LILLE, FRANCE – Wine is king in France… unless one happens to find oneself in beautiful Hauts-de-France near the border with Belgium. Thanks to its Flemish roots, the region has a strong beer culture, as evidenced by its myriad local microbreweries. Bière à Lille, a week-long festival in Lille celebrates this tradition with dozens of […]
MONTREAL – Matthieu Larivée and the team at Lüz Studio have been relentlessly pushing the envelope of late, driving technology in new directions to transform stages in ways that would have been unimaginable not long ago. So, it should come as no surprise that following their widely acclaimed work on last year’s Jason Aldean tour, […]
NASHVILLE – Where does the design process begin? For Erich Bertti, the answer is clear. “When conceiving a design, my first concern is for it to be versatile,” said the Santos, Brazil-based designer. Bertti hooked up with the perfect creative soul twin this summer when he created the lightshow for Grammy-winning Swedish hard rockers Ghost […]
ROME – It may not have rivaled the 200,000 or so spectators who used to watch chariot races there in ancient times, but the 70,000 fans who turned out at the Circus Maximus for Imagine Dragons’ show recently constituted a pretty good-sized crowd! Making the only Italian stop on their Mercury World Tour, the Grammy- […]
BRISTOL, UK – Maisie Peters’ music has been called many things. Words like “beautifully melodic,” “dreamily evocative,” “passionate,” and “flowing” have often been used… But the 23-year-old singer’s expansive sound goes way beyond these appellations to embrace elements of rock, all conveyed with a compelling dramatic flair. At least that’s the view of Tom Campbell. […]
NASHVILLE – Tony Caporale uses the word “array” quite often when talking about his 61-universe lighting design for Grammy-winners, Tedeschi Trucks Band on their recently completed North American tour. That’s not just because he used 53 CHAUVET Professional STRIKE Array fixtures to convey the 12-member band’s outsized energy level; in actuality it has to do […]
MEXICO CITY – Few people other than dedicate cinema buffs, remember the 1935 James Cagney movie G Men, but the classic gangster film has lived on for the past four decades thanks to the global success of the Spanish quartet Hombres G. Ever since they made their debut at Madrid’s Rock-Ola in 1983, the band […]
NEW YORK – “So how is my English?” Ishay Ribo asked the audience at Madison Square Garden. Not waiting for a response, he said cacha, cacha, the Hebrew term for “so-so.” The multi-platinum artist might not have nailed his English perfectly, but there was nothing middling about his performance this September when he became the […]
NASHVILLE – Necessity is the mother of invention. The time-worn adage might sound a bit trite to modern ears, but its validity is being vividly demonstrated to sellout crowds across Europe and North America on Metallica’s M72 World Tour. The eight distinctive towers that lend a dramatic flair to the production came about when Production […]
Photo: Jim Trocchio LOS ANGELES – Back in 1975, two New York inventors came up with the idea of creating a ring that changed colors depending on the wearer’s mood. Technically, crystals in the ring’s stone were responding to fluctuations in body temperature and other physiological changes, but no matter, the evocative jewelry became an […]
NEW YORK – Joshua Schultz admits it; at first, he wasn’t overly enthused about lighting a show against a large, deeply rippled curtain background for his client, Turnpike Troubadours when they performed at the historic Beacon Theatre. That quickly changed, however, when he saw how this billowy background played off against light. “I was skeptical, […]
OIRA, ITALY – Quarries in the mountainside have been described as “windows into the heart of the earth.” They are not only a source of beauty in their own right, but also through the works of art and architecture that are wrought from the marble, granite and other stones that are procured from of them. […]