Business

Details
The Netherlands - Highlite International BV reports a very successful experience day. The annual in-house event was held 1 October. Highlite presented various workshops, lectures and product presentations which attracted customers from across Europe to visit the Highlite Headquarters to be part of the experience.
Checking out the latest developments in the Infinity-family, visiting the Chimp training-room, getting up-to-date on how to design and construct an outdoor stage. Or attending the Odin-shootout, taking part in the entertaining exclusive company -tour and in the meantime enjoy the Highlite hospitality, all in one day.
The many visitors had the possibility to register for several different workshops which were given by entertainment professionals and the Highlite product specialists. They could enjoy the latest presentation in the Highlite showroom where the bra

Details
Italy - Proel has announced the appointment of Access Pro Group to distribute its Axiom brand of professional loudspeaker systems in Serbia. Based in Novi Beograd, Access Pro Group has been a major player in professional audio in Serbia since 2000 when political conditions improved enough for business to flourish. Owner and director Nenad Stojanovic has pursued his passion for high end sound equipment coupled with cutting edge technology and has built a successful rental market around corporate, DJ, fashion show and festival events.
"We specialise in professional audio, but being a small market we have to cover a wide variety of jobs," said Stojanovic. "Typically our main activity is systems rentals for up to around 5,000 people, which are the main events in Serbia. Clients like to see and hear systems working under real conditions, and for us this is the best way to promot

Details
Europe - Entertainment engineering specialist WIcreations was asked to work on two specialist elements – a moving / tracking video wall and a ‘star lift’ – for Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s On The Run II (OTR II) stadium tour, part of an epic and spectacular set design concept designed by Stufish.
In addition to all the hardware, software and bespoke engineering elements, on the administrative front, WIcreations delivered a full scenic motion risk assessment to the tour’s management, together with machinery technical files and full user manuals covering the entire system.
“As automation gets increasingly important in entertainment applications, so safety is The most important aspect to watch,” underlines WI’s owner and founder Hans Willems, who also project managed all the automation requirements.
WIcreations provided this documentation in accor

Details
UK - In September, drama school Mountview moved from its temporary home in Wood Green, north London, to a purpose-built building in Peckham. The new building houses all of Mountview's undergraduate and postgraduate performance and production arts courses under one roof and includes a 200-seat theatre, the 80-seat Backstage Theatre and a rooftop bar and restaurant with views across London.
As part of its Theatre Production Arts (Lighting) Course, Mountview receives generous support from White Light. So when the school needed to find a way of storing its equipment when it moved into its new home, they approached the technical solution specialists.
Alex Cann, senior lighting tutor at Mountview, explains: "We've operated out of our 'temporary' Wood Green home for around 30 years now. It’s a small space with a very compact lighting and sound store and nowhere near enough

Details
USA - Country singer Cam returned to Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium for a headlining show with a lighting package provided by Bandit Lites.
Based off the lighting design by Gordon Droitcour of Cour Design, tour manager Gabe Hodge created the one-off design by adding ground supported fixtures to bring more depth to the stage in addition to back light specials.
“There was also already a good amount of programming that existed with the previous show file and lighting design (done by Larry Foote), so we wanted to take advantage of that,” explained Hodge. “Having said that, there were a lot of special moments in this show that required Vanessa Sexton to programme a handful of new songs and looks with her own flare.”
Hodge had been the LD on Cam’s previous tour and was looking for a replacement following his move to tour manager. “Vanessa and I had

Details
USA - Standing over 6’3” tall with broad shoulders and rugged features, the Grammy-nominated country music duo Brothers Osborne cast a striking image on stage. Their already-imposing presence is accented even further on their current tour by a wall of truss and light designed by Chris Reade and Jay Ballinger of KYVA Design, LLC.
Reade and Ballinger created their image-intensifying wall using 54 high-output Chauvet Professional STRIKE 1 fixtures, supplied by Christie Lites. Arranged in groups of three on 18 vertical rows of truss, the single-source 230W LED fixtures create a powerful, industrial looking backdrop for Brothers Osborne, who are opening for superstar Dierks Bentley on the tour.
“Our lighting rig not only illuminates, it also serves as a scenic element,” said Reade. “We’ve created a panorama of light and truss behind the artists to create a rela

