USA - Every year, the award-winning veteran audio production crew behind the Grammy Awards telecast strives to further raise the bar on the audio quality of ‘Music’s Biggest Night’. This year, in a first for the show, the audio team implemented a Dante network powered by Focusrite RedNet D64R 64-channel MADI bridges, Focusrite RedNet D16R AES-to-Dante interfaces and RedNet MP8R eight-channel mic pres and A/D converters to deliver the vocal performance and production wireless microphones to the house sound and broadcast audio mixing consoles.
The show was broadcast live from the Staples Centrein downtown Los Angeles on the CBS network on 26 January 2. Performers included Best New Artist nominees Lizzo; Billie Eilish; and Lil Nas X, as well as Tyler, the Creator; H.E.R.;

South Africa - DWR Distribution will present its first official MA3 basic training course from 25 to 26 February in Johannesburg.
Presented by DWR’s Jannie de Jager, the two-day workshop will focus on familiarising the operator with the basic functions of the grandMA3 software and lighting consoles, as well as the operating philosophy. The content will include patching, presets, phasers and timecode. The course will also touch on networking aspects of the MA3 family.
Delegates are requested to bring a MA3 console or MA3onPC Software on a laptop with an additional screen and a valid ID.
The course will be held at DWR Distribution, C1 Kimbult Industrial Park, 9 Zeiss Road, Laserpark, Honeydew.
The cost is R1,200 and includes a light lunch and refreshments. Bookings will be confirmed once payment has been received.
Bookings on-line: http://dwrdistribu

Estonia - "Now our students will be able to have a taste of their future lives as creators, and practice on big stages,” declared Professor Ivari Ilja, rector of Tallinn’s Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre on the opening of the school’s new concert and performance centre in late 2019.
Students will have their talents nurtured at the school’s new 12m Euro concert and performance centre. Among the benefits it offers aspiring actors and musicians is a state-of-the-art stage lighting system that features 50 Chauvet Professional Ovation F-265WW high output Fresnel fixtures supplied and installed by RGB Baltic OÜ.
At the heart of the 6,000sq.m concert and performance facility is the 482-seat concert hall, which serves as a platform from which the institute's promising rising musical stars to demonstrate their talents. Here, 34 Ovation fixtures provide front and
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Indochine X PixMob Fan Immersion

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's - 40 thousand LED pixels on a ceiling!!! Indochine's whirlwind tour transports fans to another level of the live experience - immersing them from floor to ceiling with PixMob's X4 wristbands, and an LED ceiling made entirely of its NOVA Minis! With the vision of Indochine's creative team, PixMob used its LED fan-technology to turn attendees and venues into an ocean of effects, and a starry sky of LED magic. Très très cool!

Read more about the Indochine tour in the latest issue of LSi

USA - At the end of its regular season of Shakespeare in the Park, New York’s Public Theatre stages an open-air production at Central Park’s 1,800-seat open-air Delacorte Theatre. This past season, the story of Hercules was presented, a theatrical pageant brought to life by some 200 performers with a lighting design by Tony-award winning lighting designer Tyler Micoleau. The designer turned to Elation Professional’s multi-use Proteus Hybrid luminaire to provide visual impact in the outdoor environment.
Micoleau had worked on two Shakespeare shows in Central Park earlier in the summer, but it was a very different plot he knew he needed for Hercules. “The musical Hercules, in a theatre as large as the Delacorte in Central Park, required (pun intended) very muscular lighting approaches,” he comments. “The Elation Proteus Hybrid provided just th

USA - For Callas in Concert, opera singer Maria Callas was brought back to the stage via hologram, 40 years after her passing. A live orchestra accompanied digital remastered recordings of Callas for the production, which presented FOH and recording engineer Howard ‘Howie’ Lindeman with a unique challenge.
Since the show was focused around the visual of Callas on stage, and the hologram system used to project her image, Lindeman needed to find a low-profile microphone that would not be obtrusive on-stage, while still providing the highest audio quality for the live orchestral instruments.
Lindeman turned to the 4099 Instrument Microphone from DPA Microphones because of its sound, lightweight design and compact size of the instrument mic clips. In all, Lindeman and his team deployed a total of 27 4099 Instrument Microphones (with mic clips) for the 14 violin

