USA - Lighting and production designer Patrick Brannon selected Claypaky Xtylos, A.leda B-EYE K20s and Sharpys for country superstar Tim McGraw’s just completed McGraw Tour 2022, which played dates in the eastern half of the US. Nashville-based Premier Global Production Company was the lighting vendor and lighting services provider for the shows.
Grammy Award-winner McGraw kicked off the 17-city amphitheatre tour on 29 April in Rogers, Arkansas and wrapped 4 June in Mansfield, Massachusetts. The show featured more than 20 of the hits that McGraw has scored in 30-plus years of music making. McGraw was joined by special guest Russell Dickerson as well as Alexandra Kay and Brandon Davis.
Brannon, of StarDust Services in Nashville, has worked with McGraw for about 10 years and designed five of his tours. He hails from a rock ’n roll background tallying 21 years with B

Italy - Located on a hillside in the Italian city of Fondi, Villa Paola is a prestigious restaurant, wedding and events venue created by owner Gianmaria Magni. Guests enjoy the food, beautiful interiors, majestic views, and a sound system installed in the restaurant and dancefloor areas by local event production services and technology specialists Remix Sound.
More recently, Sig. Magni contacted the De Simone brothers at Remix once again, this time with a brief to extend the high-quality sonic experience outside to a spectacular pool area surrounded by large gazebos with luxurious sofas. Riccardo De Simone takes up the story.
“We needed a slim and elegant speaker with the high power necessary to cover a large outside space. We’ve worked with Nexo for over two decades so were eager to try the new ID84 in this application. We know column speakers, and it was immediat

USA - Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras declared, “There is music in the spacing of the spheres,” articulating his vision with a series of formulas and geometric patterns. Today, over 25 centuries later, his insights into the interplay between visual patterns and music is being celebrated in Coldplay’s global Music of the Spheres tour, in which the band’s performance is being supported by a production design by Misty Buckley and Phil Harvey.
Inspired by Pythagoras’ writings and diagrams, the stage design evokes the great thinker’s vision with unfolding spherical patterns extending out from the stage in multiple directions. Accentuating this panorama and endowing it with even greater moving power is a Sooner Routhier lighting design that features 192 Chauvet Professional Color Strike M fixtures.
Supplied by Upstaging, the IP65-rated mo

USA - Clear-Com was a first-time sponsor of the popular annual AVIXA Women’s Council Breakfast at the InfoComm 2022 trade show. A long-time supporter of Rise, a group promoting gender diversity within the broadcast and media technology industry, Clear-Com is now adding their support to the AVIXA Women’s Council, focused on supporting women in the professional AV industry.
“We have always supported raising the profile of women in the industries we serve, and we were pleased to be part of the AVIXA Women’s Council Breakfast this year,” remarks Clear-Com CEO Mitzi Dominguez. “Attracting, supporting and retaining more women in Pro AV opens opportunities for the next generations.”
Clear-Com’s recent involvement with Rise includes corporate sponsorship as well as active, hands-on involvement in the Rise Up Academy, Rise Up Summer School and Rise Awards. The R

USA - The hot real estate market in Southern California has spawned an equally hot Netflix TV series, Selling Sunset, now in its fifth season, as well as an upcoming spin-off, Selling the OC.
Audio supervisor Marcos Contreras, CAS, captures sound for these fast and often unpredictable reality shows with the help of his arsenal of Lectrosonics wireless systems, including SMWB and SMDWB miniature wideband bodypack, SMQV belt-pack and Hma plug-on transmitters, as well as SRc portable and DSQD digital receivers.
“Selling Sunset is one of the most popular shows on Netflix,” Contreras explains. “The show demands a lot. The wireless must be reliable every time. Lectrosonics is up to the task - no dropouts or interference even over big, open spaces.”
Selling Sunset has a cast of 10, while the upcoming OC show’s cast numbers to

Germany - Lighting designer and operator Andreas Bünemann is using the Onyx lighting control platform from Obsidian Control Systems to run a large lighting rig for German reggae artist Gentleman and says he wouldn’t turn to any other system.
“Our choice is the Obsidian Onyx system and it will be going forward,” stated Bünemann, owner of full-service rental company Bam Bam FX of Germany. “For us, it is the future and the direction we want to go. It’s a powerful and reliable system and we will be recommending it to clients interested in user-friendly lighting control.”
Gentleman is Germany's most successful reggae artist and has been filling venues in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since 13 May in support of his latest album, Blaue Stunde. Bünemann has been handling lighting for Gentleman since early this year and runs the current show using Onyx