Details
Germany - On 8 September the second edition of the Volle Kraft Voraus Festival, organised by the German band Eisbrecher, took place in Ratiopharm Arena in Neu-Ulm. The band, based around singer Alexander ‘Alexx’ Wesselsky and guitarist Jochen ‘Noel Pix’ Seibert, were also celebrating their 15th anniversary.
Production company Rain Age GmbH from Landsberg am Lech has been in charge of the festival from the very beginning - and were once more on hand for the band’s anniversary event.
Martin Heining of Rain Age, who is also lighting designer for Eisbrecher, built creatively on the band's existing tour design, which was expanded for the arena. This also serviced the guest bands – and this year besides the headliner it included Oomph !, The Krupps, Stahlmann and Zeromancer – who were also bathed in the additional light equipment.
Among other GLP e

Details
UK - For nearly 70 years, the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo has delighted visitors with a spectacular display of music and fireworks from the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle. Throughout that time, the show has been seen by thousands of people and has never been cancelled due to inclement weather.
In recent years, DPA microphones have a played a key part in delivering the sound for the show. Sound designer Sebastian Frost, who has worked on this event for 23 years, specified a vast selection of d:vote 4099 Instrument Microphones, d:screet 4061 Miniature Microphones and d:fine 4066 Headset Microphones incorporating the new CORE by DPA amplifier technology. In total, more than 110 DPA microphones were deployed across a wide range of musicians and performers, including a Malawian choir.
“My main task is to amplify lots of different elements and not just the musicians,”

Details
Protest Song - Bob Geldof is spearheading a campaign to warn of the impact of Brexit on the music industry. Sting, Rita Ora and Ed Sheeran and many others have joined forces to warn Theresa May a no-deal Brexit will put Britain in a "cultural jail".
Geldof said: "It's two-fold. One is the income it generates for this country, £94bn, contrast that to the NHS spend, of £115bn, almost the same. The second reason is cultural - the voice of Britain, the genuine, global British voice is music, it has been since the Beatles. No one knows quite why this tiny island produces such vast reservoirs of talent but we do know the entire planet dances, eats, sleeps, and plays hard to our noise. That is being endangered by a recklessness which is existential and historically self-damaging."
A joint letter states: "Imagine Britain without its music. If it's hard for us, then it's impo

Details
UK - Students and young technicians from across Britain supported Robe’s international sales team at PLASA 2018 as part of the lighting manufacturer’s NRG (Next Robe Generation) initiative.
Hailing from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, six students from six colleges and universities came together to work as a close-knit team to provide a frontline ‘welcome’ to all the trade visitors coming onto the Robe stand and offering them product demonstrations whilst acting as ambassadors for the NRG programme.
NRG is a networking community for students, apprentices and young technicians who are serious about pursuing a career in the world of performance lighting and visuals.
The initiative provides NRG crew members the opportunity to meet and get advice from influential industry professionals. The initiative also offers young technicians an opportunity to s

Details
Russia - Ayrton was showcased at the recent Prolight+Sound NAMM Russia 2018 in an interactive lightshow created by its commercial partner, TDS-Pro.
TDS-Pro specialises in stage design and technical production of TV projects, concerts and major sporting events. Its creative designers use Ayrton lighting fixtures in their designs. This was reflected in the lightshow which used the latest technologies to combine artists, Ayrton lighting fixtures, video, robots and augmented reality into a dramatic storyline.
In it, a robot, composed of an LED screen and Ayrton MagicBlade-R fixtures located on a robotic arm, lay embedded in an LED wall and DreamPanel-Twin units where it remained hidden from view. During the show, the lighting fixtures appear to start to work incorrectly as if struck by a virus. The engineer from TDS-Pro tries to solve the problem and starts to load the ant

Details
UK - Limelight Presentation Systems has ended a long search for a mid-sized loudspeaker array by investing in Martin Audio’s MLA Compact.
The delivery of 24 MLA Compact elements and 13 MLX subwoofers ended a journey that had begun many years earlier, when Martin Audio first revealed the MLA platform to audio professionals at Wembley Arena back in March 2012. Having been a Martin Audio house for 10 years Limelight head of audio, Dave Plant had reviewed all the premier brands before deciding that the time was right to invest in MLA Compact.
“We service an eclectic mix of events and we’ve been looking at MLA Compact ever since it came out with a view to replacing the LCs, but because of the varied nature of our work - providing coverage for 10,000 people at a festival one moment and then doing a corporate show for 500 the next - we thought long and hard.
“S

