Pharos - Leaderboard - May 2024

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Brit Awards - The 2022 Brit Awards take place at the O2 Arena tonight, with Adele, Ed Sheeran, Dave and Little Simz leading the nominations. All four artists are up for the night's biggest prizes - artist and album of the year - alongside Sam Fender. It will be broadcast live on ITV, and on YouTube for viewers outside the UK.
Last year's Brit Awards took place as part of the government's pilot scheme for the return of live events. COVID restrictions necessitated a mixture of live and virtual performances, with artists like Coldplay, The Weekend and Elton John appearing on tape.
This year, organisers have vowed to "keep everything in the room" - even when that meant scrapping a planned performance from US star Doja Cat, after members of her team tested positive for COVID. As a result, tonight's performances are exclusively coming from British artists - including all fiv

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Ireland - In late 2021, VDC Trading was approached by Murt Whelan Sound to create a 48-channel stagebox which will be core to much of the company’s work in 2022.
Murt Whelan Sound (MWS) is a pro-audio rental and installation company based in Limerick in the Republic of Ireland. It provides professional services nationwide and is a one stop production shop, offering support from initial concept and design right through to the realisation and management of any large-scale event.
MWS constantly invests in responsive, state-of-the-art equipment to ensure it stays ahead of the market and exceeds its customer expectations. It therefore approached VDC Trading to design a custom 19” rack mountable, 48 channel stagebox, which will be central to many of the concerts it plans to do in 2022.
The stagebox has three passive splits for FOH / MON and REC, on 24 channel VDMs.

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On The Beach - The BBC Concert Orchestra will take up a three-year residency in a seaside town to "raise aspirations". Its arrival in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, is due to a collaboration with the charity Orchestras Live and arts organisations in the county. The aim was to "provide learning pathways and improve people's wellbeing", the charity said. It will run workshops in every primary school in the town and hold a free schools concert.
Part of the Create Yarmouth strategy, it hopes to encourage students to get creative with music. “The programme aims to raise aspiration, provide learning pathways and improve people's wellbeing through collaborations with world-class musicians, digital artists, producers and arts managers”, an Orchestras Live spokeswoman said. Pop-up performances in public spaces, as part of a Heritage Action Zone, will also be held.
Pride Restor

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UK - Abbey Road Institute is a specialist music production school and the training ground for the next generation of music producers and sound engineers. Its foundations are the expertise and innovation created at Abbey Road Studios.
Originally based in St Johns Wood as part of the famous studio’s complex, the school’s diploma became so popular with students that it needed to expand its facilities to accommodate the growing demand. During the summer of 2021, the Institute moved into and revived the historic Angel Recording Studios in Islington, near Kings Cross. VDC provided the Institute with a variety of Van Damme cabling as the foundation for the refurbishment; from custom manufactured D25 assemblies on 8 pair Studio Blue to microphone, speaker and console cabling.
The Institute opened the doors to its new home in June 2021. Building on the success of the existi

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Cover Up - Theatres across England have indicated they will continue to ask audiences to wear masks for the safety of their staff and other theatregoers, despite restrictions being lifted later this week.
Prime minister Boris Johnson announced last week that Plan B measures - including mandatory mask wearing in theatres - would be lifted this week. Following his announcement, numerous theatres have said that they plan to continue requesting face coverings inside their venues.
Sheffield Theatres said it had taken the decision to continue with mandatory face coverings beyond 27 January, with this decision reviewed every two weeks in light of the number of cases locally.
“Since the theatres reopened last summer we have been encouraging audiences to wear masks during their visit. We took the decision to introduce mandatory face coverings before Plan B in early Dece

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USA - Symetrix has launched Symetrix Professional Services, fee-based services that “leverage the experience and knowledge of Symetrix applications engineers to provide engineering support for their customers’ projects”.
Symetrix Professional Services include site file programming, custom intelligent module creation, and remote or on-site commissioning.
There is a dedicated in-house team of Symetrix applications engineers who can review the system design to ensure that the selected hardware will work seamlessly in a system. Because it is being reviewed by Symetrix, customers will have the peace of mind that it is approved by the original equipment manufacturer.

