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USA - ESTA is planning its Annual General Meeting on 4 March at the Hyatt Regency Inner Harbor in Baltimore. The AGM will be in-person and take place from 9:30am-11am local time. The event will see ESTA honouring the recipients of two of its highest awards.
R. Duncan MacKenzie of Proskenion Design will receive the Lifetime Technical Achievement Award, which recognises individuals who have been a sustaining influence for more than 25 years and whose technical contributions have had a significant impact on the world of entertainment technology. The ESTA Board of Directors and Technical Standards Council have selected MacKenzie for his 50 years of designing control systems for rigging and stage machinery, including projects at the MGM Grand, Radio City Music Hall, the Kennedy Ce

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USA - iHeartRadio’s ALTer EGO concert 15 January at The Forum in Los Angeles reflected the sold-out crowd’s joy to be back at a live event. Production designer Patrick Dierson of The Activity was delighted as well and lit some of the biggest names in alternative rock using a large lighting package that included Elation Professional’s Artiste Mondrian LED profile supplied by 4Wall Entertainment.
Coldplay, All Time Low, Imagine Dragons, Kings of Leon, Måneskin, Twenty One Pilots and Willow all rocked the venue with a surprise appearance by Avril Lavigne. Presented by Capital One, the show was streamed live on LiveXLive and broadcast on iHeartRadio stations. The Activity was first engaged with the event back in 2017 in what Dierson calls “one of the most fun shows in which we were ever involved”.
The Activity handles the overall production design of the show,

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Ireland - Some 35 years ago, a young Irish singer was performing a gig when she met another aspiring musician who invited her to perform on one of his demo tracks. Decades later, Maria Doyle Kennedy and her husband Kieran Kennedy are still going strong with over 12 albums recorded, multiple awards, and their own record company. For good measure, Maria has also gone on to become one of the most prolific Irish actors, known throughout the world for her starring roles in hits like Outlanders and Downton Abbey.
In February, the duo celebrated their musical odyssey with a two-person show at Dublin’s popular Button Factory. Supporting their performance was a light show by Steven Douglas of Craorag Lighting Design that created a deeply evocative mood aided by some Chauvet Professional ÉPIX Strip Tour fixtures from the venue’s house rig.
For Douglas, whose
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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 - Originally intended for users in government and corporate meeting spaces, the Shure Microflex Complete Wireless (MXCW )system is becoming a popular choice for conferences and hybrid events, where quality audio is essential for engaging both live and remote audiences.
“The live events industry has faced several challenges over the past two years,” says Peter James, vice president of global sales, pro audio, at Shure. “In that time, we have seen event organisers choose Microflex Complete Wireless as the best audio solution to support live events safely and effectively, regardless of the acoustic conditions. In a matter of minutes, just one person can set up an MXCW system and have a complete professional audio system ready to use. Without sacrificing reliability or audio quality, MXCW can ensure natural communication for virtual, in-person, or mixed format events.

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UK - Housed in a former sheep-trading market, now a grade II listed building, The Fleece is Bristol’s largest independent music venue and has welcomed the likes of Radiohead, Oasis, Muse, Jeff Buckley, Coldplay, Sea Girls, Amy Winehouse, Frank Carter & Rattlesnakes, Queens of the Stone Age, George Ezra and Ed Sheeran.
When the Covid-19 pandemic forced The Fleece into temporary closure, it presented a rare opportunity for a complete refurbishment – one that the management seized with both hands. The Fleece has been offering live music and club nights seven nights a week since 1982. The ambitious project comprised a full interior redesign including a new, larger stage with new LED screens, new lighting systems and a comprehensive KV2 sound system.
Technical manager Rich Munday explains that the previous PA had been in place and working hard for twenty years, so w

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USA - Multi Emmy Award-winning lighting design company Darkfire Lighting Design has found its 125 Claypaky K-Eye K20 and K10 HCR wash lights with LED light sources to be workhorse fixtures for an extensive roster of television shows, including the long-running competition series, The Voice.
Oscar Dominguez, Darkfire’s founder and head designer, remembers being impressed with the K-Eyes when he saw them in a demo. “We had been talking about HCR fixtures, and these lights didn’t have a lot of gimmicks: They were a straightforward, beautiful wash light – robust, bright, with exceptional colour and without things we didn’t need,” he says. “They’ve been an excellent addition to our inventory and become a popular tool among our designers.”
LA-based Dominguez, who has been the lighting designer for The Voice since it premiered in 2011, thought

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USA - Opera Philadelphia recently presented An Evening of Vocal Fireworks: Amici e Rivali (Friends and Rivals), a socially distanced outdoor concert held at the city’s Mann Music Centre for local music lovers, conducted by Maestro Corrado Rovaris.
While the amplified event was viewed live, outdoors on large-scale screens at the Mann Music Centre, the crew also recorded the performance for archival purposes. Producer Joe Hannigan of Weston Sound & Video selected DPA Microphones to ensure a cclear, rich, full and intelligible sound for both the House PA and multi-track recording.
The soloists, tenors Michael Spyres and Lawrence Brownlee (pictured), were arranged on either side of the conductor and miked with legacy 4023 Compact Cardioid Microphones on flamingo stands (today known as 4011 mics with floor stands and modular booms).
Hannigan and Maestro Rovaris

