Projects

Details
UK - More than 25 years after they catapulted into the UK charts, and 10 since disbanding to produce solo material, British rockers Supergrass returned to touring with audio rental house Britannia Row in February and March.
Describing his sound crew as being “amazing at their jobs”, production manager Adam King has, by his own admission, “loved” working with Brit Row and the Supergrass team for the band’s recent return to live music.
Supergrass were ‘lucky’ in the sense that they finished their seven date UK run - which culminated in two sold out shows at London’s Alexandra Palace - prior to lockdown. FOH engineer Max Bisgrove notes: “We had two fantastic gigs in London, and as these were my last two shows for what will no doubt be quite some time, it was good to go out on such a high note.”
King agrees, “The Ally Pally sound check sounded i

Details
Poland - The Culture and Reading Centre in the southern Polish town of Radlów is a local government institution that stages a range of activities and performances promoting the participation of the local community in cultural and educational pursuits.
The centre organises regular activities such as workshops, theatre and fitness classes, as well as one-off events encompassing everything from festivals and exhibitions to concerts and competitions. These feature not only visiting artists but also involve local groups, some of whom are resident at the centre. Music is a very important central theme for this vibrant and busy hub.
As a new establishment, the building required a high quality sound system in order to deliver the best experience for performers and audiences alike. The principal area to be covered was the centre’s ground floor Main Hall, a multi-purpose spa

Details
USA - Demonstrating creativity and resilience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stampede is turning its Cleveland, Ohio Big Book of AV tour stop into a live virtual event on 14 May that will feature pre-arranged one-to-one manufacturer-reseller focused virtual sessions on Stampede’s new COVID-19 business engagement platform.
“Nothing is going to get in the way of Stampede helping its resellers to succeed in this challenging business environment,” Stampede president & CEO Kevin Kelly says. “Resellers all across North America rely upon Stampede to provide them with the latest new products, business development programs and training that will enable them to take their businesses to a higher level of success. In the current environment, we are pivoting to virtual events to meet our resellers’ needs.”
Cleveland will be the first of several virtua

Details
USA - Michigan-bred and Nashville-based Asher Postman is an electronic music specialist. On top of crafting his own songs, he has remixed artists from Riley Clemmons to The Chainsmokers. His tutorials garner six-figure YouTube views. Postman keeps his setup simple - he works in software on a single desk - but he recently got a game-changing upgrade: a pair of Adam Audio A7X active nearfield studio monitors.
“I first heard the Adam monitors when a friend from Detroit and I went on a writing retreat,” recounts Postman. “His name is David Chapdelaine and his artist project is called Augest, with an ‘e’. We had a cabin on Torch Lake in Michigan and his A7Xs were the speakers we brought. I was in the market for new monitors and was immediately impressed. I decided I had to get my own.”
Postman explains what impressed him first: “We were travelling light and br

Details
UK - Television and event lighting company JLLighting worked alongside Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to provide ‘the biggest #Clapforourcarers thank you yet’.
Using 40,000 watts of projections, JLL projected messages of thanks across the Children's Hospital and West wing façade, this thanks also extends to the teams at OUH and Oxford University working on multiple trials for COVID-19 vaccines.

Details
UK - Playing a role in keeping its listeners connected during the coronavirus lockdown, community radio station, East Leeds FM’s newly created remote broadcasting setup has an Allen & Heath SQ-5 at its heart.
Although created as an Internet broadcaster, East Leeds FM identified a need to provide information, advice and company over FM radio to vulnerable older residents without Internet access. The station quickly secured a temporary FM licence and created a new daily show, Keeping A Distance, Staying Close.
With presenters and technicians unable to access the station’s regular home at the Chapel FM arts centre in Leeds, UK since March, it fell to volunteer and former BBC sound engineer, Phil Driscoll to devise a solution for recording and broadcasting the show.
Phil’s office has become the nerve centre of the organisation, handling the live broa

Details
UK - In a collective action on 19 April, over 50 lighting and laser companies joined UK lighting rental company Clearsound Productions to shine lights in the sky, united by the hashtag #ourshininglight.
The campaign was initiated a few weeks ago when Clearsound’s Steven Haynes and Dan Ridd fired up eight Robe MegaPointes on the roof of their warehouse in Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, and got the town - and their social media feeds - buzzing. The duo were in turn inspired by the weekly national Thursday night Clap for Carers action taking place across the UK.
That first installation had such a great reaction that two weeks later, Steven and Dan deployed two MegaPointes each in five locations - the gardens of Clearsound employees - around Shipston shooting beams all around the town again in support of essential workers.
For this latest #ourshininglight

