USA - Ben Rector's career is a textbook case of what the new music industry landscape looks like: a sea of independent musicians touring and working hard to break through public consciousness when up against major label-backed artists. The Tulsa-born, Nashville-based Rector has put out seven albums on his own indie label, Aptly Named Recordings, selling over 450,000 albums and four million singles in nearly a decade - a considerable accomplishment for an indie artist.

Jake Hartsfield, Rector's FOH engineer and production manager, has added a new tool in Rector's road ki,t helping him perform in that crowded field that is the music business: a compact pair of DiGiCo SD9 digital consoles, used for FOH and monitors. The DiGiCo SD9s give Rector and Hartsfield the power and performance to help stand out on the road, plus the economic effectiveness to stay out there profitably.

Canada - CBC's Studio 42 at Maison Radio-Canada in Montréal is to Canadian television what a legendary room like Studio 8H in Rockefeller Centre is to US broadcasting history. Coincidentally first opened 42 years ago, the flagship studio has been used for countless awards ceremonies, talk shows, concerts and other live-event programmes over its four-plus decades.

Earlier this year, Le Studio, as it's known to millions of Canadians, underwent a significant technical upgrade. Included in that was a new L-Acoustics ARCS WiFo, sound system for Studio 42's audience seating, which Radio-Canada systems designer Michel Desjardins first heard at AES 2015 in New York City.

Designed by Radio-Canada's technical service team and installed by Solotech, the new sound system comprises one L-Acoustics ARCS Focus enclosure plus one ARCS Wide flown under two SB18 subwoofers per side,

UK - You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966 - 1970 is a brand-new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum that explores the era-defining significance and impact of the late 1960s. The era is relived though photography, posters, music, film, fashion and artefacts in this immersive exhibition which draws connections on the way we live today. Having a long-lasting relationship with the V & A Museum, White Light was called upon to provide the creative and production support for the exhibition's launch.

Bethan Garland, senior museum events manager at the V & A Museum, comments, "This is one of this year's biggest exhibitions so we wanted to make sure it received the launch it deserved. This meant capturing the spirit of the exhibition whilst remaining sensitive to the building."

Richard Stirzaker, WL's creative producer, comments, "We were approached

UK - Live audio specialist tube UK enjoyed the sun and the great vibes at the 2016 Ramsbottom Festival for which the company designed and supplied d&b sound systems for the main and second stages.

The boutique, family-friendly three-day event is staged in the picturesque Lancashire town of Ramsbottom which runs alongside the River Irwell nestled in an attractive Pennine valley. The event features a vibrant mix of music, food and artistic / creative engagements, and this year the main stage headliners were Public Service Broadcasting, former Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes and Fun Lovin' Criminals.

tube - along with Manchester based lighting company dbn - has been involved in the Ramsbottom Festival since it started in 2011, when they were asked on-board by production manager Roy Fernley.

This year for the first time tube also supplied a PA the second Smaller Spaces sta

USA - The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is a Smithsonian Institution museum. Located on the National Mall, it has close to 37,000 objects in its collection related to such subjects as community, family, the arts, religion, civil rights, slavery, and segregation.

The museum opened 24 September 2016 in a ceremony led by U.S. President Barack Obama. As part of the grand opening festivities, the Freedom Sounds show - a concert featuring The Roots, Public Enemy, and Living Colour - took place before a huge audience. To provide sound reinforcement, loudspeakers from the Aero Series 2 and Road Series catalogues of Valencia, Spain-based D.A.S. Audio were placed into service.

Audio & Light of Greensboro, NC, a full service A/V design, installation, and production company, was contracted to handle sound services for the event. Company president Jim

Poland - Allen & Heath's Qu-Pac digital rack mixer has been installed in the new COS sports complex, constructed as a training centre for Poland's Olympic athletes.

Situated in Zakopane, the centre comprises a 46m x 28m hall, 15m climbing wall, running track, gym, judo training room, wrestling training room and fitness hall. The venue was recently opened by the Minister of Sport & Tourism, and top Polish athletes, cross country skier, Justyna Kowalczyk and ski jumper, Kamil Stoch.

