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USA - Kansas have announced the fourth and final leg of The Point of Know Return Anniversary Tour, with a lighting system supplied by Bandit Lites. With the third leg of the tour currently traversing the country, the group is performing the eponymous sextuple-platinum album in its entirety to near capacity and enthusiastic audiences through Spring of 2020.
“It’s exciting how popular the Point of Know Return Anniversary shows have been,” comments Kansas lead vocalist Ronnie Platt. “When we wrap up this fourth and final leg, we will have played nearly 100 of these shows over nearly two years. We have worked hard to give audiences a memorable musical experience with this tour. We are excited to continue it with the final leg of the tour, then see what we come up with nex

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France - Amate Audio’s new X212AF advanced three-way line array was FOH for Boris Brejcha at the Positiv Festival on 5 September in the Roman Théâtre antique d'Orange in southeastern France.
Sound hire company DIDO Music supplied an all Amate Audio FOH system, comprising left / right stacks of just five X2121AF line array elements together with two further X212AF / X218WF pairings for front-fills, flooding the 9000-capacity filled Roman amphitheatre with sound.
The festival line up, featuring Nicolas Cuer and Reinier Zonneveld, was headlined by Berlin DJ and producer Boris Brejcha: purveyor of his own genre of ‘hightech minimal’ techno and man in the Viennese carnival mask.
(Jim Evans)

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USA - This summer, Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry unveiled a new daytime backstage tour based around the new, purpose-built Circle Room theatre. Hosted by Opry members Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, a 14-minute long immersive media experience takes fans on a journey through nearly 100 years of Opry history, seen through the eyes of the musicians who played on the famous stage, and features archival footage and concert-like special effects.
The Circle Room serves as the centrepiece of a $12m Opry House expansion and renovation project aimed at enhancing the guest experience. This production marks the opening of the new backstage tour, which continues into the renovated Opry House Lobby, featuring a custom lighting element made with Gibson guitars and a special media presentation.
As the introduction for the new tour, The Circle Room experience is dominated by LED conce
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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

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UK - British pop-rock band The 1975 embarked on a two-year world tour, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, with a firm focus on the fan experience: what they see, hear and feel – whether in the front row or the gods – is paramount.
With drum and bass, ethereal pop and pulsating rock performed in venues ranging from regional halls to big city arenas, the production team required a flexible, powerful and clear sound solution. As a result, the tour is one of the first to take the d&b KSL System on the road.
“Musically, this band is very eclectic, so you really need a sound system that covers all of those genres and styles,” says Jay Rigby, front of house engineer for The 1975. “Lead singer Matty Healy and drummer George Daniel produce their own albums - they know exactly how they should sound live and they have the technical expertise to communicate

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Europe - Painting with Light has developed Realites, a real-time virtual lighting design tool for balancing and fine-tuning the lighting of people and 3D objects in relation to digital scenery that is appearing on LED video screens in the background or foreground of the same scene.
It enables the lighting designer / programmer to light both the video content – which will already have a pre-determined ambience – and the actors or set around it, using the show lighting console, and without the video content needing to be re-rendered.
This is a flexible solution for video-orientated shows, creating highly realistic effects as the blend between 2D and 3D elements onstage becomes imperceptible.
Additionally, lighting on both the actors and digital backgrounds can be perfectly matched or contrasted to achieve the exact desired effect, bringing a perfect visual harm

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USA - Global design and BIM software provider Vectorworks continues to support the next generation of designers, naming Kristopher Clemson winner of the 2019 Richard Diehl Award, the grand prize for the Vectorworks Design Scholarship.
With over 1,600 submissions, scholarships were awarded to 20 student projects from the architecture, entertainment, landscape and interior design industries. Winners included both individual and group submissions.
The winning project, The Octagon submitted by Clemson, a recent graduate of Full Sail University and founder of Bifröst Lighting, focuses on lighting design, Vision and MA 3D renderings. Clemson used Vision alongside Vectorworks Spotlight to help with previsualization and implementing MA lighting on a PC.
“It is an incredible honour to receive this scholarship and to be the first entertainment winner of the Richa

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USA - Registration is now open for the 2020 New World Rigging Symposium taking place 31 March – 1 April in Houston, TX in conjunction with the USITT Conference and Stage Expo. The event provides an opportunity for riggers and those interested in the entertainment rigging industry to network, discuss current issues and new technologies, and help shape the future of the industry. A complete schedule, session descriptions and a link to register are available at www.esta.org/nwrs.
Over the two days participants will be given a range of opportunities to further their technical knowledge in sessions covering video wall rigging, automation and motorization, and tension grids. They’ll keep up to date with codes and standards, have some of their most pressing questions answered by structural engineers, and learn about rigging for cinema and performer flying.
Jeanette Farme

