USA - ATK Audiotek recently deployed a JBL Professional sound reinforcement system at the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Awards, one of the first indoor live awards shows of the year. Now in its eighth year, the iHeartRadio Music Awards honours popular artists across 41 categories, ranging from Song of the Year to the Icon Award. The 2021 ceremony, which was hosted by Usher, was held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles in front of a crowd of 1,500. Performers included The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Dan + Shay, Silk Sonic, Brandi Carlile, Demi Lovato, H.E.R., Doja Cat and Usher. With content ranging from acceptance speeches to high-energy musical performances, the event demanded a sound system with excellent dynamic range. And, with only the venue’s main floor and first of three balconies open, the event required a more focused sound system than a full-capacity show. To meet thes
Poland - Puławy Cultural Centre, known locally as Dom Chemika, has been serving the cultural need of its local community in eastern Poland since 1984. A recent refurbishment has helped bring the centre up to modern standards and TW AUDiO has been at the heart of the renovations. The idea of creating a cultural centre in Puławy was born in the 1960s as a place for entertaining workers from the local chemical plant. This led to the name of Dom Chemika (Chemist’s House) when it opened its doors in the 1980s. The facility focuses primarily on artistic education while supporting and promoting local talents. In addition to this, it hosts theatrical performances as well as concerts and film screenings. The renovation project means Dom Chemika now boasts a 520-seat main auditorium, a 98-seat chamber hall, a music club named Smok and many smaller practice rooms for music and
USA - Forced from the road in early 2020 due to the pandemic, tribute band Brit Floyd is back after kicking off a world tour 29 July at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado beneath an all-Elation lighting rig. The tour is produced and promoted by UK-based CMP Entertainment, who own and supply all of the Elation gear. Elation has enjoyed an excellent relationship with CMP over the years and many of Brit Floyd’s past tours have featured Elation gear. Chas Cole of CMP Entertainment comments: "Eric Loader was supportive of Brit Floyd in its early days with great product at a great price and even though we’ve worked the equipment really hard it’s held together really well and allowed us to produce a great light show year after year." Many have had a hand in shaping the Brit Floyd look over the years, a design that echoes Marc Brickman’s original and classic Pink
UK - 4Wall has won the tender to provide LED to the new extended reality studio at research and innovation centre XPLOR at Production Park in South Kirkby, West Yorkshire. Scheduled to open in autumn 2021, 4Wall has provided all of the LED, processing and support systems for the new XR studio which features a 40.5 SQM LED wall alongside 18 SQM of LED floor. The large-scale XR stage will be part of XPLOR’s Centre for Virtual Production and made up of 162 panels of Roe Ruby 2.3mm LED for the back wall and 72 panels of high-resolution Roe BM4 Black Marble 4.7mm LED for the floor, enabling the centre to deliver high-quality extended reality production, events and training to businesses and students across the region. 4Wall has been working in the field of virtual events for a number of years, specialising in recent years in the XR workflow, delivering high-profil
Germany - Recently Audi revealed its new all-electric Q4 e-tron and Q4 Sportback e-tron vehicles in what the company called a ‘digital world premiere’. It was a complex production, with a total of 45 live streams, each one in three languages, routed to media in 28 different countries. The audio mixing for this high profile launch was entrusted to Yamaha Rivage PM digital mixing systems. A live broadcast centre was built within Munich’s Eisbach Studios, with five themed studios. From these, Audi delivered a varied, interactive programme of digital workshops and interviews, Q&A sessions, round tables, virtual photo shoots, live presentations and a press conference, with senior Audi staff describing the design and many innovations of the new vehicles. As well as delivering the elaborate production in high quality audio to Audi’s TV channel and all major socia
Australia - Expressions of Interest are now open for Vivid Sydney 2022 under a unified, creative vision - The Soul of Sydney. The vision will inform all submissions across the Light, Music and Ideas programs as well as a new Cross Art Form category. All sectors of the creative industries are invited to investigate what truly is the soul of the Harbour City - its people, places and essence. Creators from around the world are encouraged to share unexpected stories that will engage, inspire and excite audiences, drawing inspiration from Sydney’s hidden spaces, architecture, global icons, people, food, music and ideas. Destination NSW chief executive officer Steve Cox said: “Vivid Sydney provides a global platform for artists, musicians, creatives and thought leaders, to continually push the envelope when it comes to creativity. I look forward to seeing the inno
