China - Sing! China is a TV singing competition broadcast by Zhejiang Television. The show is contested by aspiring singers drawn from public auditions. The latest season of the show recently came to its climax with a spectacular Finals production staged in the Beijing National Stadium, known globally as the Bird’s Nest. Watched by millions on TV, the show attracted a live audience of more than 60,000 in the stadium itself.
The show’s production values were of the highest order, with its designers sparing no creative efforts in presenting the artists in an incredibly dynamic and high-quality presentation. On stage, a 360° rotating decoration with a four-sided screen was deployed to present every detail of the show and this year, the team fully upgraded its follow-spot technology to further enhance the audience experience.
In a large capacity stadium like th

UK - Eighteen of Zero 88’s new RigSwitch cabinets - for controlled and synchronised power switching - have been installed at P&J Live at The Event Complex Aberdeen, a new multi-million-pound flexible entertainment, exhibition, event and conference facility delivered by Aberdeen City Council in partnership with Henry Boot Developments (read more on the development in LSi February 2020).
The building was designed by architects Keppie and constructed by the Robertson Group. Theatre Projects were commissioned to define and specify the site-wide technical infrastructure for Hall C and Conference Suites 1 and 2, and the tender for electrical contractor for these areas was wo

Qatar - Painting with Light (PWL)’s creative director Luc Peumans was asked to design an eye-catching lighting scheme for the opening ceremony (OC) of the first Qatar eSports WEGA Global Games. The OC event was staged in the Khalifa Stadium in Doha and attended by 14,000 eSports fans.
Show artistic director Steven Martin from The Cintamani Stone: ArchitectofEMOTION (TCS-AOE) asked Luc onboard for their pitch, and they were awarded the project by Doha-based event company The Planners LLC.
Working together for several years now, the experienced team at The Planners combined with TCS and Trimex has become a major player in the Qatar market for these types of shows and events.
Luc was excited to be part of an all-Belgium technical design and imagineering team including OC technical director Ludo Vanstreels from Trimex with whom PWL has also worked on several previo

Australia - Urban Theatre Projects (UTP) is dedicated to telling real-life stories which portray the many facets of modern-day Australia through site-specific cultural experiences. Many of its projects are presented in Blak Box, a portable venue that uses Alcons Audio pro-ribbon systems for a fully immersive audio experience.
UTP’s latest production was Momentum, which was presented in Blak Box at Barangaroo Reserve, Sydney, throughout the first half of November. Alcons Audio systems for all Blak Box productions are supplied by David Betterridge of Sydney-based Loud And Clear Audio Pty. The Momentum system comprised six pro-ribbon VR5 mini monitors and two BF151mkII compact subwoofers, powered and managed by two Sentinel3 amplified loudspeaker controllers. The VR5s were evenly-spaced around the perimeter of the internal wall, with the BF151s placed in opposin

Italy - The Leonardo Da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan has recently inaugurated the Leonardo Da Vinci Galleries, the largest permanent exhibition in the world entirely dedicated to the Italian scientist and artist.
The 1,300sq.m exhibition area takes visitors on an interactive multimedia journey through the life and masterpieces of one of the most important artists of the Renaissance.
The lighting installation, which contributes to give value to Leonardo’s inventions and works of art, has been set up by Sater 4.0 using more than 140 Prolights MiniEclipse.
Fabio Carolis, who works in the logistics department at Sater 4.0 says: “We chose MiniEclipse because of their extremely interesting features in terms of light output, power and colour reproduction.
“We mounted the fixtures on trusses using different optical solutions. In t

USA - Every form of the city’s creative expression seems to find a home with the 24,000sq. ft confines of Elsewhere in New York City, which houses a loft café, art gallery and four performance spaces. It is, as one New York newspaper critic declared, a “community-driven environment where art thrives and different cultures meet”.
Tying this creative cauldron together is a flexible lighting system that includes a large number of moving luminaires and stage fixtures as well as LED panels, most of which are controlled by the house ChamSys MagicQ MQ80 console. Chris Madden, head of production at Elsewhere, selected the ChamSys desk as the club’s main console because of its price to performance ratio.
“In addition to having a large number of fixtures, Elsewhere relies heavily on LED installations in the Hall, and throughout the building,” says Madden. “The MQ