Details
USA - The Orpheum Theatre is a 1,364-seat performance space located in downtown Phoenix, Arizona.
Opened in 1929, the ornate, elaborate construction of the Orpheum was adorned within by magnificent murals and mouldings that set the stage for Vaudeville and motion pictures. As Vaudeville died out, movies became the primary use - Paramount purchased the facility in the 1940s and used it as one of its motion picture houses through the 1960s.
The Nederlander Organisation then purchased the building to host travelling Broadway performances. In the 1970s a local family bought the location and hosted, primarily, Spanish-language performances and films. In the 1980s the venue branched out to live performance - and acts such as The Ramones, Metallica, Nirvana and REM played the venue as part of their tours.
It was then, in the 80s, when folks started to notice the venue h

Details
Europe - Shure worked with Southby Productions to supply Icelandic singer, songwriter and music producer, Bjork, on her concert tour and first theatrical production, Cornucopia.
The production is a theatrical experience which toured arenas across Europe, including London’s The O2, and took up residency in New York City’s The Shed and Mexico City’s Parque Bicentenario. The show, described as Bjork’s most elaborate stage concert yet, included a 50-piece Icelandic choir, a live band including a seven-piece flute ensemble, a harpist, a percussion section, water drums, a magnetic harp and a number of bespoke instruments which were implemented in the immersive sound stage design.
The show was devised and rehearsed at an Icelandic lighthouse and the Backstage Centre production facility in Essex. With the show evolving daily, the crew were required to work close

Details
UK - University of South Wales (USW) Music & Sound students have been working hard to transform what was originally planned to be a series of live gigs in various local venues around Cardiff, into a realtime event of multiple livestreams taking place over the next few days, until 3 May.
In partnership with Keep Cardiff Live and Dazed, the USW students had to quickly adapt when the Covid19 pandemic brought with it a unique set of circumstances where those plans were no longer possible. Overcoming many technical challenges, the students will be hosting the festival online, featuring genres that are popular in live music events in Cardiff.
The festival will include indie, hip-hop, house, metal and drum’n’bass nights along with interviews with subjects including USW graduate and Grammy nominee, Romesh Dodangoda, Lacertilla and Tidy Records.
USW student Lewis

Details
UK - Acting & Theatre Production students at London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) rigged a dynamic scene change using an Electro Kabuki drop in a recent performance of Oscar’s Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
The play calls for a scene change between Act 1, based in the Piccadilly rooms of character Algernon Moncrief and Act 2, set in the garden of the Manor House in Woolton belonging to character Jack Worthing (aka. Earnest). In this lively and engaging production, the creative team came up with a novel idea to mark the transition.
With Electro Kabuki dropper modules rigged to the grid high above the production in a cargo net configuration, several hundred flower heads were dropped to the stage, bang on cue with accompanying sound effects, as the actor playing Miss Prism took her seat at the garden table. Marked by appreci

Details
UK - When Projects Department Ltd won the contract to create two live studios and two breaking news spots for the Financial Times TV studio in London, Doughty Engineering was quickly brought on board to supply a range of broadcast kit.
Peter Daffarn, managing director, Projects Department Ltd explains: "The client briefed us to create the studios and news spots for presenting live news bulletins at short notice and for occasional use and, with Doughty being our go-to company for hoists and grids, we knew they'd be fundamental to the project from the start."
Building a bulletin studio meant that Projects Department Ltd had a smaller than usual space to work with, therefore the design and build needed to be imaginative. The studios were required to be integrated into a working office space and, with a number of high-profile guests visiting, the client wanted it to be aes

Details
USA - On Tuesday evening, Verge Aero, the leader in high performance drone light shows, delivered a unique aerial tribute to medical staff and essential workers on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The display of gratitude took place opposite the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and The Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania as part of the global #LightItBlue and local #PhillyShinesBlue campaigns, not far from Verge Aero’s Pennovation Works offices at the University of Pennsylvania.
The aerial light show was launched from Philadelphia’s Franklin Field football stadium, adjacent to the hospital complex. 140 extremely bright drones configured themselves into giant images up to 400ft above the ground, making themselves visible throughout the University of Pennsylvania campus and medical centre as well as far away across the Schuylkill River in downtow