USA - Founded by a group of families committed to doing church differently, Auburn Community Church (ACC) in Alabama is a non-denominational worship centre that hosts both in-person and live-stream services for a diverse congregation. The church recently upgraded to a larger camera system and needed an intercom that could provide a reliable channel of communication between camera operators and the video director. With this newfound requirement, ACC turned to Pliant Technologies’ CrewCom digital wireless intercom system, as well as its SmartBoom headsets. Although the system was originally purchased with the camera operators and the video director in mind, the church found many additional uses for CrewCom’s communication capabilities. With CrewCom, the church’s producer can communicate with the entire production team, ensuring seamless transitions within the program and
Italy - Liguria, overlooking the country’s northwest coast has always been a favourite destination for writers and artists, such as Byron, Shelley and D’Annunzio, and the picturesque villages of the Cinque Terre, with their colourful houses, cliff-hanging trails and terraced slopes are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Almost 500 events took place during the region’s 2021 summer season, including many highly original projects, such as August’s Musica dal Mare (Music from the Sea), a series of evenings in three of the riviera’s key locations (Calata Mandraccio in Genova’s Old Port, Giardini a mare in Santa Margherita Ligure and Rapallo promenade). The technical set-up for these events comprised a maxi video screen, a lighting rig combining moving head fixtures and conventional units and an impressive sound system, but the unusual aspect was that the whole
UK - Recognising that the beleaguered live events industry needed an interactive live streaming platform when the first COVID-19 lockdown hit back in April 2020, a trio of production professionals collectively known as Be Square, pooled their resources to come up with precisely that. They knew that if their idea was to have both relevance and sustainability, the event needed to offer a shared, online social experience for a group of up to five people - just as if they would all be attending in person. They should be able to appear as PIPs - tiny thumbnails in the foreground of the show - chat, mute, or generally discuss the performance via message posts on the scroll bar, all within the comfort of their respective homes. In 15 months, the company has already supported a number of events, from shows at the Battersea Arts Centre, to After The Flood in the Spiegeltent, an
UK - Describing himself as a jack-of-all-trades musician, Jesse Quin plays down his talent as bassist in the band Keane. For the last seven years he’s also run Old Jet, his own recording studio in Suffolk and recently got himself an iD44, calling his new Audient audio interface “a lifesaver”. He explains: “The iD44 was the solution I was looking for to be able to incorporate people’s laptops into my setup. So I have it on my patch bay and can use fancy outboard EQs and effects, but also just plug a mic straight into the back of it if I want to. It’s like I’d written a list of what I needed it to do, and then Audient made it. Absolutely perfect.” The most powerful of all of Audient’s audio interfaces, iD44 is 20in / 24out, offering ultimate flexibility in the studio and plenty of options for expansion. The two JFET instrument inputs are ideal for Jesse
USA - The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park in San Diego has installed three DiGiCo consoles. A Quantum7 is the front-of-house mix desk, with a DiGiCo SD10 for monitor mixing and an SD12 on hand for any auxiliary mix and processing needs. The three consoles, three SD-Racks located on stage, and a Mini-Rack in the amp room are all on a dual Optocore network, and the entire system was designed and integrated by Solotech. “There are several reasons why we chose the DiGiCo consoles, and they are all areas that the brand excels in,” says Aaron Beck, business development manager and senior engineer at Solotech. “First, there’s capacity - the Quantum7 can run 200-plus inputs. Then there’s the Quantum processing power.” Becks cites features like Quantum’s Mustard Processing channel strips, Spice Rack plugin-style native FPGA processing options, and Nodal Processing all as stan
UK - Cabaret venue Proud Embankment in London’s West End was determined to have a high-impact post-Covid reopening. One of the first venues to open its doors after the second lockdown, Proud had undergone a renovation, with a major investment in its production values and the installation of 14 new Robe Pointe moving lights. The new Pointes were specified by Proud Embankment’s in-house lighting designer Jack Knight and purchased specially for the venue by regular lighting supplier, North London rental and installation specialist, Halo. The Pointes are a completely new addition to the existing house lighting rig and are positioned all around the stage with several on a goal post at the back, from where they provide the main effects lighting looks. Robe’s highly versatile Pointe was an easy choice for Jack. “It is a properly ‘multipurpose fixture’ in e