UK - Northern Light was commissioned to design, supply and install a new lighting and AV system by The Robertson Trust for Stirling.
They were asked to provide systems which were as flexible as possible and allow the room to be used in many different configurations as the final configuration of the rooms was yet to be determined.
The proposed systems included: overhead suspension bars and lighting grids, power distribution, LED fixtures, projection, installed sound, fixed control rack, facility the new conference space within the Barracks Conference Centre, panels with cable infrastructure and a lectern.
Northern Light was also asked to provide video conferencing and presentation systems for the meeting rooms within the barracks building. The systems had to be capable of interoperability between the systems as the room will be hired out for many different clie

USA - Visitors to Arcadia Earth can’t help but feel at one with the assortment of environments represented in the art installation’s 15 rooms in Manhattan’s NoHo district, ranging from the depths of the sea to the tops of glaciers. They will also be touched by the dangers posed to each from climate change, from overfishing and plastic pollution to deforestation, as envisioned by environmental artist Valentino Vettori. But what brings it home emotionally is the score and ambient sound created by Dave Hodge of Finger Music, with specific music and sound design for each of the rooms, delivered subtly but powerfully.
The audio is riding on a networked backbone with components from Focusrite’s RedNet range of Dante-networked audio converters and interfaces. Four RedNet A16R 16-channel analogue I/O interfaces provide 119dB of 24-bit/192kHz dynamic range and Focusrite’s s

UK - The Factory Live is a new venue in the UK's south coast town of Worthing. Already attracting much critical praise, its audio system of Yamaha DZR and DXS XLF loudspeakers is impressing audiences and artists alike.
The 300-capacity venue is the brainchild of managing director Steve Gardner. Having taught himself to play piano upon retirement from a successful corporate life, Steve was approached by an old school friend who had an empty building in the town of Worthing, formerly used by the local college as a music and dance training centre. Spotting an opportunity, Gardner started the successful Soundhouse and Dancehouse rehearsal businesses.
It was natural for him to approach nearby high-end audio retailer The Audio House when equipping the rehearsal studios, developing a close working relationship with company founder Gerry Heeley.
As Soundhouse and Danceho

Saudi Arabia - Diriyah Gate is the birthplace of the Saudi Kingdom and was the original home of the Saudi Royal Family. Today, it is a 19th-century UNESCO World Heritage site which is set to attract thousands of tourists as part of Saudi Arabia’s vision 2030. King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and HRH Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud launched the opening ceremony of Diriyah Gate with a visual spectacular show.
CT was called upon by Executive Visions (EVI) to deliver the technical implementation of the striking cinematic projection mapping on the historic site to tell the visual story of the kingdom’s history.
The ancient ruins ‘mud city’ of Diriyah has been restored over the years by the Saudi Royal Family, enabling it to be the centre stage for the production. CT provided 170 Panasonic RZ31 and 21k projectors span across the 350m+ wide projection canva

UK - White Light has supplied the lighting equipment for Anton Checkov’s Uncle Vanya which has opened at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End.
This latest production has been directed by Ian Rickson and features a lighting design by Bruno Poet. Bruno comments: “What’s great about this translation is that it doesn’t reinvent the original but actually gives it a modern edge, using contemporary and accessible language which makes it moving, clear and very funny. Whilst it is set in the 19th century, the themes feel completely relevant to today.”
Bruno’s brief on the show was to move the story forward and support the character’s emotional journeys. He explains: “The script calls for a sense of the time of day, and the weather. We start in summer sunshine, move to a hot, but stormy night, then enter an autumnal afternoon that slowly travel

UK - When the £84m International Convention Centre Wales (ICCW) opened in September last year, it was not only the first of its kind in Wales, but this joint venture between the Welsh Government and the Celtic Manor Resort has contrived to deliver 26,000sq.m. of total floor space for meetings, conferences and exhibitions (around the size of four international rugby pitches). For visitors driving down the adjacent M4 motorway, the 10m tall red steel dragon provides an unmistakable landmark.
Incorporated within this is a 4,000 sq.m., pillar-free, reconfigurable main hall, and it was this space that threw up many challenges for the technology contractors, Stage Electrics. Their solution was to specify an end-to-end audio workflow from the extensive RCF catalogue, tying nearly 800 loudspeaker products (and over 1,000 RCF components in total) into a multi-use PA in the main hal

