Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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UK - HSL supplied lighting equipment, rigging and crew for a two-day summer concert spectacular staged in the gardens of Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, UK, for technical co-ordinators CSG Events who were working for producer Andrew Wyke of TBI Media and BBC 6 Music which presented one of its most popular shows - Craig Charles and his 'Funk & Soul Live' experience - on the Friday.

This featured the act, host and broadcaster presenting special guest artists all performing some of the greatest funk and soul songs, backed by the Fantasy Funk Band.

This was followed on the Saturday by a Chatsworth Proms Spectacular - an evening of classical favourites including popular arias sung by Tenor John Pierce and soprano Janet Mooney and the UK Philharmonic Orchestra (comprising leading players from Manchester's Halle, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and others) conducted by Jae Alexand

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France - Yamaha's flagship Rivage PM10 digital mixing console has been an increasingly common sight at festivals during the 2016 summer season, as it is adopted by audio rental companies around the world. In France, the Festival de Radio France in Montpellier featured a PM10 mixing two weeks of wide-ranging jazz performances.

Taking place in mid-July, Festival de Radio France features many different styles of music in venues throughout Montpellier. The 1800-seat open air Amphithé

Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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China - Taiwanese rock superstars Mayday are on the road in Asia with a large production including 56 axes of Kinesys automation - provided by rental and technical production specialist B'IN Live, who are headquartered in Taiwan with bases in China and Hong Kong.

The epic lighting, visual and set design was created by Leroy Bennet and Seven Designs from Los Angeles - well known for their imagination and style as well as interesting and provocative designs.

B'IN Live - formed in 2014 with the amalgamation of six high level technical specialist companies into a super-production company - provides full technical infrastructures and services, incorporating sound, lighting, video, rigging, automation, set and scenic plus staging and power.

Technical director and production manager for this Just Rock It tour is B'IN Live's Jeffrey Soon and he is co-ordinating all the shows o

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USA - Mitchell Schellenger from Station Six, LLC was delighted to get the call asking if he'd create a production design for US-based electronic rockers AWOLNATION on their recent tour. The lighting scheme included four types of Robe fixtures - CycFX 4s, Pointes, MMX Spots and PATT 2013s - supplied by LMG Touring, a full-service provider of audio, video, lighting and LED.

Mitchell started the design process by establishing some budget figures with management and then chatted with lead singer Aaron Bruno who is integrally involved in the whole stage presentation. They talked about his inspirations for the music among other things and bounced a few ideas around which kept returning to a water theme.

They based their final ideas on a nautical theme, so the stage set up started with the riser layout and the drum riser in the centre at 45 degrees, resembling the bow of a ship.

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UK - The new Wringer + Mangle club in East London stands out for its pulsating atmosphere and high-energy entertainment. Making a critical contribution to both is a dynamic lighting kit fitted by GLS that features Chauvet Professional STRIKE 4 multi formatted fixtures and Intimidator Spot 350 movers from Chauvet DJ.

According to Luke Dwyer, head of programming at the Mangle, the decision to install four of the STRIKE 4s and 12 of the Intimidators was a no-brainer. "It was essential for us to create the look and feel of an exciting venue from the get go, somewhere which would really take people by surprise," commented Dwyer. "To achieve this, GLS suggested a combination of Intimidator and STRIKE fixtures for a range of versatile and energetic looks."

Flown from overhead truss, the STRIKE 4 fixtures bring an added dimension to the venue by warming space with classic tungsten

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China - Back in 2012, Ultra Worldwide, producers of the award-winning Ultra Music Festival in Miami, launched a new event concept appropriately named Road to Ultra.

Incorporating cutting-edge production values, the journey unfolded through Thailand, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Colombia, Paraguay and Chile. But the most recent addition to the portfolio - the Hong Kong edition, scheduled to take place in the noise sensitive new urban development area of West Kowloon Cultural District's Nursery Park - was to be the most challenging.

The electronic music extravaganza set out to unite fellow electronic music lovers, and attract tourism from neighbouring cities across Asia and Greater China. "We're calling all 'Ultranauts' and dance music fanatics to witness history in the making and support Hong Kong to the next level of a full-fledged edition Ultra festival in the region," said the

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UK - The Association of Lighting Designers' (ALD) has announced its Sponsored Student Scheme is open for 2017 applications. For the first time, the scheme this year is available to all students studying full time in the UK, regardless of course subject. The requirement is that applicants have an interest in the process of live performance lighting and/or video and projection.

