USA - To ensure clear, impactful live sound with wide, even coverage for the Long Beach Jazz Festival, AV integrator Flag Systems deployed a dynamic selection of JBL Professional solutions. Featuring headliners Robert Glasper, Ledisi and Sergio Mendes, 2022’s Long Beach Jazz Festival took place at Rainbow Lagoon Park for waterside views as fans enjoyed a mix of jazz, soul and R&B. While the location was a pristine setting for a weekend of laid-back jazz, the stage needed an audio rig with enough coverage to reach audiences on both sides of the lagoon, while also considering the stage’s limited height and space. To meet these requirements, Flag Systems designed a sound reinforcement system exclusively featuring JBL VTX and VRX Series solutions. “If you’ve ever seen the site, you know one of the main challenges is that there’s a lake right behind the front-
USA - Some 33 years after it was founded, the 550-seat CupOJoy live music venue in Green Bay, Wisconsin, has taken delivery of its first permanently installed sound system in the larger space within the two-auditorium venue to which it relocated two years ago (having successively occupied two previous locations). Part of a complete audio-visual fit-out masterminded by local system integrators CCCP (Camera Corner), a Martin Audio Wavefront Precision WPS line array was specified after careful evaluation. Since the facility - whose mission is to be a family-friendly venue, offering ‘music that inspires’ - is a non-profit organisation run by volunteers, the two-year fund-raising programme, leading up to the investment, required an outcome that would please operators and donors alike. And the WPS has certainly delivered. CupOJoy’s technical director, Mark Berg c
Australia - AIE Film School has chosen Brompton Technology’s LED processing to power its Virtual Production volume on its Canberra campus soundstage, with plans for an expanded volume later this year. AIE’s temporarily constructed 18.5 x 3.5m stage creates a single, large volume, made up of Liantronics LED panels and powered by Brompton Technology Tessera SX40 LED processing and Tessera XD 10G data distribution units. In 2023, AIE plans to build a new permanent film studio, AIE Film Studios, featuring a larger 30m x 30m x 15m soundstage, with an expanded 24m x 6m volume (770sqm of LED panels) powered by Brompton LED processing. It will initially be used for feature film development, and later TV production, with students undertaking Work Integrated Learning (WIL) with AIE’s industry partners on the programmes. "We have been exploring features of different L
USA - After relying on a venerable Meyer Sound system since first opening at its current location in 1997, Yoshi’s jazz club in Oakland, California recently upgraded to a new system incorporating the latest technologies from the same company. Supplied by Advanced Systems Group (ASG) based nearby in Emeryville, the new Meyer Sound installation has earned praise from management, artists, guest engineers, and patrons alike. “Every artist that has come in here has been blown away,” says Yoshi’s production manager Marcel Quiroz. “Haley Reinhart’s engineer told me it was the best house system he’d ever heard, and the engineer for Dave Weckl said that hands down we now have the best-sounding room in the Bay Area. After his set, Freddy Jackson came up, gave me a hug, and said, ‘Thank you!’” The prior system had served Yoshi’s well, reinforcing the music o
Finland - To complement its growing global network of physical Experience Centres, Genelec has introduced its online virtual showroom, where visitors can explore a wide range of active loudspeaker systems and technologies in a set of stunningly realistic room settings. This allows customers across the Studio, AV, and Home Audio segments to instantly access valuable Genelec information and resources in a visually engaging interactive environment. Hosted on the Genelec website, visitors to the virtual showroom can experience the latest in VR technology to navigate separate and distinct areas for professional audio monitoring, AV installation and home audio, which showcase both stereo and immersive systems that comprise a carefully selected range of key loudspeaker and subwoofer models. Visitors can then access detailed product information, video content and valuable learning r
Australia - Sydney is back and evidence of its uniquely Australian celebration of Summer will be an unprecedented line up of artists’ work at Sydney Festival. TDC - Technical Direction Company, award-winning provider of event and entertainment technology solutions and sponsor of Sydney Festival, has announced its biggest involvement yet in the city-wide celebration of culture, creativity and live performance. Its team of technicians have been busy preparing creative design technology and projection mapping expertise showcased at multiple events across Sydney from 5 – 29 January 2023 including Festival highlights featuring feminist Frida Kahlo, and mythic new opera epic Antarctica. Chris Fitzgerald, TDC technical project manager, said: “We are very excited to be a Sydney Festival partner once again in 2023. Organising and coordinating our sponsorship of Sy