Columbia - Teatro Colsubsidio Roberto Arias Perez is a 1,000-seater venue opened in 1981 in central Bogota that has established itself at the centre of quality live entertainment, culture and performing arts. It’s renowned for high production values and imaginative shows offering a lively mix of concerts, musicals and classical performances.
The theatre has recently purchased its first Robe moving lights - 10 Pointes and 10 x Spiiders. Added to the house lighting rig, these have already started making a difference to how shows can be lit and presented.
The theatre is owned by a large commercial enterprise and independently run, and the new Robes were part of a general lighting upgrade that is ongoing to improve the technology and the levels of production on offer.
The upgrade also includes several LED fixtures, and before these new fixtures, they had six older

USA - Magowan’s Infinite Mirror Maze has been a staple of San Francisco’s Pier 39 tourist area for over a decade. When the original lighting fixtures installed for the attraction’s opening began to fail, the venue’s resident ‘light artist’ chose ADJ units to replace them. This not only completely rejuvenated the look of the attraction, but also provided a wealth of creative potential for generating new looks and effects through colour mixing and DMX control.
Pier 39 is a popular shopping and entertainment centre built on a pier close to the famous Fisherman’s Wharf district in San Francisco. Located on the second floor of the complex, Magowan’s Infinite Mirror Maze opened in 2009. It is an immersive attraction featuring a labyrinth of small mirrored rooms.
Despite its popularity, the owners of the maze are committed to investing in new technology and ef

UK - Stage Electrics has been appointed a UK distributor for Prolyte Trussing and Staging which is now part of Area Four Industries.
Fons van Teijn, Prolytes CEO, signed the deal with Stage Electrics operations director Adam Blaxill at the company’s Bristol-based offices.
“Stage Electrics have been a good ambassador for Prolyte for the past 15 years, we plan to build on that heritage and develop a strong working relationship,” comments Fons.
Blaxill adds: “We were a natural partner for this new incarnation of Prolyte in the UK. We are able to hold large stocks of trussing and staging and distribute the Prolyte product range across the UK on a next day service. Our sales team are already familiar with the product range and we now increased our Prolyte product managers to three with the appointment of Rob Foster as Prolyte technical sales consultant.”<

UK - LVR Optical will host a laser safety training for operators, installers and manufacturers of laser products.
Taking place on 2 March at Hunton Park Hotel near Watford, the event will cover a range of topics relevant to the light show and entertainment industry, including hazards associated with the use of lasers; how to design safe shows and effects; and how to prepare risk assessments and working with the local authorities. The session will also include coverage of the British Standards Institute’s PD IEC/TR 60825-3 document relating to laser effect safety, and PLASA’s own laser display safety guidance.
The laser safety course will be hosted by James Stewart, an expert in the field with 25-year experience gained through working with entertainment venues and show providers. He will offer attendees valuable insights into necessary safety requirements and undert

The Netherlands - Shure has announced a firmware update (version 4.1) that provides additional functionality for multiple products in its Networked Systems portfolio. This update includes compatibility with Audinate’s Dante Domain Manager (DDM), compatibility enhancements with leading third-party software and hardware videoconferencing codecs, and AES67 networking compatibility for products utilizing the UltimoX chipset.
The expanded support for additional third-party video codecs includes Cisco, Zoom Rooms and Microsoft Teams, providing programming-free USB mute sync compatibility with the IntelliMix P300 and ANIUSB-MATRIX.
“This firmware update adds new features and capabilities that the market demands,” says Chad Wiggins, senior director networked systems at Shure.
With Dante Domain Manager compatibility included in firmware release 4.1, Shure products i

