Business

Details
USA - In a scene ripped straight from a fairytale or science fiction novel, 30,000 music fans found themselves streaming through Sherwood Forest while psychedelic lights guided their way to the Electric Forest Festival, only to have their travels rewarded with amazing musical performances and incredible lighting.

Co-produced by Insomniac Events and Madison House, the fourth annual Electric Forest Festival was held 27-29 June and featured music from legendary jam bands, rock bands, electronica and DJs. The weekend event at Double JJ Ranch featured access to a water park, yoga sessions, impromptu jam sessions, art installations, firework shows, spectacular lighting in the forest, and night after night of music.

Musical acts for this year's event included shows from The String Cheese Incident, Steve Angello, Umphrey's McGee, STS9, Moby, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Zedd, and Matt & Kim.

Ba

Details
USA - San Antonio's (Texas) new Tobin Centre for the Performing Arts will open in September with a complement of grandMA2 consoles dedicated to both the H-E-B Performance Hall and the Carlos Alvarez Studio Theatre.

Rising behind the façade of the former San Antonio Municipal Auditorium along downtown's famed River Walk, the 1,750-seat multi-purpose venue will be the home of the San Antonio Symphony and other resident companies. It also plans to offer a diverse array of entertainment from comedy legend Bill Cosby and radio icon Garrison Keillor and The Prairie Home Companion to the Scottish Ballet's production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

The four-level H-E-B Performance Hall is the largest of the centre's performance spaces; the Carlos Alvarez Studio Theatre is a black box-style space with multiple seating options. Dealer Texas Scenic and rep Roy Harline are pro

Details
Australia - Phillip Island Nature Parks' Penguin Parade has transformed their audio equipment with a new Apart system throughout the entire indoor visitor complex.

Tilmex undertook the refurbishment for the legendary facility well known for its dusk Parade as thousands of Penguins waddle up the beach at the end of each day, watched by scores of visitors since the 1930's.

Phillip Island can be a particularly wild and harsh coastal environment and made the extensive choice of IP rated equipment Apart manufactures an obvious choice for Tilmex.

A great variety of Apart product (Revampss, Audiocontroll12.8, Mask speakers, Column and Sphere speakers) was installed in areas such as the Theatrette, small retail area, large retail area, rear exit to the beach, Penguin World information area, Outdoor Walk Way and entrance, café, and bathrooms.

The client has commented on the

Details
USA - "At the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, we have always considered sound a key element in the performance itself," shares audio engineer Russell Cowans. Joining the company in 2011, Cowans quickly learned that almost every element of the production is given artistic attention, much like the dancers themselves.

"Each detail must come together to compliment what the movement on stage is trying to convey. Every decision we make for the sound system goes to support that end vision. For audio, that means everything from volume level, allowing the dancers to feel their movement and be energized by the sound, all the way to equipment proportions, so as not to interrupt the sight lines to the dancers. It is about the whole package coming together, and it is amazing to work with a company who gives priority to that."

Along with providing regular classes at

Details
International - When it came to creating a high impact floor package for the Queen + Adam Lambert world tour, lighting designer Rob Sinclair turned to the high output beam of the Clay Paky Sharpy. Using 23 of the luminaires provided by US hire company Upstaging, Sinclair created a dynamic floor package that matched the high-energy showmanship of the band.

"The lighting design on this tour had to start big and get even bigger," explains Sinclair. "It needed to do justice to Queen's extensive and wonderful production heritage. I needed lights that could deliver huge looks and which had the capacity and versatility to make those looks go even bigger."

The gold-painted set, designed by UK show architects Stufish, featured a 30ft square of WinVision 9 LED screens from VER and a giant automated 'Q' whose tail flipped down to create the show's B-Stage.

&q

Details
UK - Star Events Group supplied structures for the BBC to produce its World War One Centenary commemorations coverage from the St Symphorien Military Cemetery in Belgium.

Working for HPower on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), Star provided a double-deck press centre, a screen support structure, a choir stage, and a host studio to the event.

Tez Sheals-Barrett, Star Events' project manager, comments: "The St Symphorien Cemetery is very small and the main brief from production manager Harry Guthrie was to make the structures as unobtrusive as possible.

"The cemetery exudes an air of grace which affected not just the event but the whole build and removal as well. The solemnness of the occasion meant we had to use all our skills to build functional structures, get them to look right and ensure that the cemetery infrastructure, and every blade

Details
UK - With the seventh Knight of Illumination Awards (KOI) set to be held at East London's Troxy on 5 October, KOI organisers report "a fantastic level of nominations" in both the Concert Touring and Events and the Television categories.