USA - Heavy metal band Gwar recently wrapped the fall North American leg of their Black Death Rager World Tour in which Claypaky Sharpy Plus Aquas played a key and unusual role. The tour marked the third for Nick Drake as the band’s lighting designer; he is also a light technician with Richmond, Virginia’s Lite-Tek Entertainment, a lighting rental and production company which supplied the fixtures. Lite-Tek has a history with Gwar, which also hails from Richmond, having worked with them multiple times over the years, including providing lighting and studio space for the band’s 30th anniversary live stream from Lite-Tek’s warehouse during the COVID pandemic. Gwar’s fall tour kicked off at the Blue Ridge Rock Festival in Virginia in September and concluded in Baltimore in November. Sharpy Plus Aqua fixtures add an IP66 rating to the award-winning S
Finland - Casino Tampere is a far cry from the glitz and bling-bling of Las Vegas. Located at Tampere’s Nokia Arena, it’s only the second casino in Finland and is owned and operated by the Finnish state-owned company Veikkaus. Casino Tampere operates a responsible gaming policy with tools in place to enable players to self-regulate as well as mandatory loss limits on slot machines. Exuding Finnish style with lots of natural wood and greenery, Casino Tampere combines Nordic design with advanced casino concepts. Over 100 Genelec Smart IP loudspeakers contribute to a complete sensory experience. Digital AV solutions experts, Craneworks Oy, won an open tender to design and supply all of the digital AV solutions for the new casino thanks to their imaginative, ideas-driven approach combined with solid technical expertise. As Craneworks managing director, Sami Käyhkö de
China - Located in China’s most populated urban area, Shanghai New York University (NYU) is China’s first Sino-US research university. Founded in 2012 by NYU and East China Normal University with the support of the city of Shanghai and the district of Pudong, the university offers 19 majors and teaches entirely in English. One of three universities in the NYU Global Network, NYU Shanghai chose Audinate’s Dante audio network platform managed by Dante Domain Manager software to deliver upon its mission to offer its teaching, research and public service. At the start of 2020, the pandemic forced educational leaders around the world to transition from in-person to remote learning, including the administration at NYU Shanghai. This presented many challenges for the University leaders and its almost 2000 students, including improving the audio setup in 57 lecture hall-
Canada - The Girardin Sports Centre in Drummondville, Quebec, is the city’s first indoor multisport complex. Opened in 2021 at a cost of $21.7m, the centre is helping to alleviate a shortage in hockey facilities in the area for the city’s 68,000 residents. The centre’s project team chose AtlasIED’s systems to provide audio entertainment and communications for the nearly 5,000 weekly visitors. The 73,000sq.ft facility needed an audio system to cover key spaces including the ice rink, indoor soccer field which is overhung by a 250m running track, and the 16 rooms including conference rooms, offices, and locker rooms in the complex. One challenge was controlling different music playlists for different zones of the facility with a range of acoustical qualities. The centre chose AtlasIED’s AtmosphereAudio Processing and Control Platform and IPX loudspeakers and endpoint
USA - Project manager Jonathan Blake and the crew at The Lighting & Sound Company spent 16 days setting up the popular Garden Glow walk-through event at Maymont Estate Park in Richmond, Virginia. “A key goal for us was to highlight all aspects of the ground’s horticulture in a way that accentuated its natural beauty,” said Blake. “In support of this goal, almost all of our LED fixtures were positioned to enhance the appearance of every scenic element. The entire event covered a lot of ground, so there were numerous opportunities to highlight interesting sights. I’m grateful to our client, Maymont Estate for given us the opportunity to work at such an impressive site. Also, thanks to our lighting designer and programmer Ryan Williams, lighting control network engineer Logan Adams and installation team lead Brennan Adams for making this happen.” H
The Netherlands - Andre Beekmans and a team from his Eindhoven, design studio, The Art of Light, created the lighting scheme for the 2022 Amsterdam Music Festival (AMF) a one-day electronic music extravaganza produced by ALDA and staged at the Johan Cruijff Arena as part of the 2022 Amsterdam Music Event (AME). Andre chose over 400 Robe moving lights to be a major part of the lighting rig, including 166 x LEDBeam 100s, 192 x Pointes and 76 x MegaPointes, which helped make a significant impact for this first post-pandemic AMF. Andre has lit the event for the 10 years since it started, and with this year being the first since 2019 everyone’s expectations were even higher than usual, and he worked closely with event technical production manager Maarten Hoogland from ALDA in creating the set and staging elements as well as delivering the lighting design. A line-up