USA - Since its grand opening in October 2021, Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena has set its sights on becoming the most progressive, responsible and sustainable arena in the world, with a net-zero carbon status, no single-use plastic, water conservation, and zero waste as some of its initial ambitions.
The arena, reinvigorated thanks to $1.15bn of private investment, has been designed to host a number of sports, including hockey and basketball, and live concerts and events, providing with a capacity of up to 18,100 guests.
David Battershell - senior consultant at Idibri, a Salas O’Brien Company - was the AV design consultant for the arena’s new construction, with Idibri acting as the AV component of a larger Populous design machine.
Designed to replace an existing venue, KeyArena, “that was too small and outdated” as Battershell explains, “the [original

Mexico - Zoé won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Rock Urban Alternative Album in 2019. Although the honour was well-deserved, it told only part of this dynamic quintet’s story. The band from Cuernavaca defies easy classification, as they weave an array of global influences into their distinct sound.
Inspired by Brit Pop and Seattle grunge, Zoé has continuously refined their music since the group formed in the mid ‘90s, bringing in synth pop and psychedelic elements to create a rich mix of songs.
The band’s current Unplugged tour will include a stop at Dodger Stadium in December. Reflecting the mood of the music is a balanced and intricately layered Tony Pérez lighting design that features 42 Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied by Meridian Pro Audio company.
Playing his design off against a large video wall, Pérez showers the stage with light from his M

USA - Australian producer and DJ Hayden James recently wrapped up his North American Lifted tour with a lighting system provided by Bandit Lites.
Production designer David Fairless fashioned a lighting design that stepped out of any typical box with an asymmetrical design that would create large impact in a variety of venue sizes while fitting the desired gear in a 12ft by 6ft trailer that was limited on weight.
“It was a last-minute call to switch to such a tight space and weight restriction but by working with the team at Bandit Lites, we were able to come up with a hugely successful touring package for the limitations we had,” explains Fairless.
“The main element of the design was linear strips of Spectron that are arranged randomly floating throughout the space,” says Fairless. “With a look like this, I was able to play with the height and

UK - For the star-studded UK debut of the movie Operation Mincemeat at London’s Curzon Cinema in Mayfair, local production specialist Impact Production Services (IPS) was enlisted to create an elegant red-carpet reception.
In keeping with the storyline of the film, which involves the clever use of limited resources, IPS MD James Mason, along with client Limited Edition Event Design and lighting designer Richard Godin, were able to create grand looks that utilised the full power and performance features of their kit.
“We used 10 Chauvet Professional X4IP active LED panels for this event and they had no problem covering a pretty large area,” says Mason. “Richard Godin, who operated the lighting from a ChamSys MQ80 console with two Art-Net nodes used to distribute data signals to the main lighting areas, did a magnificent job.”
The canopy overhang o

UK - Lighting and production designer Mark Cunniffe has chosen to light Ed Sheeran’s current Mathematics world tour, with a lighting rig composed almost entirely of Ayrton IP65-rated fixtures (expect a full production report in a future issue of LSi). The design incorporates 138 Ayrton Domino LT, 48 Perseo Profile and 22 of the new Ayrton Cobra laser-sourced fixture. This is Cunniffe’s first specified use of Ayrton fixtures, and the first tour for Ayrton’s new Cobra.
The show design is a huge, in-the-round, stadium setup with an unprecedented open design, with no roof, a large circular video screen over the revolving stage and six mammoth masts held in place by a cable net system. This major feat of production design was the brainchild of Cunniffe and engineered by Jeremy Lloyd of Wonderworks and Rasti Bartek of Cundall.
“This kind of set up h

Canada - Over the last 20 years, Montreal-based Productions Headroom has built its reputation as an innovative broadcast rental company that can deliver solutions for reality TV productions. Its latest innovation called on Point Source Audio microphones to create a robust solution that delivers pristine sound quality all while disguised as a necklace.
The ‘always-on’ nature of reality TV filming meant that the cost of repairing or replacing microphones would quickly add up and this led to the team looking for more robust solutions. “The breakage we were having was at the element and it was due to manipulation - the cast would manipulate the microphones every day three or four times a day getting in and out of the pool - which is always hard on the equipment,” recalls Jean-Sébastien Roy, founder of Productions Headroom.
“I was using Point Source Audio waterp

