UK - As part of their European journey, Swedish band Opeth opted for a single show at Wembley Arena for their UK audience. Magnus Boyd has been lighting the band for the last 18 months. The show at Wembley was a part of the Sorceress World Tour.

"During the tour, we have done special extended sets (at Radio City and Belasco in LA) featuring songs from the Deliverance and Damnation albums before the third at Wembley. The final extended set will be at the Sydney Opera House in February. These are impressive spaces that really deserve a large production; the design didn't change much, we just doubled what we would normally have in the rig."

Boyd hooked up with High Wycombe based rental company Siyan Limited to deliver his touring and Wembley show lighting requirem

Germany - Event industry professionals now have the opportunity to actively shape four formats at the international trade show and the international conference for theatre, film and event technology at Stage|Set|Scenery. They are currently invited to submit their entries for papers at the International Stage Technology Conference, the Safety in Action stage, the Anatomical Theatre, the LightLab and the SoundLab. The deadline for applications is 15 February 2017. (www.stage-set-scenery.de)

Taking place for the second time, the Weltenbauer.Awards will be presented at Stage|Set|Scenery on 20 June 2017. With this industry award Deutsche Theatertechnische Gesellschaft e.V. (DTHG) honours innovative and original stage technology solutions that have helped to realise the artistic concept of a theatre or show production in a particularly impressive manner. Any theatre, musical, show,

USA - January kicked off with the re-emergence of The Winter Jam Tour Spectacular, one of the country's largest Christian tours. Bandit Lites supplies the lighting package for the evening of music, worship and ministry, which has outpaced other tour attendance for the past four years.

This year's artists include Crowder, Britt Nicole, Tenth Avenue North, Sadie Robertson, Andy Mineo, Colton Dixon, Thousand Foot Krutch, Newsong, Tony Nolan, OBB, Sarah Reeves and Steven Malcolm.

Winter Jam has acquired a large, loyal following, meaning that lighting designer Jerry Holcomb has to coordinate a new look each year, all while staying within the parameters of the in-the-round design, budget and looks for various acts, who also can contribute to the design.

"Daniel Smallbone and Kurtis Wheat with Lumina Design are involved in the design, helping with fixture type and placements,

featured content

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

Belgium - Creative lighting designer Thomas Boets loves challenges, so when production company Fast Forward Events asked him to light the iconic Reyers Tower in Brussels - a 73m high concrete broadcasting pillar, complete with 34 diameter upper section, in total standing 89m tall and dominating the local skyline - he jumped at the chance!

He also chose Robe fixtures to accomplish the task which required a careful balance of spectacle and practicality to produce an outstanding lighting scheme for the heritage listed landmark frequently dubbed the 'flying saucer'.

The idea of transforming the Tower into a beacon of light for De Warmste Week (Music for Life) originated from advertising agency DDB working for VRT radio station Studio Brussels who organise the high-profile charity fundraising event.

Thomas - known for his designs for other events like the Ghent Floralien, p

Australia - Country superstar Keith Urban had the honour of being the first artist to headline the International Convention Centre Sydney's (ICC Sydney) entertainment theatre.

Although the venue is equipped with a d&b audiotechnik PA system, Keith is a long time Clair account and so JPJ Audio provided their new Clair Cohesion PA system, purchased just in time for Keith's Australian Ripcord Tour.

Seamless integration within the Cohesion Series, assures uniform coverage in multiple venues regardless of acoustic challenges or sightlines. The Series provides higher output, reference quality sound within a smaller footprint; in truck space and in the air.

Keith's FOH engineer Kirk Kelsey has mixed for a wide variety of acts including Live, Creed, Three Doors Down, and The Smashing Pumpkins. He readily admits that he has been blown away by the Cohesion Series.

"The new C

UK - For the third year running, Blackout supplied and installed a complex series of projection screens and drapes to transform the Royal Albert Hall ahead of The Fashion Awards in partnership with Swarovski.

