UAE - Adam Bassett, lighting designer and founding partner of Woodroffe Bassett Designs, specified a wealth of IP65-rated Ayrton fixtures for the entertainment lighting rig for Expo 2020 Dubai’s central venue, the Al Wasl dome. The rig included 182 Ayrton Perseo S profiles, 116 Ayrton Domino S profiles and 16 Ayrton Huracán LT long-throw profiles.
Postponed for over a year due to COVID, Expo 2020 Dubai finally ran for six months between 1 October 2021 and 31 March this year, and was the largest event ever to be held in the Arab world. The indisputable centrepiece was the Al Wasl dome, a 130m-diameter by 67m-tall arching steel trellis that also became the world’s largest 360° projection surface.
Its translucent dome crowned the central Al Wasl Plaza which, as the

USA - Xytech has appointed Keith Buckley as the company’s president and CEO, succeeding Richard Gallagher, the company’s founder. Gallagher will now advise the company’s board as envisioned when Xytech was acquired by Banneker Partners in December 2021.
Most recently, Buckley served as the CEO of Federos, an AI-optimised analytics and automation software solutions provider for complex networks that was recently sold to Oracle. He previously served as president and CEO of The Switch Enterprises.
“I’m joining Xytech as the company is poised for significant growth, and look forward to leveraging Xytech’s highly skilled team, strong base of product offerings, long history of core successes and its world-class customer base,” Buckley says. “The investments we’re planning and will execute upon in the immediate future will substantially increase Xytech’s

Denmark - DPA Microphones has welcomed an array of new team members. The additions are company-wide, with new hires in product management, research and development, sales, marketing, and production.
Among the recent hires is Helga Somava, who recently joined DPA as one of the brand’s directors of product management. A graduate of Copenhagen Engineering College with a focus on export engineering, Somava brings leadership experience from past directorial and managerial roles at Bang & Olufsen, GN Netcom and most recently at NUORI ApS, where she served as COO. In her new position, Somava will oversee the development of new products as they align with DPA’s goals in the industry.
Another recent addition to the team is Torben Ekenberg, the company’s new head of research and development. In this role, Ekenberg, who holds a variety of degrees in electro-mechanical
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OPUS X4 PROFILE – the most powerful LED moving head from Cameo to date

The OPUS® X4 PROFILE is the new flagship model from Cameo and is among the most powerful LED moving heads on the market. Equipped with a 1,400-watt LED white light engine, this spot profile moving head produces an enormous light output of 50,000 lm, providing powerful spot and gobo projections on even the largest stages and much more.
www.cameolight.com

Spain - National state-owned public-service television broadcaster RTVE recently teamed up with Antonio Banderas’ television production company, Teatro Soho Televisión (TST), to produce the 10-episode series of Las Tres Puertas, a new arts and culture show for its flagship TVE La 1 channel.
Presented by María Casado, a distinguished journalist and news presenter, and a key member of Banderas’ production team, the show featured guest interviews with luminaries from the worlds of culture, science, politics, business and sport, together with live performances by artists from Spain and around the world.
The weekly programme was produced live in RTVE’s Studio 6 in Sant Cugat, just north of Barcelona. A striking feature of the production was the stark visually arresting set, the appearance of which changed every week. In keeping with the set design, the sound

UK - Graduate engineers from Siemens have developed a geo-locating lighting system, which is being used as part of the Green Space Dark Skies project to create artworks in National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Geolights has been designed to allow thousands of people to create artistic displays in landscapes, led by Walk the Plank and commissioned as part of Unboxed: Creativity in the UK. More than 20,000 volunteers will create lighting patterns using the system that will be captured on film and broadcast as short films online.
The devices developed include GPS-enabled technology alongside innovations including Internet of Things (IoT), realtime location tracking, energy storage, and wireless connectivity. By remotely changing the colour of the lights, each participant will effectively become a ‘pixel’ within a coordinated image of live artworks wi

