The German band Die Ärzte (aka the ‘Best Band in the World’) is one of many artists who made creative use of the forced pandemic break. After the album Hell, released in October 2020, the cult Berlin band released an album with the contrasting title Dunkel just under a year later. The associated tour, Buffalo Bill in Rome, is currently running, for which production designer Bertil Mark uses 21 of...
Every second year, veteran American rock band 311 celebrates 11 March (3/11) with a massive party-style celebration concert for fans over two nights at the Park Theater, Las Vegas (Park MGM). And the pressure is on LD Bobby Grey, of Notan Creative (and the entire production team), to exceed the excitement of the previous event in this biennial calendar. “We went into this wondering how we could...
When Canadian creative director Matt Larivée, of Lüz Studio, sat down to design the stage set for Jack White’s Supply Chain Issues tour, GLP’s trusty JDC1 hybrid strobe and X4 Bar 20 batten were prominent in his tool kit. And so were 144 additional ‘virtual’ X4 Bar 20s… more of which later. “The JDC1 is one of my favorite fixtures for washing a band from the floor, so that was a go-to to define...
At the beginning of April, the classic German TV series Verstehen Sie Spaß (which translates as ‘ Do You Understand Fun?’) entered a new season, with the moderator duties transferring from the long-serving Guido Cantz to Barbara Schöneberger, and the entire production moving from its familiar Munich location to the Berlin studio. Lighting designer Thomas Gerdon, who has been responsible for...
Production designer Owen Pritchard-Smith used multiples of GLP’s impression X4 Bar 20 battens and JDC1 hybrid strobes for several rescheduled UK shows on Dermot Kennedy’s recent Better Days tour. These included dates at Alexandra Palace in London before the Irish singer headed off to the States. “Two of the Ally Pally shows were rescheduled from last year, and then a third date was added,” he...
The highly sensitive and lyrically complex songs of Laura Marling, performing solo on a plaintive acoustic guitar, brings with it demands for a special kind of lighting. Showcasing her latest album, the Grammy- and Mercury-nominated Song for Our Daughter, her recent three-week sold-out club and theatre tour – her first in four and a half years – was highlighted by two nights at London’s Roundhouse...
After celebrating 15 years lighting My Morning Jacket (MMJ) – including seven design cycles – any LD could be forgiven for running out of fresh ideas. But not Marc Janowitz, who recently started using GLP’s innovative KNV Dots – the latest in a long history of discovering solutions within the German company’s fast-evolving LED inventory. “In 2012 I first started stringing [impression] X4 as...
Anyone wondering how, under the current conditions, new products can be launched in an effective way within the media, need look no further than Audi. For the presentation of the new e-tron GT, the Ingolstadt-based car manufacturer staged a special kind of demonstration at the Munich Zenith. The world premiere of the ‘electric spearhead of the four rings’, as it was termed, took place on 9 th...
This year’s annual Coca-Cola Music Experience Festival took place again over two magical days at Madrid’s WiZink Center (this year under the name CCME Reloaded, to reflect the COVID-19 restrictions). The event was recorded for streaming only on CokeTV (the Coca-Cola YouTube channel) and Divinity ( https://www.divinity.es/). Celebrating its 10 year anniversary, despite the lack of venue atmosphere...
Kentucky based production designer, Bobby Grey, already had a wealth of real-world experience behind him — ranging from theme parks to theatre, touring and designing top end festival stages — by the time he had reached 30. His passion for sound and lighting dates right back to high school, when he was in a band; and he was soon bitten by the theatre bug. Concentrating on lighting he came under the...