USA - A major mural unveiling took place in downtown Minneapolis recently - heralded by a weekend of celebratory events - when a new 100ft high artwork of Prince, featuring three shots of the Minneapolis musician, was revealed for the first time.
This $500,000 Crown Our Prince project, as it is known, has been under development for seven years, with the mural undertaken by Florida street painter Hiero Veiga.
For the Purple block party to coincide with the reveal, local company Slamhammer Audio were brought into handle production, including the sound reinforcement. Having been a loyal customer of Martin Audio for the past two decades, they fielded a combination of eight Martin Audio W8LC Compacts, eight WS218X subs and a pair of W8LM Mini for front-fills. For dela

Australia - Optimal Audio has appointed Audio Brands as its exclusive distributor in Australia.
Based in Sydney, Audio Brands is focused on the installation and production markets and specialises in commercial audio and AV solutions, supplying Australia through a wide network of dealers and integration partners. With exclusive distribution for a number of leading global brands, Audio Brands has developed a strong reputation for customer service.
Don McConnell, director of Audio Brands Australia, comments: “We’re thrilled to be representing such an innovative range of products. The experienced team behind Optimal Audio truly understand the requirements of the commercial audio market, and it’s refreshing to see a focus on the user interface. The Optimal Audio range complements our existing brands perfectly and we’re looking forward to introducing the Optimal Audi

Europe - LiteNordic will no longer distribute Ayrton products in Norway, Denmark and Sweden from 31 July, the French lighting manufacturer has announced.
From 1 August, sales enquiries should be made to Matt Hallard, Ayrton’s European sales director, with LiteNordic supporting sales made before 31 July and under warranty thereafter.
“Ayrton is now actively inviting Nordic distributors and industry captains looking for an exciting new challenge to get in touch,” comments Hallard. “We are very grateful to LiteNordic for the past two years of dedication and hard work, but agree that a change in distributorship is now the way forward. We will continue to work closely with LiteNordic until 31 July to ensure a seamless transition to new distribution partnerships. There’s a wealth of stellar companies out there whom we are yet know and we look forward to meeting t
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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.

UK - Pro Media Audio Video EU, part of the Clair Global Group, has promoted Tom Williams to associate director. Working closely alongside director Eddie Thomas, Williams will now take on more responsibility for the company’s future growth.
Pro Media’s European arm has been strategically built up since its launch in Spring ’21 and with many integral project wins underway - from sporting venues to music destinations and retail activity - Williams will help to navigate the next phase of business.
Williams, who brings a wealth of industry knowledge into his new role, comments: “This is a key time to be a part of Pro Media’s growth in Europe. Our team is expanding in anticipation of some very exciting work and I look forward to further developing what we started 15 months ago.”
Director Eddie Thomas adds: “We’ve been building the brand at an impressi

UK - Dynamic projection specialists, Polestar Productions, has further invested in Green Hippo media servers, adding the new compact yet powerful Nevis+ to its stock. With 25 years of experience, Polestar Productions specialises in providing projection mapping, holographic projection and dynamic projection for all types of events, conferences, exhibitions, product launches, award ceremonies and more.
Tony Gill, managing director at Polestar Productions comments: “We have been long time users of Green Hippo Media Servers, so know the software well, and have always been impressed by the flexibility they offer. The user interface makes it easy to create stunning visual displays. Green Hippo has always been the obvious choice for us – it ticks all the boxes.”
He continues: “The new Hippotizer Nevis+ fitted our requirements for a compact yet powerful media server,

UK - DiGiCo has announced the release of its latest Version 3.0 software update, increasing the processing power of its small footprint S-Series consoles. Version 3.0 offers an optional software expansion that significantly increases the channel count from 48 to 60 flexi channels and 24 flexi busses, turning S-Series consoles into an S21+ or an S31+.
V3.0 includes two new Master Buss configurations: LCR (Left Centre Right) or LRM (Left Right Mono), providing additional control on the channels over the LCR blend or the LRM Mono Gain. LCR or LRM are ideal for running an expanded speaker setup or sending out a mono mix alongside your stereo mix. And increasing the Master Buss size doesn’t introduce any compromises: you still have access to all your busses and channels.
Software version 2.2 introduced OSC Control of Snapshots. Version 3.0 extends the OSC control capabi

