Germany - After taking Las Vegas and London by storm, Channing Tatum’s Magic Mike Live will now move on to Berlin. Inspired by the hit Magic Mike film franchise, the latest production will open at the newly remodelled Club Theatre at Potsdamer Platz in November this year.
Having supported the London show since its opening last year, full service technical production company Hawthorn has been chosen to supply lighting equipment to the new Berlin production.
Conceived and co-directed by Tatum, Magic Mike Live is a large-scale, live production show featuring a group of extraordinary artists who perform an immersive 360-degree dance and acrobatic spectacular.
With a rig almost double the size of the West End production, 500 fixtures to be precise

UK - Good times mixed with valuable insights at the grand opening of the ChamSys UK head office in Southampton's Brooklands Courtyard.
On 2 September, over 150 lighting programmers and designers from throughout Europe attended the inauguration of the new office, training facility and product development centre. Visitors participated in informative classes, think tanks, and training sessions focused on the new MagicQ and QuickQ software from ChamSys.
Adding a light-hearted touch of drama to the proceedings was a short skit presented by company team members on the history of ChamSys. The skit recounted how company cofounder Chris Kennedy developed his first console at the age of 10. Telling the story of a young man with big dreams, it showed how Kennedy achieved something beyond even his wildest imagination years later when an award-winning ChamSys console was used by A

Austria - The Austrian AV technology manufacturer AV Stumpfl recently announced that its US projection screen and media server distributor Evolve has invested heavily in the AT64-Shift screen system legs.
Orlando, Dallas and Las Vegas-based Evolve distributes and rents out video equipment for the live events industry and also provides industry training programmes. The company is now working to convert its entire inventory over to the AT64-Shift system by the end of the year.
"Our customers know that we are passionate about developing new ideas and products that deliver the best quality possible for their exciting projects around the world," comments AV Stumpfl Inc. MD, Todd Liedahl. "The AT64-Shift is such a truly exciting product that allows AV professionals to adjust the height of large mobile projection screens in record time, without them having to disassemble

UK - Lauren Drinkwater has joined TMB’s Global Customer Development Group. Lauren arrives with an extensive background in sales, support, and business management in the entertainment technology and production field. Drinkwater’s role at TMB is to build customer relationships, increase awareness of TMB’s products and service, and directly assist TMB’s European distribution partners. She will be based out of TMB’s UK office and will be at PLASA 2019.
Drinkwater brings years of experience to her new role at TMB, including management at City Theatrical, sales at Martin Professional, and accounts management at Sound Technology.
“I’m thrilled to be a part of the European arm of TMB’s global presence,” she says. “I’m particularly excited about TMB’s emphasis on long-term personal interaction with top-flight professional companies. To this end, my exper

USA - Chauvet Professional has appointed Brad Haynes as its national resource manager, concert and touring. Haynes joins Chauvet from AC Lighting and will foster relationships between the company and touring designers in addition to creating a range of educational programmes.
“All of us at Chauvet Professional are excited about welcoming Brad to our team,” comments Albert Chauvet, CEO of Chauvet. “We have a great deal of respect for his knowledge and integrity. His extensive experience in the concert and touring world will enable us to serve those markets even better than we do today.”
Prior to his experience at AC Lighting, Haynes was director of product and application support at Harman International, where he managed product training and demo programs for internal staff as well as lighting professionals. He also held a series of commercial positions at Marti

UK - Ocean Colour Scene's drummer, Oscar Harrison, leads a double life - he's the drummer and multi-instrumentalist with Birmingham's Ocean Colour Scene and a leading DJ in his own right.
Determined to make himself heard, Oscar has just taken delivery of a new rig from PA manufacturer, Yorkshire-based BishopSound.
Oscar says: “I recently found myself at a friend's wedding party and was stunned by the sound I was hearing. I was amazed at how the sound filled the room with over 400 people, with no sound loss or punch on sound quality. I got investigating. My friend was using Orion15" full range and Beta 18" subs from BishopSound. For me, the system ticked all the boxes.”
Oscar's new BishopSound rig comprises: two BO115A4 Orion 15A4, two BB218S, four BB118s Beta 118 Subs, two Beta BB115 speakers, two BSS4 Telescopic Poles plus assorted cables.
(Jim Evans)

USA - Lighting designer Benoit Richard specified two High End Systems Hog 4-18 lighting control systems for Rob Thomas’ Chip Tooth Smile Tour 2019.
“The Hog 4 controls everything in my design and has an extensive use of the pixel mapping engine on most of the fixtures in the rig,” the LD says.
Since his years as a former High End Systems designer and programmer, Benoit continued to use Hogs on projects ranging from tours and television specials to blockbuster films. “I was super happy when Bandit Lites purchased the two new Hog 4-18s for the tour earlier this year,” he says. “And I love the fact that they are manufactured in the USA.”
Richard programmed the show for the Matchbox Twenty co-founder with lighting director Patrick Hayes, who carries out his design on the road. Hayes was introduced to Hogs while participating (and winning) the inaugural

