UK - In August, Nigerian Afro-fusion star Burna Boy’s Twice As Tall event was the first in the London O2 Arena’s Welcome Back Show series of live concerts. Sold out with fans hungry for live entertainment, Yamaha Rivage PM10 digital mixing systems helped deliver a much-anticipated, impressive live production. 2021 has been a highly successful year for Burna Boy, winning a Grammy Award for his 2020 Billboard-topping album Twice As Tall, Artiste of the Year at the Global Music Awards Africa and Best International Act at the Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards. He headed to the O2 Arena with a spectacular show, arriving in a flying saucer and spending much of the performance on a stage projection, surrounded by the audience on three sides. With music blending Afrobeats, dancehall riddims, reggae, American rap and R&B, the large production included a
UK - A new dance festival called Electric Woodlands took place recently in the idyllic grounds of Bygrave Farm in Baldock. Three bespoke stages, set in lush green landscapes, and a hidden forest provided the backdrop to a who's who of drum & bass, house and bass exponents over an 11-hour period. Capital Sound, part of the Solotech UK Group, equipped all three stages with PA, the two largest fitted out with premium Martin Audio systems. The service providers had been introduced to the event by Alex Anderson, a production manager with whom they had worked previously. Capital senior project manager, Martin Connolly reports, “We were then contacted and initially asked to quote on the main stage before extending this to the other two stages.” The crew worked alongside the event’s main production manager, Catherine Bates, observing sound thresholds set by F1
UK - Green Hippo’s flagship Hippotizer Tierra+ MK2 Media Server took centre stage to drive visuals at the James Bond No Time To Die world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall. Richard Bagshaw from UK-based live events video playback and content creators Digital Insanity took the helm at the star-studded film launch on the famous red carpet steps, harnessing the power of a Tierra+ MK2 with the serial number 001 (for premiere purposes, of course. 007 was otherwise engaged). TV viewers and those lucky enough to attend the premiere arrived on the red carpet surrounded by 14 LED screens, forming giant cubes to display Bond teasers, clips and graphics. Digital Insanity supplied content creation and video playback services for the red carpet event and also supplied content for the press junket, entrance tunnel and the after movie drinks reception. “I’ve been
USA - On their recent 19-city tour, PVRIS’ free flowing music took flight against the richly textured background of a Lenny Sasso lighting design that mirrored the passion and complexity of the band’s performance. Moving from ambers to bold reds, and soft washes to intense strobing and sweeps, Sasso’s lightshow stayed with the varied and deeply felt emotions of the music every step of the way. A critical piece of Sasso’s rig were the 28 CHAUVET Professional F6 IP linear video strips that dominated the centre stage. Supplied by Sonus Productions of Moorestown, NJ, the strips were arranged vertically along two upstage rows of 10-units each, with the remaining eight fixtures flanking the drum and bass risers. Feeding the strips content from Resolume, Sasso used them to set a variety of moods on stage. “I used a combination of prebuilt Resolume packs, plus a few
Israel - Israel Railways’ (ISR) CEO frequently holds critical internal management meetings and external meetings with Israeli government departments and authorities. Therefore, to enable its CEO to conduct efficient and productive business meetings from his office, ISR turned to ClearOne for an AV solution that would fully meet the requirements of the CEO and his meeting room. “We needed to find a solution for the CEO’s office that delivered superior levels of audio and video quality which, at the same time, is intuitive and easy to use,” opens Aric Ben-Zuk, VP of sales for DM Engineering, the creative technology solutions provider leading this integration. “A key requirement for ISR was that participants, regardless of their location, would be able to concentrate on the content of their meetings without having to worry about the underlying technology.” Hav
Australia - To provide quality sound across a wide field of coverage for the Transmoto Endura dirt bike races, CMI Music & Audio and Be Productions deployed JBL Professional Eon One Compact speakers. Transmoto organises team-based endurance events in a relaxed and fun atmosphere for everyday dirt biking enthusiasts, staged on remote locations with challenging but safe off-road loops that combine grass tracks and bush trails. The Transmoto Enduros consists of eight- and 12-hour endurance races for amateur riders taking place on dedicated tracks in rural areas across Australia. With racers often spread out in outdoor campsites, Transmoto officials needed an audio system for announcements and communication with wide enough coverage to reach every racer and compete with the sounds of motorcycles and weather conditions. To meet these requirements, Be Productions consult
