, experience and contacts in the sector, having worked on some of Europe’s largest AV projects including Glastonbury, UK-produced Hollywood movies and the MTV Europe Music Awards. “We’re thrilled that Nathan has joined our growing team as Production AV looks to expand the scope of our projects and services in 2020,” says MD Pete McCrea. “His kit know-how, contacts and standing in our industry is an incredible asset to…
Oscar Tovar started his musical journey with Abreu Producciones, then spent 20 years with Audio Concepto SP, both based in Mexico. During his travels, he was monitor engineer for acts including Rocio Durcal, Manuel Mijares, Ana Gabriel, Jesse & Joey, Gloria Trevi, and Paulina Rubio, but it was in 2013 when he discovered the SSL L500 console. It was when Tovar was touring with Jesse & Joey that he first found out about SSL’s Live offering. “I remember we played the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, and (SSL’s) Fernando Guzman invited me to see the console for the first time…
Leading television lighting director Bernie Davis successfully trialed the new VL2600 Profile LED luminaire from Vari-Lite, a Signify entertainment lighting brand, on the prestigious BBC Proms classical music festival this summer. Staged through August and September at London’s Royal Albert Hall, the BBC Proms has an intense schedule, with concerts broadcast daily on BBC Radio and many performances recorded or broadcast live on BBC Television. With such time pressures, it’s essential for lighting fixtures to be reliable and versatile, but also quiet in operation and great-looking on camera. “I was looking for a good, programmable profile spot that would be quiet enough…
The recent European tour by a-ha saw the introduction of 10-bit video into the world of concert touring. The standards expected were exceptionally high, not least dictated by the fabulous content produced by the band’s chosen video creative, Knut Helgeland and realised live by the equally talented Icarus Wilson-Wright. Alex Leinster of Video Design, who oversaw the upscaling of technological standards, outlines the challenges. “There were three important issues to be addressed how to render out Knut’s content in 10-bit; finding an LED screen that could accept the 10-bit source natively; and creating the backbone to transport and manage the…
After three sold-out performances at Amsterdam’s Eye Filmmuseum, which saw Cosmos Within Us win a VR Days Halo award, the Future of StoryTelling will present the theatrical preview of Tupac Martir’s ground-breaking mixed reality performance piece in New York – as the Performative-R genre is born. A co-production between Satore Studio, a_BAHN, and Satore Tech, Cosmos Within Us turns the solitary experience of virtual reality into a multisensory performance piece for an audience of 100-150 people, creating an entirely new artform. It features 13 live performers, including five musicians, voiceover artists, live digital animations, two dancers, a conductor, and one…
The Teatr Narodowy (National Theatre) in Warsaw, Poland, has invested in a total of 40 Robe DL7S Profile moving lights which are part of a lighting upgrade to replace over 100 halogens and gel-scrollers in their rig with new LED light sources, a graduated process taking place across all three of the theatre’s three performance spaces. In addition to modernising their house lighting systems – including some previous moving lights that had been in place for nearly 20 years – they were essentially looking for quieter fixtures, stated head of lighting, Zbigniew Szulim. They considered all the options, and apart…
Tthe XTYLOS Beam Moving Light broke the bank in Las Vegas and took home two of the prestigious Awards assigned to the top products in the business at LDI 2019. The Best Debuting Product Award has always been one of the keynotes of LDI. The Xtylos was the only product in the lighting category to win this coveted Award, which has been presented to the best debuting products at the Las Vegas exhibition for several years. Claypaky CEO Marcus Graser and Julie Smith, managing the USA Claypaky customer care operations , accepted the Award. Furthermore, Xtylos also won the Best…
D.Reilly of Dandy’s Lighting was mulling over production design concepts for the Kodlaine’s 2019 European tour with lead guitarist Mark Prendergast when they were struck by the distinctive upper case “A,” with its elongated vertical lines, in the middle of the band’s stylized name. After conferring with the band, he used the logo lettering as the inspiration to create geometric diamond-shaped set pieces for their touring rig. To make this design element pop, he outlined these pieces in vivid colour with CHAUVET Professional ÉPIX Strip Tour fixtures supplied by Reynolds of Raphoe. Flown over mid-stage as three large “diamonds,” and…