USA - Distributor Stampede is hosting eight Big Book of AV Tour & Conference Series stops in the United States and Canada, one US national sales meeting, and three summits for its United States, Canadian and Latin American vendor partners.
The Fall 2019 Stampede Big Book of AV Tour & Conference Series will make stops in San Diego, California, 19 September; Montreal, 17 October; Chicago, 24 October; Toronto, 13 November; Houston, 21 November; Miami, 5 December and Vancouver,11 December. Complete details on the fall tour can be found at www.bigbookofavtour.com.
The United States Vendor Summit will take place on 7-8 October at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Centre in New York, following on the heels of its United States national sales meeting on 5-6 October. The Canadian Vendor Summit will take place on 12 November at the Holiday Inn Toronto International Airport
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Germany - State Automation has announced that BDL-KG in Germany is now a certified service centre for State Automation Lighting equipment. All European customers (excluding Scandinavia, where Bright Norway is the point of contact) should contact the company’s Wolfgang Kunwald to request repair services. BDL KG is also the point of contact and organises handling and logistics.
Repair and maintenance will be provided by BDL KG’s partner IBT Theatres and Broadcast Technology GmbH.

Canada - At a time when the background noise in audio is all about 3D sound and immersive experiences, arguably an extravagance suited to famous concert halls and exotic experimental music, it is contrary to the flow that a d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system is being applied at a church in Calgary, Alberta.
Thriving it may be, yet the pastoral team at First Assembly, Calgary is not prone to moments of irrational exuberance or wanton financial profligacy. For them Soundscape provided an entirely affordable solution to a seemingly intractable issue between acoustics, worship and sound reinforcement.
Justin Wells, First Assembly’s technical director, saw it as an uncomfortable divide between parts of their congregation and the heart of music worship. “Music is a huge part of what we do and within our church we have highly skilled musicians. For people who come fo

UK - Now well into its ninth decade of technical innovation, RG Jones Sound Engineering returned to Glastonbury for the eleventh consecutive year to support headliners Stormzy, The Killers, and The Cure on the Pyramid Stage, and to extend its expertise to the Genosys Stage and the new IICON stage at Block9, and a reconfigured West Holts stage.
RG Jones has enhanced the Pyramid Stage since 2007 in one of the longest uninterrupted runs of audio services of any sound company at Glastonbury in recent times. The 18-strong on-site team, headed up by production manager Ben Milton with production engineer Mark Isbister on stage, collectively brought to the largest green field festival in the world a wealth of expertise in delivering audio to an extremely large crowd under notoriously challenging climatic conditions.
The main aim of the system design, developed by festival soun

Australia - Expressions of Interest (EOI) are open for Vivid Sydney’s Ideas programme, encouraging innovative and thought-provoking individuals and businesses around the world to submit their ideas and concepts to be part of Vivid Sydney 2020.
Attended by over 2m people each year, Vivid Sydney is the largest festival of light, music and ideas in the Southern Hemisphere. Vivid Ideas brings together leading thinkers, creators and innovators to share their insights across technology, design, entertainment and culture to explore how they are tackling some of the biggest global issues in front of a live festival audience.
Minister for Tourism, Stuart Ayres, comments: “Vivid Ideas is a truly significant part of the Vivid Sydney programme and for the creative industries, it places Sydney and New South Wales as the creative industries hub of Asia Pacific.
“Vivid

UK - Entertainment Technology Partners has announced the launch of its new European division. Based out of the United Kingdom, ETP Europe will provide support throughout Europe to bring AV solutions to clients.
Industry veteran Paul Hutton will be joining as president of European operations. Paul has spent the past three decades creating and spearheading Blitz, one of the leading AV staging companies in Europe.
“We couldn’t be more excited about expanding ETP’s operations to Europe, especially with Paul coming on board to help lead the way,” said Les Goldberg, chairman and CEO of ETP. “We have been looking at a number of opportunities in Europe and expect to have more announcements of new brands joining ETP in the very near future.”
Entertainment Technology Partners was created in 2014 with the idea of like-minded owners joining together to continue

Europe - DPA Microphones has appointed AVL Projekt and LAV Projekt as its distributors in Serbia and Croatia respectively. The two companies are distributors and integrators of professional audio, light and video solutions and can support customers from the initial point of contact through to the delivery and installation.
AVL and LAV address DPA market segments through a network of system integrators, installers and dealers active in the theatre, broadcast and touring.
Slobodan Veckalov, managing director of AVL Projekt, comments: “We are very excited to be representing such a great microphone brand. We have worked with DPA in the past on various projects, and we advocate for top-notch quality product in the portfolio of brands that we distribute.”
Davor Vujic, managing director of LAV Projekt, adds: “It is both a great privilege and obligation to introdu