USA - The North American leg of An Evening with Michael Bublé tour resumed in August, with 23 shows in A-level arenas through late October. The tour continues to rely on a Meyer Sound reinforcement system as provided by global production company Solotech, and once again the massive system is deployed in a novel ‘dual hybrid’ configuration comprising both typical end-stage arrays as well as centre-hung arrays over the B-stage that essentially function as an in-the-round system. What’s new this time around is the introduction of the Spacemap Go spatial sound design and live mixing tool, which transparently tracks Bublé’s voice as he strolls between the two stages, maintaining precise aural localisation at all seats with synchronised, incremental changes in level and delay across multiple loudspeaker arrays. “We came up with the basic solution late in 2
South Africa - Tiger’s Milk is a popular kitchen/bar that is part of the Life & Brand portfolio, a group that runs a variety of bars, bistros and restaurants across South Africa. For this project, a new establishment located in the Johannesburg suburb of Bedfordview required a zoned audio solution to handle BGM playback throughout the premises which blended with Tiger’s Milk’s characteristic black interior. Timelines were tight as the work needed to be finished in time for the easing of COVID-19 restrictions and re-opening of the hospitality industry in South Africa. The job was originally procured by Output AV, who specified and purchased the Audac equipment, before sub-contracting K2 Innovate for the actual integration. All the hardware was supplied by Stage Audio Works (SAW), Audac’s South African distributor. The Audac system covers a total of seven dis
UK - Bluesound Professional has announced an installation of its B400S 4-zone network music player across online car retailer’s customer centres. The challenge was to create an environment where sound would enhance the ambiance of every customer centre, with uniform controllability and compliance with the legal requirements of the PRS music licence. London-based integrator Nucleus AV turned to Bluesound Professional for a scalable audio solution. The installation team worked closely with Cazoo to create a bespoke system that was both practical (in some locations, Nucleus AV would be retrofitting existing loudspeakers and amplifiers) and future-proof. Nucleus AV, working with Bluesound Professional sub-distributor OneAV, outfitted each Cazoo customer centre with a single Bluesound Professional B400S 4-zone network music player. This commercial grade netwo
Denmark - One of Denmark’s longest standing suppliers of light and sound equipment, DLT in Glostrup, has installed the architectural façade lighting for Danish Bank Sparekassen Sjælland-Fyn’s office in Holbæk. DLT’s vision was to create a luminous framework that compliments the building's architecture, whilst simultaneously creating a lively ambiance on the waterfront. To achieve this, DLT has utilised 40 units of Showtec’s Candela Pix 50, creating an ambiance near the waterline that is visible from both the city and much of the Holbæk Fjord. Showtec’s Candela Pix 50 can create the full spectrum of light, enabling the building to be lit in any desired colour or even multiple colours. This enables Sparekassen Sjælland-Fyn to alter the appearance of their exterior as desired, for instance during national holidays or sports matches. The waterproof outdoor l
UK - Cleanfeed reports that Birmingham City University has integrated Cleanfeed across its broadcast studio facilities. As with the entire industry, BCU was required to find a way of adapting to remote working during the pandemic. Cleanfeed was used by all students over the lockdown period on courses such as Media Production, Media and Communication, Journalism and Sound Engineering and Production. The tool allowed students to deliver professional recordings, broadcasts and media interviews which was crucial to their learning and development. Peter Crowther, senior technician, Radio and Broadcast Journalism, comments: “I was recommended to Cleanfeed by industry contacts and former colleagues at the BBC and quickly realised the benefits for our students who weren’t able to be on campus. The students liked the service so much over the lockdown learning period t
Portugal - Infinity Furion S401 Spots, iW-1915 RGBW wash moving heads, and Showtec Helix S5000 Q4 RGBW LED wash fixtures were successfully deployed at outside locations during a summer festival in the Algarve in the southern region of Portugal. Geopalcos is a biannual event that aims to connect art, science and nature in the Geopark territory in the Algarve. Artists and scientists are challenged to combine their skills and expertise, and take nature lovers to discover art and science, lead art aficionados through nature and the paths of knowledge, and have the audience relate to their knowledge with the natural and artificially created beauties of their surroundings. On 10 occasions between 29 May and 12 September, at different locations, the public is invited to participate in dialogues between tradition and creativity/innovation, to wander and (re)discover Portuguese
