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USA - Australian singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Tash Sultana is back out on tour for the first time in three years supporting the sophomore 2021 release, Terra Firma.
Following an initial 15-date jaunt across Europe and the UK in March and April, Sultana has just now completed a 32-show North American trek, which kicked off on in June in Las Vegas and wrapped up on 24 July in southern California. For the run, Nashville-based Worley Sound supplied the tour with its FOH and monitor control packages, both of which were built on DiGiCo Quantum338 consoles.
The current 2022 world tour finds Sultana morphing from a solo act to a full band setup for the first time.
“I started touring with Tash in 2017 and carried a DiGiCo SD11i system that I loved on many dates around the world for the solo years,” says Perth-based FOH engineer Sam Pe

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UK - Immersive experience company Pixel Artworks has designed and created the immersive mindfulness experience Room to Breathe. Located in Outernet London, a new ‘immersive culture, media and music district’ at Tottenham Court Road, the sensory experience is based on the science of ‘box-breathing’. It aims to help anxious commuters and busy Londoners unwind and catch their breath throughout the day.
This experience has been masterminded by Pixel Artworks, harnessing the healing power of digital light and pixel technology, with original music written by Matthew Wilcock and guidance from trauma and anxiety consultant Jayne Cox.
Jayne comments: “Anxiety and stress often changes the way we breathe, with our breath often becoming rapid and shallow, resulting in heightened anxiety and becoming ‘stuck’ in a state of fight or flight. Learning and regularly impl
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Europe - AV systems integrator and remote collaboration service provider Kinly has announced its entry into the DACH market, with the opening of offices in Germany and Switzerland.
The latest expansion increases Kinly’s office numbers to 20, across 12 countries, with operations being established in Zurich, Frankfurt and Berlin. Kinly works with more 2,500 customers and is backed by a team of more than 1,200 employees across EMEA, Americas and APAC.
Tom Martin, CEO at Kinly comments: “The DACH region is a thriving and growing market, and one which we have been looking to enter for some time.
“As times change, many businesses are looking to deploy or evolve the way they operate. AV/ UC, meeting and collaboration technology requires a specialist skillset. Kinly’s approach is anchored in customer success. Instead of starting with technology, we cooperate to

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South Africa - Lighting designer Ryan Lombard decided that South Africa’s newest DSTV games show The Saturday Showdown was prime time for him to make the switch to an all grandMA3 – hardware and software – solution to run lighting and video graphical content!
The show was recorded at Urban Brew Studio 10 in Johannesburg, and produced by Red Pepper Productions for broadcaster Mzansi Magic, and designed as an action-packed sport-themed entertainment game show to keep fans enthralled on Saturday nights while the Local and Premier Leagues take their break.
Ryan specified a grandMA3 light as the main console for graphics and lighting, coupled with grandMA3 onPC running on a dedicated computer on the network accessed via a grandMA3 onPC command wing which was used to trigger all the reactive LX and AV cues as different sections of the games were played.
T

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UK - Essex Sound & Light (ESL) has completed the acquisition of DPL Production Lighting.
AV integrator, ESL has been growing its rental and production business since early 2015. Since then, ESL has been providing full production support (including staging, sound, lighting and video) to numerous events and festivals throughout the UK. ESL has grown its rental stock, most recently with a large investment in IP-Rated LED video panels and processors.
DPL, founded in 1989 by Darren Parker, has offered professional lighting equipment, rigging and technical production services to the events and entertainment industries for over 30 years.
ESL managing director Mike Glover comments, "We are excited to bring the DPL name within the ESL Group. Darren Parker and DPL have an amazing amount of history and experience within the rental production market including supp

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France - Opened in spring 2021, the Scène de Bayssan sits on a site near Béziers in south-west France which has a rich history going back 5,000 years over successive Greek, Roman and Gallic societies. More recently, the area hosted a circus, a fact that’s reflected in the Scène’s architecture. The new theatre complex features three spaces; the open-air Claude Nougaro amphitheatre which can accommodate 965 people seated or 1462 standing, the 432-seated / 1350 standing Michel Galabru theatre, and a small structure that houses reception facilities.
Offering a varied programme of perfoming arts, art exhibits and cultural events, Scène de Bayssan required an ultimately versatile sound system that could handily address the varied programme. The team chose L-Acoustics K, A and X Series, supplied by L-Acoustics partner, Du Show, to deliver both consistent audience coverage