UK - Chester’s Storyhouse is an award-winning venue encompassing a theatre, library, restaurant and cinema. Housed in a restored Odeon building that dates back to 1936, it now holds an 800-seat auditorium and a 200-seat studio theatre. SolaFrame 1000 luminaires from High End Systems are the latest addition to the venue’s LED inventory as part of a tungsten replacement programme.
“With busy rep seasons multiple times throughout the year, playing up to four shows on top of one other, flexibility within our lighting equipment has always been key,” says Storyhouse technical manager, Andy Patterson. “We opened our building in May 2017 with a four-show rep season and a schedule that didn’t allow for refocuses between shows.”
During the first year of operation, the venue’s kit list included a combination of Source Four, Source Four LED Series 2 Lustr and Color

India - It’s a rare occasion when a live concert features more musicians on stage than there are spectators in the audience, but such was the case for a Guinness World Record-breaking performance in Mumbai on 24 January.
To commemorate the premiere of Amazon Prime’s series The Forgotten Army, Live 1000 - a group of 1,046 musicians - performed selections from the series’ score for a crowd of about 200, supported by an Adamson S-Series audio system from production technologies provider Sound.com.
“When we were first approached to take part in this very special event, it was clear that the sound system needed to be compact and discreet as to not impede the audience’s sightlines, considering the unique layout of the seating and stage,” begins Warren D’souza, the founder and managing director of Sound.com. “We knew Adamson’s tour-proven S-Series wo

USA - Approaching the centennial of its current building, the First Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi has been an institution in the area since it was built in 1926. Facing the lawn of the Mississippi State Capitol in downtown Jackson, the church’s sanctuary seats 3,000 worshippers and streams and broadcasts its services online to thousands of viewers any given week in 60 to 80 countries.
The sound in First Baptist’ sanctuary has been served for several years now by a DiGiCo SD5 console and its two SD-Racks for front of house. Recently, it was joined by a new DiGiCo SD10 console as the church’s primary broadcast console for streaming the audio for services and other events, along with a DiGiCo Orange Box multi-format converter equipped with a DMI (DiGiCo Multichannel Interface) card for Dante connectivity.
Both consoles, which were installed and integrated b

USA - Now celebrating its 26th year, Grace Family Church started with just 80 people in a former ‘jazzercise’ storefront next to a bar in Tampa, Florida. It has subsequently grown to over 12,000 members.
To accommodate so many members, Grace Family Church operates satellite campuses. Its sixth campus opened in Land O’ Lakes, a suburb of Tampa, and AVL firm All Pro Integrated Systems helped design and install the AVL system. Since many of the decision-makers at Grace Family Church had never heard a Danley Sound Labs system, All Pro arranged for a demo that proved persuasive.
The system includes Danley’s patented point-source Synergy Horn loudspeaker technology, its patented Tapped Horn subwoofer technology, and seven Danley multi-channel amplifiers with built-in DSP and pre-sets for every Danley loudspeaker and subwoofer. Perhaps in the spirit of its origins, th

UK - Reflecting the raw, unsettling power and complexity of composer and performer Anna Meredith’s music in light is no easy undertaking, especially when contending with limited time, space and budget. But that’s what Simon Horn did on 5 February, when Meredith appeared at London’s progressive EartH, with help from a collection of Chauvet DJ fixtures.
“For a one-off show with minimal space, power draw, and load-in time, I need something that could be set up quickly and easily, yet still allow me to create the kind of immersive looks that would support this artist’s exciting music,’ says Horn of Purple Lighting. “I also knew that uplighting the area around the stage and backlighting the band itself would be critical to creating the kind of mood I was after.”
Horn found what he was looking for in the Chauvet DJ Freedom Flex H4 IP. Positioning 12 of the b

UK - Green Hippo’s Hippotizer media servers were chosen by video director Jay Baker of Creative Video Design to drive the visuals for Spotify Presents: Who We Be Live 2019. Performed live at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester, the Spotify show was part of its series of events featuring the UK and Ireland’s leading Rap, Grime, R&B and Afrobeat line-ups.
Creative design and production was by UK marketing agency Amplify, working closely with event promoter, SJM Concerts. Creative Video Design was brought into the project by Production Box, led by Mike Oates.
While the venue’s exterior was used as a projection surface on which lighting designer Jon Trincas created some suitably grungy looks, the stage set inside was designed with a grunge/grime warehouse theme. “Our main challenge,” Baker explains, “was to create multiple different looks for the