The scheme is funded by Corporate Members of the ALD and offers students opportunities to network with more experienced members, to create contacts within the world of lighting that may not otherwise be available and boost their own profile as one of the next generation of lighting designers or technicians.

ALD member, Jai Morjaria, benefitted from a year's free ALD membership when he began his studies at RADA, he remembers, "being a member of the ALD whilst being a student, gave me a non-biased sound

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Remains of the Day - The remains of the theatre where Shakespeare's Hamlet was first performed has been granted legal protection by the government. Archeological remains of the Theatre, which dates back to 1576, have been added to the National Heritage List for England, alongside the ruins of another Elizabethan playhouse near London's Bankside. Shakespeare and his acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Company, were strongly associated with the Theatre - the remains of which were discovered in Hackney in 2008. Scholars believe Hamlet was performed for the first time at the venue in 1595, and it is also thought to be where Marlowe's Doctor Faustus was first staged.

The Hope playhouse - which doubled as a theatre and bear-baiting pit - has also received legal protection as a historic site. Close to both the Globe and Rose theatres when it was first built, th

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Canada - The landmark stores of leading home furnishings retailer IKEA are located in more than 50 countries worldwide. In Canada, IKEA has 12 stores which are visited by over 25m people every year. The company has just completed a new Distribution Centre warehouse in Mississauga, Ontario to fulfill customer orders from its four Toronto area stores as well as e-commerce purchases. The new facility will also support the growth plans for IKEA Canada in new and existing markets.

At 397,000sq.ft, the Distribution Centre presented an interesting acoustic challenge for the paging system, which covers both warehousing and offices. Now complete, the system was designed by Don Friesen of Stantec and installed by Genesis Integration.

Stantec chose Community R SeriesS to meet its criteria for a robust loudspeaker that could be implemented both indoors and out, providing high intellig

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UK - Six Straightpoint load cells are being used by the Rose Theatre Kingston in South West London during a three-week run of Zack Helm's Good Canary, directed by John Malkovich. The ensemble of load cells includes two that were ordered at the 11th hour due to scenic additions.

The latest Loadlink plus load cells were added to the rigging following the addition of side masking to three 4m-high LED screens that are tracked up and down stage during performances and integral to the production.

Wayne Parry, head of production at the Rose Theatre Kingston, said, "The side masking allowed for a clean, crisp finish and meant the production team could incorporate a doorway for the actors to enter and exit to the side of the screens. An additional benefit was that they solidified the screens and facilitated smooth movement."

However, the loading requirement that this pla

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UK - Chichester Festival Theatre has an international reputation for producing work of the highest quality, from large-scale musicals to distinguished dramas.

The venue recently decided to update its lighting rig; not only to install the latest technology but to also remain as environmentally friendly as possible. They approached White Light who supplied them with a range of the ETC Source Four LED Series 2 Lustrs for their Minerva Studio space.

WL has a long relationship with Chichester Festival Theatre. Not only does the technical solution specialist annually supply the lighting for the Chichester Festival but also supported their Children on the Edge fundraiser last year.

Sam Garner-Gibbons is the venue's technical coordinator. He comments, "We have wanted to make alterations to our house rig in the Minerva for a while now. As a venue, we are consciously trying to b

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UK - Star Events is an appointed supplier to Hull UK City of Culture 2017, which has just unveiled the first season of its 365-day programme of events.

Star has provided technical and infrastructure expertise to Hull 2017 over the past few months, including the hugely successful Place des Anges, an aerial spectacular, which attracted 10,000 people to the city centre in July.

Roger Barrett, special projects director at Star Events, comments, "We are delighted to have been able to offer support to Hull 2017, bringing our knowledge and expertise of working on major events as they prepare for this massively important year for the city.

"All of my formal education was in Hull, and much of my informal education as well. I started my career in the 1960s as local crew for The Who's Tommy tour at Hull City Hall, where most of Live At Leeds was recorded.