UK - Surfhire deployed a full-service complex comms package to the boutique Henley Festival held on the Berkshire bank of the River Thames. After an unprecedented delay due to the pandemic, the Henley Festival of Music and Arts, famed for its strict black tie dress code, finally returned for a 2021event. With performances from Madness, James Blunt, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, the five-day show had to deliver with perfect ambience. In order to keep the event running as smoothly as possible – despite some of the site’s particular idiosyncrasies - production manager John Harris brought Surfhire, part of Britannia Row Productions, back once again to provide radios, internet backhaul, and site-wide network services for the festival. “Surfhire have been involved for 12 years, but the role has expanded and contracted as time has gone on,” explains Surfhire’s Si
UK - Organisers of the annual Leeds Castle Concert, worked tirelessly to reschedule this year’s event, featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, following the easing of restrictions - staging it later than normal, on 4 September. Leeds Castle is amongst the many long-standing clients that have relied upon RG Jones Sound Engineering for decades. In the case of this site, the company has been providing sound systems since the very first show way back in the early 80’s. It’s a tricky site to cover well, and for the highly popular concert fielded a classic system of its own - Martin Audio’s original MLA - to overcome the coverage challenges. Although this historic Castle site in Kent is isolated, imposing no restrictions on sound levels, the contouring leaves much to be desired from an acoustician’s perspective, with a steep hill on which many of the crowds up
USA - To provide Grupera band Los Bukis with live sound for their 2021 reunion tour, AV integrator Sound Image deployed JBL Professional and Crown audio solutions. Founded in 1975 by cousins Marco Antonio and Joel Solís, Mexico, Los Bukis are one of the most successful Latin American bands of the 20th century. With hits like Tu Cárcel and Como Fui A Enamorarme De Ti among many others, the band combined Mexican Grupera with American pop and new wave to create a highly influential sound still heard in Latin pop today In August 2021, Los Bukis reunited and embarked on their first tour in over two decades, performing multi-night runs in stadiums across North America for a multi-generational fanbase. Such a high-profile tour required a powerful, reliable and immersive live audio system fitting for stadium-level venues. To meet these needs, Sound Image turne
South Africa - Johannesburg’s Market Theatre has been on South Africa’s political, cultural, and social frontline since 1976 when it opened as an independent, anti-racist producing house at the height of the apartheid era. Located downtown in the lively Newtown area, the Market Theatre has taken delivery of 50 Robe T1 series LED moving lights as part of an upgrade initiative emanating from SA’s Department of Arts & Culture which is looking to the future and boosting suitability across the arts. These new Robe luminaires will be used across the venue’s three main performance spaces - the John Kani, Barney Simon, and Mannie Manim. The T1s were a major part of a package delivered by Robe’s Southern Africa distributor DWR after winning a competitive tender to supply the venue’s new theatrical / stage lighting elements. The tender was writte
USA - Shure supported the 74th Annual Tony Awards, welcoming the theatre community home after a year without Broadway. Broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount+, this year’s Tony Awards, hosted by Audra McDonald and Leslie Odom Jr., achieved cutting-edge audio for the entire ceremony and subsequent Broadway’s Back! event. The night included performances from the cast of Jagged Little Pill, American Utopia, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, John Legend and the cast of Ain’t Too Proud, and Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast of Freestyle Love Supreme. Each act relied on the digital radio offered by Shure’s Axient Digital Wireless System. “I wouldn't want to do the Tony Awards with any other wireless system than Axient Digital,” said Cameron Stuckey, RF engineer. “The layers of complexi
Italy - Founded in 2013, Battiti Live features a selection of leading Italian and international music artists. The annual event consists of a series of concerts held in various locations throughout the region of Puglia. Since 2017, lighting designer Massimo Pascucci, accompanied by programmer Davide Fusco, has created engaging and high impact shows, using the Hog family of lighting desks. Hog 4-18 was the primary console of choice for the 2021 edition, together with a Road Hog console for additional special effects. From a technical point of view, there has always been a desire for Battiti Live to maintain a strong live impact. This remained the case even after leading Italian television channel Italia 1 first started transmitting the event in 2017, and broadcast needs became an important consideration. Since he began working on Battiti Live in 2017, Davide Fus