UK - With Glastonbury Festival cancelled for a second year, an online celebration - Live at Worthy Farm - was held in its stead on Saturday 22 May 2021. Filmed over a week and beamed as live around the world, the five-hour virtual festival echoed the glories of the full event missed by so many, in spite of the access problems suffered by the online audience. For many artists it was the first opportunity to play live in a year or more. The event highlight came with a performance from Coldplay, lit by multi award-winning lighting and show designer, Sooner Routhier of Sooner Rae Creative. Routhier incorporated 60 Ayrton Perseo Profile and 36 Ayrton Domino IP65-rated multifunction lighting fixtures, supplied by Neg Earth, into her design to handle the demanding outdoor conditions. “I needed a large format profile that was IP65 rated because the site was open to the elements in
USA - The annual Red Wing Roots Music Festival in Mt. Solon, VA’s Natural Chimneys Park, offers the best of roots, bluegrass and string band music from Virginia and beyond. Martin Audio rental partners, Southard Audio, have been providing audio services at this five-stage event since it began in 2013 (providing technical support for the four stages). The festival, which is attended by around 4,500 people, is a collaboration between Black Bear Productions LLC and The Steel Wheels - the latter a nationally touring band, who perform throughout the US, with many of the members living nearby in the Shenandoah Valley. Southard Audio have a long relationship with Martin Audio systems, and business partner, Jason Misterka, was in no doubts why he wanted to redeploy the large, scalable Wavefront Precision line array system that had proved such a success last year. “When we
UK - Part of University College London (UCL), The Bloomsbury Theatre works with students and researchers to ‘bring ground-breaking discoveries to the stage’. In 2018, 50 years after its first performance, the landmark Brutalist building reopened its doors following a major renovation project to update its main auditorium which now boasts more than 500 luxurious seats. The final part of the renovation was the installation and commissioning of a significant EM Acoustics HALO-C PA system by theatre specialists, Autograph Sound. Autograph’s Adam Broom explains: “There’s a bit of a back story here given that we in fact supplied the system before the renovation. As it made no sense to replace a system that had only just been replaced, it went into storage. Julian Brooks was appointed technical manager of The Bloomsbury in 2019 and he soon realised that the system n
USA - To provide quality sound for the high-profile 2021 Billboard Music Awards, ATK Audiotek recently deployed a range of Harman Professional sound reinforcement solutions for indoor and outdoor stages at the Microsoft Theatre in Hollywood. Since 1990, the Billboard Music Awards show (BBMAs) has honoured the music industry’s highest-charting artists, with this year featuring live performances by the Weeknd, Doja Cat, P!nk and Twenty One Pilots among many others. Following an audience-free ceremony in 2020, this year’s BBMAs welcomed a crowd of more than 500 in the plaza outside of the Microsoft Theatre - one of the largest awards show audiences of the year thus far. Musical acts performed on a stage in front of the crowd, while nominees sat by the main awards stage nearby. Additionally, several performances took place inside the theatre. Dick Clark Producti
USA - After an 18-month Covid-caused hiatus, many of hip-hop’s biggest names played Rolling Loud at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium in late July. Over 130 artists including ASAP Rocky, Travis Scott and Post Malone featured. Turning up the adrenalin level higher were bold light and video shows that drew on the big presence of powerful, flexible rigs created by Steve Lieberman and his team at SJ Lighting, including production manager Max Robin. Known for his festival work, Lieberman was responsible for production design at the festival’s four stages (Cîroc, Audiomack, Monster Energy, and Dryp), as well the VIP area. Providing abundant punch at the main Cîroc stage as well as at the second Audiomack stage were some 200 Chauvet Professional Maverick MK3 Wash, COLORado 1 Solo and COLORado 1 QS fixtures supplied by 4Wall Entertainment. This firepower allowed LDs Ma
USA - Since 2008, the Rooster Walk Festival at Pops Farm has been a Memorial Day tradition in Martinsville, VA in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In addition to providing a boost to the local economy, it has raised money for a scholarship fund that donates musical instruments to schools and students. Then Covid happened. Not only did the pandemic force the cancellation of the 2020 festival, it’s lingering effects also nixed this year’s planned Memorial Day event. Undeterred, Johnny Buck and William Baptist, the festival’s producers and their team, moved the event back a few weeks and served it up in a modified form as an outdoor concert by jam band heavyweights moe.# Dubbed the ‘moe.Morial Show’, the two day, four-set performance featured nonstop improvisational blends of old and new rock. Jason Patsel went with the flow, supporting every twist and