Concert Touring and Events is judged by independent industry professionals from journalism and rental companies while the Television category, supported by the STLD, will again be judged by television industry professionals. The Theatre category, fully supported by the ALD, continues to be judged by professional critics from the National newspapers.

This year the organisers have further established the independence of the KOI Awards by opening a new level of table sponsorship to any company involved in the lighting industry. Companies from control to rental and all lighting manufacturers have been invited to join lighting and video d

Details
UK - As the annual 'Wimbledon Fortnight' approaches each summer at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in south-west London, long-term contractors RG Jones Sound Engineering can generally be found putting the finishing touches to the latest upgrades to meet the club's evolving network and comms requirements.

As old equipment reaches end of life and more efficient digital solutions come onstream - as was the case when BSS introduced the Soundweb London digital DSP platform - so RG Jones' sales and installation director Jon Berry prepares a new specification which will underpin the club's future requirements.

However, this year a more radical overhaul was required with the relocation of the PA room in the Broadcast Centre - and this required him to specify a large number of Crown's new four-channel, energy efficient DriveCore Install (DCi) amplifiers.

In total RG Jones deployed 1

Details
UK - For their recent production of Swallows and Amazons, Theatre by the Lake sought to trial a new energy-efficient solution for cyclorama lighting, and lighting designer and technical manager Andrew J Lindsay turned to entertainment lighting specialist White Light for options and advice.

White Light's Jonathan Haynes worked with Andrew to find the right fit for the production and the venue as a whole. Like most performance venues, Theatre by the Lake is taking energy consumption into consideration when deciding on future lighting fixtures. For Swallows and Amazons, Andrew was looking for an LED fixture that could deliver on energy efficiency without compromising on brightness or colour.

After surveying the choices, Andrew employed three Spectra Cyc 200s and four Spectra Cyc 100s for the production. "Having seen the Altman units on demo, I was excited to se

Details
UK - XL Video supplied video solutions for studio recordings of Series 12 and 13 of the popular Endemol UK/Remarkable Television show, Pointless. The familiar Pointless set includes several video elements that are key to the quiz show, hosted by Alexander Armstrong and quizmaster, Richard Osman which is recorded at Stage 8 of Elstree Television Studios, and broadcast on BBC1.

For the questions screen, XL Video project manager, Jeff Bailey, specified one of XL's high brightness Barco HD-20 projectors, which fed the 3.2 x 2.32m screen. The high brightness unit, which supplies 20,000 Lumens, was selected to counter the ambient light on set.

For the game tower, which counts down the scores towards the much-sought-after 'pointless' answer, 20 tiles of XL's Barco NX6 LED product were utilised, depopulated from the standard rental frames and installed into a laser-cut c

Details
France - With over 10m record sales, French rock band Indochine have completed their Black City Tour with two mammoth consecutive shows at Stade de France. With a rigorous touring schedule, this complex production relied on the simple combination of Adamson, Lab.gruppen and Lake.

Formed in the 1980s, Indochine are heroes in their home country, the first French band ever to play the Stade de France to a crowd of 80,000 back in 2010. That they have endured for so long and so successfully is testament to the drive and vision of Nicolas Sirkis, singer and leader of the band. That vision has led to one of their most elaborate stage shows to date, one that blends sound, light and video in ways not normally seen at a rock show.

The Black City Tour started in February 2013 and took Indochine across Europe and the rest of the world, culminating in two consecutive shows at the Stade de

Details
Canada - The Virgin Mobile Presents Squamish Valley Music Festival site will be going fully cashless for the first time, working in partnership with Canadian access control and cashless payment specialists, Intellitix.

Produced by Live Nation Canada in partnership with Festival creators brand.LIVE Management Group, Virgin Mobile Presents Squamish Valley Music Festival takes place at the Logger Sports Grounds and Centennial Fields in Squamish, British Columbia, 8-10 August 2014.

In its fifth year, the festival will be welcoming its most impressive line up to date with a mix of top international artists and emerging local talent. Over 70 acts will be taking the stage including headliners Bruno Mars, Arcade Fire and Eminem, who will be performing his only festival of the 2014 season.

Each of the expected 35,000 visitors per day will be issued with a Radio Frequency Identificati

Details
UK - VDC Trading, distributors of the Van Damme cable, managed to fulfil a huge order for over 150 microphone leads at very short notice for SWG Events to complete their installation at Glastonbury this year.