France - The style and panache that has made The Village Outlet so popular throughout the Isère department was on full display at a recent celebratory event at the outdoor retail centre in Villefontaine, 40 minutes outside Lyon. Adding colour and glamour to the occasion was a lively L&DB lighting design that featured Chauvet Professional Maverick MK2 Wash fixtures and Geyser P7 atmospherics.
“Our goal was to blanket the area in colour to support the spirit of the event,” says Romain Plantier, CEO of L&DB. “The Maverick MK2 Wash excelled in this regard. We also relied on its zoom feature to tighten the beam and create dramatic effects against the fog from the two Geyser P7 units we had on site. The powerful jet and the colorization of the smoke that we got from the Geysers provided a striking effect.”
L&DB used six Maverick MK2 Wash fixtures at The

USA - When the ninth Annual NFL Honours was held the day before Super Bowl LIV, lighting designer Jon Kusner selected a complement of Ayrton Diablo LED profile luminaires from PRG to supplement the house lights.
The awards presentation by the National Football League honoured players from the 2019 season. It was hosted by Steve Harvey and pre-recorded for same-day broadcast on FOX. The venue for the show was the Ziff Ballet Opera House at the Adrienne Arsht Centre in Miami.
The Diablo fixtures were the first Ayrton luminaires to be used by Kusner, a member of the Los Angeles lighting design co-op, 22 Degrees. Kusner mounted 14 Diablo on the balcony rail to backlight the audience and act as a stage wash when crowds filled the set and follow-spot traffic was compromised.
“The balcony rail typically holds conventional fixtures,” he notes. “The lights we chose

Slovenia - Croatian singer-songwriter and actress Severina played four major arena concerts in the Balkans this fall - at Split and Zagreb in Croatia, Belgrade in Serbia and culminating at the Dvorana Stožice in Ljubljana, Slovenia - which were lit by Slovenian LD Crt Birsa who added over 150 Robe moving lights to the lighting design for the three concerts in Croatia and Slovenia.
Crt, whose work is well known internationally was to light these four special shows for the superstar. Talks originally started back in April 2019 when Severina invited him, set designer Greta Godnic and show director Nejc Levstik to submit ideas. They asked Den Barca of ThenVision to join the creative team and work on the video design and visuals.
“It was a complicated design and setup,” commented Crt, who was delighted when his initial lighting scheme proposal was accepted. “We had a

Argentina - The Teatro Astral in Buenos Aires relies on an Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing system for the launch of the Broadway musical, Kinky Boots, which saw its opening night in January.
The large-capacity venue accommodates up to 1,200 people and has become a home to various productions, events, conferences, congresses, seminars and exhibitions. With the theatre not having its own in-house system, the venue turns to audio rental company BR Sound S.R.L to help host its events. With the latest Kinky Boots production being scheduled for multiple times a week over the next two years and featuring a large crew of on-stage actors and musicians, the engineers needed a large format desk that significantly expanded the theatre’s capabilities in terms of channel counts, processing power, speed and flexibility.
Lead engineer, Santiago Rivero (BR Sound

UK - Video company Universal Pixels has made a significant acquisition of disguise equipment, responding to increasing demand in theatre and an overarching determination to remain at the forefront of designers and production engineers’ needs.
Universal Pixels has added multiple disguise gx 2c media servers, as well as SDI VFC and HDMI VFC cards, to its rental stock as it continues its expansion in a range of markets. The company, which prides itself on a flexible and attentive approach to all of its projects, made the investment to meet the evolving creative demands of video designers.
UP’s Ollie Luff commented: “We’ve always got a close eye on how the industry is developing and the way in which video is being used. We’re seeing an ever-increasing demand from designers to integrate Notch seamlessly and quickly into their workflows and the gx 2c certainly has

Europe - The Audio Engineering Society has opened registration for the upcoming AES Vienna 148th International Professional Audio Convention, taking place at the Austria Center on 25-28 May. Early registration discounts are available through 29 February for the dedicated European pro audio event that celebrates ‘A World of Audio’.
AES Vienna attendees will experience “stellar, leading-edge recordings - including VR productions from the Abbey Road Spatial Audio Forum and examples of immersive music and game audio - presented with production insights from the engineers who brought the projects to life”. Legacy productions will be examined, such as the music of Bruce Springsteen.
Core audio topics and the technology of today and tomorrow will be explored, including audio for new distribution platforms like Magic Leap.