UK - After a two-year postponement, Craig David commenced his UK tour in April, initially visiting 13 arenas across the country with a large-scale production based around DiGiCo’s Quantum console range.
The tour will continue into the summer with festival appearances, formatted as either full live band sets or the artist’s TS5 boutique DJ shows. To ensure seamless audio quality across the range of performances, the sound team specified consoles from DiGiCo’s portfolio.
Entitled Hold That Thought, the tour celebrates 20 years since the release of David’s critically acclaimed Born To Do It debut album, which established him as one of the UK’s best loved artists. The tour encompasses new tracks from his forthcoming album as well as his early music, and elements of his TS5 project, named after the Tower Suite 5 apartment in Miami, where he used to host hou

North America - Britannia Row Productions has provided audio support for singer, songwriter, and producer, Chelsea Cutler, whose When I Close My Eyes tour kicked off in Austin, Texas in March.
The tour - which marks the start of the young artist’s relationship with Brit Row - was followed by her Coachella debut in April and saw her play The Governors Ball stage in June. The tour is running under the care of New York based Mutual Friends, an artist management company.
“I’d never worked with Brit Row until now,” comments production manager, Alex Slohm. “The overall service has been excellent, and the gear has been immaculate. I heard from our account manager, Marc Soame, after the first couple of shows to check in but all I had to say was how pleased I was with everything.”
One of the major advantages for Slohm was the ability to alleviate some o

South Africa - The first major live post-pandemic corporate event staged in South Africa was organised by international services, trading and distribution company Bidvest for key clients, suppliers and staff. Taking the theme Future Now, the large and impressive show returned live after a two-year absence, staged for the first time at the Time Square Arena in Pretoria with newly appointed CEO Nompumelelo Thembekile Madisa.
Future Now was a special commission for Bidvest created and produced by the team of David Bloch of David Bloch International and choreographer Debbie Rakusin, who commissioned Gearhouse South Africa as technical supplier together with Pieter Joubert as technical director.
Stage, set and lighting design was delivered by Tim Dunn from nVisible agency, who flew in from the UK to programme and run the show lighting, which he did in close c

Saudi Arabia - The global premiere of the theatre and dance show Kan Yama Kan was staged in the Global Theatre at Riyadh’s BLVD RUH City entertainment complex, delivered by an award-winning West End and Broadway creative team, with lighting designed by Natasha Chivers, direction and choreography by Will Tuckett and auditorium, set and video design by 59 Productions, who were also technical co-ordinators for producers, Wonderjunkie and Anthology.
With a large cast, a vibrant traverse stage design, fast moving dancers, dynamic scenic items and aerial performers, Natasha - working with associate LD Andy Purves - needed to track up to 15 principal actors, dancers and aerialists all over the performance space using multiple light sources positioned everywhere on the overhead trusses, often simultaneously.
As a solution, they specified two zactrack PRO servers whi

Indonesia - Since the first Java Jazz Festival more than 15 years ago, the event has become an annual fixture in the Indonesian entertainment calendar, attended either for work or pleasure by all the most influential music and sound industry professionals in the region.
Like so many events around the world, the festival took a COVID-enforced hiatus over the past couple of years but returned in celebratory style to the Jakarta International Expo Kemayoran over the weekend on 27-29 May, with bands and musicians performing on a total of nine stages.
One of the more challenging acoustic environments at the festival was the GRAB Hall, a former aircraft hangar in which local rental company DSS Sound Systems deployed a Nexo Geo M12 line array, with support from the technical team at local distributor Yamaha Music Indonesia Distributor (YMID).
“With no acoustic treatme

USA - CP Communications has established itself as a full-service production equipment provider for live events, attracting opportunities from Fox Sports, MLB Network, the NFL, and others. The company offers a range of Dante workflow solutions with multiple products from Studio Technologies, manufacturer of high-quality audio, video, and fibre-optic solutions.
“We have a few hundred Studio Technologies products in our Dante ecosystem that we use for all of our events,” says Brian Ready, account executive & systems engineer at CP Communications. “The ease of use and durability of Studio Technologies’ products allow us to augment our Dante workflow depending on the client’s needs and the scope of the project.”
According to Ready, CP uses “a little bit of everything” from Studio Technologies, including beltpacks, intercom interfaces, and audio engines.