Project manager Tom Lambert, who has worked on the event for the previous two years at London's Coliseum, oversaw the smooth installation of the production rigging at the Royal Albert Hall utilising Liftket motors and associated rigging equipment to fly two large projection screens, an LED screen and Blackout's five roller screens.

Set back from the front of stage and offset to each side, two portrait projection screens each measuring 5m x 11.5m and weighing 500kgs each were flown with the LED screen set back in between them. A voile drape was installed hard up to the front of the LED to create a back drop for the projection across the three surfaces; this allowed the

UK - Internationally-renowned lighting designer Durham Marenghi selected an array of Claypaky luminaires to enhance a number of stunning audiovisual installations across Hull as part of the city's 'UK City of Culture 2017' inauguration festivities.

Marenghi, who has previously designed lighting for such prestigious outdoor events as the London NYE countdown 2016, London 2012 Olympics Handover in Beijing and the Rio 2016 Olympic ceremonies, was assisted in the project by award-winning West-end theatre lighting designer and Hull resident Tim Lutkin.

Together, they specified 42 x Claypaky Mythos, 12 x Claypaky Alpha Spot QWO 800s and eight Claypaky Sharpy Wash 330s from Manchester-based lighting specialist dbn lighting to create architectural light shows at the city's historic Queen Victoria square, famous aquarium The Deep - as well as an installation in an underpass famous

UK - Elaine Paige has just completed her sold-out Stripped Back" UK tour to rapturous reviews. Fans were treated to an intimate experience with just a five-piece band, a microphone and her. Delta Sound supplied all the audio equipment for the tour (stage, control, monitor FoH and PA systems) including a substantial HALO-C system of up to 33 boxes depending on the venue.

According to Delta's Stephen Hughes who managed the equipment supply, a main PA system wasn't initially specified on the tour. However, it quickly became apparent that the house systems were woefully inadequate for Elaine, and so Delta recommended a HALO-C system from EM Acoustics as the best solution.

"The rigging in many of the venues wasn't suitable for a full PA so we mostly ended up ground-stacking the system with around five or six boxes per side and then a number of HALO-C elements as front fill and

Puerto Rico - Since first going on air in 1954, independent television station WAPA-TV (Channel 4) in San Juan, Puerto Rico, has been a technology leader among broadcast stations in the island country. In 2016, WAPA-TV renovated its broadcast lighting in three of its studios, installing Elation TVL series LED lighting systems. Installation of the white light luminaires made WAPA-TV the first broadcast studio in Puerto Rico to transition to LED technology.

WAPA-TV replaced all of its conventional fixtures with LED in its largest studio (Cinema), as well as a separate broadcast studio plus a smaller studio. Puerto Rican production company Musique Xpress Lights worked with the station to supply all of the LED lighting fixtures to the network and worked with WAPA's in-house LD Juan Carlos on the lighting placement and design.

The new LED lighting was part of a complete renovat

Forever Young - Petula Clark will make her UK festival debut at Fairport Convention's Cropredy Festival on Friday 11 August. "We're really proud to be the first British festival that Petula has played," says Fairport bassist and Cropredy co-organiser Dave Pegg. "I saw her show in Birmingham recently and it blew me away - she is a wonderful live performer. I was surprised how many of her hits I knew and her contemporary songs are really great too. Our audience will love her, I'm sure."

Also lined up for the Oxfordshire event is The Trevor Horn Band. The producer will front a 14-piece all-star band featuring fellow producers Steve Lipson and Lol Creme. The setlist will be packed with songs the trio have produced - between them they've had over 200 hit singles - and there may be guest appearances from some of the musicians they have worked with.

Dark Times Ahead - Gori

UK - Digital Projection has announced the appointment of Simon Hutchinson to the position of sales manager, UK & Ireland. Based primarily at the company's Manchester headquarters, Simon's appointment is effective immediately. A seasoned industry professional of 20 years, he brings a wealth of AV industry experience alongside intimate knowledge of the channel from end user right up to vendor verticals to this key position.

