Details
UK - Completed in 1871, Rochdale's Grade 1 listed Gothic Victorian Town Hall is widely regarded as one of the finest municipal buildings in Britain, renowned for its detailed architecture. The Town Hall functions as the ceremonial headquarters of Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council and houses local government departments, including the borough's civil registration office.

With a need to up-grade the audio system in the magnificent Great Hall, industry specialists National Stage Technology were consulted to propose a system which would provide improved audio quality for the wide variety of special events hosted, while blending discretely with the intricate hand painted walls and ceiling panels and stained glass windows showing an outline of English history from the time of the No

Details
World - Opera star Erwin Schrott is touring with a dual GLD mixing system to manage FOH and monitors. Purchased by the singer's head of sound, Martin Laumann, the system comprises a GLD-112 at FOH and the new Chrome GLD-80 on monitors, connected via Dante, with an additional AR2412 and two AR0804 remote IO racks. There is also the option of live recording using Protools via the Dante network.

The singer's latest tour, entitled Erwin Schrott & Friends, explores all areas of Latin music, with dates all over the world.

"I use GLD on every show. The system has very good sound quality, and together with the fast and easy work flow, is my mixer of choice. Another advantage for me is the fact that the mixer is lightweight and easy to carry. Mostly, I have to do the whole FOH setup by myself, and GLD is easy to handle for one person," comments Martin Laumann. "All of GL

Details
USA - The San Francisco Symphony (SFS) has implemented a new Meyer Sound Leopard linear sound reinforcement system in its home, Davies Symphony Hall.

While highly regarded for the orchestral acoustics, the hall's warm and reverberant characteristics pose a suite of challenges for its amplified events, which have evolved and diversified under the leadership of Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas. Now with Leopard, SFS can offer the same world-class experience it brings to traditional orchestral events to its range of amplified programmes, such as film series, pop concerts, Broadway favourites, and leading-edge contemporary music.

"Regardless of content, sound reinforcement should feel natural and undistorted and defined and clear so that you can focus on what is on stage," says SFS operations director Andrew Dubowski. "Leopard is an exponential improvement in ho

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

Details
UK - Lighting designer Matthew Kilmurry is controlling Irish musician Hozier's US and UK tour lighting this autumn using an Avolites Sapphire Touch.

Kilmurry's design for the Hozier tour is based around a warm tungsten atmospheric feel, using old school Edison bulbs dotted around the stage which gives a wonderful glow to the performers.

"I've been using Avolites consoles since I started out in lighting in 2001," says Kilmurry. "I trained in Ireland and the first console I used was a Pearl 2000. I chose the Sapphire Touch for the Hozier tour in the UK and US this year as I find the cloning/exchange fixture works very well and I can get around it much quicker than other consoles. Everything I need seems to be a few less button pushes away."

The Sapphire Touch is designed for ambitious shows, with more submasters, more flash and executor buttons, and the pow

Details
Europe / USA - AC/DC's Rock or Bust Tour thundered through Europe and the USA bringing night after night of head-banging delight to hundreds of thousands of fans. The grungy, buffalo horned, 'Mad Max' style arena spectacular is the inspired work of Ray Winkler of Stufish Design and Patrick Woodroffe of Woodroffe Bassett Design Ltd and sees lighting and set seamlessly welded together in an imposing corrugated steel clad domed stage.

Peppering the corrugated iron façade are a large number of Clay Paky Sharpy Washes, positioned inside transparent protective domes. These fixtures are barely visible until they strike up to bring texture, colour and dimension to the set and to bathe the audience in sharp, randomly angled, acid coloured light.

"AC/DC's identity is distinct, they're a straight forward rock and roll band," states Woodroffe. "We wanted to reflect that in

Details
UK - VER, a leading, global provider of production equipment and engineering support, has announced it has completed its acquisition of Aurora Lighting Hire (Aurora). The acquisition represents the latest step in VER's strategic plan to expand its lighting capabilities and equipment inventory throughout the UK and Europe.

Steve Hankin, chief executive officer of VER said, "We are very excited to team with Aurora, an industry-leading lighting rental house that offers the UK a boutique, premier service. Over the next year, we will invest significantly to expand the equipment offering and other resources to support the tremendous demand for their service. The combination of Aurora's knowledge and quality service with VER's broader product line will offer Aurora's clients a truly one-of-a-kind resource. "

Nick Edwards, managing director of Aurora said, "VER is a glo

Details
Ireland - Sennheiser has announced the acquisition of several business units of Professional Audio Ltd. (PAL) in Ireland. This new step in the development of Sennheiser's Irish operation follows a mutual agreement between Sennheiser GmbH & Co. KG and PAL, which among others sold Sennheiser products in Ireland.

Sennheiser already employs over 300 people at its manufacturing plant in Tullamore, where it produces headphones, headphone capsules, audiology products, studio monitors and products for the integrated systems sector.

