USA - Located in Toppenish, Washington, four hours southeast of Seattle on the Yakama Nation reservation, is Legends Casino Hotel. Wanting to attract new guests by expanding their entertainment programme, Legends recently built a new events centre and sought to maintain their high standards by equipping the space in modern entertainment technology systems.
Legends contacted Elation Professional dealer Morgan Sound of Lynnwood, Washington, for a vision to transform a 200' x 200' ballroom into a top-notch 1,750- seat concert and performance venue. Contracted to design and install the audio, lighting, video, staging, and drapery systems at the new events centre, Morgan Sound called on its team of AV experts to transform the space into a first-class venue. 1,750- seat concert and

USA - Part Broadway-style stage show, and part story-driven concert, Nick Jr. Live! Move to the Music is on a national tour. The lively and colourful show, which is Vstar Entertainment’s third collaboration with Nickelodeon, has many of the network’s characters like The Bubble Guppies, PAW Patrol, and Dora The Explorer sharing the same stage for the first time.
Supporting this cast of children’s favourites as they sing, dance and charm their way into young hearts is a collection of 47 Maverick and nine Ovation fixtures from Chauvet Professional.
Colour rendering is very important when it comes to working with such a recognizable intellectual property, according to Jessica Mrovka, technical services manager at VStar Entertainment. Because the audience loves the characters presented on this tour and knows everything about them, even slight deviations from f

USA - High End Systems’ Sola Series automated luminaires drove the main Honda Stage at the 2019 Austin City Limits Music Festival in Austin, TX. For two consecutive weekends in October, 28 SolaFrame 3000 and 18 SolaHyBeam 2000 cut through day and night performances for Tame Impala, Billie Eilish, The Cure, Idles, Third Eye Blind, Cardi B and Robyn, among others.
Houston-based LD Systems provided the gear, while its LDs Nathan Brittain and Lance Williamson worked with ACL Music Festival designer Chris Lisle on the overall design.
The team deployed the 37,000 lumens of each SolaFrame 3000 for profile fixtures and band specials, while the SolaHyBeam 2000 washed the downstage with bold beams, animated gobos and effects. This year’s larger stage was 20ft wider, measuring 80ft wide by 60ft deep.
Weather was a study in contrasts for the event with intense record-bre
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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

UK - Northern Ireland’s new wave indie pop returned to touring with their fourth studio album, False Alarm, continuing a worldwide relationship with Britannia Row Productions. At FOH is Ian Laughton, a long-time Britannia Row customer who has live engineered the Club’s shows for over five years.
“A great thing about mixing this band is that they want you to put your own stamp on it. They want a pretty different vibe compared to their recorded sound, and I love that; I have to be able to put my own touch on whatever I work on,” says Laughton, who works closely with monitor engineer Steve Donovan.
The band’s engineers are joined by Britannia Row’s seasoned system tech Cesar Lopez, newly qualified stage tech Jacopo Fois and second system tech Giacomo Gasparini. The audio team’s combined efforts have been noted in the band’s close circles.

Australia - Lighting designer Alex Berlage used 36 Astera Titan Tube battery-powered wireless LED fixtures, each rigged on two individual winches, to produce a range of lighting, location effects, architecture and scenic elements for a new production of Lord of The Flies staged at Roslyn Packer Theatre by the Sydney Theatre Company.
Directed by Kip Williams, the production has been acclaimed for many aspects including its diverse mixed gender 11-person adult cast who brought new energy and insight into William Golding’s tense psychological novel that explores some brutal, uncomfortable and uncompromising issues related to chaos, power and human behaviour.
Alex is a theatrical director as well as a lighting designer and he’s constantly looking at different and more spatial ways to use lighting for building dramaturgic foundations and challenging some of the m

USA - The organising committee of the 2019 Knight of Illumination Awards USA (KOI-USA) has announced the third and final shortlist for this year's awards.
KOI-USA honours the talents and achievements of lighting and video designers for their work across the United States in the sectors of Theatre, Concert Touring & Events, and Live for Broadcast. The judging panel in the Live for Broadcast category have reviewed this year's submissions and selected the final shortlist of nominees, which is as follows:
The Vari-Lite Award for Awards Show
Jon Kusner for Billboard Music Awards 2019
Jon Kusner for CMA Awards 2018
Tom Sutherland for People's Choice Awards 2018
The Green Hippo Award for Digital Content
Trevor Burk for CMA Awards 2018
Yussef Cole, Michelle Higa Fox, Jorge Peschiera & Marc Janowitz for Patriot Act

USA - LS-Wing, the latest addition to Work Pro's award LightShark DMX-based hardware lighting console range, is gives professionals access to an Open Sound Control (OSC) hardware controller.
Making its U.S debut at LDI 2019 in Las Vegas, LS-Wing can send OSC commands via ethernet networks to any device or software controlled by the OSC protocol. What's more, it can also use ethernet networks to send UDP/IP commands, making it compatible with virtually every lighting, music, video and media server software in use today.
LS-Wing can be configured in a variety of different modes to suit different applications. Developed as a 3 In 1 product, LS-Wing can be a straightforward fader wing, an OSC hardware controller or a standalone MIDI console for any device that accepts MIDI control via USB. A total of four USB ports are provided, including a USB-B port, making it easy to co

