UK - Owned by the True North Brew Co, The Old Grindstone in Crookes is a popular Sheffield pub which recently underwent an extensive programme of refurbishment. Essential to the overall refurbishment, particularly in the light of the pub’s commitment to a wide programme of events, was to install a high-quality, versatile and flexible zonal audio system that could fulfil a wide range of demands. The pub needed to be able to separately control audio for four music zones, five TV screens, meeting room, and two recently installed upstairs karaoke pods. Any solution needed to be powerful enough to meet all the requirements whilst being simultaneously easy to operate for the venue staff. Sheffield-based Audio Engineering Services was engaged to install the new system. Audio Engineering Services’ Andy Fisher consulted with Polar’s Integrated Solutions team about a pote
Austria – Guitar player Nita Strauss has played and toured with Alice Cooper for years and is currently with Demi Lovato. Earlier this year, Strauss became the first female rock solo artist in 32 years to hit number one on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart with her song Dead Inside. She’s also had a successful solo career, including her album Controlled Chaos. She is believed to be a descendant of Austrian composer Johann Strauss on her father’s side and keeping in concert with her Austrian connection, Strauss has been using Austrian Audio microphones on stage. "Austrian Audio checks all the boxes for a working musician - pristine, clear sound in a stylish package,” says Strauss. “We have been using them on our recent tour with Black Label Society." The band, completed a 17-stop US tour earlier this year, putting the microphones to the test -
Belgium - Completed in 2002, the Paul Robbrecht and Hilde Daem designed Concertgebouw Brugge has been hailed the world over for, as one critic wrote, “its acoustic wizardry,” the result of a series of technological innovations that reduce the length of reverberations. In keeping with its commitment to providing the most pristine acoustical experience possible, Concertgebouw Brugge replaced its traditional tungsten moving fixtures with the Chauvet Professional Maverick Silens 2 Profile, a completely fan-less LED fixture designed to operate in total silence. Concertgebouw Brugge installed the first eight of its 20 Maverick Silens 2 Profile units during the COVID lockdown; the remaining dozen were added just recently. “We went ahead and acquired more of the fixtures, because we were so impressed with the original eight,” said stage manager Geerolf Jacques. “Ove
Estonia - Robe was the moving light of choice for the 2022 Saaremaa Opera Festival staged in a purpose-built tented arena erected beside the charismatic Kuressaare Castle in the south of Saaremaa Island which was the dramatic location for five days of popular opera and other performances, all presented this year by the Silesian Opera (Opera Śląska) from Bytom, Poland. The substantial venue measured 30m wide by 60m long and accommodated 8000 guests over five days. The event was organised by Eesti Concert and saw a repertoire programme comprising operas Romeo & Juliet and La Traviata, a gala show, a Mozart evening with a ballet production of his Requiem and a specially created children’s opera. Polish LD Dominik Ksol created a production lighting design to cover all five shows, and was assisted in Estonia by Andres Sarv and Tõnis Järs from
Malaysia - When a retailer staged its first public exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, it kicked off the event with a party for 300 VIP guests capped by a light and drone show in the heart of the city. Lighting designer Michael Chan of Singapore-based Lighting Insomnia designed the lights and lasers for the event using 120 Claypaky Mythos 2 fixtures mounted on the 6th Floor of Suria KLCC (the rooftop), which is connected to the Twin Towers on both sides. Guests attending the party at the nearby Sky Garden at Permata Sapura were invited into the garden at the close of the evening to enjoy the surprise of a thrilling aerial show. “As the first private event to be held at the Petronas Twin Towers, the idea was to have power light beams emit from the towers and create an awe-inspiring light and drone show in the heart of the city,” explains Michael. “I believe it was the fi
Morocco - The Mix restaurant and club located in the city of Marrakech features a DJ booth in the centre of the restaurant delivering music via a Nexo P+ Series system. With a vision for a restaurant with music in its DNA, owners of the venue approached Casablanca-based sound, light and video technology specialists Smart AV to design and install a sound system that could shift gears seamlessly from background music to powerful, floor-filling sound when the DJs take over. Working in collaboration with Nexo’s Engineering Support Team, a Nexo P+ Series point source system was configured using Nexo NS-1 software to predict coverage in the venue. Four P12 loudspeakers and four L15 subs are installed in the main room, with amplification from Nexo NXAMP4X1MK2 powered controllers. The centrally located bar is equipped with two Nexo P8s. “P12 is the perfect system for