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UK - Specialist hire and events business, SLX, has been sold by the Stage Electrics Group in a transaction led by the existing chief executive Alastair Currie.
All staff will transfer as part of the transaction which completed on Friday 11 October 2019.
Alastair Currie says, “Two years ago I joined SLX and at the time had no idea what an amazing business I would find. SLX is brimming with some of the most knowledgeable, talented, passionate and dedicated individuals I’ve ever come across. From delivering on incredible West End productions and national tours to utterly unique corporate events as well as being in house providers at nationally recognised top tier venues, I couldn’t be prouder of the work we do.
“There is still an incredible untapped opportunity and I’m confident our plans for significant investment in the latest lighting products and furth

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China - The Mida Performance Store in Changsha, the capital city of China’s Hunan province, is a new concept that offers a high-spec live performance venue, bar and social media experience for music lovers. It provides an open stage for anyone wanting to give free rein to their singing talents in front of an appreciative audience of their peers, and the entire performance space is equipped with Genelec 1032C and 4030C loudspeakers for a high quality audio experience for both performers and audience members alike.
The concept has proved hugely popular with customer flow reaching 120,000 in the first month of opening followed by 200,000 in the second month. On the Store Member’s Day, performance waiting time exceeded three hours. Much of the popularity is attributed to the superlative quality of the Genelec audio experience that forms an integral part of the concept. From

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Spain - Since starting the business in 2015, the group of young entrepreneurial friends who formed Madrid’s successful Lalala Group has already opened 12 bar/restaurants. The latest, on the city’s fashionable Calle de la Princesa, features a Yamaha audio system which is keeping both customers and the city council happy.
Lalala Group calls its venues ‘modern beer houses’, which all follow a core theme, but each has a different personality. Located in one of Madrid’s most popular areas, the latest Lalala Group venue - Alboroto - has a spacious dining area, two bars and a cocktail menu complemented by a choice of music which encourages patrons to enjoy upbeat, celebratory nights out. DJs maintain a lively atmosphere from Wednesday to Saturday, with live performances at weekends.
Being in an area with many bars and clubs, Lalala Group wanted to ensure that Alboro

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USA - As part of ongoing renovations, Nashville’s Hutton Hotel recently completed work on a new live music venue, alongside Writers Studios production rooms conceived by musicians Dierks Bentley and Ryan Tedder.
Spearheaded by L.A.-based GreenLight Media, Nashville-based British acoustician Michael Cronin was hired to bring the venue and the two production rooms to fruition. Cronin subsequently brought in Clair Solutions, who worked closely with Cronin and the venue to spec the AV system – a key part of which involves components from Bose Professional, including ShowMatch and RoomMatch Utility modules.
The 5,000sq.ft Analog music venue and cocktail lounge, which takes up the footprint of a former parking facility and is two stories high in the centre section, usually seats 160 but has a maximum capacity of 300. The hotel wanted the venue to reflect its intimate vib

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USA - Madison Square Garden has welcomed just about every conceivable kind of music act in its storied history, but it’s doubtful that the famed arena has ever hosted a concert with a scenic set quite like the one Vulfpeck used for its recent show. With a mix of well-worn chairs, ottomans tapestries and thrift shop lamps, the set for the band’s concert looked more like the kind of apartment inhabited by college kids, than a funk music stage.
Formed by four students at the University of Michigan’s music school, Vulfpeck recorded their first song in an Ann Arbor living room. They had the exact furniture from that room shipped 622 miles from their college town home to Manhattan for their Madison Square Garden debut.
The ‘living room’ provided a nice touch that captured the engaging style of Vulfpeck. At the same time, though, it also presented a challenge for Ch

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UK - London based Kudos AV arrived on the Data Strategy stand at London’s PLASA 2019 exhibition to confirm its order of a two-bay QC-Check 660 Workstation, incorporating PAT-4 and CAB-5 test equipment from technology partner, Out Board.
Kudos AV is an event management company delivering full-service event production with high quality audio, visual, lighting and staging solutions. Data Strategy’s QC-check will provide the company’s stock and inventory system with increased levels of efficiency as well as safety.
QC-Check will interact with the company’s existing inventory management system, to automatically request and log product test updates from the workstation’s in-built industrial PAT and Cable inspection equipment from Out Board. One of the big advantages of the QC-Check system, Kataria explains, is its capacity to “aid the management of assets”. He

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The Netherlands - Guido’s Orchestra, the popular Dutch ensemble that fuses pop and classical music, performed their annual open-air concert in Kerkrade at the end of June. As this also happens to be the home town of ADJ Europe it was fitting that a lighting rig consisting entirely of ADJ’s fixtures – including 186 recently-released IP-rated outdoor units – was used to illuminate the performance which ran over two evenings and featured a number of guest performers.
Billed in full as The Maestro & The European Pop Orchestra, Guido’s Orchestra is the brainchild of conductor, violin soloist and composer Guido Dieteren. Having toured throughout Europe and North America as part of numerous traditional orchestras, Guido formed his own ensemble with the intention of performing the most famous melodies of all time from both the classical and pop worlds.
Every summ

