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Hollywood Bowl

Hollywood, California, USA

With its unmistakable signature shell, the Hollywood Bowl is one of world’s largest natural amphitheaters, and a famed American landmark. Now it boasts cutting-edge LED lighting technology among its many notable design features.

In the spring of 2005, lighting designer Jay Winters of JK Design Group and Paul Geller, Hollywood Bowl Production Director were entrusted with the shell’s exciting illumination makeover. A project team was created, composed of Winters; Geller; Bob Sockolich, Master Electrician; Gil Samuelian, Assistant Electrician and Board Operator; and Andy Kassan, Assistant Electrician.

”The original idea was to come up with an approach that would illuminate the entire arch of the shell in a seamless manner with concealed fixtures,” says Winters.“We compared several technologies and determined that an LED-based approach was the way to go.” The team wanted to maintain the shell’s capability for color-changing effects, yet in the past they had used conventional light sources with scrolling color changers. They had also tried using a dichroic color-mixing fixture. According to Winters, “The move to Color Kinetics’ LED-based system allows not only the ability for straight color changes, but also an unlimited variety of sequenced effects and an amazing range of effects in terms of how we move from one color to another.”

The team chose iColor Cove® MX Powercore – a 12” (30.5 cm) linear fixture that applies Color Kinetics’ Powercore™ technology to integrate power and data management directly within the fixture. As a complete line voltage system, iColor Cove MX Powercore is easily installed in lengthy, continuous runs without the need for external power supplies – a significant reduction in installation costs and complexity. iColor Cove MX Powercore receives line voltage and data from Data Enabler.

To mount the low-profile fixtures, the project team used custom, 4’ (1.2 m) sheet metal channels with four fixtures per section. The metal channels provided the proper cut-off to control the fixtures’ wide beam dispersion as desired – ensuring the proper illumination of each specific surface of the shell's concentric baffles, without spilling onto the other surfaces within the stage area.

The lighting effects were programmed and controlled by the venue’s existing DMX console. The team can easily program unique effects as needed to support various musical performances and the Los Angeles Philharmonic during its summer season.