Finland - The Sámi Cultural Centre Sajos, situated in the heart of Inari, Finland, recently underwent a full renovation of its main auditorium, equipping it with the latest audio and conference technology, including an Allen & Heath dLive mixing system.
The Sámi Cultural Centre Sajos, also home to the Finnish Sámi Parliament, puts on a range of events, from concerts to theatre productions, and as the largest event venue in Northern Lapland, one of the central projects is the Sámi music centre, which actively encourages the development and teaching of traditional Sámi music.
As such, the venue needed an advanced, up-to-date system that could keep up with the various requirements for concerts, theatre productions and seminars.
Supplied by Finnish distributor, F-Pro, the installation featured a dLive S7000, fitted with Dante card for virtual soundcheck and

UK - As the Strictly Come Dancing Live! 2020 tour draws to a close, crew and artist catering specialist Eat to the Beat has received positive media feedback from the celebrities, professional dancers, judges and crew.
With 33 dates in major venues throughout the UK and Ireland from 16 January to 9 February there was plenty of scope for Eat to the Beat’s culinary team to get creative and cook up a feast. Whilst menus always featured tasty healthy options, including plant-based meals, to fuel the dancers ahead of each performance, there’s no doubt that the amazing array of tempting desserts on offer were also a definite hit.
Mary Shelley-Smith, global operations director for Eat to the Beat comments: “The Strictly Come Dancing Live! tour is always a highlight in Eat to the Beat’s calendar, the whole team really enjoy working with the celebrities, professional d

UK - FOH engineer, Chris Martin and monitor engineer, Gerry Colclough used DiGiCo SD12 consoles for Primal Scream’s 2019 UK and Ireland tour, citing the desk’s reliability and ease of use.
Formed in 1982 in Scotland, rock band Primal Scream released their third compilation album, Maximum Rock 'n' Roll: The Singles in 2019, containing 17 tracks spanning the period from 1986 to 2016. In support of the release, the band announced a major winter tour of the UK and Ireland in 2019, which saw FOH engineer, Chris Martin and monitor engineer, Gerry Colclough use DiGiCo SD12 consoles – owned by Stage Audio Services based in the West Midlands.
Martin has been working with the band since 2008, starting out as FOH system tech for a PA hire company before progressing to the position of FOH engineer for the group in 2015.
“The band are amazing people to be arou

Germany - In April 2019, singer / songwriter Lena Meyer-Landrut released her fifth, critically acclaimed studio album, Only Love, L. In June, the Only Love tour of 12 dates took the band through small to medium-sized halls in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Designer JoJo Tillmann developed a reduced set with a scalable lighting design for single-trailer transportation. Although there were four musicians, two backing vocalists and two dancers on stage, alongside the singer herself, the show was not conceived to be ‘over-staged’.
"I designed the set on a very stripped-down basis,” reports OPUS award winner JoJo Tillmann. "Apart from a small ramp leading up to a platform, there were no set building elements on the stage. As a result, versatility became all the more important."
For his lighting design, he mainly used fixtures from the GLP catalo

UK – For Marillion’s orchestral UK tour dates in November, lighting designer Yenz Nyholm chose the the VL2600 Wash fixture from Vari-Lite.
The Marillion With Friends From The Orchestra tour saw the band joined by string quartet, In Praise Of Folly, plus Emma Halnan on flute and Sam Morris on French horn. Culminating in two nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall, the tour coincided with the British band’s 40th anniversary and the 30th anniversary of Steve Hogarth as its lead singer.
Nyholm’s challenge was to deliver the required level of spectacle for the celebratory shows. “My brief called firstly for ‘big’, and then for ‘bright’,” he said. To achieve this, he chose the new, LED-based VL2600 Wash luminaire, supplied by Siyan. “My main priority was output,” said Nyholm. “Plus, we needed to match the colors of the video content to the lig

Lebanon – A nightclub complex in the Lebanese ski resort of Zaarour has been equipped with BlacklineX loudspeakers from Martin Audio.
Founded in 2016, Frozen Cherry is a sunset bar in the highest point of the Zaarour mountains, offering a view of Lebanon above the clouds. The high-altitude party lounge immediately became a popular year-round destination, equally busy in both the summer and winter seasons. The unusual name of this scenic sunset bar comes from the cherry shape that you see when you look at the venue from the top of the Zaarour peaks.
Two years later, Dublin Room dance club was founded, also within the Zaarour club, specialising in house and techno. It hosts a mix of famous DJs and local heroes.
The brains behind this concept are Nasri and Maher Choueiry, owners of several F&B and design outlets, who come from a creative background in architec

Latest Issue. . .