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Coachella Returns - Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Kanye West - known as Ye - will headline this year's Coachella festival. It's being held for the first time since 2019 after the 2020 festival was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The festival runs across two weekends in April in Indio, California, with the same line-up appearing on them both. Swedish House Mafia, Flume, Megan Thee Stallion, Disclosure, Doja Cat and Run the Jewels will also perform. Billie Eilish will become the festival's youngest ever headliner.
Celtic Connections - The organisers of Celtic Connections have launched a ‘hybrid’ online version of the musical festival after shows had to be cancelled due to Covid restrictions on crowds. Performances will now be shown online with some screened to smaller audiences at Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall. A small number of larger-scale shows will b

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USA - Amber Solutions has announced that its AC Direct DC Enabler is now available as a demo kit for technical evaluation by consumer, commercial and industrial electrical products manufacturers and semiconductor companies, such as Infineon Technologies, who have already announced an alliance around Amber.
This breakthrough Amber AC direct power system enables DC extraction directly from AC Mains without the use of transformers, rectifiers, or filtering. It eliminates many of the old-tech electromechanical components that are still standard today, enabling a dramatically smaller size footprint, while simultaneously delivering a much more dynamic, configurable power delivery capability. The result is an unprecedented opportunity for manufacturers and semiconductor companies to reinvent how electricity is leveraged, designed and feature-scoped in all electrical products, accor

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UK - For the past 40 years, 5 Star Cases has been manufacturing flight cases that are already trusted by a vast range of industries, ensuring the safe transport of vital equipment around the world, even in the most challenging of environments, safely and securely.
Taking its four decades of experience and expertise, 5 Star is now producing a new range of custom-designed packing crates, which can be used as a cost-effective alternative when flight cases are not required, or as an added level of protection when they are.
Using the same advanced production techniques and extensive infrastructure at its dedicated manufacturing facility in the heart of the Cambridgeshire Fens, 5 Star packing crates are constructed with strength and durability in mind. They can be used for storing and transporting products across different industries and applications, from AV, entertainment,

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Overwhelming Loss - Bring It On the Musical has cancelled its planned UK tour dates after suffering an "overwhelming loss of income" due to omicron disruption. The show was forced to cancel 13 performances during its six-week run at the Southbank Centre in London due to self-isolation requirements, losing hundreds of thousands of pounds, producers said. It continues at the Queen Elizabeth Hall until 22 January, however producer Selladoor Worldwide has now announced that the touring dates that followed will not go ahead. It had been due to visit locations across the UK until 30 July.
A statement from Selladoor said: "Cancelling 13 performances has resulted in an overwhelming loss of income for the production during a peak period that would otherwise have provided a vital financial backbone of the tour. This lost income, amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds, ha

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Austria - The experience of Chameleon Event Production’s personnel, combined with the advanced pathogen eradication tools from sister company Entec UVC SafeClean, twice saved the day, and enabled a fashion-based sales meeting from one of their most loyal and long serving clients to go ahead - in spite of COVID lockdown.
Having worked with global sports and fashion headwear specialists, New Era, since 2014, they were booked to stage an interactive sales meeting for their sales force at the Hilton on the Danube in Vienna, and had done 90% of the prep when Austria announced its lockdown on 19 November 2021.
Chameleon production manager, Sam Parkins, explained how the flexibility of his team, coupled with the trust invested by the client, resulted in the production house reconfiguring its studio in Milton Keynes and staging the event virtually, in a simulated COVID-se

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USA - The Long Reach Long Riders and Behind the Scenes will host their annual fundraising raffle at the USITT Conference 3-5 March in Baltimore.
This year’s raffle will celebrate the 19th anniversary of the Long Reach Long Riders annual charity motorcycle ride. The Riders, who have raised over $800,000 for charity in their years of touring, will be riding 18-24 June on the Blue Ridge Ramble tour through the Appalachian Mountains.
The Behind the Scenes Boutique will also be open for business during the show featuring an assortment of great Behind the Scenes swag and the famous Long Reach Long Rider T-shirts and kazoos.
Tickets for the raffle are an affordable $5 each or 5 for $20 and can be purchased at the Behind the Scenes booth throughout the show. Winning tickets for nine regular prizes and one grand prize will be drawn at 1pm on Saturday, the final day of St