USA - Dead & Company are back on the road for their 2022 summer tour which kicked off in mid-June at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The tour is powered by a system featuring Meyer Sound’s new Panther large-format linear line array loudspeaker.
The band further augmented its repertoire of tunes while UltraSound - decades-long audio provider for the Grateful Dead and successor ensembles - assembled the largest system of Panther loudspeakers in North America, and the first to roll out on a USA tour.
To cover expansive audience areas in a mix of sports stadiums and larger sheds, UltraSound is carrying a Panther inventory that allows reconfiguration for venue size. For stadiums, a typical deployment is four identical arrays - two main front and two side - each comprising 14 Panther loudspeakers, with four Panther-W wide coverage versions flown under 12 Panther-L long-
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BikeFest Spain 2025 - Join the ride!

BikeFest Spain is set to return for its fourth consecutive year, inviting cyclists from across the industry to join the 360km ride towards ISE in Barcelona. From 31 January to 2 February 2025, riders will again rally in Valencia, cycling along the Mediterranean coast in support of industry causes.
For more information and to sign up, visit: www.joinbikefest.com

Spain - After postponing many of its scheduled 2020 dates due to the pandemic, this year Spanish artist Pablo López's Unikornio tour finally resumed and is enjoying great successes. Spanish full-service company, Ilusovi, is in charge of supplying sound and lighting equipment for the tour, which is one of the first in Spain to deploy a DiGiCo Quantum338 console.
Although Lopez has increasingly played bigger venues, one console is used for both FOH and monitors. Max Miglin, the artist's trusted sound technician, manages both mixes and explains why he has chosen to use a DiGiCo Quantum338 for this latest tour.
“Ilusovi had recently acquired a Quantum338, and I was able to get to know it up close on a course organised by the DiGiCo’s Spanish distributor, RMS Proaudio, at their facility,” says Miglin. “The Quantum338 has great processing power, so I’m delighted t

UK - Late Friday night, as they concluded their 90-minute set on Glastonbury’s acoustic stage, headliners Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott walked out for their first encore. Evoking an earlier time in Heaton’s career, they performed a soulful version of Caravan of Love, a song that was a No. 1 hit for Heaton when he was a member of the Housemartins.
Embracing the music and enhancing its magical effect was a Patrick Sollitt lightshow that he ran on his ChamSys MagicQ MQ500M.
“Caravan of Love, was my favourite look,” said Sollitt. “It was simple, nothing very complicated, just two colours that moved together in a very gentle balanced way. I think it topped off the set perfectly.”
Working with a rig supplied by Fineline Lighting, Sollitt created a variety of other looks that captured the deep, and gently evocative mood of the 21-song set.

UK - Music Support, the charity that helps those who work in music and live events affected by mental ill-health and/or addiction has announced its latest fundraising auction: Music Support’s Music Icons featuring exclusive prizes from four music artists.
With music festivals well and truly back in Summer 2022, artists and crew alike are under pressure to perform at levels that have not been seen for years. The funds raised through this auction will contribute towards Music Support’s core services, including its peer-led confidential Helpline that saw a 60% increase in volume of calls during the global pandemic.
Music Support’s Music Icons auction prizes are as follows:
Coldplay, has donated a Fender Squier guitar, signed by all four members of the band. Of their donation, the band said:
“The music industry can present a very specific set of