Zakopane-based installer, Future Tech, installed the sound reinforcement system, which manages sources such as, microphones for announcements and coaches' commentaries, and music playlists.

"Qu-Pac is at the heart of the sound system," explains Marcin S?odyczka, owner of Future Tech. "The great thing about this compact mixer is it provides independent control of seven zones, and EQ and dynami

Norway, The Concert Hall in Oslo has installed the largest console to leave the Audient factory. Delivered in September, the 48 channel ASP8024-HE Heritage Edition comes with all the trimmings, including patchbay, Dual Layer Control (DLC) and producers' desk. With nine bays, it's officially the largest Heritage Edition ever made.

"We were looking for an analogue console that doesn't lie," says production manager, Jan Olsen Skare, explaining their decision. "Obviously the room has to 'help' the music, but we wanted the console to have a true dynamic and good preamps." When introduced to the Audient brand by Norwegian distributor, Prolyd, he wasn't disappointed. "The mic pres are so quiet and respond amazingly. The EQs are just wonderful and very accurate; I've never heard anything sound this good."

Launched earlier this year, Heritage Edition is billed as the 'definitive ve

UK - Setsquare Staging worked with Star Events and Bright Bricks to build a fully functional scale model of Tower Bridge, clad in a record 5,805, 846 pieces of Lego, for the Land Rover Discovery 5 launch at Packington Hall, near the manufacturer's Solihull plant.

Delivered by creative agency Imagination, the event was designed around the seven seat Discovery's family and adventure priorities, action man Bear Grylls descending from a helicopter to place the final brick on the structure.

Twelve months in the planning, the Tower Bridge model had to lift and support two Land Rover Discoveries while Ben Ainslie, the most successful sailor in Olympic history, drove his team underneath, pulling a Lego replica of their Land Rover BAR racing boat.

John O'Gorman, director of Setsquare Staging, comments, "Our relationship with Imagination has been getting stronger over the years

UK - A Jands Vista console was at the heart of Fall Out Boy's headline performances at the recent Reading and Leeds Festival main stages.

The Chicago band have spent the past decade working their way up the festivals' bill, and their strikingly visual performances on the consecutive nights, created by production designer Robb Jibson, garnered rave reviews in the media.

Robb, who also helms Chicago-based So Midwest Inc which provided the Vista control package, has been touring extensively with the band, and the Leeds and Reading shows were the culmination of the 18-month American Beauty/American Psycho album cycle. The custom setup, which has accompanied him throughout, consists of a Vista S3 control surface run on OSX via two Mac Minis with stacking dongles, providing an active/backup system with the footprint of just one desk and a total of 16 cores of i7 processin

USA - Lighting designer Zach Bunner admits that some of his LD brethren might think that designing an arena tour for a two-time Grammy winner "without a rig full of beams and profile fixtures" would limit the looks of a show.

However, Bunner proved otherwise by creating an intimate and immersive club-like feeling at venues from The Forum in Los Angeles to Madison Square Garden with a rig that relied heavily on the Rogue R2 Wash and STRIKE 4 multi formatted fixture from Chauvet Professional.

Bunner of Showtime Sound worked his magic on the just-concluded Louis C.K. summer tour. The comedian-actor-director, who has won six Emmys and a Peabody Award in addition to his pair of Grammys, wanted a lightshow that engendered the feeling of a comedy club or small theater, despite his tour's outsized venues. Aerial washing from the Rogue R2s was instrumental in creating this environm

UK - Creative technical production expert Hawthorn is continuing to expand its video department and increase its presence in the dry hire sector with a recent investment in d3 server technology.

Due to an increasing demand for projection mapping and large-scale content, Hawthorn has added four d3 4x4pro media servers to its already extensive hire inventory, representing an investment of £200,000.

The d3 4

USA - In its continuing support of arts education, ETC is once again giving six students who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in the fields of lighting design and stage technology an exclusive opportunity for professional development.

As recipients of ETC's annual LDI Student Sponsorship, the students will enjoy an all-expenses-paid trip to the LDI tradeshow, a full conference pass to experience the newest technology and benefit from LDI seminars and trainings, and the chance to network with professionals throughout the industry at special events.