Australia/UK – When UK-based lighting supplier Version 2 invested in dimming technology from LSC Control Systems, the new equipment paid dividends on its debut outing. Version 2 purchased 12-way GEN VI dimming modules from LSC, the Melbourne-based manufacturer, to go straight onto ITV’s 2021 production of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! Managing director Nick Edwards has been an LSC customer for many years, and continued investing in them when he founded his own company, Version 2. “LSC’s reliability has always stood out,” he says. “Having used them for so long, I know it’s very rare to get a call from site to say an LSC dimmer’s gone down. It’s pretty much unheard of!” His faith in LSC’s technology – and its world-class customer support – was rewarded when Version 2 deployed 10 x 48-way GEN VI dimming racks on the production
Portugal - This year’s Congress of Certified Accountants held at the Altice Arena in Lisbon over three days attracted more than 6,000 certified accountants from all around Portugal to learn about sustainability and non-financial reporting, corporate responsibility, social entrepreneurship, sustainable economy and accounting metrics and indices. This event brought together 25 distinguished speakers who addressed the various aspects of sustainability in different panels over the three days, among them the Minister of Finance, the Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs, the President of the Portuguese Association of Accountants, the President of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC); and His Excellency, the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Europalco delivered a highly complex event seamlessly. The company set up an astonishing 50m x 14m ma
Portugal - Independent audio-visual project Porta 253 has been utilising the Audient iD14 MKII audio interface to produce artistic films on YouTube for a while. Recently, Portuguese TV network, Canal180 approached them to televise a curated selection of its audio-visual pieces, each of which is recorded around the city of Braga. Founded by Joana Jorge, the concept of Porta 253 is to promote Portuguese music by filming 20-minute intimate concerts and interviews with local and international artists in unusual surroundings. She is the creative mind behind the project, often choosing the venue - which could be anywhere from an ice cream shop to a railway station - as well as handling the video direction and editing of each performance. Joana’s boyfriend, producer João Figueiredo looks after all things audio. Since the arrival of his iD14 MKII, he has put the Audient a
Germany - Astera Titan Tubes provided a solution for the lighting of a rolling ‘small stage’ scenic truck which was central to the action for the 2022 Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival’s production of Allessandro Nell’Indie by Leonardo Vinci, directed by Max Emmanuel Cancic and lit by David Debrinay from Paris and Lyon, France, based design studio, LJOMA. Three performances were staged at the Margravial Opera House (Markgräfliches Opernhaus), a UNESCO World Heritage site. David is well acquainted with Astera products, and he initially asked lighting specialist Kai Fischer, the festival’s technical production manager who co-ordinates all the lighting procurement, if he could source Astera AX1s or Titan Tubes for the task of lighting the small stage – which played an integral role in the narrative. The story is focused on Alexander the Great’s
Europe - The Rolling Stones took to the road this summer for their first European tour since 2018 with their new show, Sixty, in celebration of their 60th anniversary. The show had a new set design by Stufish and lighting by Patrick Woodroffe, the Stones’ lighting designer and creative director for over 40 years. “When designing a European tour, you must consider the vast range of weather conditions you might meet across the summer from beautiful sunny days to end-of-the-world storms,” says Terry Cook, associate lighting designer at Woodroffe Bassett Designs. “One thing Ayrton has become famous for is their high-powered IP rated fixtures. On the 60th Anniversary Rolling Stones tour we have 83 Ayrton Perseo Profiles over the stage. We have used these units on multiple shows and found them to be bright and reliable. “At FOH, for the first time ever, we specifi
Italy - Vasco Rossi is known for selling 225,173 tickets, the highest number ever to a single show, in his home region of Modena in 2017. After the success of his last stadium tour, Vasco Non Stop Live 019, and in anticipation of his upcoming album Siamo qui this November, Vasco has marked his return to the live stage by playing 11 sold out concerts. Supplied by Italian rental company, Agorà, DiGiCo consoles took up both the front of house and monitor positions, with Vasco’s long-time sound engineer, Andrea Corsellini, utilising a pair of Quantum 338s at FOH. For this tour, alongside the Quantum 338s, the set up included five DiGiCo SD-Racks on stage - two for monitors, two for the FoH and one for effects, all connected via an Optocore optical loop. “In a show like this, redundancy is a ‘must’ and the use of Optocore guaranteed that reliability an