UK - PLASA Awards for Innovation 2022 are now open for entries. Organised in association with LSi, the awards celebrate innovative products from across the live entertainment technology industry that can demonstrate a new style of thinking, improve technical practice or safety, introduce new materials or techniques, or offer a new commercial advantage.
PLASA Show 2022 exhibitors, PLASA members and non-exhibitors are invited to enter their products by 5 August (Friday) to be in with a chance of winning one of the coveted awards. 
Each successfully entered product will be judged by an independent panel of industry experts who have the authority to present up to eight awards of equal standing, plus a potential Gold Award for an outstanding new product. 
An Award for Sustainability is reserved for a product that can demonstrate a significant reduc

Italy - Claypaky has unveiled the first product in its Volero line of LED bars - the Volero Batten Aqua.
Designed for outdoor use, the Batten Aqua’s light source is in made up of 10 60W Osram RGBW LEDs. Each LED adopts 80x80mm lenses, allowing more versatility with focussing the power of the LEDs, optimising their luminous efficiency and resolution.
Volero Batten Aqua also allows separate control of the zoom in two groups from five adjacent lenses, creating a dynamic movement of the light beam. The fixture offers Advanced Layers Management, with which the operator can choose to use different levels of effects simultaneously.
With its IP66 protection rating, optional Wireless DMX control, effects and built-in macros, the batten is designed for the touring, event, television and installation markets, and works equally well for indoor and outdoor applications.

UAE - In September 2021, Dubai saw the opening ceremony of Expo 2020 as it began to host the world’s largest Expo event. From October 2021 until March 2022, Expo 2020 welcomed and hosted 192 participating countries to be a part of the journey.
Adam Bassett and Simon Fraser from the lighting design consultant company on Expo 2020, Woodroffe Bassett Design, chose Follow-Me remote follow-spot and performer tracking solutions to be installed and used in three of the venues, The Al Wasl Plaza, the Jubilee Stage and the Dubai Millennium Amphitheatre.
Al Wasl Plaza is a 67m-tall, 130m diameter structure with 252 video projectors and an immersive sound system. With a brief to transform the spectacular garden space into a venue, WBD designed a house lighting rig that is integrated into the structure with the clear direction not to detract from the beauty of the architecture.<

South Africa - Cape Town-based lighting designer Marius Coetzee collaborated closely with Bradley Hilton from Pixel Nation to create a subtle and highly visual canvas and intricate high-impact projection mapped show devised for the South African launch of the Audi e-tron electric series.
Marius chose Robe moving lights - Esprites, LEDWash 600s and MegaPointes - to assist him in the task.
The fixtures were supplied by rental specialist MGG to the Night of Progress event which was created by the Full Circle agency for Audi South Africa and staged at Cape Town’s Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. This stunning building is located in the Silo district of central Cape Town and is the largest museum of contemporary African art worldwide.
The museum is part of the conversion of a 57m-tall historic grain silo, originally built in 1921 and decommissioned

UK - West Midlands- based technical production specialist CPL (Central Presentations Ltd) supplied LED screens and all associated processing and vision control for two major stages - The Baillie Gifford Stage and Friends Stage - at the 2022 Hay Festival of Literature & Arts.
This year Hay Festival celebrated its 35th year in style with over 500 ‘live’ events staged across 11 days which included an impressive line-up of in-person appearances from Hillary Clinton, Svetlana Alexievich, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Stephen Fry, Nicola Sturgeon, Minnie Driver, Monica Ali, Damian Lewis, Jimmy Page, Damon Galgut, Ben Okri and more, uniting readers and writers together in a series sustainable events designed to inspire, examine and entertain.
Each of the two CPL supplied arenas featured a central 4.5m-wide by 2.5m - wide LED screen at the back of the stage, flanked by two 2.5m b

UK - Lighting designer, director and operator Jose Lorenzo uses Obsidian Control Systems’ Onyx lighting control platform on tours in the UK and recently ran a 78 show, three-month tour by 2021 Strictly Come Dancing champion Giovanni Pernice using an NX2 lighting console. The show, This is Me, toured the UK and Ireland from 1 March until 30 May and highlighted Pernice’s showmanship supported by a cast of professional dancers and singers.
Early last year, Lorenzo, who started working with Pernice in 2019, transitioned from a more established lighting control platform to Obsidian’s Onyx. “Cally Bacchus at [Elation Professional UK distributor] Entedi asked me to demo an Obsidian NX2 console and I immediately loved it,” the designer stated. “It’s powerful, reliable, compact, and doesn’t cost 50-60K. It is ideal for touring and doesn’t take up much

