Germany - LED manufacturer Absen has launched the Jade Dragon (JD) Series, its latest LED display series, as announced in its March online product launch.
As a transparent LED display solution, created to be used in windows or to divide spaces, the JD Series boasts a lightweight 6.5kg design, as well as a thin 10mm thickness and up to 86% transparency.
Featuring brightness of up to 7,000nits and a high refresh rate of 3,840Hz/20,000Hz, the JD Series will be ‘eye-catching and bold, and uncompromised by the transparency of the screen’. Retailers, meanwhile, will gain the added benefit of windows that can not only provide ample light and visibility for instore products, but also advertise to and attract customers simultaneously, says Absen.
The standard size of th

Italy - RCF has added three models to the NX Series portable audio system series. RCF engineers have merged purpose-designed transducers, a constant directivity waveguide, FiRPHASE processing, and newly-added Bass Motion Control algorithms, all driven by a powerful amplifier with 2100 Watts Class-D technology. Durably built in a rugged wooden enclosure, NX 9 is tour-ready, and delivers ‘remarkable audio performance and versatility to any professional audio application’, says RCF.
Now 50% more powerful than previous models, NX 9 manages high sound pressure levels, says RCF. The amplifier is energy-efficient so there is no need for a cooling fan. The circuit is attached to a solid aluminium heat exchanger in the back of the unit with no moving parts. Performance improvements are enabled by the new 1.75" compression driver with Polyimide-Kapton dome featuring a new bondin

Europe - The pre-launch presentation of the PixlDrive Pro 8 from Lucenti has resulted in an immediate order from Tom Pardon’s AV rental company Screenit.
In recent years, Tom Pardon and his crew have been creating and installing eye-catching lighting setups with over 1,000 Blackwave LED bars in the Kara Savi stage on TML, Amelie Lens’ All Night Long events and Exhale livestreams.
“The advanced technology that puts these controllers ahead of every other alternative on the market is created by KLSTR and natively integrated into the device,” says Lucenti. “We are convinced KLSTR will revolutionise the lighting industry and we are proud to be the first manufacturer that is pushing this cutting-edge technology to market.”
Tom Pardon adds: “We are very excited to start using this technology, it is a huge leap forward in the implementation of

USA - A new addition to the San Diego skyline, The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park was built to host open-air concerts by the San Diego Symphony. The sheer size of the bayside structure - 57ft high, 92ft wide at stage front - makes it amenable to hosting large productions while enabling orchestra musicians to hear and respond to one other as well as they would in a top-tier concert hall.
To create an optimum acoustical listening environment that can be fine-tuned for various performances, a Meyer Sound Constellation system has been installed inside the shell - making it the first Constellation system designed for stage acoustics in an outdoor venue. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park opens 6 August.
Pre-opening rehearsals and online concerts have elicited effusive praise from orchestra principals.
“The sound onstage is unbelievable,” San Diego Symphony music director Ra

Israel - Singer-songwriter Hanan Ben Ari kickstarted his tour in April after a long hiatus during COVID-19 lockdown, selling out the biggest venues in Israel. Hanan was the fourth most listened artist in Israel on Spotify at the end of last year and is now back on tour with his band.
The tour's lighting rig was designed by Ronen Najar, co-designer at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2019. The tour features twenty-four Prolights Pixie WashXB spread around the back truss, giving depth and a range of colours to the show.
“I was looking for a lighting fixture that will be small in dimension without compromising on quality,” said Najar. “The Pixiewash XB had all the qualities I was looking for - perfect size, a very wide range of colours, great light output and precision when working with it.”
The Pixie WashXB has 280W single lens RGB and warm white source, with
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The Netherlands - Full production company Events Light has made a major new investment in Robe’s latest T2 moving lights - among the first to be delivered in Europe.
The 32 x T2s together with 60 x Spiiders also from Events Light are being used for lighting Zodiac, a new musical production which is being lit by Marc Heinz. The show is staged at the Koepelgevangenis, a former prison in the same city. It is set to open next month in this domed venue, a heritage protected architectural masterwork designed by Johan Frederik Metzelaar that opened in 1886 and is based on the panopticon model.
Due to the pandemic, Zodiac’s production schedule has been somewhat fluid, but everyone has been equally determined to make it happen.
Towards the end of 2020, Robe’s Benelux distributor Controllux and other manufacturers conducted several tests and shoot-out