Ireland - An Audient ASP8024 Heritage Edition console was installed as part of a full studio upgrade at Dublin’s Dun Laoghaire Further Education Institute (DFEi) this academic year, which has already sparked great interest from students. Patrick Wall, course coordinator of the Music and Sound Engineering programmes explains, “We offer students the chance to undertake supervised studio time outside of class hours to work on their own projects. There has been really great uptake this year, and I am sure that the new console and studio improvements have played a part.” The studio setup consists of a control room, main live room, drum room and smaller booth. The control room houses the Audient console, Genelec monitoring, Mac Mini M1 running ProTools and an outboard rack with various processors and effects. “As well as the new Audient console, we installed bespoke
UK - Scottish singer-songwriter, Gerry Cinnamon, concluded his 10-date summer tour of the UK and Ireland with two sell out dates at his hometown stadium, the 50,000-capacity Hampden Park National Stadium in Glasgow, in mid-July and simultaneously made history as the first independent act - and the first Scot - to sell out multiple nights at the venue. Production and lighting designer Pete Hutchison of Illumination Creative Design chose Ayrton Khamsin S, Bora S and the new laser-sourced Cobra to provide the big looks the show needed. Forty-eight Khamsin S were rigged across four pairs of side trusses and on overhead finger trusses from where they were used as the main workhorses for stage lighting and for lighting out towards the audience. “The main reason I chose Khamsin was for the power of their LED source which matches up perfectly with old discharge lamps
USA - Dave Matthews Band wrapped their November US tour with two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden, deploying a system anchored by Meyer Sound’s Panther large-format linear line array loudspeakers for the first time. DMB has carried Meyer Sound for their 25+ years of touring, and FOH engineer Tom Lyon was excited for the chance to deploy UltraSound, LLC’s Panther system on this recent run. “I had a lot of fun mixing on Panther. I noticed a certain sparkle to the top end of Dave’s guitar that I hadn’t noticed before. Everything sounded nicer through the system. When we walked around, we could tell the improvement of the coverage consistency: it sounds great off axis as it does down the middle of the coverage. I hardly had to touch the EQ on the system at all.” The system comprised 18 Panther-L loudspeakers for left and right mains with two Panther-W pe
Singapore - Point Source Audio’s Confidence Collection CO2-8WLp have been specified by theatrical sound designer Shannon Slaton for The Sound of Music’s international tour. The multi-year tour began at the Marina Bay Sands Theatre in Singapore before moving on to Kuala Lumpur and Taiwan. With more than 25 years of experience as a theatrical sound designer and Broadway audio mixer working on some of the biggest musicals in the world, Slaton has a deep understanding of what is needed to make a tour sound great. “Designing for a tour, I have to think about how much time people have to load the show in and out and the equipment has to sit in a certain amount of truck space,” he explains. “If you’re doing a Broadway show, you have three weeks and you install the equipment where you want it. But with a tour you have eight to 12 hours, so the equipment and ease o
China - November saw the opening of the 16th Guangdong Provincial Games and the 9th Guangdong Provincial Games for Persons with Disabilities in Qingyuan and, with more than 20,000 athletes, coaches and related staff taking part, it was the largest Guangdong provincial games to date. The visually stunning main venue for the games, the Qingyuan Olympic Sports Centre, is designed in the shape of a soaring phoenix and consists of a 30,000-seater stadium, a gymnasium with 9,000 seats, a natatorium with 2,000 seats and an Olympic sports park capable of hosting large-scale competitions, concerts, and exhibitions. AV solutions provider EZPro was handed the responsibility to supply the sound reinforcement system for the centre with two criteria in mind: “First, reliability is absolutely critical for the sound reinforcement system when hosting large-scale competitions,” expl
UK - Project Audio has installed a K-array background music system of Vyper compact line arrays at London’s historic Burlington Arcade. Established in 1818, the 196-yard-long covered shopping Arcade runs from Piccadilly through to Burlington Gardens and houses a selection of luxury boutiques much favoured by London’s well-heeled patrons. When the Reuben Brothers bought the Arcade, the new owners decided that they wanted to create considerably more atmosphere in the naturally lit, galleried Georgian space to provide a more welcoming ambience for shoppers. A discreet, high quality music playback sound system was what was needed, and the brothers approached Crystal Palace-based Project Audio, specialists in custom-designed and high-end bespoke audio installations. Claire Munnelly, Project Audio’s director and project manager, comments: “The challenge for us