"I have been back in

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UK - Few comedians would have the sheer brass neck to have their arena show opened by a three-piece progressive jazz trio, but Amy Schumer is hardly run-of-the-mill. A multiple Emmy Award winner, Schumer has become virtually omnipresent on US television, famed for her confessional, observational, self-deprecating schtick.

In September, the Jewish stand-up princess arrived in Europe to play a string of dates with Entec Sound & Light providing a complete production package to promoter Live Nation UK. Sandwiched between appearances in Dublin, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen, Schumer's UK tour played to audiences of between 2,500 and 3,500 people at the Edinburgh Playhouse and Manchester Apollo, culminating in her O2 Arena performance in front of an impressive 12,000 fans.

Standing in the wings every night was Live Nation tour co-ordinator Gordon Isaacs, whose fatefu

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Canada - Rental company Omnison has debuted Nexo's STM modular line array system against the spectacular backdrop of the International Balloon Festival at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.

The annual event is one of the five biggest festivals in Quebec, a nine-day fiesta themed around the hot air balloon, and including diverse music, comedy and animation programming for its 400,000 visitors.

Omnison has a long history with Nexo products, with stock inventory of Geo T and Geo D Series systems, and over 60 cabinets of Geo S8. The company was an early adopter of the new STM Series line array in 2014, but has lately made a substantial investment in the system, supplied by Yamaha Corporation of America, adding STM mains, bass and sub modules, as well as additional RS subs, Geo S12 cabinets and many NXAMP 4x4 amplifiers.

The Montgolfieres Festival is held at an ex-military airfield

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Italy - This summer, on the Florence date of Sting's marathon Back to Bass tour, the artist and his band performed at the city's Cascine Park for an ecstatic sold-out audience, which was able to enjoy every nuance of Sting's hits, thanks to an Outline GTO audio rig supplied by Emporio On Stage and helmed by the artist's veteran FOH engineer Howard Page.

Howard Page explained, "The secret to good live sound is to know your audience, so you make a decision based on them, and with Sting I look for perfect clarity and definition, tuning the PA in a very smooth flat way - like studio monitors."

Another of Page's secrets lies in the bottom end: "I want the bass notes to be short and tight. The way to achieve this is not to bias the PA tuning towards the long end, and not have it too strong. Many larger line array sound systems have tuning which has a big boost from the bottom en

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USA - Analog Way has been named an official InfoComm International Renewal Unit (RU) Provider. This will allow thousands of professionals who hold InfoComm International's Certified Technology Specialist credentials to earn renewal units toward their certification by completing Analog Way training programmes.

Certification Programmes for LiveCoreTM series of premium AV video processors, including Ascender, NeXtage and SmartMatriX Ultra units, and Vertige Premium Show Controller, can now be completed for RUs.

Both Certified Technology Specialists (CTS) and the specialized designation Design (CTS-D) will get 12 RUs when training for LiveCoreTM and nine RUs for VertigeTM . Analog Way has always been committed to helping customers become experts of the brand.

Training AV professionals is part of Analog Way's main commitment which resulted in the creation of Analog Way Acad

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UK - Pearce Hire acknowledges the importance of engaging with those who will shape the future of the industry in years to come, and has confirmed its participation at the first Production Futures taking place on Thursday 6 October at Production Park in Wakefield.

"We believe in investing time and energy to nurture the skills and enthusiasm for our industry from the next generation of technicians, designers and producers," observes MD Shaun Pearce, whose company Pearce Hire has an established intern programme with local college PRC (Peterborough Regional College).

"We have a long-held commitment at Pearce Hire to engage with those students studying at PRC, offering internships with us, which often leads to seasonal or even full time employment of those students who really shine and have a passion for the work we do. Getting involved with Production Futures, and supporting t

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USA - Labour Day may mark the official end to summer in the US, but for the big crowd gathered at Boston's Fenway Park the following weekend, the season was still in full swing. The hometown Red Sox were battling for a pennant, but they were 431 miles away in Toronto playing the Blue Jays.

The sweet summertime mood that enveloped fans at the historic ballpark on 9 and 10 September came not from baseball, but from a memorable concert by country music superstar Jason Aldean and special guest Kid Rock.

Contributing to the freewheeling atmosphere was a fast-moving high intensity lightshow created by Keith Hoagland that featured a floor package of Chauvet Professional Rogue RH1 Hybrid moving hybrid fixtures supplied by Bandit Lites.