Details
USA - Breaking down barriers between athletes and fans, Ross Stripling and Cooper Surles launched The Big Swing podcast in January 2019 to discuss everything from sports to pop culture to finance, with a focus on all things baseball. When the co-hosts were looking to deploy a high-quality microphone solution to capture crystal-clear audio for their podcast, they found what they were searching for with MXL Microphones’ BCD-1 Live Broadcast Dynamic Microphone.
“In our first few months of podcasting, audio was the biggest challenge for us,” says Stripling. “Once we were able to deploy the MXL mics and put them in front of each speaker, our audio went up twofold – the sound quality of MXL’s BCD-1 is incomparable to the previous solution we were using.”
In addition to quality audio pickup, Surles finds the noise rejection capabilities of MXL’s BCD-1 t

Details
USA - St. Joseph Catholic Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan features a 250-capacity sanctuary replete with stained glass windows, smooth white walls, and an ornate baptismal font. It was built in the 1910s and continues to serve as a cornerstone of Catholic social life in Kalamazoo
An outdated sound reinforcement system made it difficult to understand what was being said during St. Joseph’s services. Local AV integration firm, Sound Connections Group, remedied the problem with the installation of a single Danley SM96 loudspeaker.
“St. Joseph Catholic Church had a handful of old loudspeakers in place that were blasting the room and walls with sound and adding chaos to the already poor acoustics,” explained Sound Connections group founder and owner Duane Davi. “To make matters far worse, the church’s priest, Father Antony, is a native of India. His accent made the

Details
USA - Like many DJs, Brent Schmidt who has been side-lined by the Covid-19 lockdown, has taken to streaming performances every week, partly to stay busy, partly to reach out to friends and fans in his community. In the process, thanks in part to their attractive visuals, his livestreamed shows have actually resulted in new business.
Sporting catchy titles like the Six Feet Apart Party, Schmidt’s streams emanate from his home studio. From a production standpoint, this ‘venue’ is a far cry from the rooms that he has worked while lighting major conferences like SkySprout, or touring with celebrated TV magician Rick Smith Jr.
Still, Schmidt strives to give these online shows at least a basic level of production looks.
“I love doing these streams, and I think it’s great that other DJ are going on line to do this kind of thing,” he said. “In my vie

Details
Belgium - CC de Warandepoort Theatre in Tervuren near Brussels took delivery of Elation Fuze Profile luminaires shortly before performance venues went dark in March and looks forward to using the new full-colour framing moving heads on a variety of productions once the theatre can again welcome patrons to its stage.
Warandepoort Theatre is a 370-seat performance arts venue and the cultural centre of the municipality of Tervuren, presenting both modern and classic theatre, concerts, comedy, dance, film, and the occasional corporate or community event.
Although many of the productions the theatre hosts carry their own equipment, according to Alexander Remmerswaal, technician at the theatre, many do not. “When that is the case, we are glad to step in with technical support by providing our own equipment,” he says, clarifying that there is little budget for renting in

Details
Germany - Hippotizer Media Servers were recently chosen to drive the visuals for the Cyber-Gen ShockWave tour. Featuring a line-up of Deutsch-rap and R&B artists signed to the Cyber-Gen music label, including YouTube stars TJ Beastboy, Young Mokuba, Wavvyboi and others, the tour played dates in Germany, Austria and Switzerland - and sold out in under 28 hours.
Lighting designer Otto Schildknecht asked Emanuel Jörgner to programme and operate the show’s video and lighting elements. “Because we needed a high performance server, which would ensure all the live notch FX ran smoothly, we chose the Boreal+,” says Jörgner. “The other good reason for choosing the Boreal+ was the fact that we could deform the content with the FX library.”
The display setup consisted of a 8m x 2.3m, 16mm pixel pitch LED wall positioned upstage, with alternative configurations fo

Details
USA - For fans of Texas Christian University’s (TCU) Horned Frogs football team, this school year’s Big 12 conference football season was bigger and bolder than ever thanks to the kick-off of a $118m expansion of the Fort Worth campus’ Amon G. Carter Stadium.
Among its many improvements, the first phase of this multi-year initiative notably involved a significant upgrade of the nearly 50,000-capacity stadium’s video and audio facilities, including a new L-Acoustics K1/Kara loudspeaker system designed and installed by local integrator Electro Acoustics (EA).
According to EA Account Manager Ryan Walker, who has been with the firm for 20 years, the project actually marked the second L-Acoustics system to be installed on TCU’s campus. In 2015, the company installed a Kara loudspeaker system paired with SB18i subs at the school’s Garvey-Rosenthal Soccer Stadium,