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UK - The Drum theatre is a flexible performance studio venue, forming a successful part of the Theatre Royal Plymouth (TRP) complex. A bijou 159-capacity space, it hosts a mix of house productions and also receives shows from established smaller scale touring theatre companies. The venue has recently undergone a full refurbishment including a premium sound system from EM Acoustics based on their flagship Reference Series loudspeakers.
TRP head of sound, Dan Mitcham explains that as part of the renovation process, he and his team were tasked with looking into how to improve the existing sound system. “We had a four-box set up of main L/R and surround L/R, but it didn’t cover the whole auditorium, and was also starting to show its age. We decided it was better to start again from scratch and put in a system worthy of the space.”
Mitcham continues, “We’ve always

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UK - When Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts decided to bring a bold new actor-musician interpretation to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s musical adaption of the Stephen King classic Carrie, it was Mountview’s former head of lighting training, Louisa Smurthwaite, who worked with the students to create the visceral, yet retro lighting design. Keen to introduce fixtures that bought an era-reflecting feel to the classic story, yet still introduce the students to the latest lighting technology, Smurthwaite specified the VL5LED Wash luminaires by Vari-Lite, the originator of the modern moving head and a Signify (Euronext: LIGHT) entertainment lighting brand.
With a lighting design brief from show director Rich Fitch that specified ‘Stranger Things meets ‘80s horror gameshow,’ the scenic design, created by Sophia Pardon, was a torn-up school, ravaged by the

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Eurovision - The Eurovision Song Contest will take place in the UK next year after show organisers decided it could not be held in the winning country, Ukraine. The ongoing war following February's Russian invasion prompted the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to look for an alternative host.
The UK's Sam Ryder came second this year, which prompted the EBU to open talks with the BBC last month. Several UK cities have already expressed interest in hosting. The UK has a number of places with suitable arenas, accommodation and international transport links, with London, Sheffield and Manchester already confirming that they will put in an official bid.
The bidding process to decide which city will host will begin this week. The BBC and the The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will consider all official approaches and will publish the longlist later this summer.
"We

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Singapore - The School of Design and Media, part of ITE College Central in Singapore, recently placed an order for Ayrton's Ghibli S fixtures as part of the lighting inventory for the Higher NITEC in Performance Production programme. The students use these fixtures on a regular basis as part of the course where they learn to rig and set up lighting, as well as practise programming on the console, all within the school's Blackbox training facility.
Mr A. Kumarran, lecturer in Performance Production, chose the Ghibli S fixtures to boost and expand the school's lighting offering and support the teaching curriculum. “Students are introduced to different types of lighting fixtures to expand their knowledge of industry practices,” he explains. “We wanted to include a hardy fixture that was able to provide a good number of gobos and effects. Such attributes are ideal for stud

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UK - The Fish Society has been running for 25 years and is one of the UK’s leading online fishmongers. Having witnessed the online spike of a home cooking being filmed for YouTube and TikTok during the pandemic, the company decided to branch out and build a studio kitchen within their Guildford-based offices to deliver their own ‘how-to’ video content.
“The team wanted a premium system with cameras used for recording and streaming live content and after going through various options, we mapped out a solution that was right for them,” recalls Flipside AV managing director, James Cooper. “When they mentioned Master Chef as their inspiration, I had a felling there would be a technical challenge that can often happen in a separated studio kitchen, but I think we mapped it out just right with the camera and mic positioning to get some good footage – it’s a

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Europe - As the summer touring season moves into top gear, artists from Lorde and Bon Iver, to Tindersticks, H.E.R. and Lewis Capaldi are turning to DPA Microphones to deliver clear, reliable audio.
Phillip J. Harvey, FOH mixing engineer for pop artist Lorde, is currently travelling through Europe in support of the artist’s Solar Power Tour. A longtime fan of DPA, Harvey started Lorde on a d:facto 4018VL Vocal Microphone in 2017. Since then, he has put DPA mics on nearly the entire drum kit, with 4099 CORE Extreme SPL on snare bottom, hi-hats, toms and under heads, and a 2011 Twin Diaphragm Cardioid on snare top.
“The flat response of the d:facto is a huge asset and the bleed is very palatable - unlike any other vocal mic I’ve experienced,” he says. “That realistic response provides the foundation for colouring sounds in the mix any way I want, and it’s ama