Details
UK - Edinburgh theatre and live event production company Blue Parrot has recently enhanced its rental inventory with the purchase of an MDG Ice Fog Compack HP low fog generator and an MDG ATMe haze generator. Blue Parrot provides full production services and dry hire of lighting, sound, video, staging, rigging and power distribution, which it has done for more than 18 years.
The Blue Parrot team was actively looking for alternative low fog and haze generators which would give a better output with less noise and the durability to withstand the high demands of life in a rental house. “We made a conscious decision to invest in MDG because the demand for the brand in Scotland is growing fast,” says Blue Parrot MD, Jonnie Clough. “We already have low fog and haze generators from other manufacturers but were not really satisfied with the effect they produced and found them v

Details
USA - Media solutions and control specialist ArKaos will be at the LDI expo in Las Vegas next week on the stand of US distributor Elation Professional (# 931) showing their latest range of products, including MediaMaster, ArKaos video servers, GrandVJ and LEDMaster.
In a dedicated demonstration room at the Las Vegas convention Centre, the ArKaos team will be presenting two free training workshops on Friday, 19 October, and Saturday, 20 October.
The Friday session is taking place from 1pm-4pm local time. Topics covered will include ArKaos’s flexible range of media servers; an overview of the MediaMaster software; the highlights and uses of the KlingNet protocol and Kling-force interface and an overview of the new ArKaos An-Ki remote control and digital content management solution.
On Saturday, the workshop are running 9am-1pm and will focus on the MediaMaster wo

Details
UK - Manchester-based tube UK is holding expanded sessions on Yamaha’s Rivage PM7 digital mixing system on 15 October (Monday) at the city’s Albert Hall.
The sessions are being run in conjunction with Yamaha Commercial Audio and will be an engineering focussed, hands-on introduction to both the Rivage PM7 and PM10 digital mixing systems.
Sessions will begin with an introduction to the key features of the Rivage range by Yamaha’s technical staff, after which both systems will be setup in two areas with virtual soundcheck media, to simulate mixing a live show.
The sessions are being held at 2pm, 4pm and 6pm and are strictly on an RSVP, first-come first-served basis. Contact PM7@tubeuk.com to confirm your preferred time slot.
(Jim Evans)

Details
World - Yamaha and Audinate are teaming up to present a free webinar entitled Live Multi-track Recording Made Easy: The Power of the Dante-Yamaha Connection.
Taking place on 24 October (Monday), the webinar will be moderated by Tom Kenny (content director, ProSound News) and will feature Andy Cooper (manager, Pro Audio Application Engineering, Yamaha R&D Centre) and Kieran Walsh (Audinate director of application engineering, EMEA) and Colin Sheen, a studio owner, recording engineer, composer and musician with many years’ experience of digital audio systems and use of Yamaha equipment with Dante.
It will help participants learn how to make successful multi-track recordings and virtual soundchecks using Dante audio networking and Yamaha professional audio products, including the TF, QL and CL series digital mixing consoles, as well as the Rivage PM7 a

Details
UK - European stage automation specialist VisionLite invested in a new Kinesys Apex hoist system - comprising 21 x Apex motors - plus Kinesys K2 control to help facilitate its busy summer work schedule.
The new Apex products went straight out on the Resistance summer season in Ibiza where they helped create a spectacular production design for the popular club experience.
Resistance embraced its underground roots in curating a serious line-up of superlative techno, led by artists like Carl Cox and Sasha & John Digweed in the 10,000 capacity Privilege venue, running for nine incendiary events over the summer.
The Resistance creative team has developed a distinctive dynamic industrial aesthetic for their live shows which is often based on moving video and lighting pods transforming the architecture and shape of the space as the night unfolds.
Thirteen mo

Details
UK - On 16 October (Tuesday), Mountview drama school will be holding an open day for prospective Production Arts students.
Participants will take part in taster sessions in lighting, sound and stage management, speak to current students, find out about funding and accommodation, and tour Mountview’s new building in the heart of Peckham, South London.
A further open day, details of which are yet to be announced, will be held in December. 
With a history spanning over 70 years, Mountview has a reputation for providing the highest standard of training in lighting, sound and stage management, working closely in recent times with industry partners White Light and Autograph. Graduates of Mountview’s Theatre Production Arts course have gone on to be the chief electrician at the Royal Shakespeare Company, design lighting and sound across the West End as well as stage

