USA - Today, it seems like just about every show “has to be lit ready for broadcast, I-Mag and or social media at any time,” says Felix Peralta. The noted designer and programmer has worked with many big stars with astronomical followings on Instagram, Facebook, and every other platform.
This summer Peralta had the opportunity to create an array of video/photo-worthy visuals with his lighting when he lit Café Tacvba with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic in concert at the Hollywood Bowl.
Peralta’s inspired use of contrasting warm and cool colour tones played off against the famed bandshell’s concentric arches, while the warm, radiant glow emanating from the shell-like stage accentuated the natural beauty of the venue’s Hollywood Hills surroundings.
Helping him create these looks was a 4Wall Entertainment supplied rig that included 24 STRIKE Array

Poland - Sound rental company Gondek Stage & Events provided the audio infrastructures and other facilities for some of the largest festivals staged in eastern Europe through the spring and summer of 2023.
An established Outline client, Bydgoszcz-based Gondek has recently added a substantial stock of Superfly to their existing inventory, which along with many other Outline products, handled a wide range of productions across numerous locations.
Starting in May, they delivered a package including sound systems and staging for the Sunrise Festival at the Ergo Arena Upperground in Gdańsk, which was followed in June and early July by supplying two stages at the Open'er Festival at the Gdynia-Kosakowo airport in Gdynia.
Right after that they delivered not only the sound but also the main stage and entire backstage infrastructure at the Reggae Festival in Ostró

Canada - Christie reports that its RGB pure laser projectors are illuminating a new immersive venue in Toronto. Illuminarium Experiences, in partnership with Toronto-based Secret Location, has opened its first Canadian location in Toronto’s Distillery Historic District. The 13,500sq.ft space includes almost 30 Christie RGB pure laser projectors and maintenance and support from Christie Professional Services.
Illuminarium at The Distillery District places guests in the story and allows them to see, hear, feel, and affect the space around them. The new experience opens with two immersive shows: "Waking Wonderland inspired by Lewis Carroll’s classic novel Through the Looking Glass, takes guests through multiple projection-mapped environments and includes 7.2m real-time frames and over 30 unique interactions. SPACE: A Journey to the Moon and Beyond uses

Singapore - Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is always a delight to light, and Singapore-based lighting designer Gabriel Chan relished this task for the 2023 Shakespeare in The Park (SITP) version of this magical and mischievous work.
Gabriel chose 67 Astera NYX Bulbs to get light sources into some of the more inaccessible parts of Richard Kent’s ‘cityscape’ set design, a cocktail of architectural fantasies that reimagined Athens as a stark industrial landscape that transformed into a dynamic hi-tech playground for the magic parts of the narrative.
The set needed careful lighting from specific places and NYX Bulbs proved a perfect solution.
It was the first SITP event for producers, The Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT), since 2018. The production was directed by Guy Unsworth and staged at Fort Canning Green within Fort Canning Park.

Portugal - The highlight of the 37th World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon, saw Pope Francis give the address at the Vigil, when an estimated 1.5m people gathered at the city’s Parque Tejo.
Situated between Parque das Nações (Nations Park) and the mouth of the River Trancão, this beautiful setting was perfect for the pilgrims to receive the 86-year-old Pontiff’s core messages of hope and joy.
Broadcast for the event was handled by Optocore partner Auditiv, who were responsible for capturing, amplifying and distributing sound on the Parque Tejo stage, and delivering all signals for broadcast distribution from the TV control compound. To give an idea of scale, 109 delay towers were spread across the 3km2 site, along with 69 LED screens.
Aside from the address by the Pope, the stage hosted performance by a number of other artistes during the day.
According to

USA - With more than 19m monthly listeners on Spotify, plus over 300m streams of his song Last Last alone, Nigeria’s Burna Boy - née Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu - is by all counts a major international success.
In July, the Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and record producer became the first African artist to headline a US stadium concert when he drew more than 40,000 fans to New York’s Citi Field to celebrate his 32nd birthday. But that wasn’t an isolated incident; he’s packing massive venues around the world on his latest Stadium Tour, sonically reinforced by Solotech, who are supplying a DiGiCo Quantum338 and two Quantum7 mixing consoles, one of which is loaded with a DMI-KLANG module for immersive in-ear monitor mixing.
Burna Boy doesn’t do anything on a small scale, evidenced by the swarm of musicians and singers that surround him onstage.