"We added the floor package, because we felt that the Rogue Hybrids would be an excellent complement to the other fixtures on our rig," said Ho

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Mexico - During a recent week-long tour of Mexico, Pope Francis addressed record audiences at five venues around the country, accompanied by SSL Live L500 and L300 consoles in a variety of roles.

Miguel Angel Tapia Trujillo was the Front of House engineer at the Parque Chamizal in Ciudad Ju

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USA - Utah State University football fans will get both an eyeful and an earful this season. In addition to a massive new 67ft-by-38ft video scoreboard at the north end of Merlin Olsen Field, USU's Maverik Stadium now also has an equally impressive new sound system built around L-Acoustics' K2 enclosures.

The system was officially commissioned just ahead of the Aggies' fall season, specified and designed by Richmond, Virginia's Anthony James Partners and installed and integrated by Salt Lake City-based Poll Sound, an L-Acoustics certified provider, systems integration.

A total of 24 K2 modules are split between a left and a right line-array hang. In addition, seven L-Acoustics X12 high-performance coaxial speakers are installed underneath the new scoreboard, which is atop a five-story end-zone building, filling the acoustical "shadow" area directly in front of it, while an

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Germany - Powersoft's flagship amplifiers were out in force recently at the annual Bardentreffen Festival in Nuremberg - one of a number of successful deployments around the world during the busy festival system.

For the second consecutive year, Powersoft partner Barowski AG provided sound reinforcement for the main stage, situated on the Hauptmarkt in front of the city's main town hall, bidding successfully for the contract, issued by organisers, the City of Nuremberg.

Billed as "Germany's largest world music festival", and attracting more than 200,000 visitors over the three days, for its 41st edition, Bardentreffen focused on a variety of music from around the globe under the theme Sounds of the Islands.

Barowski AG had first fielded their X8 racks for the 2015 edition, but according to Michael Barowski, chairman of the board, they increased their inventory for this

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Spain - Mad Cool Festival is a new rock and pop music festival in Spain that debuted 16-18 June at the Caja Magica tennis grounds in Madrid. With a line-up that included Neil Young, The Who and The Prodigy, and a three-day attendance that topped 100,000, Mad Cool is off to an impressive start.

Madrid-based PRG Spain was responsible for the audiovisual production for the festival's three main stages and incorporated Elation Professional's Cuepix Panel LED matrices into the design for Stage Three, a 10,000-capacity stage located inside the main tennis court arena.

"The Mad Cool Festival has been one of our biggest productions this summer with 98 staff from PRG Spain, one full day of set-up and another of lighting, video and sound rehearsals prior to the three days of concerts," said PRG's Francisco 'Pako' Palazon, head of production and lighting design for the three main sta

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USA - To celebrate Lollapalooza's 25th Anniversary, the festival gave its estimated 400,000 attendees a very special gift: a fourth day to see some of their favourite acts live, including J. Cole, Lana Del Ray, Radiohead, Future, Red Hot Chili Peppers, LCD Soundsystem, Ellie Goulding and Haim.

Bandit Lites once again worked with C3 Presents to provide the festival lighting package for both the Samsung and Bud Light Stages, along with site lighting. Lighting designer Seth Jackson created the festival lighting rig, reaching out to the headliners to assess their production needs, and once he acquired all their information, he evaluated efficiencies.

"Seth's strongest tool is knowing the Bandit inventory," said C3 production manager Brandon Sossamon. "He applies that knowledge to the advance and keeps everything streamlined by cross referencing artist needs with Bandit invento

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Italy - Just home from Rio where he designed the lighting for the 2016 Olympic opening and closing ceremonies, Durham Marenghi shares his reflections about the project, for which he brought a massive line-up of SGM lighting fixtures including P-2, P-5, Q-7 and G-1 Beams, supplied by Italian rental company Agor
  1. Syncrolite shares stage at Made in America Festival
  2. Sao Paulo-based LPL invests in BMFLs
  3. Alcons delivers audio excellence at Verso
  4. Elation ACL 360 Bars add flare to Flatts tour
  5. Hawthorn steps into virtual reality at Battersea
  6. Absen and Clear Channel partnership takes off
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Astera - Large MPU - June 2025
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