UK - The first Christmas light trail to take place in Windsor Great Park is set for this winter. Windsor Great Park Illuminated will open on 18 November 2021 and run until 9 January 2022. The experience is created and produced by global events and entertainment group IMG (Hampton Court Palace Festival, Natural History Museum Ice Rink, Hyde Park Winter Wonderland, Taste Festivals) and DEAG Entertainment Group / Christmas Garden Deutschland (creator of 15 light trails in Europe). For the first time this winter, trees, paths and the Obelisk Pond within Windsor Great Park will be ‘awash with hundreds of thousands of lights, lasers, projections and holograms’. Both celebrating and respecting the natural surroundings, and flora and fauna of the park, this very special light trail will feature colourful and brilliant light installations including floating water lili
USA - The $85m Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, the new outdoor home of the San Diego Symphony, is located on the edge of San Diego Bay and in the heart of the city’s downtown. Designed to complement the sails of the nearby San Diego Convention Centre, the concert shell is wrapped in a translucent flexible material that covers a generous 13,000sq.ft performance space for accommodating the full orchestra and guest artists. Depending on the event, audience capacities and setups are able to vary widely, from intimate two- and four-person table seating arrangements to standing crowds of up to 10,000. ‘The Shell’, as it has come to be known, features an immersive L-Acoustics PA system designed in Soundvision by Françcois ‘Frankie’ Desjardins of Solotech. Working in tandem with sound consultant Shawn Murphy, Solotech integrated the venue’s full AVL system. “It
USA - When Orlando’s Discovery Church set out to build a new main broadcast campus, the overriding goal was to create a space that was comfortable and inspiring for in-person worship but also technically optimized for streaming of Sunday services and other special events. Audio was a critical component in achieving the technical goals, and a keystone element of the solution is a reinforcement system based around Meyer Sound Leopard line array loudspeakers. “We were looking for a major step up from the aging point source system at our old broadcast campus,” says Zack Howes, technical director at the new Sand Lake campus. “We wanted a system with higher output and greater intelligibility, and also rider-friendly. We wanted to up our own game at weekend services but also be ready for high-profile special events.” Long before “groundbreaking” on the new
Australia - When the family-owned Millett Group hospitality and tourism group opened Salty’s restaurant and bar, owner and operator Christian Millett wanted to create a venue that paid tribute to the history of surfing culture in Australia and Bondi Beach in particular. Millett’s vision called for a more relaxed and fun environment with a serious PA system capable of handling it’s various audio needs. Millett turned to Pro Audio Video Technology (PAVT) who designed a custom audio system from Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW) for the venue. The Millett Group and PAVT have a long-standing history with EAW having installed EAW PA systems in the company’s various venues around the region for the past 10 years. “I have always been impressed with the quality and durability of EAW’s equipment,” says Millett. “Our venues operate seven days a week, year-round and our
USA - Laudio Technology recently outfitted the newly-opened Voodoo Bayou restaurant in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, with JBL Professional, Crown and BSS audio solutions. Presented by True Grit Hospitality Group, the organisation behind the successful Calaveras Cantina, Voodoo Bayou serves southern Cajun cuisine and cocktails in a vibrant atmosphere reminiscent of classic Louisiana architecture. The restaurant consists of a main first-floor dining room with a bar and stage for live performances, as well as a mezzanine level with a second bar overlooking the main dining area. Voodoo Bayou required a sophisticated audio system with a simple, portable control interface. To achieve this, Laudio Technology equipped the restaurant with an assortment of JBL loudspeakers powered by Crown amplifiers and a BSS signal processor with the HiQnet Motion Control app for convenient iP
Iceland - British rental house TSL Lighting is now offering a range of VL2600 Profile and VL2600 WASH luminaires from Vari-Lite to provide customers with a powerful LED workhorse. The Basingstoke-based company brought in the VL2600s for global video game developer Riot Games’ League of Legends esports tournament in Reykjavik, Iceland. Lighting designer for the event, Mat Stovall, collaborated with TSL Lighting’s Dom Sheerman to source an LED lighting package that would suit his needs – a reliable, powerful workhorse fixture that would give him powerful wash and profile capabilities with consistency in discharge for both the in-house crowd and the live-stream cameras. “The VL2600s were fantastic - bright, lovely color rendition, great color temperature control. It's nice to have a new workhorse,” says Stovall. “This is the first time TSL Lighting