UK - Bronx-born ‘King of Bachata’ Romeo Santos played a sold-out show at London’s O2 Arena earlier this summer, transforming the venue into a vibrant Latin music club.
The show was the only London stop in Santos’ Vol. 3 World Tour. Adding to the dynamic vibe that resonated throughout the arena was a collection of 84 Chauvet Professional fixtures.
Bigabox Productions managed (and supplied full) production for the show. “We called upon our friends at Encore Audio London and DMX Productions for audio, lighting and rigging support and solutions,” said Bigabox’s Dean Graves, who served as production manager. “The team of experts was complemented by the services of pyro master extraordinaire, John Wilson. Nyfield designed the original show, which was modified for O2 by assistant PM Tom Cull. It was a very memorable show.”
“Everything flowed s

Italy - On 28 May 2023, Magnifying the Beauty, a Cartier show designed and directed by Lulu Helbaek and Simone Ferrari, was held at the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, in front of a select audience of 600 people with entertainment from guest artists Ellie Goulding and Celeste.
Lighting designer, Pasquale Mari, assisted by Gianni Bertoli and programmer Mattia Carli, was responsible for lighting the evening’s events, set within the historic confines of the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred) amid the statues and paintings of Italy’s largest public hall.
Mari chose to illuminate the statues and highlight the grand architectural elements of the room using 40 award-winning Robert Juliat Dalis 860 cyclorama lights which he floor-mounted just 1m away from the painted walls and sublime statues, transforming them into a beaut

USA - Heart WeHo is a 1,500-capacity venue making it one of the biggest nightclubs along Santa Monica Boulevard in the ‘heart’ of the ‘Rainbow District’. The club is operated by Rocco’s, which is part-owned by Lance Bass, former singer with N Sync.
New York based integrator Global AV Group successfully fulfilled the brief for a high energy, high SPL club system boasting definition and clarity. Global AV’s owner Jason Ojeda explains that “Void checked all the boxes as the perfect solution for this venue.” He continues: “With the club’s focus on electronic music and Void Acoustics’ world dominance for sound systems in this genre, it was a self-evident collaboration. We were simply deploying the best of what Void Acoustics offers.”
Global AV Group has worked with Void Acoustics for over 15 years and is well-known for their obsessive attention to d

Austria - Situated amid Austria's picturesque wine country, the Mörbisch Lake Festival is a cherished celebration of culture and performing arts. The location has been a regular event for nearly 20 years and each year draws thousands of festival-goers.
The festival's centrepiece is a floating stage that appears to levitate above the tranquil waters of Lake Neusiedl. This stage is integral to the festival experience. As dusk falls, and lights shimmer on the water, the stage morphs into an enchanting spectacle that captivates all who witness it. This year, the mesmerising ambiance of Mörbisch has been elevated further through collaboration with L-Acoustics.
Over the past 20 years, this venue has evolved from a simple site, into a vibrant centre for performing arts. Transitioning from opera to musicals, it now hosts productions such as this year's Mamma Mia! and

UK - Experienced lighting designer Anthony Hazelden has made the journey from classic theatre to high-octane dance raves effortlessly, his generic stage lighting of yesteryear now replaced by next generation hybrid LED strobes, including GLP’s new JDC Line 1000.
For a recent EDM concert within Cardiff Castle he not only provided a cutting-edge floor package for headliner Fisher, for whom he was LD, but the generic house rig for the support acts. This included Luther star Idris Elba and Arielle Free.
Hazelden had known most of these artists from working with them on other projects around the world and had known the production manager for the Cardiff Castle show, James Dutton, from High Scream Productions in Ibiza.
Mindful of the high-speed approach of Australian dance DJ Fisher within a historic venue, Dutton and Hazelden conceived their design for the sh

UK - Britannia Row Productions supplied L-Acoustics PA systems across four of WOMAD’s stages: Open Air, Saddlespan, Siam and Taste the World, on behalf of Judgeday Productions Director, Dave T.
The Open Air Stage is the second festival environment in which Britannia Row has deployed the new L Series L2 system, following exceptional results at Soho House Festival.
System engineer Sergiy Zhytnikov worked across the Open Air Stage. It boasted main hangs of L2, K2 stacked on the platform for side coverage, KS28 subs in a cardioid configuration across the stage, and A15s for front-fill.
He comments: “As WOMAD is a world music festival, artists perform a variety of different genres including indie rock, nu jazz and downtempo, Indian funk and so on. Both the guest engineers and the production team were very happy with the L2’s results over the weekend, from consis