Europe - Notch, the visual creation tool for interactive motion graphics, has released a new version of its Notch Builder software for motion graphics artists and designers. The update brings a path tracing solution to the tool, which already features accessible real-time rendering and ray tracing technology.
Path tracing is used by many leading high-quality renderers. It simulates the paths of real light including the way light bounces, reflects and refracts through a 3D scene. It also takes into account the materials it interacts with, making near photo-realistic results possible.
The new GPU path tracer is seamlessly integrated into the existing Notch toolkit. The same real-time WYSIWYG environment and nodes our users know and love are now unified with the path tracer. This includes particles, procedurals, cloners, lights, post-processing and compositing. Available

UK - When looking to up-grade the sound system in their council chamber, Newcastle Civic Centre turned to long established supplier Gary Nicholson of Newcastle-based Rock Warehouse to propose a solution.
Having previously installed an HK Audio system in the Civic Centre’s largest space (the baronial style Banqueting Hall, capable of seating up to 600 guests), HK Audio was Nicholson’s first choice.
Paul Frankcom was responsible for looking after the full gamut of AV requirements throughout the Civic Centre. He explains: "With the principal use of the Council Chamber being to host meetings for up to 200+ delegates using a variety of microphones positioned around the room, first rate speech intelligibility was the priority, with the objective being to commission a system capable of delivering a uniform audio experience for all delegates, with even coverage from the fr

USA - Milwaukee may be widely known for its Germanic roots and mass celebration of beer, bowling, and bratwurst, but this town is also the site of Irish Fest - a celebration of Irish music and culture - which this year utilised dLive and SQ Series consoles from Allen & Heath.
Held downtown at Henry Maier Festival Park along the shore of Lake Michigan, Irish Fest 2019 featured 100 musical acts and 300 different performances spread across 16 stages.
With Clearwing Productions handling the bulk of the event’s sound reinforcement needs, the Ingleside, Illinois-based independent rep firm Audio Biz deployed five dLive and six SQ Series consoles across seven of the stages plus a preshow/demo suite.
Among the dLive systems were S5000 and C3500 control surfaces supported by DM48, DM64, and CDM48 MixRacks. Utilised at smaller stages where space was at a premium, SQ-5

France - For the past five years, XCPH has been responsible for designing the lighting rig for du Tour Vibration, a popular five-city back-to-school tour sponsored by Radio Vibration.
Each year, their designs have been greeted with enthusiasm by the event organizers, performing artists, and the fans who turn out by the tens of thousands in France’s Central Region for the free concerts. This year, in a bold departure from precedent, Maxime Perrey scaled back the role of LED video walls that had dominated his previous designs in favour of a more lighting-oriented rig that featured Chauvet Professional fixtures.
“The tour has continuously grown,” said Perrey. “This was the first year that I had carte blanche to create a plan. I wanted something different from the four previous editions. Before, video was much more present, with larger, more imposing, surfaces. S

South Africa - DWR Distribution is inviting interested parties and companies to attend an L-Acoustics demo on Tuesday, 29 October in Durban.
Taking place at the Glenridge Church in Stamford Hill, the free event will run between 12:00 and 15:00, with a focus on the L-Acoustics Kiva II and the A15 (Wide & Focus). Those wishing to attend should register at dwrdistribution.co.za/register/l-acousticsdurban.

Estonia - A Robe moving light rig supplied by Tallinn-based rental company E&T was used for Estonia’s two highest-profile annual summer opera festivals, the Birgitta Festival organised by the Tallinn Philharmonic Society and Saaremaa Opera Days organized by Eesti Kontsert.
Saaremaa took place on a 60 x 30m stage built beside Kuressaare Castle on Saaremaa Island in the Baltic Sea. The castle is one of the best-preserved medieval fortifications in Estonia and provides a magical backdrop for all the operatic action to unfold.
For the Birgitta festival, the same staging company constructed a temporary roofing / staging structure adjacent to the elegant ruins of the Pirita Convent in Tallinn, which dates to the 15th century.
In both cases, the lighting rig comprised around 120 Robe fixtures – a mix of Spiiders, MMX WashBeams, MMX Spots, LEDWash 800s, Cyc FX 8

Europe - Rozbark Dance Festival is using Prolights to mark the return of a major international event to Silesia
This new dance theatre festival is a 10-day international event, presenting the most captivating dance theatre projects from Portugal, China, Israel, the UK, Poland and across the world.
The Kamea Dance Company is home to 14 versatile dancers, Israelis side by side with dancers from all over the world who bring their creative talent to the works. Based in Beer Sheva, the capital of the Negev, Kamea tours extensively in Israel and abroad whilst enjoying acclaim from audiences and critics alike. The broad repertoire includes works from internationally renowned guest choreographers.
Kamea Dance Company discussed production needs and fixtures with Teatr Rozbark and looking at the original rider and assessing the desired outcome the teams unanimously chose