USA - After two years of waiting, fans of the Hangout Festival returned to the Gulf Shores beachfront for a weekend of live music. Headliners included Post Malone, Fallout Boy, Halsey, Tame Impala and Megan Thee Stallion. More than 40,000 fans turned out for the sold-out, three-day event, and Bandit Lites provided the festival lighting system for the main Hangout Stage and the Surf Stage.
Bandit’s vice president of production, Dizzy Gosnell, has designed the festival lighting rig for many seasons, and he meticulously works to ensure the headliners on each stage have a plethora of lighting to work with from washes, spots, beams, strips/strobes and blinders/safety lights spanning across both rigs.
“The first thing I try to get is to layer the lamps on each truss,” explains Gosnell. “For example, having lamps perched from the top chord, outrigged down from the t

UK - Located in the heart of Newcastle’s vibrant city centre, The Lofts, which opened in August last year, has already earned a reputation for being a new ‘super club’, welcoming high-profile artists and delivering some of the liveliest nights out in the city.
The 1,500-capacity venue was co-founded by directors Rob Seaman, John Dance, and Marty Smith, whose extensive nightlife experiences in the Balearics and beyond drive the ethic at The Lofts. And that ethic extends to the L-Acoustics K3, which is a key part of the overall experience, designed and installed by Adlib to deliver excellent coverage and crystal-clear audio throughout the venue.
“The club’s owners approached Adlib after we’d been recommended to them by a mutual acquaintance,” recalls Nick Whitehead, Adlib’s project manager and project lead on The Lofts. “They came to us with an ambitio
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Case Study: Hans Zimmer Live

When award winning film composer Hans Zimmer brought his smash-hit tour Hans Zimmer Live to North America fall 2024, the show's audio team sought out to bring infrafrequency bass to the show to add new depth to the show's audio experience. The team chose Danley Sound Labs.

Norway - Det Norske Teatret (the Norwegian Theatre) in Oslo houses three stages in its main building in downtown Oslo, plus one more in another venue in the city run by the same team, all of which work on a busy repertory schedule. Together at least 25 original productions are created annually, in the Norwegian language of Nynorsk, and some guest works are hosted.
Also known for high production values, the theatre has recently invested in 15 Robe Esprite moving lights for its 250-capacity Scene 2.
The theatre’s resident lighting designer Torkel Skjærven, explained that they previously had Robe ColorWash 750AT Tungsten moving lights in the black box Scene 2 space, and these have worked hard and reliably for over 10 years. However, the time arrived to replace them with a more modern LED light source.
The drive to convert the theatre’s lighting to LED has bee

Europe - Gary Numan took to the road in April with a moody and ethereal lighting design created by award winning LA-based designer Dustin Snyder.
An essential objective of the design was to ensure that the fans could see Numan and his band’s expressive faces from all parts of the room and also on camera. For that reason, Snyder sought out the precise framing capability and familiar CMY colour palette of the VL2600 Wash from Vari-Lite.
Atmospheric and moody, the design is inspired by Numan’s three red stripes of facial war paint, from his portrait on the cover of the Intruder album, and centres around a heavily backlit, multi-layered, video and lighting design.
The main scenic element on stage is a huge video wall that oozes ominous, cinematic insights into a broken planet, destroyed by humanity, as Numan manifests as the planet’s own lamenting voice.

USA - The NAMM Show finally made its much-anticipated return to Southern California last week with international delegates from the music production and pro sound industries coming together at the Anaheim Convention Centre.
Alongside all the booths and exhibits, visitors enjoyed a series of outdoor shows from a variety of bands and musicians on the Grand Plaza Stage, located directly outside the main convention centre entrance, with sound provided by a Nexo STM modular line array system supplied and deployed by Minnesota-based events services company Reach Communications.
Side by side hangs of 12 each STM M46 main and B112 bass extension modules with two M28 down-fills were used on either side of the stage, while six pairs of Nexo Geo M10 cabinets were used as front-fills. With other buildings in close proximity, a controlled low frequency dispersion was a particular r