USA - Hotel Figueroa, one of the longest-standing hotels in downtown LA, has been a part of the area for nearly a century. Following a two-year restoration inspired by its original 1926 Spanish architecture, the hotel re-opened for guests in 2021.
However, its legacy audio systems were encountering issues and needed an upgrade from the systems integration team at Drp, who relied on audio amplifiers from LEA Professional to power the historic venue, its restaurants, and other spaces.
With 268 rooms and suites spread over 14 floors and a pool nestled within a botanical oasis, Hotel Figueroa, part of the Hyatt group, is renowned for its style and close proximity to the Crypto.com Arena and LA Live, formerly known as Staples Centre.
When the hotel decided they needed to upgrade the entire audio system, Drp was brought in to create a system that met their new standar

USA - Andrew Goedde, lighting designer for Goose since 2018 has been creating a procession of deeply evocative looks for the quintet from Connecticut as they’ve played live music venues and festivals.
The band is now playing more notable venues like Red Rocks and Radio City Music Hall, as well as major festivals in the US and Europe. For Goedde, his client’s blossoming career has opened a new world of opportunities. Not only is he touring with a larger rig that features The Chauvet Professional Color Strike M, which was supplied by Main Light, he’s also collaborating with one of its leading designer/programmers Tony Caporale.
“For the first time ever with Goose, we have the luxury of having the same tour design for almost all venues,” comments Goedde, owner of Indianapolis-based Goedde Sound & Light. “It’s really cool to have the same consistent desig

France - After a two-year hiatus, the 28th edition of the annual Massy International Circus Festival returned this year, featuring the world's top circus artists, performing in the company’s impressive 50m diameter, 3,000-capacity big top erected in the town of Massy on the outskirts of Paris.
To mark the return, the technical design team employed a new, innovative AV system, revolutionised by the introduction of immersive mixing technology from German in-ear monitor specialists, KLANG.
Established in 1993 to honour the 75th birthday of celebrated clown, Achille Zavatta, the International Circus Festival of Massy has since been staged annually in the town, receiving international recognition and broadcast every year on the French television channel, France 3. A homage to traditional circus entertainment, the festival attracts world famous circus performers. At the he

France - On 12 May, the historic Palais-Royal in the heart of Paris was the site of an EDM dance fest - Monumental Tour Europe - with a crowd of 2,000 raving to pulsating beats and bass drops beneath a canopy of powerful beam effects from Elation Proteus Excalibur moving heads.
Technical solutions provider Magnum provided all of the lighting, sound, power and truss for the event, including the Excalibur fixtures. Elation French distribution is by Best Audio & Lighting.
Needing an outdoor-rated beam light that could project far into the night sky, six Excalibur fixtures worked from the top of the building in a powerful and unmistakable fan of luminosity. The 20,000-lumen Excalibur features an a narrow 0.8° beam that widens to 3.5° when needed using an expander lens. Powered by a long-life Philips Platinum 500 FLEX lamp (550W), its long-throw beam acts as a

Italy - Eurovision returned to its full splendour in Turin for 2022 after the challenges of the pandemic in 2021. Even the continuing horror of war in Europe failed to affect the event, in fact, only serving to intensify the joy, the magic and the music that Eurovision brings to the world every year.
To bring a kaleidoscope of SFX to the stage in Turin, Luca Toscano, CEO of Artech teamed up with Lucas Gerritzen of Pyrofoor de Amsterdam who supplied the FX for the 2021 show in the Netherlands. Artech is a group of companies, that specialise in delivering SFX and show solutions across the globe.
Appointed by this years’ host broadcaster RAI Television as the Eurovision 2022 SFX, pyro and laser supplier, Toscano sees the event as a glorious celebration of the entertainment industry, a showcase for the best of the best. Across the two companies, more than

Germany - As the exclusive global manufacturer of Philips professional displays, PPDS is dedicated to helping integrators learn about and test the latest technologies, products and opportunities that can help grow their businesses. Building on its strategy to bring seamless global business locally, PPDS has launched its first full-solutions showroom in Munich, featuring Philips professional displays and virtual collaboration systems from ClearOne.
The new 155sq.m showroom is designed to highlight new solutions for various spaces and client types, with dedicated rooms set up to demonstrate how new technologies can be integrated to optimize conference rooms, meeting rooms, retail spaces, classrooms, hotel guest rooms and even home offices. According to Christian Krela, channel manager for PPDS in Germany, the new Munich showroom is the company’s first demo space to focus on

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