USA - As one of country music's most popular artists, the three-time Grammy Award-winning Zac Brown Band has sold over six million albums worldwide and produced 11 number one singles. So as they prepared for their 2014 Great American Road Trip tour, the design elements of the production needed to be as big and bold as the artists themselves.

With tour provider Special Event Services (SES) once again ready to support, show designer James Scott was brought on board to create the dynamic design and he did so using 20 VL3500 Wash, 60 VL3000 Spot and 22 VLX Wash luminaires from Philips Vari-Lite.

"In looking at the automated luminaires side of the design, I needed fixtures that were 1200W or more to really give me the power and ability to create bold looks, and this criteria pointed me towards the Vari-Lite Series 3000 range. SES is a large Vari-Lite house so we truly b

UK - The Ambassadors Theatre Group has revived Irving Berlin's classic musical Annie Get Your Gun. The show premiered at the Manchester Opera House on 12 May before embarking on a 20-week national UK tour due to culminate at Torquay's Princess theatre on 4 October.

Ian Talbot's production starring Jason Donovan as Frank Butler and the effervescent Emma Williams as Annie Oakley has so far enjoyed a raft of positive reviews. Award-winning British sound designer, Gregory Clarke, specified EM Acoustics systems throughout including a new Halo Compact system as the main PA. All of the PA equipment for the tour has been supplied by Stage Sound Services.

Clarke, who received the New York Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Sound Design for Journey's End in 2007 and who won the Tony Award for his sound design on Equus in 2009, was delighted to be able to use Halo-C on

Israel - Channel 9 broadcasts news around the clock from their studios in Modi'in as well as talk shows, current affairs programmes, series, original productions, telenovelas and more. The channel has two studios, a large 900sq.m space and smaller one of 350sq.m. A new lighting system was installed with grandMA2 control with the move into the new facility.

Chief lighting designer Michael Schwartz explains the selection of the grandMA2: "I chose MA due to my experiences with the MA system in the past and because of the great reliability and many possibilities which are perfect for television studios."

For the large studio, Schwartz selected one grandMA2 light and one MA command wing and for the small studio he chose one grandMA2 ultra-light.

Sagi Lamay, project manager from A.B. Electronics, explains, "The request was for a closed system with a full backup for

UK - It's always great to be involved in projects that are challenging and different, and when Caroline Jones of production company Miss Jones and Co evolved the concept of the world's first sensorial wine tasting 'Colour Lab' at the four day Streets of Spain Festival staged along London's Southbank ... she required some inventive input from lighting designer Simon Honnor.

They in turn approached rental company Entec to supply the equipment needed to help realise the idea of enveloping a complete space in saturated colour to see if it made a difference to how people's taste altered when their environment changed.

The Colour Lab was one of the biggest single attractions of the four day Festival, with over 3,500 people participating.

The idea - developed in collaboration with Oxford University Professor Charles Spence, an expert in experimental psychology - was to showcase a s

Australia - Ms Collins is the new inhabitant of the grand sandstone building on the corner of Melbourne's Collins and Market streets, which in its previous incarnation had been home to Silk Road.

The latest venture for established hospitality group Roar Projects, which also owns Alumbra in the Docklands, Ms Collins includes seven bars all of varying sizes and ambience is capable of holding 800 patrons. It's a vast black, multi-level structure daubed with a riot of pink and white paint and neon lighting, with intimate spaces tucked in every corner.

Designed by Blackmilk Interiors and inspired by French socialite 'Ms Collins', the elaborate venue evokes glamour and sexiness with the use of bold, opulent colours and a luminous material palette featuring high tech fabrics that are capable of changing colour with light.

As well as thought provoking signage and daring use of colou

Europe - Progressive rock band Yes continued their 2013-14 Three Album world tour presenting three complete iconic works - Close To The Edge, Going For The One and the Yes album - live and with a lighting design by Don Weeks ... with the latest European section featuring Robe's Robin Pointe multi-purpose moving lights.

Don started working with the band in 2011. This Three Album tour started in 2013 with him using Robe LEDWash 600s for the first time as part of his floor specials package. For the most recent dates, Pointes replaced the original beam fixtures he had used on the US tour, becoming an integral part of the floor rig supplied by VER.

The starting point for the tour stage presentation was based on a concept first created in spring 2012, depicting a starker stage set-up than in the past with no scenic elements, just an upstage video s

USA - Florida's fast-growing Celebration Church is utilising Jands' flagship Vista L5 console to control lighting and video productions during worship services for its 12,000-strong congregation.