USA - Joe Beardsmore and Jonny Gaskell channelled the power of contrasts when designing the light and video show for David Gray’s recently concluded USA leg of his 20th Anniversary White Ladder tour. Divided into two distinct parts, their client’s show was lit in “black and white shades of CTO cold whites and CTB” for one hour, as Gray performed back catalogue hits; then, following an intermission, concluded with saturated coloured lighting as the star played his seminal 7m sold album White Ladder in its entirety. (Gray changed outfits to mirror this contrast, wearing a black suit at the start of the show and a white one in in its concluding section.) “There were many different things we did to keep it interesting as we created this contrast, between black-and-white and colour,” said Beardsmore. “We relied on about eight different shades of white i
Croatia - The 256-capacity Concert Hall at the Hrvatski Dom in Split, Croatia’s second, is enjoying new Robe T1 Profile moving lights as part of a technical investment that was instigated and specified by the venue’s head of technical, Slaven Tahirbegovic. The fixtures were delivered by Robe’s Croatian distributor LAV Studio and installed when the building re-opened after extensive renovations which returned the Art Nouveau architecture and décor back to its original 1908 splendour simultaneously integrating contemporary elements enabling it to function fully as a cool 21st century performance space. They join the existing 10 x Robe LEDWash 600s which were delivered in late 2019, a great combination of fixtures to facilitate the current programme of shows and events. The Concert Hall is an intimate space. It has outstanding acoustics and is utilised for
UK - With a frequent presence at the Glastonbury Festival site at Worthy Farm, where they service a number of stages, SWG Events also provide technical support for Pilton Party. Although lesser known, it occupies the same site as the popular John Peel Stage - and features equally prominent headliners. This year it was the turn of Elbow, supported by Easy Life to take the stage at Pilton Party 2022, where the same PA system that graced the Pyramid stage this year -Martin Audio’s WPL Wavefront Precision line array - was in position again, and Pyramid production manager Emma Reynolds-Taylor repeated her role. Both bands had turned in stunning performances on Pyramid stage this year, and Pilton Party saw a reprise. Besides that, SWG Events provided sound reinforcement for Easy Life when they played the BBC Music Introducing stage at Glastonbury in 2019. The confide
Europe - Metallica has completed its European summer festival run with The Return Of The European Summer Vacation tour, which saw the band playing at some of Europe’s most anticipated music festivals including Copenhell 2022 (Denmark), Download Germany, Hellfest Summer Open Air (France), Rock Werchter (Belgium) and NOS Alive (Portugal). With a total of 11 shows held between June and August, Metallica’s long-term production partner PRG turned each event into an epic visual experience both for the in-person and streaming audiences by providing a custom LED set-up of ROE Visual panels and Brompton Technology LED video processing. PRG has worked with Metallica for over a decade, supporting them on tour and providing custom design work to deliver the fascinating LED configurations the band’s fans have experienced throughout the years. For Metallica
Spain - El Madrileño is one of the most successful Spanish album premiers, generating more than 5m downloads on Spotify in a single day. It is the third studio album from Spanish rapper and singer-songwriter Antón Álvarez Alfaro, better known as C. Tangana, and was co-produced with fellow recording artist, Alizzz. With the album peaking atop the Spanish music charts and bringing C. Tangana his first Latin Grammy nomination as a performer, a concert tour in support of El Madrileño, Sin Cantar ni Afinar Tour, was announced. The first date in Málaga earlier this year sold-out almost instantly, with over 30 shows taking place around Europe since. Providing powerful processing and stability are DiGiCo Quantum 7 and SD7 consoles, supplied by audiovisual equipment rental company Fluge Audiovisuales. FOH engineer Felipe Lara has been mixing for C. Tangana f
UK - It’s been a busy summer for Blackbeam, the popup cinema and event projection specialists based in Barnstaple on the north coast of Devon. The company provides popup cinema hire services to a range of customers including Exeter Phoenix, Seaton Outdoor Cinema and the National Trust, in addition to organising its own Blackbeam Cinematic events. A graduate of the Royal College of Art with a history of working in the events services industry, Blackbeam owner Alastair Leslie knows that powerful, full range cinematic sound is every bit as important as a great picture in creating a thrilling and truly immersive outdoor movie experience. So Blackbeam audiences are wowed by the punch and clarity of a compact Nexo line array system comprising two hangs of six Geo M6 boxes with a pair of LS18 subs on the floor, with amplification and processing from a pair of NXAMP4X2MK2 powered