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Further Action - Labour is calling on the government to urgently take further action to support the arts sector - including widening eligibility for the Culture Recovery Fund - warning many “treasured theatres” face collapse without support. The call on the government follows an announcement from chancellor Rishi Sunak that £30m has been added to the CRF.
However, Labour said more needs to be done to ensure the “support is effective” and reaches “those most in need”. The party’s demands include: widening the scope of the Culture Recovery Fund Emergency Resource Grant so that previous recipients, commercial productions, and individuals can apply; speeding up payment through the Culture Recovery Fund so that the self-employed, and freelancers in the culture sector can have their contracts honoured, and an urgent review of the Live Events Reinsurance Scheme, whic

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World - As the LSi and PLASA teams finish up for the festive break, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued readership throughout 2021.
Whilst the pandemic continues to cast its long shadow, it has been encouraging to see the gradual return of the full spectrum of live events, and to bring you technical reports from some of the brightest concert touring, theatre and festival productions across both LSi Online and the magazine.
Our daily online news service will resume on Tuesday, 4 January 2022. Until then, if you fancy a read, you can access LSi’s full 36-year back catalogue free online here.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays - we wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous new year!
The LSi team

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More Cancellations - Almost half of London's major theatres were forced to cancel performances last weekend because of Covid infections, as Omicron plays havoc with live events. Of the 46 full members of the Society of London Theatre that had shows running, 22 scrapped performances.They included Hamilton, Matilda, Wicked, The Lion King, Cinderella, Cabaret and Come From Away.
Producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh said it was "hugely disruptive" and the industry was in a "dreadful state". He told BBC News: "It's literally day-to-day. We spend all morning trying to work out if we can do the show or not. The important thing is, when we do it, it is safe, and the public have been remarkable in that they are, in our experience, turning up mostly to the shows."
Bookings for the first part of 2022 are well below expectations, which i

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Record Spend - A record £4bn was spent making TV shows in the UK in the past year - almost double the figure before the pandemic. TV production slumped during lockdown but rebounded to a new high between October 2020 and September 2021, the British Film Institute (BFI) has said.
Some £4.14bn was spent filming British and foreign shows like Bridgerton and Peaky Blinders in the UK in that time. That compares with the £2.3bn spent in the same period in 2018-19 and is 10 times more than was spent in 2013. The latest figure includes money spent by British TV channels on home-made series like Doctor Who, The Bay, Shetland and Ghosts.
It also includes forthcoming streaming shows like The Essex Serpent from Apple TV+, Andor from Disney+ and Netflix productions like The Sandman and the new series of Bridgerton.
Ne

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Freelancers in the Dark - The coronavirus lockdowns have had a major impact on theatre freelancers, leaving them pessimistic for the future, says the leader of a study. Dr Holly Maples, of the University of Essex. said the "stops and starts" of the lockdown prevented freelancers from being able to plan ahead. She said many did not know whether they would be able to carry on in their profession.
The first part of the report, called Freelancers in the Dark, found 72.4% of respondents felt more pessimistic about their future as a theatre freelancers. Dr Maples, a senior lecturer at the East 15 Acting School at the Colchester university, said: "The closures of theatres greatly affected people's ability to plan and to carry on with the work they had been doing. A lot of people were kind of left high and dry, both by the organizations they were working with [that] couldn't

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Canada - After another uncommon year, Solotech has maintained its ninth position in Systems Contractor News’ Top 50 systems integrators.
At the same time, Solotech confirms its place as Canada’s prime integrator, being the only Canadian company to make it on to the list. The acquisition of CBCI, a Solotech company, in May 2021, has further strengthened Solotech’s expertise in systems integration from coast to coast.
‘’This recognition is the result of the hard work of our team of experts,” said Philip Giffard, global president, sales & systems integration division. ‘’We have kept our place of choice in the market thanks to our strategic approach based on diversification and a wider geographic footprint. Our employees’ innovation and passion remain at the heart of our success, despite the many challenges they had to overcome. I am very proud of t