"Ireland is an important market for us and we want to make sure that our customers there continue to be well supported," says Daniel Sennheiser, Sennheiser's CEO. "Drawing business for this territory directly into our global operation means that we are able to offer the same level of service that we offer everywhere else in the world. At the

Details
Vietnam - Using exclusively Van Damme cable supplied by VDC Trading in London, AVE ASTS-Series column speakers have been installed in the Tan Thinh Church in the Hoc Mon District of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, as part of a construction project that saw the demolition and complete renovation of the worship venue in the effort to accommodate a larger congregation.

QV Sound worked alongside the project management team during the construction phase to establish optimum speaker positions and cable runs, as well as providing audio equipment from which the entire sound system installation can be controlled.

The high demand of speech intelligibility requires a high transparency of audio signal. The entire sound system equipment is connected by Van Damme cabling and Neutrik connectors to ensure the spoken words are heard naturally and clearly.

The main worship area features 4 ASTS-1

Details
UK - The Roland O.H.R.C.A M-5000 Live Digital Mixing Console was recently put through its paces as FOH console for the 'Club House' live music tent at the Somersault Festival in Devon. The opportunity to showcase the new live console to engineers working at the festival came from a collaboration with Darryn de la Soul, founder of the audio engineers' network and support service Soulsound.

Renowned Soulsound sound engineer Jose Ortega (also Quincy Jones Productions, Imogen Heap) was at the helm of the M-5000 for the majority of the performances. Describing his experience using the M-5000 for the first time, Ortega commented, "The M-5000 was quick to understand and has really good features that made my life easy."

Roland Product Manager Nico Suarez was also on hand for setup and to support the engineers for three days of back to back performances. Following the success

Details
USA - The 2015 version of Gathering of the Vibes had everything its legion of fans have come to expect from this annual four-day seaside festival that celebrates the sound and the spirit of the Grateful Dead. There was the eclectic mix of music ranging from rock and reggae to bluegrass, jam band and soul, as well as scenic surroundings, arts, crafts and a colourful, freewheeling lightshow anchored by a collection of Legend and COLORdash fixtures from Chauvet Professional, provided by JDI Productions.

The festival, which drew over 25,000 people to Connecticut's sprawling Seaside Park (it covers over two miles of shoreline on the Long Island Sound), is a far cry from the small get-together that Ken Hays and a group of friends held 20 years ago to honour Jerry Garcia, following the death of the Grateful Dead's legendary frontman. Hays, who still runs Gathering of the Vibes, recentl

Details
Denmark - Neets has added three new members to its team - Dennis C. Hansen, technical trainer and backup for support; Ditte Beck - marketing manager and firmware developer Brian D. Rasmussen.

"They had their first day at Neets on 1 September and they all bring great expertise to our team. The goal for us is to have even more focus on how we can grow our business together and continue to develop and improve Neets Control Systems with new solutions and features," says Neets.

(Jim Evans)

Details
USA - PixelFLEX reports that the FLEXCurtain HD has received a 2015 Parnelli Award nomination for Indispensable Video Technology. The winners of the Parnelli Awards will be announced on 24 October 2015, at the awards ceremony taking place as part of the LDI Tradeshow and Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

"This is our second year in a row to be nominated for a Parnelli Award and we couldn't be more excited," said David Venus, PixelFLEX Director of Marketing. "Last year, our FLEXCurve LED Video Screen won the Parnelli Award, and this year we are hoping for the same outcome for the FLEXCurtain HD."

The FLEXCurtain HD is a lightweight and flexible LED video screen designed for high resolution video playback and video effects for indoor and outdoor applications. Its hi-res LED video can be driven by any DVI output, and the multi-directional, flexible design of th

Details
South Africa - Gearhouse South Africa has purchased four grandMA dot 2 XL-F consoles which will be split equally between their Johannesburg and Durban branches.

"We chose them to fill a gap we felt existed in our inventory of consoles, for desks suited to the smaller and medium sized corporate work," commented Stuart Andrews, lighting operations manager.

"Given that we have established the MA2 platform as the standard for the Gearhouse Johannesburg branch to supersede the MA1 platform on which we operated for many years, it made sense to us to continue in this vein. The units are small and extremely powerful consoles yet very compact."

(Jim Evans)

Details
UK - Now the summer season is over, regular LSi contributor James Eade is running more temporary electrical training courses around the country. The popular industry-backed Creative Skillset Certificate in Temporary Power Systems has several new dates for later this year and into January 2016, including a new venue in Salisbury in November.

With nearly 600 candidates having completed the course to date, the feedback is continually proving positive: visit bit.ly/scites to read more and find out about dates and venues. Some courses are being organised by BECTU so members may be eligible for a discount. Currently the major broadcasters plan to enforce Creative Skillset Certificate in Temporary Power systems on their productions by April 2016, so time is slowly running out to beat the de

Details
USA - Based in Santa Monica, California, fast-casual vegan restaurant Veggie Grill has taken off. The restaurant chain, which opened its first store in 2007 in Irvine, California, now operates over two dozen outlets in three states, focused on offering only plant-based food, with no meat, dairy, eggs, cholesterol, animal fat or trans fat.