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UK - Assimilate has announced that its Live Looks, Live Assist, and Live FX software solutions now support integration with Brompton Technology’s Tessera S8 and SX40 LED processors, enabling live colour grading and compositing in virtual production workflows.
This integration is currently available in the new v9.4 releases of Live Looks and Live Assist, and in the open beta of Live FX. Taking advantage of Brompton’s API, users working in LED volumes can now send 3D LUTs in near-real-time to Brompton’s Tessera S8 and SX40 LED video processors, powering live on-set colour grading on the LED screen.
Assimilate’s Live Looks and Live Assist tools work in tandem with real-time rendered environments from game engines such as Unreal Engine or Unity, with Live Looks providing a powerful live grading solution and Live Assist offering record and playback, including in mul

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Europe - Prolight Concepts UK has expanded the eLumen8 Tank Trap range with the addition of a version with wheels.
Tank Trap consists of a 600mm square steel plate fitted with a 50mm receiver that features wing bolts to firmly secure aluminium or steel tubes in place. A cut out in the base allows compact stacking for transport and storage. Heavy-duty 75mm wheels are fitted to one edge for ease of transportation.

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USA - The 380-seat McLaughlin Theatre at St. Ignatius Prep is long on charm and character. With an interior modelled after the Chicago theatres of the late 19th century, it provides an evocative setting for audiences. But its Bob Newhart Stage isn’t the most capacious in the city, measuring only 28ft wide by 18ft deep.
This relative lack of space can create issues when staging a musical that’s as grand as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. But these challenges can be easily met, as director Kevin Bellie and his crew demonstrated at a recent production of the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber classic.
Helping to capture the ebullience of the show on the small stage was an immersive and colourful lighting design by Dustin L. Derry that featured Chauvet Professional COLORado 2-Quad Zoom Tour fixtures.
“This was a fun project, getting to work wit

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Belgium - Guitarist Isaac Delahaye says music is “in his genes” and, looking at his history, there’s no denying that. Raised in a musical family, Delahaye spent his childhood and teenage years learning, teaching, and performing with different hometown bands. After going to school for music and touring internationally through his 20s, he settled down as a guitarist with Epica, a Dutch symphonic metal band.
Delahaye has been performing with and mixing demos for the band for the past 13 years, but it wasn’t until recently that he discovered the KRK V-Series 6 Studio Monitors, which he now relies on for all his home studio mixing needs.
The guitarist was first introduced to KRK while visiting Gibson’s showroom in the Netherlands. Having heard good things about the brand, he wanted to test some products himself, and eventually settled on the V-Series. “Compared

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Australia - When global streaming provider 5stream needed a configurable solution to streamline their scheduling and resource management, they discovered MediaPulse was the right fit. 5stream deployed Xytech’s MediaPulse to streamline the operations of their Broadcast Services division.
“5stream is a rapidly growing business. We previously relied on a homebrew system of Google Calendars, spreadsheets and custom CSV scrapers to manage over 1000 events each month,” says Mitchell Kalika, general manager at 5stream. “With increasing resource requirements and complexity across all our jobs, our existing system is no longer suitable, and we needed a solution to streamline our operations. MediaPulse allows us to effectively book and manage the large quantity of work and helps streamline and visualise complex broadcast workflows to reduce setup time for our MCR and Presentat

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UK - Tower 42, one of the tallest buildings in London, recently enlisted Light Fantastic Production Services (LFPS) to upgrade the control system powering its LED display.
The top three floors of the distinctive skyscraper, visible from all sides of London, are lit up year-round with still images and animations representing charitable causes and topical dates in the calendar. These images are shown on a screen made up of 5,905 bespoke RGB pixels, which are programmed and maintained by the LFPS team.
LFPS were enlisted in 2021 to carry out a complete overhaul of the control system which powers the display. Having been in situ for over 10 years in a hostile environment 40+ floors above London, it was beginning to suffer occasional failures. The building’s owners were keen to maintain the screen in great condition, in line with its status as a London landmark.
The

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USA - In October in the depths of the pandemic, a group of backers unveiled their plans for a new live entertainment centre
“It’s time to put a positive spin out there, to have hope for concerts in St. Louis and for employment,” one of them told the press at the time. Less than one year later, their hope and vision were realised with the opening of The Factory, a bi-level 52,000sq.ft indoor venue with the capacity to serve up to 3,000 fans.
Located in the heart of St. Louis’ popular dining and entertainment destination, The District, the new venue is now entertaining fans with a wide variety of shows, following strict safety protocols. Enhancing their experience is a dynamic and flexible lighting rig featuring Chauvet Professional Maverick, Rogue and STRIKE fixtures supplied by Logic Systems, which also installed audio, video, and rigging systems at The Factory