USA - For the latest Broadway revival of The Music Man, the production team worked with PRG and Martin Professional to deploy an array of Martin lighting solutions, including MAC Viper, MAC Encore Performance and the new MAC Ultra Performance and Ultra Wash fixtures. Written by Meredith Willson and originally staged in 1957, The Music Man is a Broadway classic that’s won numerous Tony awards and has been staged by countless theatre companies - professional and amateur alike - in the past 75 years.
In February, a new production of musical starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster opened at the Winter Garden Theatre. Director Jerry Zaks worked with scenic and costume designer Santo Loquasto and award-winning lighting designer Brian MacDevitt to strike a balance that simultaneously felt modern while retaining the old-fashioned quality of the original production.<

USA - Clear-Com has announced the appointment of Calvin Long to the company’s applications engineering team. Based in the South Eastern region of the US, Calvin brings industry experience and knowledge with a focus on both remote and hybrid broadcast operations from his time at Black News Channel (BNC) as broadcast manager of operations for the live news channel.
Calvin was a first-hand Clear-Com user in his previous role, configuring the intercom system to enable remote and hybrid broadcast workflows for the anchors, production team and engineers.
“With our customers increasingly moving to an IP-based workflow with both hybrid and remote operations, it’s especially important to bring on board Applications Engineers who have the kind of real-world AoIP experience that Calvin brings to the role,” remarks Justin Emge, applications engineer manager. “Calvin’s

Germany - Optocore has appointed RadhaMohan Rajani, who joins the technical sales support team and will work across both Optocore and sister company, BroaMan.
After studying Visual Communications, Rajani joined Warren Dsouza’s Mumbai-based rental company Sound.com in 2014, where he first started using Optocore devices. This was specifically on the large stadium events and opening/closing games ceremonies in which Sound.com specialises.
In 2016, he relocated to Poland to work for Fotis Sound (another Optocore client) -working on festivals, tours and concert set-up prior to the pandemic. In 2019, he underwent his full Optocore Certification Training (OCT) at company HQ in Munich.
As a member of the Tech Support team, he will focus on client communications and relations with a particular emphasis on building BroaMan’s presence in the market.
BroaMan MD Ti

Singapore - Theatre consultancy Theatreplan is providing the technical know-how for the upgrade of the cabling infrastructure from the analogue tie-lines system to a digital IP-based network to serve sound, video, communications and lighting across all venues, plus new facilities for digital media at Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay in Singapore.
Opened in 2002, Esplanade is a major centre for the performing arts, located at Marina Bay, on the bank of the Singapore River. The centre consists of a concert hall for 1,600 people, a theatre with a 1,950-seat capacity, a recital studio for 245 people, and a theatre studio accommodating up to 220.
Having been appointed in 2019, Theatreplan’s work has continued throughout the pandemic and is on-going. The scope of work includes a feasibility study, a detailed site survey, technical design recommendations and development of a

Columbia - Maluma has a global following and record sales of over 18m and the Museum of Modern Art in Medellín, his hometown, recently unveiled a statue of the Latin artist, based on the wax figure of him at Madame Tussauds in Orlando, Florida. The star showed his love for his townspeople with Medallo en el Mapa, a passionate three-hour, 35-song concert at the city’s Atanasio Girardot Soccer Stadium.
Although this landmark venue normally accommodates 45,000 fans, demand for tickets was so great that it was expanded to 54,000, making it the most attended show in the history of the big stadium. To make room for the larger crowd, a 360° stage was installed in the middle of the field, so the audience could fill the grass as well as the stands.
Invariably, an open 360ﹾ stage brings its own set of challenges, but fans were still treated to a rewarding visual experience

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