Veggie Grill's management works hard to have every aspect of its customer experience reflect a sense of high quality and high standards, and that extends from the food to the background music. That's why virtually all of Veggie Grill's more than two-dozen locations - there were 28 as of the end of 2014 - now have sound systems from Bose Professional.

Depending upon an individual location's overall size and interior dimensions, a Veggie Grill restaurant will have anywhere from four to 16 Bose FreeSpace DS-16F, DS-40F or DS-100 surface-mount sp

Details
UK - Fuelled by Green D+, Midas Productions powered the campsites, 21km of LED festoon lighting and a record-breaking disco ball at Bestival last weekend, generating more kVA but cutting costs and emissions in the process.

Situated at the top of the route into the festival arena, and visible from all the main campsites, Midas three-phase inflated Newsubstance's mirror tile-covered PVC bladder to 10.33m, 35cm bigger than the previous disco ball record holder, and kept it at size via a bespoke pressure management system.

Andy Dann, operations director at Midas, comments, "The Guinness World Record was a fantastic achievement for Bestival and it was a pleasure to keep the ball in shape and to bring Green D+ to the event for the first time."

Introduced to the market this year, Green D+ is cleaner on the generator than red diesel and produces 35 per cent less NOx and 85

Details
UK - The Knight of Illumination Awards (KOI) TV judging panel has announced its eagerly anticipated shortlist for this year's ceremony, which will take place at London's glamorous Troxy club on Sunday 4th October.

Organised by the ALD, STLD, The Fifth Estate Ltd and Clay Paky and now in its 8th year, the KOI Awards is a celebration of the creative talents of international lighting and digital content designers working in the UK across TV, Theatre and Concert Touring and Events.

The sub-categories for Television are: Drama; Light Entertainment; Small Studio; Events; and Video Graphic Display.

The TV shortlist judging panel comprised: Stuart Gain (Chairman) - Rob Horne (Small Studio) - John O'Brien (Drama) - Stuart Gain (Light Entertainment) - John King (Events) and Mike LeFevre (Graphics).

The shortlist is as follows:

DRAMA - Gavin Finney for Wolf Hall; John

Details
USA - Early in 2015, creative production design company 44 Designs of Nashville, Tennessee, took on set and lighting design duties for country music duo Thompson Square's new music video Trans Am and used Elation Cuepix Panels, Sniper 2R multi-effects and Platinum Beams in the visual design. The award-winning and multi-platinum group liked the look so much they decided to take it out on tour.

"It was a great experience and it's a trending video in the country market," says Jeff Lavallee, lead designer at 44 Designs, who has been designing Thompson Square's stage look for the past four years, almost as long as the duo has been around. "The song and video capture the brazen passion and energy of Thompson Square's live shows. Together with Keifer and Shawna Thompson, we then decided to use the look on their 2015 tour."

An important visual element of the

Details
UK - This week, ArKaos PRO presented a dynamic, interactive demonstration day at White Light's new training centre, Studio15, where it showcased its MediaMaster PRO software and range of media servers.

Entitled Learn to Video Map Like a PRO! attendees of all levels of experience learnt how easy it is to achieve complex projections quickly, trigger shows from a lighting desk and build a quick cue sequence using ArKaos MediaMaster PRO.

"The purpose of today's presentations was to show people how easy it is to use ArKaos MediaMaster on their events," says WL's technical solutions director, Andy Hook. "MediaMaster PRO is the fastest system out there and even a first time user can be mapping and running shows in a very short time. The same software and servers can be used for television studios, theatres, production companies or schools - it is so versatile an

Details
UK - Thorpe Park Resort theme park in Surrey has recently been supplied with a complete EM Acoustics audio system based on the HALO-Compact line array system supplemented with MSE-218 subs, AD and AQ amplifiers and a number of just-launched M-C12 monitor speakers. The complete system as well as lighting equipment was supplied and installed by production solution specialists, White Light. The system was purchased largely to cater for Thorpe Park's busy outdoor events season which includes the monthly Ministry of Sound club nights and the Island Beats concerts over the summer.

White Light's business development manager, Jonathan Haynes, led the project. "After a number of onsite product demonstrations, it quickly became apparent that the EM Acoustics system was ideally suited to their requirements as it provided the flexibility they required in order to handle the wide variet

Details
The Netherlands - A key objective point of Operation Market Garden during World War II, the John Frost Bridge is one of three bridges in the city of Arnhem, Netherlands, and serves as a central connection to the city across the Lower Rhine river. The bridge is named after British Major-General John Dutton Frost, who commanded the Allied forces that defended the bridge during the Battle of Arnhem.

In celebration of the bridge's world-renowned history, the city commissioned Netherlands-based lighting integrator and distributor Fairlight BV to illuminate the bridge in 2004. Eleven years after the initial install, Fairlight BV was brought back to retrofit the design with more energy- and cost-efficient lighting fixtures from Martin Professional.

Fairlight BV faced two main challenges during the installation. The first was the location of the fixtures. Due to the bridge's architect

Page 3400 of 3465

Latest Issue. . .