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Sondheim Remembered - The lights in London's West End were dimmed on Monday night as theatres payed tribute to US composer and songwriter Stephen Sondheim who has died aged 91. The composer and lyricist, famous for creating the musical Sweeney Todd, was described as one of theatre's "greatest geniuses" after his death on Friday.
Sir Cameron Mackintosh said the world had "lost one of its greatest and most original writers". The theatrical producer renamed his Queen's Theatre venue after the composer in 2019. During his illustrious career, he wrote the scores of some of Broadway's best-known shows including Company, Follies and A Little Night Music. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story.
In The Courts - Two ticket touts who made millions of pounds reselling tickets to theatre shows and gigs including Harry Potter and the Curs

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UK - The Association of British Theatre Technicians (ABTT) has announced Mig Burgess Walsh and David Evans as co-chairs. The duo will succeed Richard Bunn, senior consultant at Arup, who navigated the ABTT during the pandemic period.
Walsh is lighting tutor at the Guildford School of Acting, chair of AAPTLE Wellbeing Group, and an active freelancer. Evans is the head of production at National Theatre Wales, former chair of the Production Managers’ Forum and a founding production manager and board member of the Lagos Theatre Festival.
The ABTT says: “The combination of Mig and David’s extensive background in the performing arts, encompassing teaching, touring, programming, production and venue management, alongside their ongoing commitment to improve our industry make them ideally-qualified to lead the ABTT’s council of management over the next two years.

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Hard Times - One third of musicians were still earning nothing after restrictions on live events were lifted this summer, according to UK charity Help Musicians. The music industry is one of the last sectors to recover from the pandemic, it said, with 83% of professional musicians unable to find regular work. The findings are based on a survey of 929 musicians in August. Almost nine in 10 were earning less than £1,000 per month, and 22% were considering giving up music altogether.
Restrictions on live music were removed in England and Wales in July, and Scotland in August, after Covid had kept the live music industry shut for most of the pandemic. Help Musicians said it had seen a 60% increase in people getting in contact for mental health support, with one in eight saying they were experiencing a mental health problem that was preventing them from returning to work.

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Spain - Artists touring to Spain will no longer need visas for short-term engagements in a dramatic change to the current onerous rules. The change follows months of work from LIVE and the Association for British Orchestras (ABO), working alongside Spanish counterparts Asociación Promotores Musicales.
The development represents a significant boost for the sector which has, as a result of Brexit and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, seen European touring become more expensive, more complicated, and more difficult to execute.
Visas have been a significant issue for Spain which, despite representing the fifth largest live music market in the world, posed the most costly and complicated visa application process across the bloc for artists looking to travel for short-term work.
Until now, artists and their promoters have had to make applications for short-term vi

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Safety Concerns - COVID-19 safety concerns are preventing a significant proportion of previously frequent arts attenders from returning to cultural venues, newly released research has suggested.
Among audiences that have not yet returned to in-person performance, less than a third have booked tickets to a cultural event in future, underlining the crucial importance of COVID safety reassurance from venues, according to the joint research by the Insights Alliance, made up of consultancies Indigo, Baker Richards and One Further. The organisations have urged theatres to continue to employing safety measures such as mask wearing and COVID status certification, arguing that failing to do so is “counterproductive”.
Over a six-week period in September and October they surveyed nearly 11,000 people, who were frequent arts attenders before the pandemic. Of those surveyed, 45

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Safe and Inclusive - A set of principles aimed at creating safe and inclusive working spaces in the industry have been updated to include all forms of discrimination. Launched in 2017 in response to the #MeToo movement by the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre, the original set of principles focused specifically on bullying and harassment.
The list has now been updated to cover all forms of discrimination, including racism, and the organisations behind the principles hope they will become standard across the industry. Equity and BECTU are among 21 industry bodies that are supporting the 10 principles and encouraging theatre employers, freelancers and board trustees to adhere to them.
Among the 10 principles are instructions recognising that “harassment or discriminatory language or behaviour may be unlawful under the Equality Act 2010” and that those adhering
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