Details
Australia - Well-known Italian manufacturer of professional lighting brands, Prolights, Tribe and ArchWork (under the parent company Music & Lights) will be hitting Australia, following an agreement with Show Technology.
Professional AV and lighting distributor, Show Technology, will soon be launching their first official selection of hand-picked solutions from Music & Light’s Prolights range. Some of the products Show Technology will be bringing to the Australian and New Zealand markets this summer include the IP65-rated high-output LED wash light, the Panorama IP wash with pixel ring designed to bring the workhorse LED wash light to outdoor events, as was featured at the 2018 PLASA conference in London last month.
Show Technology’s founder and managing director, Emmanuel Ziino, comments: “I recently visited the company headquarters and was very impresse

Details
UK - Edinburgh-based lighting, sound and AV company Black Light is the latest dealer join the group of High End System’s Hog 4 master dealers in the UK.
Black Light has worked with ETC for 25 years as a respected sales and project company. With an active hire department, this relationship continues to grow with the High End Systems brand adding Sola Frame 750 moving heads to their hire inventory along with a number of Hog 4 consoles.
The appointment confirms the company’s key role in the distribution of Hog consoles around the UK.
Calder Sibbald, director at Black Light, comments: “I am delighted that Black Light has been appointed as a master dealer for High End Systems. It is currently a very exciting time for ETC and High End Systems and I am really looking forward to Black Light being part of the evolution of the brand and product. Being appointed, trul

Details
UK - PLASA has announced three new professional development training events aimed at industry professionals looking to broaden their skillset.
The events, taking place in November and February, will cover creative branding, problem-solving solutions and the latest electrical and wiring regulations, coming into force from January.
The branding, communications and strategy workshop is taking place on 21 November at Leisuretec’s HQ in Leighton Buzzard. It will be led by PR specialist Lauren Rogers of Burnt Orange (the Big Chill Festival; FIFA Club World Cup Abu Dhabi) and explore the importance of unique branding and how to differentiate in an authentic way. Businesses of all types and sizes are encouraged to attend.
On 22 November, LSi columnist and electrical consultant James Eade will provide updates to the 18th edition Wiring Regulations in a seminar and wo

Details
UK - The Ladder Association, a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting work at height safety practices, is stepping up ladder safety through training with its Get a Grip on ladder safety campaign.
With falls from height still one of the leading causes of workplace fatalities and injuries - accounting for 35 fatalities in 2017/2018, according to the organisation - and with businesses facing record fines for failing to keep workers safe, the campaign sets out to ensure that everyone using a ladder is fully trained and competent to do so.
Steve Booker, chair of the association’s training committee, comments: “Safety and competence in the workplace begins with thorough and consistent training. The saying ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ is all too familiar where ladders are concerned. It’s an attitude that encourages a complacent, over-conf

Details
USA - Spitfire Creative Technologies has completed the acquisition of Green Hippo.
Spitfire also owns tvONE and Magenta Research, manufacturers of premium video processing and signal distribution products.
Green Hippo will continue to go to market with sales, branding, and distribution independently as further growth synergies materialize over the next few quarters, says a statement.
Emma Marlow, CEO of Green Hippo, comments: “For 18 years Green Hippo and Hippotizer have been part of live events around the world. We have grown well and want to continue growing. Becoming a member of the Spitfire family allows Green Hippo to focus on growing further and faster. We look forward to their strong organisational support so we can do more to help our customers and users around the world deliver the best live video experiences.”
Denise Nemchev, president and C

Details
Here We Go Again - Comedian and Great British Bake Off host Sandi Toksvig will adapt the story for the Mamma Mia! spin-off show when it opens at the O2 in London next August. The writer and broadcaster will adapt Calle Norlen, Roine Soderlundh and Bjorn Ulvaeus’ original story into English for the immersive theatrical and dining experience, Mamma Mia! The Party.
Set in a Greek taverna, Mamma Mia! The Party will take place in a venue within the O2. It will seat 500 audience members, who will experience the show alongside a Mediterranean meal. The show has been created by Abba’s Ulvaeus, with producer Ingrid Sutej, and features music and lyrics by Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. It will be directed by Soderlundh, with set by Bengt Froderberg, costumes by Annsofi Nyberg, lighting by Patrick Woodroffe and sound by Gareth Owen.
Welcome News - Th
  1. DPA embarks on house of worship tour
  2. Harman extends partnership with Fairlight
  3. Cast to distribute Green Hippo in Germany
  4. Current RMS acquired by Kerridge CS
  5. SOS supports Inspired Stages bootcamp
  6. MATCHevent adds ROE Visual Black Pearls
Page 246 of 1813

Latest Issue. . .