UK - Woolwich Works is set to open in September, bringing a new creative district to southeast London.
Led by Royal Borough of Greenwich, the £31.6m project - which is transforming the historic Royal Arsenal site into a cultural hub that will include a concert venue, studios and other event spaces - will be the home for local performing arts collectives including immersive theatre company Punchdrunk, Europe's first majority black and minority ethnic orchestra Chineke! Orchestra, as well as National Youth Jazz Orchestra, Greenwich-based dance company Protein, and the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair.
The new district includes a 1,200 seated or 1,800 standing performance venue; an external courtyard for performances; five studios, which will also be used for performances and rehearsals spaces; cafe, bar and spaces for community groups and the general public, plus hire
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UK - Battery powered generator specialists, Green Voltage, has extended its range of emissions free, mobile power systems, with the addition of a new 20kW E-Gen unit.
Designed specifically for use within the film, TV and live production industries, the 20kW E-Gen delivers ‘new levels of power and performance’. Adding to the company’s selection of 2kW and 5kW units, the 20kW offers ‘even greater quotas of robust, reliable mobile power - enough to keep you powered right throughout the day’.
Green Voltage director Adam Baker says, “We worked hard to make sure our new 20kW is a premium, powerful extension to our range of E-Gen systems. Like the 2kW and 5kW, the 20kW is completely emissions free and silent, but remains extremely capable and perfectly suited to all types of application.”
Having established themselves as a popular choice with crews workin

USA - Created in 2015 by the merger of two churches, worship at South Carolina’s Hope Church ranges from high energy music to spoken word sermons. A recent enlargement of its Simpsonville campus provided the opportunity to upgrade its audio system. An Alcons Audio pro-ribbon system provided a blend of power and clarity.
The expansion of the single-story Simpsonville building enlarged the room’s depth by around 70ft and added gallery seating at the back, providing a total of 700 seats. The existing audio system was not adequate to cover the newly enlarged space with high quality sound for all styles of worship, so the church contacted AVL Solutions (AVLS), based in nearby Greenville, for help.
“A challenge for the sound design was the pitched roof, which ranges from 15ft at the sides to more than 18ft in the centre,” says Chris Craine, AVLS designer / director

The Netherlands - The 2021 Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) which took place at the Rotterdam Ahoy in The Netherlands last month, was coordinated under the direction of a team of experts with decades of experience. Among them were ESC head of broadcast sound Thijs Peters and ESC head of venue sound Jeroen ten Brinke, long-time, consistent users of the DPA brand.
The show’s design team was further supported by Ampco Flashlight, the official technical supplier for lighting, rigging and audio, which provided one-hundred 4088 Directional Headsets and 40 d:facto 4018V Vocal Microphones from DPA Microphones for all of the show’s vocal performances.
“I have over 25 years’ experience as a live sound engineer and designer, and I have been using DPA since it was B&K; the d:factos are great-sounding mics,” says ten Brinke. “It was an honour to work on Eurovision, o

Australia - The Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra touts an impressive resume – not just due to its seven robust academic colleges of study, but because it is also connected to the Australian Government by way of its position across the river from Capital Hill, where parliament is located.
The university often hosts high-profile meetings in the Mills Room, an ornate conferencing space featuring Tasmanian blackwood woodworking and capable of hosting up to 54 people. Located in the ANU Chancelry Tower, these meetings can include high ranking members of the government, making the Mills Room a premiere location of importance on campus. Because of its design and the fact that is has served as the location of significant ANU meetings since 1964, the meeting space is deemed by the university to have heritage significance.
However, after decades in service, the

USA - Bluegrass and orchestral music might come from vastly different places, but the two genres can happily share the same lighting rig, provided it has enough versatility designed into it. This was readily apparent on the banks of the Ohio River in Louisville this Independence Day weekend, as foot stomping shows by Greensky Bluegrass were followed by a rousing performance by the award -winning Louisville Orchestra.
Taking place at the city’s Waterfront Park, the bluegrass and orchestral shows were supported by a powerful and flexible rig anchored by 14 Maverick Storm 1 Wash and six Maverick MK3 Spot fixtures from Chauvet Professional.
Supplied by C&H Audio Visual Services (the event’s production company), the IP16 rated RGBW washes were evenly spaced across 40ft downstage truss. The high output 820-watt spot fixtures, which were rented from 4Wall Entertainmen

Italy - Fulcrum Acoustic has appointed Ligra DS S.r.l as its distributor for Italy.
"Like Fulcrum Acoustic, Ligra is a rapidly growing company," says Gianluigi Cravedi, Ligra's CEO. "We have been looking for innovative loudspeaker technologies to offer to our customers. Fulcrum's unique blend of technology and performance provides the type of solutions that we were seeking."
"Over the past year we have made good progress expanding our distribution in Europe," says Fulcrum Acoustic president Stephen Siegel. "Ligra is the perfect partner for us in Italy. We know that their energetic and capable team will represent us well and deliver top-quality solutions to their customers."