Denmark - For this year's Smukfest, the Roxx Cluster B2 FC was used on the festival's main stage as a blinder.
The mood was high at Smukfest in Skanderborg earlier this month as 40,000 guests flooded the festival grounds to experience five days of performances by international and Danish artists on the five different stages - and the odd rain shower.
Nordic Rentals, who supplied lighting for the festival's main stage, Bøgescenen, chose to use 72 Roxx Cluster B2 full colour blinders, which generated a buzz on the main stage because of the endless possibilities the fixture offers lighting designers.
The Roxx Cluster blinder made its debut last year directly on three of the biggest festival stages, the Glastonbury Festival, Rock am Ring and Rock im Park and has since found its way to many of the biggest stages in the world. The fixture has become very popular all o

USA - Designer Tyler is a fan of the Chauvet Professional Rogue R1 FX-B with its five individually controlled RGBW moving heads. He particularly likes the fixture’s infinite pan and tilt.
When lighting multi-platinum rockers Breaking Benjamin on their North American tour earlier this summer, Veneziano stopped himself from using this feature at points during the band’s 90-minute, 17-song set. “I love the infinite pan and tilt, but I didn’t want to over-use it and become predictable,” he explained. “My plan was to save theses looks for key moments to maximise their impact.”
There were plenty of such moments in the band’s performance, as they rocked the crowd with ‘their heart-shaking base, crunchy guitar riffs and thunderous percussion’. When they did, Veneziano was ready with his 12 Rogue R1 FX-B units, which, like the rest of the rig, was supplied

China - In collaboration with event solutions provider Creative Technology (CT) UK and Nordic, Holoplot’s flagship X1 Matrix Array took centre stage at Auto Shanghai - Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition for the launch of Polestar, the Swedish electric performance car brand’s new model, the Polestar 4 electric SUV coupé.
By harnessing the power of 3D Audio-Beamforming and Wave Field Synthesis, Holoplot created an inspiring multi-zone audio extravaganza, with show visitors treated to a keynote presentation from Polestar’s CEO, delivered via two dedicated listening zones, one for English, one for Mandarin Chinese - the world’s first-ever live simultaneous translations without the need for wearables. X1 also played a pivotal role in creating a captivating audio experience throughout the show, enveloping visitors in a discoverable sonic journey.

Italy - Prolights products illuminated the Innamorato Tour of Blanco, the young artist riding high in the Italian music scene.
Following the success of the Blu Celeste Tour, boasting 35 sold-out dates, Blanco has once again astonished his fans with his inaugural stadium tour, securing his position as the youngest Italian artist to perform on these prestigious stages. The concerts took place at Rome's Olympic Stadium and Milan's San Siro Stadium, where the singer delivered an overwhelming performance, paying attention to every detail and presenting a setlist that encompassed the best of his repertoire, accompanied by a visually stunning scenography.
To ensure a captivating visual experience, the rental company Mister X Service employed 106 Astra Wash19PixIP and 138 Sunblast 3000FC Prolights fixtures to illuminate the stage. These fixtures orchestrated a sy

USA - Things never got “routine” for the Beartooth production crew this summer. The Loudwire and Metal Hammer award winners’ 37-city tour has included a wildly mixed bag of shows, as they’ve moved from headlining their own appearances, to supporting bands like Breaking Benjamin and Disturbed, with a healthy sprinkling of festivals thrown in.
“It was just kind of all over the place on this run,” said the band’s lighting designer Dan Michie. “This made it critical to have a floor package that was not only very versatile, but could also be set up and torn down fast.”
Michie got what he wanted, and more, with a versatile, easy-to-work-with rig from Squeek Lights that featured a collection of compact, but powerful Chauvet Professional fixtures. “The Squeek rig was so great for what we had to do,” he said. “It could be set up and torn down, and offsta

USA - Indie folk rock band Dispatch is back touring with a lighting package from Bandit Lites. Comprised of Chadwick Stokes and Brad Corrigan, the Boston-based band were ready to release an album and tour when the COVID-19 pandemic happened. The band utilised the time to retool and deconstruct songs and released their eighth studio album Break Our Fall in August 2022.
They kicked off their summer tour with performances alongside the National Symphony orchestra, requiring lighting designer David Singleton of Datum Creative to engineer a design that could adapt to the special shows and additional festivals.
“The design came about from various conversations with the band and the band's management,” explained Singleton. “They love the look and feel of tungsten fixtures. I wanted a little more flexibility than just the tungsten look, so I went with fun unique

