Big Bang
Lighting Co
Visions Lighting
Venue
Honda Center
Anaheim, CA
Jane’s Addiction
Lighting Co
Upstaging Inc.
Venue
Various (Tour)
Demystifying “Drood”
Charles Dickens never completed the story of Edwin Drood because he died during its creation. Thus composer/lyricist Rupert Holmes fashioned a tongue-in-cheek, self-referential musical (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) about the story that takes place in London’s Music Hall Royale in 1895. It’s a show within a show — there is a chairman leading us through everything, and the actors even come out in costume prior to the show to warm theatergoers up before setting about performing a bawdy murder mystery.
Urbana 12: Five Days, Three Stages
Dodd Technologies Supports InterVarsity’s Big Year-End Conference
It’s a concert. It’s a church. It’s a theater. It’s an intimate space that takes up half a football dome. It’s Urbana, a collegiate Christian mission conference staged in St. Louis’ Edward Jones Dome the last week of December. Close to 16,000 college-age men and women participated — some dressed for church, most in hoodies and jeans — attending up to seven hours each day over a five-day span for a mix of entertainment, information and spiritual inspiration.
Rush’s Clockwork Angels Tour
LD Howard Ungerleider Choreographs the Lighting
For Rush’s latest album, Clockwork Angels, science fiction writer Kevin J. Anderson expanded drummer Neil Peart’s lyrics into a novel that depicts a colorful world of Steampunk, lost cities and a protagonist caught between the forces of chaos and order. For the live concert experience, Howard Ungerleider’s lighting design, or “choreography,” dances with video elements during the three-hour show.
Penthouse Club San Francisco
These days, it seems that nightclub concepts in general have a shelf life of no more than a few years — and the same holds true for gentlemen’s clubs. While the dancers may be the main attraction, club owners are willing to invest millions to update a major club’s atmosphere, décor and branding.
Stage Tops USA: Making Soft Goods Part of the Show
“I’ve had the honor of working with some of the best live entertainment professionals in the industry,” declares Stage Tops USA owner Kevin Greenwood. “I’ve worked with trussing companies, staging companies, production managers, designers, local hands, and riggers. Some of the stage installations were done at crazy high heights — I’ve been with clients on top of roofs that have been locked off at 45 feet and up.”
Clay Paky A.Leda Wash K10
Last month, I found myself in a gig where I needed a couple dozen small footprint, yet powerful, wash lights to tuck into corners of a giant stage. I researched all the various LED heads on the market. Each one had some fancy function that separated them from the next. It was hard to choose. Then my friend Dennis Flenniken asked if I had seen Clay Paky’s first foray into the moving LED head department. He told me that the reason CP had not built an LED head yet was that they were waiting to come up with one that was superior to all other fixtures. He was not wrong.
Name Your Top Five Tools
This column marks my 30th story for PLSN … or maybe it’s the 31st. (Senior moments can sneak up to you at any point in time, so I might be off by a bit.) Way back in 2007, I penned a lengthy story about a remarkable concert by The Who in Dallas, and the editor at t he time invited me on board as a contributor. Thirty columns later, video is still causing smiles, gasps and major headaches all across the industry, and there’s no shortage of topics to write about.
Mr. Harman, Meet Mr. Martin
Harman International announced its purchase of lighting and video vendor Martin Professional literally a week before Christmas, as though it were gift that couldn’t wait to go under the tree for Harman Professional, for which the larger company is, apparently, a good and well-heeled parent. And like many of the complex gadgets that were opened on Christmas morning, it’ll take some time to find out how good it fits with everything else.
Under the Gun
Productions come in all different sizes and budgets, and often not enough time is set aside for the lighting programming. Sometimes the programming of the lighting is put off for bigger priorities such as building the rig and/or stage. Automated lighting programmers can find themselves in various time crunch situations as they try to meet the production demands. In many cases, this can lead to little to no programming time before an event. A true professional must be prepared for these circumstances and know how to make the best of the situation.
A John Denver Tribute; Imagining Dragons; A Rose in the Hall of Fame
For the first time in 15 years, John Denver returns to the concert stage. Not in physical form, but in an evening of music and memories in John Denver: A Rocky Mountain High Concert. The John Denver estate has created a touring tribute to the late singer/songwriter, performing in U.S. theaters Feb. 1-23. The basic idea is that archival video footage of Denver will accompany live performances by his former band members.