USA - Located just outside Los Angeles, Concordia University Irvine recently opened the Borland-Manske Centre, marking a significant expansion of its music programme.
The acoustic spaces in the $30m building were designed by Walters-Storyk Design Group and include an 1100sq.ft. studio suite connected to a 3000sq.ft. orchestral hall and a 2500sq.ft. choral hall for large scale recordings. Anchoring the studio is a new 32-channel Rupert Neve Designs 5088 console, fully-loaded with 32x Shelford 5052 Mic Preamp / Inductor EQ modules, 9x Shelford 5051 Inductor EQ / Compressor modules, and the company’s own SwiftMix automation.
“I have been fortunate to work on consoles designed by Mr. Rupert Neve for many years,” says Prof. Steve Young, Concordia’s director of commercial music. “One of our core values for the new facility is to provide students with an opportunity

UK - White Light has supplied the lighting equipment for Leopoldstadt, which opened at the Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End this week.
Written by Tom Stoppard, Leopoldstadt tells the story of three generations of the same Jewish family living in early 20th century Vienna. It is directed by Patrick Marber and features a lighting design by the Olivier Award-winning Neil Austin.
“Leopoldstadt is a truly exceptional play which encapsulates the experience of the Austrian Jews through one family’s journey,” says Austin. “Beginning in the period of cultural and scientific explosion in Vienna at the turn of the century, it spans a near 60-year period ending in 1955. To achieve the passing of time it’s an abstract set of gauzes and items of furniture, which represent the one room through the years.”
As such, Austin’s brief on the piec

Czech Republic - Rock band Kabát recently completed a sold-out stadium tour to mark their 30th anniversary, accompanied with an upgraded PA system featuring DiGiCo’s Quantum 7 console.
Kabát is a nationally renowned classic rock band, which has been popular since the 1980s. Its 10th anniversary stadium tour was the most prosperous in Czech music history, and the band represented the Czech Republic at the country's first entry in the Eurovision Song Contest. The latest anniversary tour visited stadiums and venues across the country over a three-week period.
The band is managed by Prague-based production company, the Pink Panther Agency, which also takes care of a number of other Czech artists. Its touring division recently expanded its hire stock with the addition of the Quantum 7. Purchased through DiGiCo’s distributor, Pro Music, the company was experiencing de

USA - Bandit Lites once again provided the lighting for the Winter Jam Tour Spectacular, Christian music’s largest annual tour. According to Pollstar, attendance often outpaces any other tour’s attendance during the year’s first quarter. The evening of live concerts by top Christian artists includes a roster of Passion, Crowder, Austin French, Andy Mineo, Hillsong Young & Free, Building 429, Red, Louis Giglio, Newsong and more.
After a few years with an in-the-round design, the tour returned to an end stage arena design, allowing the space for a large upstage LED wall. Due to an 8 mil blow through LED panel, production designer Jerry Holcomb was able to place Elation Paladins behind the wall.
“With the tour having several more worship-oriented bands, we knew we needed a lot of upstage light looks punching through the bands,” Holcomb explained.
To

South Africa - The Nelson Mandela Theatre at the Joburg Theatre Complex in Braamfontein remains one of the most prestigious and celebrated stages in South Africa. Home to the Joburg Ballet Company, the much-celebrated annual pantomime and one of the best-equipped opera stages in the country, the theatre complex is a flame of hope that continues to keep the performing arts alive and well in the city.
In keeping with international trends, the Joburg Theatre has recently invested in an Absen LED video wall, which will be installed on the Nelson Mandela Theatre ‘s opera stage.
Technical manager at the Joburg Theatre, Enos Ramoroko explains that, historically, the Joburg Theatre has relied on set pieces and scenery. “In the 1980s and 90s, we used a lot of large-scale painted scenery and set pieces to bring productions to life – which was possible thanks to the ample

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