The South West Group is a regular supplier of events services to the Glastonbury festival and employs 10 full-time staff members and over 100 trained technicians, managers and consultants. SWG's coverage of the event spectrum includes sound, lighting, power, audio-visual, production services and event support. The company prides itself on having all resources to hand and we deliver only the very best service to our clients, sometimes with incredibly challenging deadlines. This was one of those times.

Richard Howells, project manager at SWG, said: "The guys at VDC really helped us out this year in preparation for Glastonbury, turning around 150+ cables in only a coupl

Details
Sri Lanka - PR Lighting fixtures were used extensively to provide a dynamic backdrop for a major concert by Bengali Bollywood/Bhangra star, Mika Singh in Sri Lanka recently. The Punjabi star is a prolific songwriter, singer, performer and composer, who since releasing his first album 17 years ago has produced numerous chart hits - either taken from his film scores or privately recorded albums.

Local production company The Lighthouse (Pvt) Ltd provided a real tour de force, decorating the main hall at the MICH (Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall) in Colombo with 30 XS1200 (1200W) discharge spots, 30 XR200 Beams, and six XL1200 Spots.

The design was handled by Lighthouse's Dinusha Perera, who credited the fixtures' "excellent reliability and high brightness." At the command of the Avolites Pearl Expert, he confirmed that they fulfilled all the function

Details
UK - Avolites and Avolites Media continued their strong association with Glastonbury Festival with an impressive array of equipment and an eager team out in force to support friends and colleagues alike.

With no less than three headline acts on the main stages controlled by Avolites, as well as numerous other acts and stages, the festival proved an excellent opportunity to showcase the power and versatility of the range.

The first of those headliners, Arcade Fire, brought the Pyramid stage to a climactic close for day one with a set list spanning their four albums. The band put on a compelling show, performing in elaborate costumes and face paint against a myriad of moving mirrors, fireworks, and an outstanding use of lighting skillfully conducted by Chris Bushell from a Sapphire Touch.

Meanwhile, Kaiser Chiefs ended the day one festivities on the John Peel stage, with Ali P

Details
Norway - The largest Meyer Sound Lyon linear sound reinforcement system ever assembled was heard this summer at Telenor Arena in Oslo, Norway. Provided by Bright Norway AS, the 360-degree system entertained 8,500 employees of Scandinavian supermarket chain REMA 1000 with performances by Norwegian musicians Karpe Diem, D.D.E., and Kurt Nilsen.

Named 1000 Colours of REMA, the show required a system that could provide even in-the-round coverage at rock music levels with impeccable speech intelligibility. The solution designed by Bright Norway's Preben Frostad incorporated eight arrays of 11 Lyon linear line array loudspeakers each. To deliver powerful and even low-end coverage, the audio team specified a TM Array configuration, with four arrays of seven 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements suspended directly over the centre stage.

"The whole audio package was perfe

Details
Belgium - AED Rent has recently made some new investments in the field of wireless microphones and in-ear monitoring. It includes a comprehensive package from Shure systems, complemented by DPA miniature microphones. So AED Rent now has Axient, ULX-D and PSM1000 in its rental range.

In a time where more and more wireless applications are used, but where less bandwidth is available for the pro-users in the audio industry, Axient offers a highly reliable solution for high profile events, allowing the user to set up a 100% redundant wireless connection, say AED.

"With Shure ULX-D we find ourselves in another market/price segment. The price-quality ratio is very good. What gives the opportunity to many users to use wireless microphones in a digital version. In the AED group, a total of nearly 100 channels ULX-D are available spread over three different frequency bands,"

Details
UK - The Technical Theatre Awards, which celebrate the outstanding achievements of people working behind the scenes, have announced that this year's awards ceremony will take place on Tuesday 7 October at 5pm on The Theatres Trust TheatreStage (R40) at PLASA London.

The Technical Theatre Awards (TTAs) will also have their own stand during PLASA, S30, which runs 5-8 October at London's ExCel.

The TTAs, which debuted at PLASA 2013, were established to give due credit to the often unsung heroes and heroines that work backstage to make the theatre magic happen.

With the guidance of TTAs co-founders and organisers Ian Taylor and Olivia Dermot Walsh, the event has attracted immediate support from some of the biggest names and companies in the industry, including Philips Entertainment, PRG, and Triple E, all of which are sponsoring the awards again this year.

The TTAs announced n

Details
USA - PLASA Events has announced the cancellation of PLASA Focus: Austin 2014, scheduled for 9-10 September. The show, returning to Austin for the third time in three years, was experiencing location saturation. Even with the prior success in Austin, it was clear the Events team would not be able to deliver the high quality experience exhibitors and attendees have come to expect from this celebrated series.