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Poland - The recently-constructed Cavatina Hall has been designed with a focus on vision over budget and the ambition of becoming a landmark centre on Europe’s cultural map. The six-storey, multi-functional venue provides commercial and entertainment facilities with over 9000 sq. m of office space, a chamber music hall, recording studio, and the highlight of the construction, a 1000-capacity concert hall. The hall is complete with an AV network, streamlined and managed by Quantum 338 digital consoles from DiGiCo.
The project began in 2018, conceptualised by one of Poland's largest property development companies, Cavatina Holding. Located in the city of Bielsko-Biała in Southern Poland, the shell-shaped building with glass façade, became an instant architectural beauty, and now houses the offices of the holding company and related firms, alongside the ultra-modern entert

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Germany - Ayrton supplied producer and lighting designer Jens Hillenkötter with its very latest luminaire, the laser-sourced, IP65 rated Cobra, for the celebrations of 75 Years of Lower Saxony in Hannover.
Cobra’s speckle-free laser source is designed for rendering a D65 white point that allows perfect colour reproduction. Its narrow 0.6° beam angle and extreme range of focus allows the beam shape to be adjusted to suit the operating distance. It has a 170mm frontal lens and a 0.6° to 23° zoom range. An IP65 rated, minimalist body with continuous pan and tilt are just some of the features that make Cobra special.
Postponed from 2021, Niedersachsen Day celebrated the 75th anniversary of Lower Saxony and culminated in the long-awaited evening spectacular at the waterside location, Maschsee, the largest body of water in Lower Saxony.
“Maschsee is a very larg

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USA - Elation Proteus Maximus LED moving heads and Cuepix 16 IP LED matrix panels provided field of play, broadcast and entertainment lighting for Fan Controlled Football’s season two at Pullman Yards in Atlanta. The historic setting provided a suitable backdrop for a modern version of America’s most popular sport complete with multi-dimensional lighting.
Fan Controlled Football (FCF) is a professional indoor American football league that began in 2021 and is the only professional football league where fans call the shots, including real-time play calling, team branding, and personnel decisions. Pullman Yards, a historic industrial complex where the Pullman Company once repaired railroad sleeper cars, is now a landmark site and the filming location of many movies and television series. Under redevelopment as an entertainment destination, ahead of the 2022 season the FCF

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South Korea - Now in its 28th year, South Korea’s Dream Concert is the country’s longest established and largest K-Pop festival. Featuring performances from more than 20 K-Pop idols, 60,000 tickets were sold in just 20 minutes for this year’s event which took place on 18/19 June at the Jamsil Olympic Main Stadium in Seoul, with a Nexo STM sound system supplied by local rental partners Way Audio.
Originally built for the Summer Olympics in 1988, the stadium has a field size of 110m x 75m with a seating capacity of almost 70,000 in two tiers and has previously been the venue for concerts by Coldplay, Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga and Metallica.
To achieve even SPL and frequency coverage in the stadium, Way Audio designed and deployed a system using side by side hangs of 21 each STM M46 Main and B112 Bass Extension modules on either side of the stage, throwing a distanc

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Saudi Arabia - Fuzion is a specially commissioned new Cirque du Soleil production that was staged at the King Abdallah Sports City (KASC) stadium in Jeddah for the 2022 Jeddah Season Festival.
Directed by Mukhtar Omar Sharif Mukhtar with creative direction by Stefan Miljevic, the lighting and set was designed by Mikki Kunttu who used 186 x Robe BMFL moving lights – making up half of the lighting rig.
Mikki was based in Montreal at Cirque du Soleil’s international HQ immediately for the two years before the pandemic, when he returned home to his native Finland, and relished being onboard and again. He added his own creative magic to this production which ran for 32 intense action and adrenaline-packed 75-minute performances.
The lighting brief included making an “elegant, theatrical, and vivid” impact, with the goal of recreating the splendour and

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UK - #WeMakeEvents invites keen cyclists from across the events and entertainment industry to sign up for BikeFest 2022, which will take place on Saturday 3 September.
Together, the BikeFest team will raise funds for Backup – the technical entertainment charity, which helps industry peers during times of ill health and financial hardship, and other #WeMakeEvents-supported charities. Starting at SFL’s headquarters in Reading to a destination in London, BikeFest will also kick off the PLASA Show as it returns to Olympia London from 4-6 September.
Now in its sixth year, BikeFest began as a 100-mile cycle to PLASA Show to raise awareness and funds for mental health in the industry. With the pandemic, this need became ever more relevant. Since 2020, #WeMakeEvents campaign has been instrumental in expanding the BikeFest event in the UK, and for the first time this year,