ETC will match the Student Sponsorship recipients with industry luminaries who serve as mentors - giving advice, inspiration and support to the students as they embark on their careers. The 2016 ETC LDI students are:

Ben Clark - Currently a graduate student studying technical design and production at the Yale School

The Netherlands - The latest in Talpa Media's string of hit TV talent shows is about to hit the screens this autumn when The Next Boy / Girl Band is broadcast by SBS6.

The imaginative stage set has been lit by Light-H-Art designer Bas de Vries and his assistant, programmer Joost Wijgers.

Having collaborated on a number of similar TV talent shows for Talpa in the past, including The Voice, Dance Dance Dance and It Takes Two, the two men this time turned to 12 of GLP's GT-1 hybrid Spot / Beam to dominate the set, which has been built at the giant Studio 24 on the Media Park in Hilversum.

"We got to test a GT-1 when we were recording Dance Dance Dance and thought it would be a great fit for The Next Boy / Girl Band," admits Joost.

The show itself is recorded in front of a live audience. The main elements of the scenography are

Belgium - Held in the aptly-named Belgian town of Boom, Tomorrowland is one of the biggest electronic music festivals on the planet. The 2016 event attracted 60,000 people on each of three days in July, with almost 600 cabinets of L-Acoustics loudspeakers specified for no less than eight areas, including the huge Main Stage.

The system is owned by Phlippo Productions, an L-Acoustics partner for the past four years, who also supplied eight technicians for the build. Design for the audio systems was by Noizboyz, a group of freelance audio technicians who specialise in live sound for electronic dance music (EDM). They have specified L-Acoustics systems for Tomorrowland since they first became involved with the festival in 2011.

"Back then we started with a V-DOSC / SB218 rig. With the arrival of K1 we changed it to K1 / SB28 and this year we upgraded the main systems to KS28

USA - With over four million records sold in the US, a Grammy nomination, and songs on soundtracks for hits like Game of Thrones to their credit, heavy metal masters Killswitch Engage have achieved much. Seventeen years after their founding, the band from Westfield, Massachusetts continue to push the musical envelope out a little further with each passing show.

This passion for defying comfortable expectations is shared by the band's lighting designer Freddy Thompson of JDI Productions. Working on the group's current tour in support of their album Incarnate, Thompson tore up his old playbook and rewrote the rules to come up with a lightshow that matches his client's evermore ferocious sound with an explosive mix of fresh new looks. Key to helping him accomplish this feat is a collection of eight Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures from Chauvet Professional that he added to th

Belgium - Founded in 1985 by youth organization, the Young Humanists of Leopoldsburg, Pukkelpop started life as a small, local music event before evolving into the huge three-day outdoor festival that it is today. This year, the festival organisers asked Total-e event support specialists to supply audio, lighting and room control for their extensive VIP/Press area. Total-e immediately suggested a Liviau S from Apex.

Held just outside the city of Hasselt in Belgium, the Pukkelpop now attracts some 180,000 festival-goers over the three days. A festival with a distinctly alternative flavour, the event is not just about music - the Baraque Futur space hosts a variety of lectures and discussions all focused around the theme of sustainability - although if it's music you're looking for, with ten stages to choose from, visitors won't be disappointed.

The VIP area for such a major

UK - Held on 14-15 September at the Science Museum, London, Space for Inspiration provided an opportunity to show how the environment of space can help overcome key challenges here on earth.

The two-day event involved expert speakers, live demonstrations and the opportunity to create relationships in one of the world's most renowned science venues. With a strong reputation in providing production support on a range of conferences, WL was called upon to provide the complete technical solutions for this event.

Space for Inspiration was hosted by the European Space Agency who approached WL to help bring their event to life. WL's conference account manager Shrenik Singhavi comments, "Upon meeting the ESA, it became clear that they wanted to host an extremely ambitious event. Alongside the lighting and AV support, there would also be interactive Q and A's, live audience respons

UK - Bestselling children's author and McFly band member Tom Fletcher launched his children's fiction novel The Christmasaurus at the Natural History Museum. The Earth Hall was transformed into a Christmas extravaganza with seasonal lighting, canapés and a Giant Crumpet Christmasaurus made from 2500 Warburtons crumpets.