The services held at the Jacksonville-based Church's newly constructed worship arena are often broadcast internationally via web stream. They are renowned for being an energetic, immersive next generation praise and worship experience that infuses diverse genres and styles.

Celebration Church's lead lighting designer and AVL technician, Trey Smith, specified the Jands Vista L5.

"The Jands Vista L5 is so user-friendly and easy to grasp that it's a hit not only with us tech guys, but also with the church's volunteers, who often operate the lighting and media during shows," says Trey. "The L5's Timeline feature was a key factor in us specifying it, making it easy to cont

USA - InfoComm 2014, the annual conference and exhibition for professional audiovisual buyers and sellers worldwide, held 14-20 June in Las Vegas was visited by 37,048 professionals attending from more than 114 countries. This represents a 5.5 percent increase in attendance over InfoComm 2013.

"InfoComm is the ideal place to make AV purchasing decisions, connect with contacts and learn principles that will boost your effectiveness," said David Labuskes, CTS, RCDD, executive director and CEO, InfoComm International. "The marketplace strongly supports the InfoComm show, and we are grateful for the attendee support and for the innovative exhibitors who are committed to making InfoComm a can't-miss event on the industry calendar."

More than 5,700 seats were filled at InfoComm University sessions, which provided practical training and attracted the industry's be

Belarus - Art Ramos Studio a.l.c., Community's partner in Belarus, has recently overseen the installation of the audio systems at the Chizhovka-Arena in Minsk, featuring Community loudspeakers. The arena, one of the largest sports facilities in Belarus, is a multipurpose complex for ice hockey, sports, leisure and entertainment and is the home ground of HC Yunost-Minsk.

Chizhovka-Arena was built for the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Ice Hockey World Championship that took place in Minsk in May 2014. In addition to the tens of thousands of fans that travelled to see the event live, the IIHF's flagship event was televised to 115 countries with television audience around the 1,000 million mark.

Chizhovka-Arena is located in the southeastern part of Minsk in a picturesque nook of a park named after the 900th anniversary of the city. Designed by Marat Grodnikov, the ar

UK - Sometimes the smallest things can make the biggest difference. Many people believe that covering audiences of 1,000 people with just one Point Source mid/hi enclosure per side can't happen. KV2 Audio's ES Systems have been dispelling this myth for over a decade and allowing rental houses, venues and audio professionals to do this with incredible clarity and performance.

The idea of covering 5,000 people with the same system would normally be laughable. How about covering 50,000 people with one mid/hi per side? Impossible? Not quite.

Essex based Maple Pro Audio were tasked with providing sound and staging for a march to mark the first anniversary of the Peoples' Assembly being established. The march ended up in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament and featured speeches by comedians Russell Brand and Mark Steel, MP Caroline Lucas and journalist Owen Jones as well as live

UK - Specialist retail event organisers, Maynineteen has always taken care of the production aspect of jobs as a matter of course, but since their recent expansion they now offer this as a stand-alone service. With over 10 years experience and an unrivalled level of expertise this minor change will come as no surprise to some.

Unusual Rigging contract manager, Andy Sweet says, "Maynineteen Production supported our team during the preparation, rigging and loading out of the support structures for dressing building facade for the first Ideal Home Exhibition at EventCity in Manchester. They are the go to people if you need production support in the North. Nothing is too much trouble and their knowledge and relationships with local suppliers is second to none. They provided us with excellent logistical support and it would have been a much tougher job without them."

The

Brazil - GloboSat's new TV OB truck is producing live broadcasts from World Cup matches played in the Maracana stadium, in Rio de Janeiro. The vehicle, which was completed just in time for this year's event, is Brazil's first 4k OB truck, and is fitted with audio equipment from Lawo and state-of-the-art Ravenna IP networking technology.

At the heart of the audio control room is a latest-generation 48-fader Lawo mc²56 - which is both compact and powerful. The interfacing to the outside world is taken care of by a DALLIS I/O system in the truck and two DALLIS stageboxes (with port redundancy) that are linked via Ravenna. The console's integrated Lawo Plugin Server allows seamless integration of plugin effects that can be recalled with stored snapshots.