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UK - Martin Audio’s MLA system was deployed for the first time on the main stage of Radio 1’s Big Weekend that took place at Memorial Park, Coventry, with the popular music festival finally returning after the hiatus caused by Covid-19.
An audience of 40,000, and an array of acts that included Harry Styles, George Ezra, Ed Sheeran and Calvin Harris, played across two nights in the city of Coventry’s historic park. The show was new to RG Jones, who tendered successfully for the event. The production company were delighted to get the chance to flex their sonic muscles on such a high-profile project while re-connecting with long-standing clients Dick and Frankie Tee from EnTEEtainment.
Being an urban site, noise management was of the highest priority, but Coventry’s status as 2022 City of Culture has also meant that throughout the year events of all shapes and siz

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China - Spatial audio specialist, Out Board, has appointed Phoenix Audio Distribution as the new TiMax distributor for mainland China and Hong Kong including Macau and Taiwan. The company has strong links with the team at Out Board and the TiMax product range, already holding stock at its Guangzhou and Hong Kong offices, with plans to invest immediately into inventory for demonstration and support purposes at its offices in Beijing and Shanghai.
The team at Phoenix Audio, headed up by Chris Zhang and Mac Lo, is well versed in the needs of the pro audio market in its territory, servicing a wide range of premium specifiers, integrators and operator contacts plus considerable experience in the professional live performance and AV installation marketplaces.
Chris Zhang, commented, “It is a great honour to take on the distribution of the TiMax range of products. At Phoeni

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Finland - Leading creatives and lighting practitioners including Mikki Kunttu, LeRoy Bennett, Christopher Bauder, Ola Melzig and Ralph-Jörg Wezorke are set to speak at Music x Media: Light & Shadow Seminar, taking place on 28 September at Tampere Hall, in Tampere, Finland.
The event forms part of celebrations around the 30-year career and 50th birthday of lighting designer Mikki Kunttu whose resume includes work for Cirque du Soleil, Nightwish, Apocalyptica, Boston Ballet, Tero Saarinen and the Finnish National Opera.
Running from 9am-6pm, Light & Shadow welcomes professionals and students alike to gain insight into the artistic processes of top professionals. The day will be hosted by Ola Melzig, as Kunttu explains: “There are very few technical producers around the world with such a mind-blowing resume. Ola is well connected and a well-know

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UK - PLASA and LSi are calling for nominations for this year’s Gottelier Award. The award recognises the invaluable contributions of the people behind the products, from pioneering product developers to creative R&D teams.
Named after the late lighting designer and industry commentator Tony Gottelier, the Gottelier Award aims to recognise product developers who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of entertainment, presentation, or installation technology.

Launched in 2007, previous recipients include: Christian Heil (L-Acoustics); Alan Jacobi (Unusual Rigging); Wayne Howell (Artistic Licence); Anne Valentino (ETC); David Cunningham (Entertec); Pasquale Quadri (Claypaky); Jim Bornhorst (Vari-Lite); John Meyer (Meyer Sound); Terry Clarke (Klark Teknik, MC2 Audio); Fred Foster (ETC); Alex Cooper (Midas & Klark Teknik); John Stadius (Di

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Europe - DiGiCo has announced that it has appointed RMS Proaudio as its new distributor for Portugal.
Specialists in providing pro audio solutions to Southern Europe, RMS Proaudio has been working with DiGiCo as its Spanish distributor for almost two decades and has established DiGiCo in the Spanish market.
“RMS Proaudio has been consistently successful with the DiGiCo brand across Spain, so when the time came to appoint a new distributor for Portugal, they were an obvious choice,” says DiGiCo sales application specialist, Fernando Delgardo.
“We have been distributing DiGiCo to the Spanish market for more than 18 years and now we are excited to bring the same level of experience, support and technical service to Portugal,” says Miguel Angel Jiménez, general manager of RMS Proaudio. “We are delighted to have this great opportunity and aim to take adv

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UK - The UK Music workforce diversity survey tracks progress to boost diversity and inclusion in the UK’s music industry. This survey focuses on those who work behind the scenes in the industry, rather than those who are on stage. The final date for completed forms to be included is 8 August.
Led by UK Music’s Diversity Taskforce, the survey collates data from across the music business including studios, management agencies, music publishers, major and independent record labels, music licensing companies and the live music sector.
Launched in 2016, the findings of the survey give the music industry, Government and other stakeholders a critical insight into where improvements are needed regarding diversity and inclusion – and highlights where positive change is already under way.
The survey takes place every two years and UK Music will publish th
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