USA - Goodspeed Musicals, a professional musical theatre located in an historic Opera House on the banks of the Connecticut River in East Haddam, Connecticut, is using 15 Ayrton Diablo S fixtures from PRG for its new production of 42nd Street. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton lighting in North America. Goodspeed is the first regional theatre in America to earn two special Tony Awards, one for outstanding contributions to the American musical and a second for distinguished achievement. Goodspeed mounts both new and newly revived musicals each year on its main stage at the Opera House and its second stage in Chester – a total of more than 400 performances during the April to December season attracting 130,000 patrons to the Connecticut River Valley. The revival of 42nd Street is the first theatrical production for which PRG has sup
The Netherlands - Having worked with singer/songwriter Eefje de Visser since 2019, lighting designer Randall Diagre understands and appreciates Eefje de Visser’s emotive approach to her art. It is a quality that inspires and invites collaboration, leading to creations that support her songs with evocative visual displays. The fruits of this creative process were one full display at Pinkpop, where Eefje de Visser was named the festival’s Number 1 act by the Dutch media. Wrapping itself seamlessly around the singer’s captivating performance was an evocative lightshow designed and operated by Diagre, with help from light artist Nick Verstand, who created a remarkable mirror scenic piece that helped define the show’s transcendent quality. As Diagre recalls, the distinctive design grew of a project organised by Motel Mozaik Rotterdam during the pandemic lockdown. He
Germany - Bayreuth hosted its third Baroque Opera Festival (BBOF) this year with a lively programme of works including Allesandro Nell’Indie, which was lit by French LD David Debrinay using over 50 Robe moving lights including T1 and T2 Profiles and LEDBeam 350s. Three memorable performances directed by Max Emmanuel Cencic, also artistic director of the festival and one of the principals, were staged at the Margravial Opera House (Markgräfliches Opernhaus). Opened in 1748 and declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2012, the venue reopened in 2018 after extensive renovations. It is also a museum and is licensed for just 30 live performances per year. David, from the Lyon-based design practice LJOMA Studio, and Max have worked on several previous projects including the two other Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festivals in 2020 and 2021. Multiple creative star
USA - The streets of Cincinnati were awash with colour in October as an estimated 1.5m people enjoyed the BLINK light and art festival, which featured four large-scale projection mappings powered by Hippotizer Media Servers. During the four-day event, video installations turned the city’s landmark buildings into ‘a techno cityscape of the future’, bringing existing artworks and architecture to life and creating eye-popping 3D projections. Some of the most spectacular video mapping installations were Hippotizer driven, including at Memorial Hall on Elm Street where the building’s four striking pillars and grand architectural shapes were perfectly video mapped and projected upon with sweeping, kaleidoscopic artworks by Italian multimedia studio, Antalless Visual Design. Titled In The Middle, the installation harnessed the power of a Hippotizer Boreal V4+
UK - Britannia Row Productions has a long-standing relationship with the WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) international arts festival, having been involved in several editions since the very first in 1982. The 2022 festival saw Brit Row provide skilled crew and audio packages for all four stages, catering to a diverse line-up of musical acts and performers. “We love the festival, particularly because of its ethos to bring in these wonderfully diverse artists to headline,” says Brit Row director, Bryan Grant. “Another great aspect is that our engineers often mix bands, so it’s excellent experience for them. There are also roles on the crew for relative newcomers, whom the festival always encourages to get stuck in. Our freelancers line up to work at WOMAD!” Audio crew chief Alex Hore had worked on the festival many times over the years, but this was his
Cambodia - The inauguration of the new administrative headquarters for the Phnom Penh Municipal Police Comissariat took place recently in the Cambodian capital. The Deputy Prime Minister, senators and members of the National Assembly were all present to see the culmination of a three-year project to deliver the ten-storey construction, which was completed at a cost of US$14m. Comprising multiple rooms across 20,000sq.ft, the facility required high quality audio reinforcement for its many meeting and conference spaces, which include designated international meeting and conference rooms. After careful consideration, experienced AV consultant and integrator Sounin Development GP Co of Phnom Penh was engaged to design, supply, and install the system. After consultation with leading distribution partner Fast Technologies, AV engineer Sounin Chann chose a variety of HH Elect