Published by Penguin Random House Children's, The Christmasaurus is Tom' s first novel aimed at 7-11 year olds, inspired by his love of all things Christmas and dinosaurs. Set on Christmas Eve, the story is about the magical adventures of a boy named William Trundle and a most unusual dinosaur called the Christmasaurus.

Magical Christmas scenes from the novel were reconstructed by Bespoke Events, from architectural lighting themed to match the book jacket in winter wonderland colours blues, white and purples to snow flake projections on

Sweden - Gothenburg's renaissance style Stora Teatern was originally built in 1859 and is one of the most popular historical buildings in the bustling Swedish port city. It now presents a lively mix of concerts, theatre and dance shows and is also weekend destination during the summer season as Backstage, a popular club / DJ performance experience in the region.

Owing to its truly multi-purpose entertainment programme and many different configurations depending on the event, the show lighting rigs are constantly changing.

Saving time and hassle, head of lighting Joel Karlberg has installed a LumenRadio wireless DMX system which enables data signals between the lights and the control desk to be re-routed quickly and easily.

Joel co-ordinates all the lighting technical elements and has found the wireless DMX system to be a flexible and practical solution for addressing a

China - Flightcase manufacturer 5 Star Cases has opened a new factory in Fenggang Town, Dongguan City, Guandong Province, China.

Established to run in parallel with the UK manufacturing base in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, the new 5 Star China operation will primarily service the burgeoning domestic Chinese and wider Asian markets which are demanding high quality products - for which it's simply not practical to ship from the UK.

The idea has been on the horizon for some time explains 5 Star's MD Keith Sykes, but several elements needed to fall in line before the plan could be successfully implemented.

Running the new 1000 metre plus production facility will be 5 Star's local business partner James Zhang, a well-known, respected and highly successful entrepreneur who manages other manufacturing companies in the town, including travel bag / handbag and polythene carrier bag

UK - The Association of Lighting Designers (ALD) will present their second International Fellowship to South African lighting designer Mannie Manim on Friday, 14 October, 2016.

The presentation ceremony will take place at the Young Vic Theatre, where Manim's latest production, A Man of Good Hope is playing. The show is based on the classic novel by Jonny Steinberg and depicts the true story of one refugee's epic quest across Africa, brought to life with music from the world-renowned Isango Ensemble.

ALD vice president, Rick Fisher, states, "It is an honour for the ALD to present Mannie with the ALD International Fellowship award."

The Association extends a very warm invitation to the UK's LDs and lighting industry practitioners in anticipation of many being able to join with Manim to celebrate his career and the art and craft of Lighting. The audience is invited

USA - Ben Rector is out on his biggest tour to date which he has whimsically named 'The Biggest Tour I Have Done So Far' tour. The title alone alludes to the increasing popularity of the artist, whose brand of pop/rock 'music with a purpose' has resonated with fans.

Lighting and production designer is Chris Lisle who is using Elation Professional ACL 360 Bar LED battens to colour the singer-songwriter's show, which is playing dates in the US through October.

The versatility of the ACL 360 Bar has been on show on several festivals, events and tours this past summer, including the likes of the Rascal Flatts tour, the Nocturnal Wonderland and Hard Summer festivals and more.

On Rector's The Biggest Tour I Have Done So Far outing, Lisle, who is working with the artist for the first time, has the colour-changing battens working from a row along the upstage edge behind the ba

Australia - Lighting designer Tom Wright had the difficult task of lighting the pre-match entertainment at this year's NRL Grand Final at Sydney's ANZ Stadium. Fortunately, he had done the job before, as well as several State of Origin pre-match shows, and knew how to overcome the complexities associated with the production.

Working for creative director Tony Assness of The Spark, Tom had to please multiple people with a budget and acts that changed daily.

"You never really know where you are until one to two weeks out," he admitted. "I have to give huge thanks to the Chameleon Touring Systems team for riding that with me. Chameleon's Luke Cuthbertson is one of the calmest account managers I have ever worked with! I think I sent seven versions of the plot and the seventh was only a week before the event."

Keith Urban was hesitant about playing in the round so although

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