Glastonbury Records - Kylie Minogue's decades-spanning greatest hits set has become the most-watched Glastonbury performance ever, according to BBC figures. An average audience of 3.2m people tuned in to see her play the festival's legend slot, beating previous highs set by Ed Sheeran and Adele. Viewership peaked at 3.9m during the closing minutes of Kylie's set, as she played Dancing and Spinning Around. The emotional show came 14 years after a cancer diagnosis forced the star to pull out of a planned headline slot.
This year's Glastonbury saw a significant shift in viewership, with audiences increasingly choosing to catch up with performances online. The total number of online requests, including YouTube views, iPlayer requests and live streams, reached 37.5m - an increase of 86% from 2017 (Glastonbury took a year off in 2018). However, TV viewership was

UK - Martin Audio has confirmed that the active versions of its BlacklineX series, the BlacklineX Powered, will begin shipping in early September.
When it was first announced in May this year, customers and distribution partners welcomed the introduction of a self-powered version of this full-bandwidth, high definition portable system. They will now have the opportunity to sample the new speakers, and learn more about their properties at the series of Martin Audio open days (17-19 September) at company HQ in High Wycombe
Comprising 12” (XP12) and 15” (XP15) full range enclosures plus the compact but powerful 18” XP118 subwoofer, BlacklineX Powered integrates Martin Audio’s signature acoustic, DSP and amplifier technologies and follows the success of the passive BlacklineX Series - the fastest-selling portable series in Martin Audio’s 48-year history.
S

UK - Unusual Rigging's Tom Harper will lead a session hosted by SiPA at PLASA 2019 which aims to explore how 'circular' the live production industry really is.
The session which takes place on 15 September at 14.00 will look at how the industry needs to decouple 'show business' from the highly wasteful, energy intensive and inefficient consumption of finite resources.
Tom, a director at Unusual Rigging as well as the company's circular economy lead, recently completed his MBA in circular economy innovation and is passionate to drive forward system shifts to ensure an effective transition towards an economic model that is regenerative by design.
"This isn't just about what we at Unusual Rigging can do – although we are very much trying to lead by example. It's about working with the entire industry in order to radically reduce consumption levels. We are locked i

Saudi Arabia - Called upon by event producer Maestro Group to light the King Cup Final in Riyadh, lighting designer Koert Vermeulen used the versatility of a rig exclusively from Vari-Lite, a Signify (Euronext: LIGHT) entertainment lighting brand, to deliver his stadium-scale design. His creation utilised 350 Vari-Lite fixtures, including 100 of the new VL10 BeamWash and 100 fixtures from the LED-based VLZ range.
The King Cup, the highlight of the Saudi soccer season, was held in May at Riyadh’s King Fahd International Stadium. The event included three separate shows - a five-minute pre-match entertainment, a 17-minute half-time show, and a post-show entertainment featuring an hour-long set by Saudi popstar, Rabeh Sager.
Vermeulen, of Belgium-based consultancy ACTLD, is no stranger to the challenges of designing on a stadium scale, and the variety of demands it makes

UK - Esports Championship Series (ECS) Season 7, the latest iteration of the world’s most-watched CS:GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) tournament, took place earlier this year, culminating in a four-day final in June at The SSE Arena, Wembley, London. The 16 groups that started the event were gradually reduced to four teams, which then battled through a knock-out competition to determine the season’s champions.
The tournament was run by FACEIT, the competitive gaming platform for online multiplayer PvP gamers, which boasts more than eight million users and 12m online gaming sessions each month.
disguise rental and studio partner, Bluman Associates, was commissioned by FACEIT to provide a 4K video display solution and management for the event. Bluman Associates have a disguise rental fleet including gx 1, gx 2 and solo servers - as well as the newest addition

Singapore - Ayrton MagicBlade-FX and Mistral spot luminaires were recently supplied to the Church of Our Saviour in Singapore by Ayrton’s exclusive local distributor, Total Solution Marketing Pte.
The Ayrton fixtures were chosen for a number of reasons, as technical director, Ron Chiam, explains: “Because we only have a small space, we needed fixtures that were small and compact, but at the same time powerful enough to create a vibrant atmosphere. It was the first time we had heard about Ayrton, but soon realised that these were the fixtures to go for in the space that we had. They are used during moments of worship and are also used to create 3D-like lighting for our camera crew, so that they can capture what is on and off stage with ease.
“We have four MagicBlade-FXs rigged up on our flybars in a V-shape, so that we can fan them out to create some eye candy ef

UK - one thousand six hundred fans descended on the Indigo at the O2 to enjoy a Sri Lankan ‘pop’ music show. This event, designed to provide an essence of Sri Lankan music was headed up by Palinda Samarasinghe from Lankan Imaginative & Foremost Events.
Ruary Macphie, touring project manager from Matrix UK Solutions (Matrix) ensured the correct equipment was supplied to fully enhance and deliver the content on the show. Overseen by Ruary, the team performed a thorough pre-show check of all the show equipment, an opportunity to modify, prep and test the video equipment - this took place in the warehouse of parent company Anna Valley. At this stage, the team ingested the Sri Lankan filmed footage and programmed it to 55 tracks.
Ruary comments, “It is essential to pre-rig and thoroughly test show equipment – this takes place as a given for all our events. Howev

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