USA - San Diego State University recently completed its new $310m 35,000-seat college football venue, Snapdragon Stadium, and crystal-clear sound was of the utmost importance throughout the project. To achieve a new level of stadium design, complete with the latest technology, audio and video design firm WJHW called on Clair Global Integration to install a wide range of future-proofed products. Most notably, Snapdragon Stadium now features over 100 AC6 ADAPTive Column Loudspeakers from Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW). “EAW supported the design team during the various phases of the project including early demonstrations, proof of concept and modeling for the AC6 loudspeakers, and exporting data for consultants’ integration into the full system design,” says Mark Graham, associate principal, WJHW. “The brand also remained involved throughout the construction process
UK - The 2022 World Gymnastics Championships were held at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena over nine days in October and November, with 500 gymnasts from 75 countries competing at the 7,500-capacity venue. The lighting supplier for the tournament was Adlib, who specified Martin’s latest MAC Ultra, amongst other fixtures. In total, 146 x MAC Ultra Performance and 24 Wash fixtures were deployed. Elliot Tutt, Adlib’s account manager, said, “The client originally proposed the event to feature MAC Viper fixtures, so a large part of our proposal was the switch to the efficiency of LED and the performance of the MAC Ultra.” Lighting designer for the event, Dominic Main, commented, “The MAC Ultra range is simply incredible. The light output is beyond anything I have used before in this size of moving head. The MAC Ultras allowed me to deliver a field-of-play lu
USA - Los Angeles-based DCLighting has been successfully lighting The Kelly Clarkson Show since its debut in 2019 and was recognised for Outstanding Lighting Direction with a Daytime Emmy Award in 2020 and in 2022. DCLighting founder and lighting designer Darren Langer is understandably proud of his team, who have lit over 600 musical performances on the show to date. For the show’s fourth season, which first aired on12 September, 2022, Darren and his team are keeping the lighting looks fresh using a rig of Elation DARTZ 360 narrow-beam LED moving heads, SixBar 1000 linear LED bars and Cuepix 16 IP LED matrix panels. Produced by NBCUniversal Syndication Studios and taped at Universal City in Los Angeles, The Kelly Clarkson Show is an American daytime television variety talk show hosted by American singer Kelly Clarkson. More than a simple sit-down tal
USA - As the amplified vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth head audio engineer, Randall L. Squires is no stranger to the band’s haunting, hypnotic vocals. After starting with the group in 2015 alongside boss and mentor Damon Lange, Squires eventually took over full audio operations, including recording, mastering and FOH engineering. Most recently, the group entrusted Squires with recording its latest album, requesting that he create a completely new audio canvas from which they could work. To complement the unique sound and get consistent, reliable audio, Squires turned to DPA Microphones’ d:facto 4018VL Vocal, 5100 Mobile 5.1 Surround and 4011 Cardioid Condenser Microphones. “The d:factos were perfect for us,” Squires says. “Roomful of Teeth is primarily a live act, so they’re used to amplification and having a handheld vocal mic on a stand directly in front
UK - “It’s been a while, but we’re going on tour in November and can’t wait to see you again.” So read the official statement announcing the recently completed UK tour by the Kaiser Chiefs. The multi Brit-Award winning band played 13 sold-out venues, with a dynamic lightshow run on a ChamSys MagicQ MQ250M console that featured ample amounts of engaging audience lighting. “This is a band that thrives on interacting with the audience,” said Jason Hyne who co-designed the show with Mike Darling. “Ricky Wilson, the band’s charismatic leader feeds off the crowd’s response to his actions. Our goal was to create one space for the band and crowd to share this connection.” Facing a tight time schedule and a limited budget, Darling and Hyne worked concepts from previous tours into their new design. After only one-day of production rehearsals, the tou
USA - The 90-minute Christmas at Hillcrest concert, which took place at the church’s Nine Mile Campus in Pensacola, FL, featured purples and blues, along with a host of other inspiring hues transforming the stage. “As we listened to the songs that were to be featured in the production, we asked ourselves does this feel like a certain colour?” said the church’s production director Gavin Crane. “Different colours also have different biblical significance, so we tried to keep this in mind as well. For example, blues convey the calmness that comes with the hope and peace of Christmas. They also represent the clear moonlit night of the first Christmas. “Throughout each song we varied our palette to reflect the different thoughts and feelings. So, we might start a song with the deep blue or purple, then as it built, we changed the colours to fit that moment. One