UAE - Expo 2020 Dubai, the first World Expo to take place in the Middle East region, officially opened its doors to visitors on 1 October showcasing architectural wonders and technology innovations from more than 192 countries. The UK’s contribution to Expo 2020 Dubai is the cone-shaped UK Pavilion with a circular façade which was created by designer Es Devlin. The 25m-high LED façade which is integrated into the wooden sculpture is designed to celebrate global cultural diversity and collaboration. The UK Pavilion uses an advanced AI learning algorithm developed in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture which allows visitors to add their word to a continuously changing ‘collective message from humanity to the universe’ displayed on the LED modules. PRG was appointed by Pico to deliver the engineering of the 2,000 customised LED tiles through the PRG
UK - Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance is the UK’s only Conservatoire of music and contemporary dance. With two separate faculties for dance and music in southeast London, the establishment today is the result of a 2005 merger between Trinity College of Music and Laban. When the decision was made to upgrade the sound system at the Conservatoire’s Faculty of Dance in London SE8, Trinity Laban turned to Autograph Sound who designed, implemented and commissioned an innovative multi-role sound system from EM Acoustics. Autograph’s Business Development Lead Euan Mackenzie handled all the project specification and system design for this very focused application with some unusual requirements: “Performers in contemporary dance need to feel that they are part of their audience and experiencing the same auditory stimulus, so the system had to be completely immer
UK - Calendars lost much of their meaning over the past year, as the pandemic erased so many long-anticipated occasions from their pages. For a group of students at the University of Nottingham, one such date was Monday 12 July, when their already-delayed graduation ceremony was cancelled again due to lingering safety concerns. However, these students made up for lost time when the university held a glittering black-tie ceremony with dinner, dancing and entertainment at Newark Show Ground. Setting an appropriately festive tone for the affair was its technical producer OneBigStar, which oversaw and managed the production of the event. OneBigStar retained the services of lighting designer David Howard and supplied him with a versatile kit that featured over 80 Chauvet Professional fixtures. “We wanted this evening to feel almost like a festival, to erase the disa
USA - Nashville’s new Brooklyn Bowl venue hosted a late night ‘Phish after-party’ following their concert at the Ascend Amphitheatre. Kicking off at 10:30 pm right around the time Phish was finishing their encore with a cover of the Rolling Stones Loving Cup, the after-party featured improvised jam and funk sounds by six-piece band Big Something. Adding to the festive atmosphere was an electrifying Daniel Thibault lightshow that reverberated visually throughout the intimate, 1,200-person venue, filling it with an whirlwind of movement and colours. “I wanted to make this room look its biggest,” said Thibault. “Everything about this band’s sound and stage presence is big.” Thibault, a partner in Life Is Art Studios, added 20 Chauvet Professional Rogue fixtures from his company’s own inventory to the house rig, to create the desired immersive atmo
UK - Blackmagic Design reports that Creamfields, the UK's biggest dance music festival, was delivered using a live production workflow built around ATEM production switchers and HyperDeck recorders. The four-day festival held over the August bank holiday weekend welcomed around 80,000 people to Daresbury, Cheshire to see some of the biggest names in dance music, including Tiesto, David Guetta, Carl Cox and Chase and Status perform across multiple stages. Handed the brief to be the sole provider of AV with three weeks' notice, UK based CSD Productions deployed an OB truck and three flyaway kits for organiser Live Nation. “We had several weeks to pull together what would normally take six months of planning,” reveals Andrew McQuillan of CSD Productions. “We’ve supplied our OB trucks to Creamfields for the fourth and fifth stages previously, and we’ve hand
UK - You Me at Six (YMAS) have recently returned to the road with a live show two years in the making and a streamlined audio package courtesy of Britannia Row Productions. Although FOH engineer Phil Jones had already managed to escape his temporary, Covid-19 enforced position as a delivery driver for a handful of shows with another artist, his return to life with YMAS gave him the chance to overhaul his audio setup and help sculpt the band’s sound as they reach new heights in both creativity and popularity. “The You Me At Six sound has changed a lot since the release of their latest album, Suckapunch,” says Jones. “It went to No. 1 – which is great – but the sound is richer than ever too, with a lot more track and electronic elements. Of course, there’s still ripping guitars, but the overall sound has more depth to it now, and more dynamic range