China - The Liaoning Ballet has taken delivery of 40 ADB Klemantis AS1000 LED cyclorama lights, half of them for fixed installation for the Liaoning Ballet and half for the ballet company’s worldwide touring performances of Hua Mulan.
The Liaoning Ballet is known for producing new Chinese cultural works and performing well-known ballet classics. The story of a powerful female general in Chinese history, Hua Mulan has had many incarnations, including a Disney animated film. The Liaoning Ballet’s new production interprets the iconic tale through modern ballet choreography and music. It is now touring globally.
Lighting programmer Ma Liang from the Liaoning Ballet chose the new Klemantis cyc lights and 40 ADB Warp 12º-30º 800W Zoom Profile spotlights, which were previously purchased by the Centre, for the production. Sergey Martynov is Hua Mulan’s

USA - Under the banner Inspire, professional audio’s annual family reunion returned to New York City’s Javits Center for four October days where inspiration was abundant as leading audio innovators shared their knowledge and experience alongside gear designed to spark creativity and imagination while enhancing productivity.
“The programme rocked, and the exhibits were packed with people. Everyone was very excited to be there,” shares Agnieszka Roginska, AES New York 2019 co-chair and AES president-elect. “No time in AES’s history has seen a more diverse, innovative and forward-looking programme.” Convention co-chair and AES Secretary Valerie Tyler elaborates: “We expanded the comprehensive technical programme to include more genres, a broader range of new technologies and a wider breadth of voices than ever before.”
“We’re so proud of the

UK - Since the National Theatre’s initial investment in 42 MAC Encore Performance LED moving heads for the Olivier Theatre in May 2018, a planned roll-out has seen the venue on London’s Southbank install MAC Encores in the Lyttelton and Dorfman Theatres and add further units to the Olivier. In total, 156 MAC Encore Performance and Wash fixtures are either permanently installed or held in shared lighting resources.
Selected for their feature set, durability and near silent operation, the roll-out has been supplied by a number of Martin dealers including White Light, Stage Electrics, Hawthorn and Flashlight - all themselves supplied by UK Martin distributor Sound Technology.
In the Olivier Theatre - the largest of the three theatres within the National - lighting supervisor Jack Williams is preparing to install additional MAC Encore Performance CLD fixtures as the p

USA - Global design and BIM software provider Vectorworks has announced open registration for its fifth Vectorworks Design Summit.
From 22-24 April 2020 in San Diego, California at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa, design professionals, educators and students in the architecture, landscape and entertainment industries will have the opportunity to attend industry workshops, product training for all levels of expertise, keynotes, networking opportunities and a customer appreciation party.
“This is our first time hosting the Design Summit on the West Coast, and we look forward to the networking opportunities, training workshops and events we’ve planned for attendees in beautiful San Diego,” comments Vectorworks director of channel operations, Tara Grant. “With the resort’s numerous activities and this year’s speakers, we know everyone will have the perfect

USA - With just less than a month to go until LDI 2019, organisers have announced they expect record attendance and participation in this year’s events.
LDI runs from 18-24 November at the Las Vegas Convention Centre, starting with the LDInstitute and LDIntensives sessions and LiveXperience Symposium, culminating in the exhibit hall tradeshow from Friday 22 to Sunday 24 November.
“We’re thrilled that this year’s LDI Show looks set to be the most well-attended yet, bringing the global live production community from over 80 countries to Las Vegas to share ideas, exhibit and do business,” says LDI's managing director, David Johnson. “Our registration process shows us that people are coming from a wide range of international live and broadcast venues - festivals, corporate events, theatre, concerts, clubs, theme parks, architainment, and houses of worship. LDI

UK - CPL supplied full technical design and production for show producers Pandora Events, who delivered Tropic Skincare’s 2019 Glambassador motivational event, a high-energy day action-packed with new product launches, presentations, awards and live entertainment, complete with a gala dinner.
The extravaganza for 2,500 people - themed Carnival of Colour - was staged in Hall 4 at the NEC, Birmingham, UK.
CPL’s production and project manager Lee Gruszeckyj worked closely with Pandora’s Vanessa Carter and a crew of 27 technicians specialising in all the disciplines who started with the installation of a 20m diameter circular stage in the centre of the room. The inner 10m diameter section was a revolve.
Above this, four large screens were installed, which were fed by Barco UDX high-powered projectors, giving 360° viewing angles.
The stage was a fu

Germany - After the successful opening of the Rathausmarkt Open Air in Hamburg Germany last year, the classical music event with general music director Kent Nagano and the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra returned in August.
For the first time the Farao Studios from Munich provided the acoustics at the event and started with a complex concept, that combined acoustic measures on stage with elements of virtual acoustics and a high-resolution pro-ribbon sound system from Alcons Audio.
The concept, originally developed for Audi’s ‘Vorsprung Festival’ in 2014, was brought by the experienced team of Farao Studios at the Hamburg Rathausmarket square this year.
A setup consisting of 15 Alcons LR28 large-scale pro-ribbon line array systems (l / r) and 14 Alcons LR18 as centre cluster was installed. A total of 20 of the powerful BC543 3x 18'' cardioid subwoofer system

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