Germany - Situated between Cologne and Düsseldorf, the Monheim am Rhine community of under 50,000, bills itself as the “town for everyone” and backs up the claim by offering “a combination of natural beauty and urban sophistication, ancient ruins, and a thriving modern art scene”.
For three days this summer, the town’s commitment to diversity was on full display at the Monheim City Festival, a popular event that served up a spread of attractions, from art to interactive activities and, of course, a wide range of music on three stages.
At the open-air stage in the Gartzenweg, fans gathered until late in the evening to enjoy an array of performances representing different musical genres. The Stadtkapelle Monheim played pop, rock, and musical tunes. Air Flik and Micha Deutz rocked the turntables. DJ Fedde Le Grand, known for hits such as Let Me Think About I

Spain - The musical Los Chicos del Coro (The Choir Boys) production is based on the Oscar-winning film The Children of Monsieur Mathieu and premiered at the Teatro La Latina in Madrid in late 2022.
The multi-award-winning production unites renowned musical performers with an 80-member children's choir and celebrates the creative power of music. For the METjor award-winning lighting design, internationally renowned lighting designer Juanjo Llorens used Cameo moving lights from the Opus and Evos series.
The musical production directed by Juan Luis Iborra relates the contrast between the harsh realism of the dreary everyday life at the boarding school and the emotional power that arises from the friendship between the students and their music teacher. For Juanjo Llorens, the first scene of the musical sets the visual direction: "The boarding school

UK - A new family play-world has opened at The Alnwick Garden, with its imaginary inhabitants realised by the spatial sound capabilities of a d&b Soundscape system. Installed by Southby Productions, the system helps to bring the world’s magical inhabitants to life, via the work of award-winning theatre sound designer, Gareth Fry.
Ten years in the making, Lilidorei delivers an enchanted world inhabited by fabulous creatures - dwarves, trolls, fairies, hobgoblins, and more - all of them invisible. With the only clues to their existence provided by special effects and immersive audio, much is owed to the d&b Soundscape.
The behind-the-scenes story of Lilidorei’s creation - the result of the vision of Jane Percy, the Duchess of Northumberland - is revealed by a six-part television documentary. The Duchess And Her Magical Kingdom began on Channel 4 on 2

UK - One of London’s most talked about new openings, Outernet Venues, has put its trust in Clair Global Integration (CGI) for audio and networking solutions throughout three of its spaces.
CGI worked on three state-of-the-art music venues: HERE at Outernet, a 2,000-capacity space frequented by touring artists, The Lower Third, a 250 capacity live music venue for smaller acts and DJs, and Forge, a 50-person capacity cocktail bar that caters for intimate singer-songwriter acoustic performances.
Together, these contrasting spaces form part of an arts and entertainment hub built beneath the streets in the beating heart of Central London. Each venue required its own custom audio, network, and infrastructure for both independent and collaborative use, with all three utilising d&b audiotechnik loudspeakers, and HERE marking one of the UK’s first d&b XSL installat

USA - When pop music siblings Girl Named Tom - Bekah, Josh and Caleb Liechty - first set out in 2019 they would travel from city to city and gig to gig in an old minivan. Then, in 2021, Girl Named Tom made history as the first trio to ever win NBC’s The Voice, placing four songs concurrently on the iTunes Top 10 charts, with two of them reaching #1, during the show’s 21st season.
Now playing to larger audiences in bigger venues across the United States, Girl Named Tom recently wrapped a several-month tour on which they used the new Sennheiser EW-DX digital wireless system for vocals as well as electric and acoustic guitars and the EW G4 wireless in-ear monitoring system for all five musicians in the band.
“We were honoured to be the first American touring act performing with this specific set up, and we are thrilled to report that these microphones are th

USA - The redolent power of the mood ring made an appropriate metaphor for Matchbox Twenty’s Slow Dream Tour, which recently concluded its 54-show run at Chicago’s Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre. The Playground design studio evoked images of the emotive cultural icon with a large inflatable semi-circle that arches over the upstage deck and is backed by a massive video wall.
An array of images from retro clips to abstract patterns displayed on the video screen, is suggestive of the dreamy, translucent look of a mood ring. Accenting the 3D quality of this ‘ring’ is a collection of lighting fixtures, including the Chauvet Professional Maverick Force 2 Profile, arranged along angled stage left and stage right horizontal truss structures.
“Things that felt important to us were that the show feel minimalist and architectural. It had to exist as an environmen

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