Simon joined Digital Projection from SCC, where he was AV sales specialist manager. Prior to that, he occupied a number of account manager roles with both manufacturers and integrators - ranging from Epson, to some major AV integrators in the UK such as AVMI, GV Multimedia and Roche Audio Visual.

At Digital Projection, Simon will assume responsibility for overseeing and developing the business in the UK & Ireland. With the company firmly established in th

The Netherlands - Cymatic Audio has announced the addition of Dante compatibility to the AudioLan option card for the uTrack24 multitrack recorder, player and interface.

The AudioLan option card is the ultimate audio networking solution for uTrack24, bypassing the need for expensive infrastructure with proprietary routers and switchers. Natively supporting RAVENNA as well as the new AES67 standard, the AudioLan card enables you to integrate your uTrack24 seamlessly into RAVENNA environments as well as any other AES67-compliant networks

Cymatic Audio continues to enhance connectivity options with the imminent release of a firmware update specifically targeting integration into AES67-compliant Dante networks and the management of its AES67-streams directly in the Dante connection manager.

Thanks to AudioLan you can feed 24 channels from the audio network (be it RAVENNA,

The Netherlands - At ISE 2017 in Amsterdam, Austrian AV manufacturer AV Stumpfl will present new high performance media playout solutions, in addition to introducing "ground-breaking new projection screen systems".

Visitors to the AV Stumpfl stand 1-H6 will be able to see the following products in action:

The powerful Wings Engine RAW media server is the only server of its type capable of playing out four simultaneous streams of uncompressed 4K content at 60fps, which has made ithousehold name in different branches of the AV industry in record time. RAW servers can also display video content using a full 12-bit colour space, delivering more colour information than the current media server standard.

The Wings Engine Stage is an acclaimed and technologically advanced media server system featuring a solid hardware platform, automatic camera based softedge and warping cali

UK / USA - This year, DiGiCo celebrates 15 years of manufacturing digital mixing consoles. It has enjoyed phenomenal success, with the D5 Live establishing both the company and the concept of digital mixing. The SD Series followed, delivering a powerful new way of working, with the flagship SD7 becoming the market leader. In 2015, it launched the affordable S Series with a new, modern workflow. In 2016, it introduced Stealth Core 2 software, which multiplied the power of the SD range of consoles exponentially. Now, at the very beginning of 2017, it has unveiled Project Vulcan, the new SD12.

The SD12 is the culmination of everything that DiGiCo has learned over the last decade and a half and encapsulates the best features of both the SD and S Series. Utilising the latest generation of Super FPGA, it is compact in size, but delivers the power and capability that is now synonymou

USA - Nashville-based mobile production specialist TNDV recently gave back to its community on a project that hit close to home, delivering turnkey production services for country music superstar Dolly Parton's Smoky Mountains Rise telethon to aid families affected by the Great Smoky Mountain wildfires that began in late November. Working within an extraordinarily short timeline, TNDV provided production and uplink trucks, equipment, crews and expertise while managing all key video, audio and lighting elements for the live television event.

The fires in Tennessee's Sevier County burned over 17,000 acres, claimed 14 lives, and damaged or destroyed more than 2,000 homes and businesses. Parton, who grew up in the area and whose Dollywood theme park was near the edge of the blaze, quickly established the My People Fund to help victims of the devastation. On 13 December, the three-

USA - Located near Madison Square Garden and Penn Station, Stout has been a post-game and post-work staple for Midtown New Yorkers for over a decade. Patrons spread out across three floors (Stout is arguably the largest Irish pub in the United States' largest city!) and dip deep into an extensive beer and gastro menu. Recently, NYC's Starview Satellite replaced Stout's rack of tired, failing amplifiers with fresh, powerful, energy-efficient Ashly nX-Series multi-channel amplifiers.