However, the PLASA Focus 2015 show series will hit the sunshine state once again, bringing the world's latest entertainment technology to Orlando on Tuesday, 17 February and Wednesday 18 February, 2015 at the Rosen Plaza Hotel.

Companies already signed up to exhibit at PLASA Focus: Orlando 2015 include: The Light Source, GLP, Ushio, Altman Lighting, CHAUVET Professional, TMB, Barbizon, Elation Professional, Harrington Hoist, Group One, Ultratec, A.C.T Lighting, and many oth

Details
Italy - Clay Paky, the Italian manufacturer of professional show lighting, has today announced that it is preparing for a new phase in its history, with the signing of an agreement for the acquisition of the company by OSRAM, one of the world's leading light source manufacturers.

Following the acquisition, which is subject to approval by the relevant antitrust authorities, Clay Paky will continue to operate from its production and administrative head office in Bergamo, Italy. Key positions will remain in place, ensuring continuity in management, the company says.

"Integration with OSRAM, which has a great wealth of technological competence and an in-depth knowledge of the lighting market, is an ideal opportunity for the further development of Clay Paky," says Pasquale Quadri, founder and current president of Clay Paky. "After 40 years crowned by success, I am de

Details
USA - Sensaphonics has added two more audiologists to its Gold Circle listing. The Sensaphonics Gold Circle is a group of audiologists who have been specifically trained to meet the hearing needs of music industry clients, with a special emphasis on in-ear monitoring.

Joining the Gold Circle ranks are audiologists Dr. Teresa Cannon of Staten Island Hearing and Balance, Staten Island, New York; and Dr. Matthew Bell of Pacific University in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Held at Sensaphonics headquarters in Chicago, the Gold Circle seminar is the only formal training system for audiologists on the in-ear monitoring from the musician's perspective. Instructors for the Gold Circle seminar include Sensaphonics founder and President, Dr. Santucci, and audio engineering consultant, Joe 'Sound Guy' Tessone. Topics include in-ear monitoring and hearing protection technology, concert sound system d

Details
The Netherlands - It's been nearly a year since over 80 Robe lighting fixtures were supplied and installed at the charismatic Energiehuis, a former power station at the confluence of the Wantij and Beneden Merwede Rivers on the outskirts of Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

Energiehuis was transformed into a new multi-venue cultural centre by Jonkman Klinkhamer Architects - a stylish and cool integration of majestic civil engineering with contemporary industrial design and modern performance facilities offering the very highest production values.

The once thriving power station was closed in the 1970s and lay derelict and neglected before the three year regeneration plan commenced in 2010. The Energiehuis project was instigated and driven by Dordrecht Town Council and the performance elements developed in conjunction with theatre consultants, PB Theateradviseurs, who produced the te

Details
UK - Antony Warren, promoter for the Whisky Sessions approached Illuminate Design to provide lighting, sound, staging and technical support for their marquee at the Isle of White Festival.

With limited power, Chauvet Colorado Par fixtures were chosen for their punchy colour from a small unit. Source 4 Lustrs were provided to illuminate the backdrop of the stage. Traditional festoon lighting was used to light the 360m2 marquee to give a rustic feel in line with the branding for the event.

With a varied mix of acts playing on stage, the sound needed to be flexible whilst taking into account the very strict sound levels on site. RCF (HD10A + Art905AS) powered speakers were provided for both the FOH PA as well as the on stage monitoring systems (HD10A). Various microphones and DIs were supplied to cater for both voice and instruments, with a Yamaha LS932 as the main mixing console

Details
UK - The Eagles brought their History of the Eagles tour to London's O2 Arena in June in a worthy celebration of a lifetime of work. Performing classics and songs from their top-selling documentary, the concert is an exploration of one of the world's biggest-selling and culturally significant American bands.

Butch Allen, in collaboration with lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe and the band, designed the set and show. PRG provided lighting & rigging and worked alongside PRG Nocturne UK, who supplied video and a live camera package for the show.

Lighting director Dave Hill and his entourage of Stateside Lighting crew, led by Jason 'Atta Boy' Statler, crossed the Atlantic with production to reproduce the success of the North American run. Jason was joined by his team of professionals, including Russel Lyons, Greg Gore, Brian Monahan, Errol Reinhart, Matt Schnieder and UK

  1. Clay Paky lights record-breaking Vasco stadium dates
  2. Showline strobes frame Pyramid Stage in light
  3. GDS lights refurbished Everyman Theatre
  4. Sennheiser awards for LIPA students
  5. SSL Live at Edinburgh Castle
  6. Chauvet Professional lights guitar legends
Page 1633 of 1813

Latest Issue. . .