Details
Thailand - To create an immersive AV solution for a wide range of events, Mahajak Development Co equipped Modena By Fraser Buriram Hotel with a Harman Professional Solutions networked audio system.
Located within walking distance of the Chang International Circuit racetrack and Chang Arena football stadium, the Modena By Fraser Buriram hotel features 152 guest rooms, a spacious foyer and a large ballroom and more.
To deliver clear, detailed sound in the ballroom and throughout the hotel, Modena By Fraser Buriram hired AV integrators Mahajak Development to design and install a premium networked audio solution. Mahajak Development designed a networked audio system featuring solutions from JBL, Crown, Soundcraft and BSS.
“To ensure consistent sound throughout the facilities, we installed a networked audio system using Harman’s industry-leading AV solutions,” s

Details
USA - The luxurious Sir Francis Drake has anchored the San Francisco’s famed Union Square since 1928. And since the landmark hotel’s opening day, Lizzie’s Starlight (originally dubbed the Starlight Room) has drawn hotel patrons and locals alike to the roof of the 21-story hotel for entertainment, food, drinks, and spectacular views.
In 2019, Lizzie’s underwent a major renovation - torn down to bricks, bare floor, and bare ceiling and entirely remodelled. Ayre Productions of Chicago, the company behind multiple projects for owners Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, designed and installed a new audio system for the venue, driven by Linea Research 44C and 88C Series power amplifiers.
“We worked on this project for two years, and the design has changed three or four times,” notes John Wagner who, along with brother Joe, is co-founder and co-owner of Ayre Productio

Details
USA - The Springs Church in Colorado Springs, CO recently underwent an audio upgrade with a Martin Audio WPS system spec’d and installed by Sight and Sound Technologies, the first installation of the new system in the United States.
Asked about the project, Sight and Sound COO Kris Johnson explains: “It was basically an upgrade of their PA. They had an aging left-centre-right line array system that in some respects was overkill for what they needed plus they were starting to have some problems with the speakers. They had a plan to repurpose them in another room which worked out really well timewise for us because we were able to pull the old ones down, test them out and re-install a handful of them in another room.
“In terms of the main room or sanctuary, we had already installed the Martin Audio WPM system on multiple occasions and really liked it. Then we got t

Details
Denmark - The global response to COVID-19 varies from country to country but it seems to be universal that large public gatherings are not permitted. This affects musicians very seriously but it also has implications when it comes to a national celebration. Social media has been awash with inspirational videos of Italians singing from balconies and virtual gigs from musicians and singers who just want to perform.
In Denmark there is a popular tradition of ‘Fællessang’ which can be literally translated as “common-singing”, that is as popular now as ever before. The question is how to celebrate your Queen’s important birthday when public gatherings cannot take place and all of the celebrations are cancelled. The challenge of leading the nation in song was picked up by the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra who wanted to capture more than 100 musicians and singers on

Details
USA - Taking the stage at the Boulder Theatre in Frisco, CO, on Saturday 21 February, the six members of Eminence Ensemble likely had even more spring in their step than usual. The jam band was clearly on a roll. Their recently released first EP, Real News a mash-up of jazz, rock, electronic, funk and hip-hop, had cemented their reputation as one of the brightest rising stars in the West.
The Boulder-based group was also about to embark on a national Road to Red Rocks tour in celebration of their first-ever appearance at the famed outdoor amphitheatre, which was scheduled for Saturday 25 April. Then Covid-19 happened, putting the tour, the Red Rocks show milestone, and every other live event on indefinite hold.
Undeterred, the band continued to stay connected to its loyal fan base. A video of their Boulder Theatre show (the last before the lockdown) was posted
  1. Martin Middle East lights Tolerance Bridge
  2. Allman Brothers Band celebrates 50 with Robe
  3. Adam Audio debuts T8V studio monitor
  4. Wisconsin Town honours unsung heroes
  5. Breaking new ground with Bliss and Rayzor
  6. Ovation balances dance studio looks
Page 267 of 461

Latest Issue. . .