UK - The new 3,500-capacity Swansea Arena forms a central part of the new £135m Copr Bay regeneration programme in the Welsh city.
The latest of Ambassador Theatre Group’s (ATG) 58 operator run venues, the venue has been equipped with a JBL VTX A8 line array, installed by Glantre Engineering following a competitive tender issued by main contractors, Buckingham Group Contracting. Consultant on the project was Neill Woodger Acoustics and Theatre Design. Glantre’s contract as system integrator was a turnkey, covering rigging, drapes, full AV (including IPTV) and lighting, as well as the audio component - not only in the main event rooms but also the meeting rooms.
However, the recommendation for JBL’s compact line array had come from ATG’s head of technical operations, Stuart Graham, who had been involved in the project from the outset. “We were able to have so

USA - Allen & Heath featured the latest additions to its installation range at InfoComm 2022. Making their InfoComm debuts were the recently released AHM-32 and AHM-16 matrix processors, the CC-7 and CC-10 Touch Panels for Custom Control plus a trio of compact Dante expanders.
Harnessing technology from the AHM-64 Audio Matrix Processor, AHM-32 and AHM-16 open up the platform to the full spectrum of installed audio environments - from a single boardroom to a complete campus - with emphasis on simplicity of programming and control, plus expandable audio networking and I/O capabilities.
Three Dante interfaces from Allen & Heath’s Everything I/O range of audio expanders will be making their first ISE appearance: the DT20 with 2 mic/line inputs on combi connectors; the DT02 with two line outputs on XLR; and the DT22 with 2x2 I/O on Phoenix connectors.
The

USA - Waves Audio has expanded its commercial audio line with the introduction of the CA3000-MX Commercial Audio Mixer.
Waves CA3000-MX offers powerful mixing and built-in processing, plus the option to expand processing, by adding plugins from Waves’ massive catalogue. The CA3000-MX system is compatible with standard ASIO audio or Dante network configurations.
CA3000-MX is suitable for corporate, commercial, government, educational or house-of-worship installations that demands a high level of audio quality and advanced processing flexibility. Housed in a compact half-width 2U rack-mount chassis, CA3000-MX couples a powerful digital audio processing engine with an install-ready version of the industry-proven Waves eMotion LV1 mixer, supporting up to 32 stereo inputs, 24 stereo aux mix outputs plus L/R/C/M outs, and a 12x8 stereo matrix.
Integration and setup

USA - The winners of the ESTA Members Choice Awards were announced during The NAMM Show in Anaheim. ESTA member exhibitors nominated new products, and ESTA members, who attended The NAMM Show, voted on their favourites in two categories, Equipment and Gadget.
In the Equipment category, Altman Lighting was awarded the prize for their AIP-200 Hydra PAR, a compact 200W RGBL IP65-rated and convection-cooled zoom PAR. “It’s always gratifying to receive recognition for a product that so many people put so much hard work into,” says Nicolas Champion, Altman’s vice-president of sales and marketing. “And when it’s ESTA members that are recognising your product, it’s extra special. We are very proud to support the work that ESTA and its members do for our industry and community and are greatly honoured by this award.”
In the Gadget category, Link USA took home t

UK - Full-service video and lighting company 4Wall has extended its stock of Elation Artiste series LED moving heads into Europe with the purchase of the Artiste Monet Profile, Artiste Mondrian Profile FX and Artiste Rembrandt Wash luminaires.
The purchase complements 4Wall US’ investment in Mondrian, Rembrandt, Monet and Artiste Van Gogh units. The sale took place through Entedi, Elation’s exclusive distribution partner in the UK, working closely with Elation’s European office and Elation business development manager, Graham Hill.
David March, director of business development 4Wall, comments: “Following on from our recent investment in Elation fixtures in the US, we are pleased to have placed a significant order with Elation’s UK distributor Entedi for Artiste fixtures. We have chosen from the Artiste family the Monet, Mondrian and Rembrandt for their full