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USA - Virginia’s famous Mariners’ Museum has upgraded its lighting control to a Strand Neo console from Signify.
The Museum, situated in the city of Newport News, Virginia, holds one of North America’s largest maritime history collections and is designated America’s National Maritime Museum by the US Congress. It has a wide range of fixtures in place ranging from incandescent stage and theatre lights to LED indirect and accent lights.
“One of the key areas within The Mariners’ Museum is our theatre performance space, and we use a lot of cues that sync with timecode to create dramatic lighting effects that help tell the stories we share,” explains Tim Kines, AV exhibit technician at the museum. “We needed to upgrade our control console to add dynamics and effects via a simple-to-use interface, and the Neo fits perfectly.”
In the exhibition areas,

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Poland - Founded in 1993, The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity was originally created as a one-off event to raise money for medical equipment, raising over $1.5m that year. Part of the WOŚP Foundation, the event has since grown to become Poland’s largest non-governmental, non-profit charity organisation, raising money for pediatric and elderly care and featuring annual Grand Finale live events in towns and cities right across the country.
2022 saw the 30th edition of the numerous events supporting the charity and their purpose this year was the purchase of medical and diagnostics equipment for eye diseases in children. The largest single event was held in the capital, Warsaw, where sound company Gigant Letus were commissioned to deliver, install, prepare and operate the sound systems for the various events and activities.
Gigant supplied and commissioned four se

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USA - When three-time Grammy Award-winning country duo Dan + Shay hit the road in March of 2020 for their first official headlining US arena tour, they played three consecutive sold-out shows. Then COVID struck, grinding the trek - along with everything else - to a sudden halt. A year and a half later, the tour finally picked back up, rescheduling and resuming the 30 remaining sold-out shows on the three-month run, which carried an L-Acoustics K Series loudspeaker system supplied by technical solutions provider PRG.
Presented by AEG Presents, The Arena Tour was in support of the duo’s latest album, Good Things, with PRG supplying all audio, video, and lighting systems from its Nashville location. “This was our first tour with PRG, and as soon as I knew that they’d be our touring partner, I went to our production manager and said, ‘Hey, if we can have it, we’

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Reconnected - The organisers of the T in the Park and TRNSMT festivals have announced their newest event will be held in Edinburgh. The Connect Music Festival will take place at the Royal Highland Centre near Edinburgh Airport from 26 to 28 August. Promoters DF Concerts said the line-up for the weekend-long event will be announced this Wednesday. There have been two Connect festivals before, in 2007 and 2008, both at Inveraray Castle in Argyll.
Announcing the festival's revival, Geoff Ellis, chief executive of DF Concerts and Events, said: “During initial planning discussions around the relaunch of Connect, we realised that we had to make some changes and to remaster the original festival proposition for today's audiences. One of the biggest considerations we had was around public transport and ensuring the event was accessible to festival goers from across the country. Th

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South Africa - Having the right tools for the job is vital in any walk of life. When you are a radio presenter that means having the appropriate microphone. Prosound has helped GoldFM 104.3 to achieve this with an upgrade across all of its studios to Electro-Voice RE320 dynamic microphones.
Based in Welkom, GoldFM is a community radio station providing music and speech-based programming to Free State’s second largest city, while also streaming to the world. “It’s very much nuts and bolts community broadcasting,” explains Brian Emmenis, station manager and head of technical at GoldFM. “We can do a lot more than the bigger radio stations because they’re subjected to very stringent national rules. What’s of interest here is not of interest elsewhere so we cover local news and can make a proper fuss of it, we can take it one step further.”
“Brian has dec

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USA - The Cincinnati Bearcats celebrated the end of a winning season with a 150-strong Verge Aero drone display, put on for the team by their sponsors and with fans invited to join the fun.
Taking place at Cincinnati’s 38,000-seater open-air Nippert Stadium, which is the Bearcats’ home field, Verge Aero’s military-grade-manufactured drones were positioned high above the crowd to spell out the team’s 13-0 winning season and display their logo. Backing up the show were more than 100 lighting fixtures and 384 rooftop fireworks, creating a spectacular celebration show.
Verge Aero’s Chris Lutts project managed the drones for the event, in collaboration with the University of Cincinnati Bearcats events team, their sponsor’s event team, and lighting and fireworks specialists.
“We actually only had around seven days to get our drones programmed, transporte

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UK - Audiologic has announced its collaboration with Technically Creative to deliver an immersive experience at Yorkshire Wildlife Park.
The recently-launched Evolution restaurant at Yorkshire Wildlife Park provides an immersive experience, with diners embarking on a journey to a mysterious land where Jurassic Island meets the fantasy world of caves and mythical dragons, with sound, animatronics and visual effects. The restaurant forms part of the new ‘hub’ of retail and play, extending the park’s traditional offerings.
To achieve this experience, the audio brief demanded speakers which had to be discrete enough that they could be disguised within the scenic works as much as possible, whilst producing enough volume at high quality to fill the space, with a relatively limited number of them. With multiple seating areas delivering different background soundscapes,
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