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The Netherlands - Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) is an all-encompassing platform for electronic music, combining as it does a festival, conferences and a cultural playground that extends across the city for five days. ADE features more than 1000 events in 200 venues, attracts in the region of 400,000 visitors and includes live performances from more than 2500 artists. The festival is supplemented by talks, hardware presentations, exhibitions, promotions and interactive events. It would be hard to conceive of a more important event in the global electronic dance music calendar.
ADE has once again partnered with Pioneer Pro-Audio, who will be supplying sound systems for a number of official event venues, including the ADE Zen Space, an oasis in which visitors to the event can unwind, relax and gather their thoughts. Located in the 600-year-old Waalse Kerk church, Zen Space will f

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Australia - The 2019 Victorian State Schools Spectacular: Made of Stars was staged at the Melbourne Arena and filmed by Channel 7 for later broadcast. The annual live arena production showcasing the talent of students across the state of Victoria featured a large complement of Claypaky lighting fixtures, which helped students working behind the scenes gain real-world experience with top-of-class, professional luminaires.
Some 200 schools participated in Made of Stars, where performers included daredevil BMX riders, skaters, acrobats, circus artists, musicians and hip-hop dancers. The three-hour show featured the arrival of a spaceship and a send up of the fashion industry. The yearly production is an invaluable performing arts opportunity for students in Victoria from primary school to grade 12 and has become a rite of passage for top young talent.
PRG Au

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UAE - Lucid Technologies is showcasing the systems behind its art, on Stand 4B24 at this week’s ProLight+Sound Middle East exhibition.
Lucid Technologies’ recent presence in the Middle East has assured the success of vividly impressive projects such as the Saudi Arabia National Day projection at Samba Bank. With the company’s projection mapping expertise behind the event, the inherent difficulties of projection on to glass was meticulously overcome. Two facades of the vast 40-storey building in the new King Abdullah Financial District of Riyadh were rendered ablaze with colourful and flowing imagery for the celebration.
Lucid Technologies has a number of projects underway in the region and more on the horizon in the Middle East. The company will demonstrate the capabilities of BlackTrax for the tracking of both lighting and video, with a system driven by the comp

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Europe - Mega Audio GmbH has named MusicNetwork AG distributor for the UNiKA Pro range for Switzerland.
The UNiKA Pro Dante range comprises the NBB-04R, 96KHz 4-channel receiver, NBB-04T 96KHz 4-channel transmitter, the flagship 192KHz NBB-1616 16-channel I/O and the new NBB-0202 2-in / 2-out transceiver. Specifications include 24dBu max input or output level, uncompressed 24-bit PCM encoding and programmable mic pre-amplifiers with 132dB dynamic range.
MusicNetwork’s Franco Stuppia, comments: “I received test samples of the NBB-04R and NBB-04T earlier this year and was very impressed with the sound, build quality and ease of use. The full range of UNiKA Pro is now in stock at MusicNetwork, including the NBB-1616 and the new NBB-0202.”
Burkhard Elsner, CEO at Mega Audio adds, “It is great to be working with Franco and his team to promote the UNiKA Pro bra

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Morocco – Entertainment company EcmaPro who specialise in the distribution of fixtures and products specifically for the entertainment industry has joined the Prolights distributor network.
EcmaPro Systems centre their business around providing quality Italian brands for the world of professional entertainment, in particular audio, lights and accessories. In addition to this, EcmaPro also offers LED technology for the architainment sectors including facilitating architectural illumination or interiors or whole environments.
Federico Colella, sales manager for EcmaPro states, “The fixtures that leave the Prolights factory are consistently innovative, reliable and robust, and use the very best that technology has to offer in this industry. We are so excited to be working with Prolights and proud to be part of the network.”
Prolights international sales manag

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USA - The Knight of Illumination USA Awards (KOI-USA) ceremony and gala dinner return to Las Vegas this November, championing the work of local and international lighting and video designers across the United States. The Awards cover leading design work in the sectors of Theatre, Live for Broadcast, and Concert Touring & Events.
The KOI-USA Concert Touring & Event judging panel, led by judging chair and lighting designer John Featherstone, consisted of content director for Live Design Marian Sandberg, tour director and choreographer Barry Lather, designer and cofounder of sculpture design company HYBYCOZO, Yelena Filipchuk, tour manager Angie Warner, and director of production company Upstaging Inc, John Huddleston.
The Concert Touring & Events Shortlist has been revealed as:
The MA Lighting Award for Club Lighting
Sean Burke for Robbie W

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USA - Brigham Young University-Idaho (BYU-I) has taken delivery of Robert Juliat Lancelot 4000W followspots for its three theatres as part of a complement of lighting fixtures.
BYU-I, formerly known as Ricks College, is located in Rexburg, Idaho and offers programmes in liberal arts, including the sciences, engineering, agriculture, management and the performing arts. The university is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
BYU-I’s theatres host theatrical productions and concerts staged by students and visiting artists. BYU-I Center, the largest of the theaters, seats 15,000; the Hart Auditorium is a three-quarters arena that seats 3,700; and the Snow Drama Theater, the smallest venue, seats 400.
The new fixtures were acquired from Barbizon Light of the Rockies in Denver as part of the lighting replacement cycle, notes
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