France - Follow-Me B.V. has announced the appointment of Axente S.A.S. as its sole distributor for France with immediate effect.
Since 1996, Axente has been providing installation and support for entertainment lighting and audio, providing solutions and support across the professional rental and installation markets.
“Axente is a well-established name in France, having built a strong reputation as a solution provider for the entertainment technology industry, both for rental production as well as for installation and integration,” says Gary Yates, with Erik Berends, founder of Netherlands’ based Follow-Me. “We see Axente as the perfect partner for supporting Follow-Me products towards our growing client base in France. It is a great step to expand our network with this partnership, becoming our 12th partner worldwide”.
Since its inception in 2013, Foll

UK - Bob Bohannon has joined the management team of the Lighting Industry Association (LIA) in the role of head of academy and policy.
“This is a key role for the LIA and will provide strategy and leadership in the academy, as well as enabling a forward-looking handover, of Peter Hunt’s excellent work in his role as Chief Policy Officer,” says the organisation.
Bob will oversee and coordinate all those supporting policy within the LIA, head up many of the key relationships, create wider and effective cross-industry links and work closely with the newly created Government Affairs committee, chaired by Dave Ribbons.
Bob brings a wealth experience to the LIA, the immediate past president of the Society of Light and Lighting, he had 20 years in manufacturing working on major projects such as St Pancras Station and Heathrow T5, before returning to lighting desi

USA - Main Light has announced the appointment of Dave Pretz as asset manager. Working from Delaware, Pretz’s role will cover both Main Light East in Wilmington and the soon-to-open Main Light West facility in Las Vegas. His responsibilities include inventory oversight and new equipment acquisitions company wide.
Prior to joining Main Light, Pretz was the cross-rental manager at 4Wall Entertainment, where he had also worked as operations manager and their returns manager. His move coincides with Main Light’s West Coast opening.
“It’s a team effort, especially as we spin up Las Vegas with an all-hands-on deck mentality, which I enjoy,” says Pretz. “It’s a good fit, and I am really pleased to be part of it. Being responsible for both locations’ inventories and purchasing is a fun challenge as I get to help ensure that we have the right balance of equipm

Italy - RCF has unveiled the ART 9 series, a range of six active loudspeakers that can be used as the main sound system, fills, or stage monitors.
This is the ninth generation of the series, which brings speakers with 10" to 15" drivers and a new cabinet design. All speakers also feature a 2,100W two-channel Class-D amplifier with advanced DSP processing.
RCF says ART 9 speakers are 50% more powerful than previous models, with “extremely high” sound pressure levels. The amplifier is energy-efficient so there is no need for a cooling fan. The circuit is attached to a solid aluminium heat exchanger in the back of the unit with no moving parts. Performance improvements are assured by new RCF transducers, featuring advanced materials such as kapton, titanium, and neodymium.
The new 1.75-inch compression driver with polyimide-kapton dome features a new bonding te

USA - The Old Navy flagship store in midtown New York City was converted into a four-floor soundstage for a recent commercial shoot, and the production companies found a combination of Clear-Com wireless intercom technologies to be the right fit for covering the retailer’s closed set safely and efficiently.
The project required a mix of pre-recorded segments with employee interviews and a celebrity guest appearance. The talent was staged on separate floors when off-camera, allowing the onsite technical crews to maintain proper distancing while still experiencing high-quality communications among each other and talent, as well as the remote producers and directors who were in Los Angeles.
Gotham Sound & Communications was the lead production company for the shoot, with VP Peter Schneider managing operations remotely and independent sound engineer Ken Goodwin on-si

Spain - Fira de Barcelona and N&M have signed a collaboration agreement forming a service partnership in the fields of wire suspension systems and rigging. N&M technicians will provide their services to customers through a newly established branch office in Catalonia's regional capital.
In recent years, Fira de Barcelona has developed into one of leadingt trade fair locations. Events such as the Mobile World Congress, the MICE sector's ibtm World or the Sónar festival for electronic music attract professionals from all over the world to Catalonia's capital in the north-east of Spain. In June 2021, having switched from Amsterdam to Barcelona, Integrated System Europe (ISE) made its premiere as a hybrid event due to the corona pandemic while also making its debut in Spain's strongest economic region.
In order to provide fair organisers and their customers with

USA - James Baker reflected the enduring magic of the 1972 musical Pippin recently with a neatly balanced, multi-faceted design for a production at Riverview High School, Oakmont, PA.
An all LED rig provided Baker with a level of flexibility that could never have been imagined, even on Broadway, given the technology available at the time, when the play opened. At the heart of this system were Chauvet Professional Maverick and Ovation fixtures supplied by Star Design Event Services.
Baker, who was retained by the school district to light this show, comments, “For the concept of this show, we were playing with contrasting ideas, such as light/bright and dark/shadows, to symbolize the inner conflicts faced by Pippin,” he said. “Our ensemble members assumed the role of phantoms trying to manipulate the thoughts in his head. We had this LED star curtain that we

Namibia - The Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) is at the apex of the system of government in the Republic of Namibia. A historical building in the Namibian capital of Windhoek, OPM houses the first Cabinet Chamber and the Constitution Room, in which most of the country’s legislatures were drafted.
The government recently elected to augment the Cabinet Chamber with a sophisticated sound reinforcement and visual display system to improve the meeting experience. Gadgets Namibia Solutions – a leading ICT products and services provider - were asked to source an appropriate solution, which they did through Stage Audio Works Namibia.
“This was an interesting project as the multilevel and oval shaped seating arrangement made it impossible to implement a traditional projector and screen solution,” explains Joppie Maritz of SAW Namibia. “Furthermore, we were working

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