USA - Over 16,000 athletes representing 800 teams from 40 countries participated in the 2022 Allstar World Championship in Orlando this spring.
Craig Huddleston, the designer and show director, comments: “This is a competition, but it needs to be fun. We wanted to highlight the athletes and make them feel like rockstars when they ran out on stage.”
Huddleston and his team at AVOS agency succeeded in doing this in spectacular fashion. Athletes competing in 50 different divisions were greeted with a walk-on light and video display reminiscent of a NBA championship game, complete with flurries of strobing and aerial effects, as well as dynamic neon-like video wall patterns heralding their arrival.
Helping them accomplish this on the event’s main stage was a 4Wall Entertainment Nashville supplied rig that featured over 300 Chauvet Professional F 5IP LED panels

UK - Specialist set designer Diagon has created a new 40,000sq.ft workshop in Erith, southeast London. The facility doubles the company's indoor footprint and will house specialist departments for carpentry, engineering, paint and CAD.
A provider of bespoke scenic build and installation services for the retail, exhibition and event sectors, Diagon works with clients including Christie's auction house, George P Johnson, the BRIT Awards and artist and stage designer, Es Devlin.
Tom Sabin, managing director, comments: “This fabulous new facility marks a huge milestone for Diagon. Coming just after our 21st anniversary, we have doubled our fabrication capacity, created a new studio department with incredible draughting and design capability and added some fantastic staff to the team. With a busy summer ahead, we now have the ability to further step up the scale and qu

UAE - Lighting designers Travis Hagenbuch and Bob Dickinson lit the Expo 2020 Dubai Closing Ceremony and turned to Elation Professional’s powerful Proteus Excalibur beam moving head to create a spectacular finale look that brought to a close the six-month Expo journey.
The Emmy-award winning designers - who also lit Expo’s Opening Ceremony back in September - sought a compact, IP-rated beam light with power to project an impactful ring of light out of the Al Wasl Dome. “We were tasked with how to make it happen within the constraints we had,” comments Travis Hagenbuch, who notes that the brief came from Expo 2020 director-general Reem Al-Hashimi. “It was a beautiful poetic moment, simple and elegant, and a fitting way to end the Expo.”
The Expo story began during the Opening Ceremony when a young Emirate girl was given a ring, which unlocked a world of dis

Italy - The RCF Arena, billed as the largest outdoor music venue in Europe is equipped with a total of 410 high-end loudspeakers and approximately two megawatts of sound power.
The inauguration of the arena took place with a concert-event that celebrated Ligabue's 30-year career. In 2015, the Italian rock artist set a European record with 150,000 paying admissions for a single artist, already amplified by an RCF audio system. The space, covered mainly by grass, includes all the services and amenities for event production, including a proper lawn slope of 5% and a "guitar pick" configuration divided into five main areas to ensure optimal visibility and acoustics.
The stage is located in the lowest part of the Arena in a central position with a viewing angle of 110° - an optimal value for the audience to fully enjoy any event. The venue is centrally located, with airp

UK - The eyes of the world were on the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Concert to witness a host of big-name singers perform on a specially created stage in front of Buckingham Palace. As the royal family, politicians, dignitaries and the public looked on, a show fit for a queen unfolded, backed by LED screen content driven by Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 media servers.
More than 200sq.m. of Roe Black Quartz LED screens, supplied by Creative Technology, were erected on the stage, which surrounded the famous Victoria Memorial statue in front of the Palace. These were split into one large LED screen upstage centre, and eight LED pillars edging out toward the audience.
Tasked with media server programming was Matthew Lee, who was approached by lighting designer for the event, Nigel Catmur. “We had two Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 servers, one main and one backup,” says Lee. “LED sc

UK - LSi is sad to report that John Simpson, co-founder of White Light and chairman of technical entertainment charity Backup, passed away on the morning of 11 June after a short battle with cancer. He was 79 years old and is survived by his partner, Sue, and three children.
In a tribute to its founder, White Light has published the following statement: “We are heartbroken to bring you the news that our founder and former chairman John Simpson passed away (…). Those of you who were lucky enough to know John, or work with him, will know what a brilliant person he was and how this is not only a huge loss to White Light but also the wider industry. John had a lifelong passion for theatre lighting and his co-founding of WL was both a pioneering and revolutionary move; forever changing the way the industry would operate. Not only did he have incredible foresight bu

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