"In terms of power density, nothing can beat Ashly's well-engineered amplifiers," said Rich Trombitas, regional sales & product manager with A/V manufacturers rep firm Cardone, Solomon & Associates (CS&A). Trombitas recommended the Ashly amplifiers and assisted Starview Satellite with the design and logistics.

He continued, "Moreover, Ashly's nX-series multi-mode amplifiers are especially flexib

Canada - The Great Hall is one of the most eye-catching and iconic fixtures of Toronto's vibrant Queen West area. Built in 1889 and designated as a Heritage Property in 1973, it stands as a long-time beacon for the city's artistic and cultural communities.

With its age becoming increasingly apparent, this historic Victorian venue recently benefited from an interior and exterior revitalization. Now, with the addition of Adamson PAs in both the 10,000-sq. ft. Main Hall and 5,000-sq. ft. Longboat Hall, The Great Hall is in prime position to host cultural, corporate, and private events for the diverse and dynamic community it serves.

"The goal was to provide something powerful enough to handle any and all potential applications, but also work with the space on a functional and aesthetic level," shares Lina Beaudin, The Great Hall's director of business development.

The ven

Lebanon - ARX has appointed Beirut based Sparks Audio as its exclusive distributor for Lebanon.

"Sparks Audio is run by a group of sound engineers that have been active in the pro audio industry in Lebanon for more than two decades and are well known for their audio engineering talents for local and international shows," says ARX MD, Colin Park.

"We decided that Sparks Audio with its many years of experience in the pro audio installation and production industries was the ideal partner to grow the market and user base for ARX's digital and analogue product range in Lebanon."

"ARX fits perfectly into Sparks Audio product portfolio, and will be of great interest to our dealers and end users," says Jean Gibran a partner in Sparks Audio.

(Jim Evans)

Norway - Zenitel, an international leader in critical communication solutions, have delivered safety communications and entertainment equipment as part of Norway's largest ferry contract.

In 2014, Bast° Fosen won the contract to continue to operate Norway's busiest inland ferry route, between Moss and Horten, until 2026. As part of the agreement, three new ferries were built to serve this vital transport route. Zenitel has delivered communication and entertainment systems to all of the new vessels.

The inland ferry link also forms part of the national road network, Riksvei 19, acting as a highway across the Oslo fjord. In 2013 over 1.3m vehicles and 1.6 million foot passengers used the ferry service. Many of Zenitel's own employees use the ferry as part of their daily commute to the company's operational head office in Horten.

Zenitel CEO Kenneth D

USA - Since making his debut on social media and on shows such as X Factor and American Idol, RCA Nashville recording artist Kane Brown has seen a meteoric rise in the country music industry. Brown recently launched his first headlining tour in support of his self-titled debut album. Needing a production design to complement the Tennessee-native, his management team enlisted the assistance of designer Chris Lisle who got to work creating an exciting yet functional tour design which included PixelFLEX FLEXCurtain HD 6.25mm LED video supplied by tour sponsor Monster Energy.

"This is my first tour with Kane Brown as his production has now grown to a point where he needed creative direction, so I was contacted by his business manager and asked to come on board," began Lisle. "Since he would be playing a wide variety of venues, we had to create a tour design that woul

USA - There is no shortage of theatrics in the annual series of El Monstero concerts that sweeps through America's mid-section every year like some tornado of light and sound. Formed by members of Stir in 1999, and currently made up of musicians from a variety of different bands, the group pays tribute to Pink Floyd with an immersive concert experience involving upwards of 75 actors.

El Monstero captures the evocatively edgy Pink Floyd sound with spot on renditions of songs from classics like The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon and more. A Pink Floyd concert was never just about sound, though. To recreate the complete concert experience in 2017, the band serves up a dazzling visual show with fantastical live characters in costume, all colourfully illuminated by a Chip Self-designed lightshow that features Rogue and Legend fixtures from Chauvet Professional.

Self,

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