Gabriel Thomazini, sound engineer in Rio on the GloboSat OB truck, reports on his work with Lawo, "We have had good result

France - Airstar, a world leader in advanced lighting solutions for the event industry, was recently called on to animate the iconic and majestic nave of the Grand Palais in Paris with dramatic lighting of the 23rd edition of the Tour Auto Optic 2ooo. They were contacted by Peter Auto, the company responsible for some of the most prestigious classic car events in Europe.

Over 5,000 visitors queued up to admire 250 classic racing cars registered for the race which recalled the golden age of BMW, Ford, Porsche and Jaguar to name a few. 15 lighting balloons from Airstar's Lunix range were deployed and used for various purposes including decoration, space filling, lighting and signage.

With a diameter ranging between 2 and 2.5m, all 15 balloons were inflated with helium and contained a couple of 1kW halogen lamps, with one exception: a gigantic 10m wide balloon suspended in the mi

UK - Earlier this year Green Hippo welcomed Vincent Steenhoek for a placement with its Hippotizer Product and Testing Department.

During his time at Green Hippo, Vincent attended Basic and Advanced HippoSchool training and was a great help within the department, working on testing and demo machines, and got to grips with Hippotizer in no time at all.

With his end-of-year exhibition in the pipeline, Vincent chose to use a HippoCritter media server to realize his vision and idea for the project. "And he was kind enough to give us a little profile of himself and his work after the exhibition," says the company. "In recent years this industry has seen the emergence of several amazing young talents, and Vincent will be joining the ranks of a number of very accomplished new-comers. With his portfolio growing, we are sure he will be involved with some amazing projects

Italy - Clay Paky lights stood godfather to Roby Facchinetti's tour. While awaiting the Pooh's 50th anniversary next year, Roby is doing the first solo tour of his career to support his album Ma che Vita la Mia (What a life I've had). The preview tour, which consisted of a few important shows in May, was an introduction to the tour itself, which will take place in the summer and autumn.

Crico Fabi, the Pooh's long-standing lighting designer, was a must for these events: "After all these years, Roby Facchinetti and I understand each other instantly. I am very happy I took part in this 'intimate tour', so to speak, where Roby performed alone in front of his audience for the first time."

Clay Paky was technical sponsor of the tour. The lights included Sharpy Washes, Sharpy Beams, A.leda Wash K20s, A.leda B-EYE K20s and Alpha Spot HPE 700s. "I used the A.leda

Sweden - Audio Concept, a Stockholm based audio retailer, has recently opened the doors to its newly refurbished showroom in the centre of the city. At 456sq.m this remarkable showroom is not only one of the largest specialist shops in Europe devoted to high end audio, but also one of the most original and creative. Amongst the range of audio equipment showcased is a 15.2 surround sound demo system that features Genelec G Series loudspeakers and an Illusonic IAP 16 processor.

Audio Concept offers a complete audio system service from initial consultation and planning, through to installation. Robert Grubstad of Audio Concept has been working with Genelec monitors for many years and was well aware of their potential as residential loudspeakers as well as for multichannel purposes:

"When we chose the Illusonic IAP 16, a unique multichannel processor, we knew we would need a

UK - The Professional Footballer's Association got its celebrations of this year's World Cup off to a great start by hosting a charity dinner on London's South Bank. Sennheiser UK - the PFA's official audio supplier - provided a Digital 9000 Series wireless microphone system for an evening that raised thousands of pounds for charity.

The dinner, which took place at the Riverbank Park Plaza, was attended by a number of World Cup legends, including 1966 winner George Cohen and other former England players, as well as the evening's host Alan Shearer. Featuring Brazilian-themed entertainment and a silent auction, in all the evening raised over £54,000 for Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Sennheiser UK supplied eight channels of Digital 9000 Series microphones to the event, including six handheld and two lapel mics, which were used by Shearer and for the silent auction.

Sennheiser

Spain - For another year running D.A.S. professional sound systems were on hand to provide sound reinforcement at Valencia's recent 40 POP concert. This legendary event, sponsored by the Cadena Ser radio network, has been held for over 25 years and has become a must-attend concert in the Mediterranean city, drawing tens of thousands of fans with a stellar line-up of musicians which this year included Pablo López, El Viaje de Elliot and Antonio Orozco.

The concert was held at the Agora esplanade next to the Hemisféric building at Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences, an unbeatable open-air setting where over 20,000 fans gathered for an evening of great music. As in years past, an array of D.A.S. systems were rolled out for this popular event, with 32 D.A.S. Aero 50 line array systems rigged for the main system. Two linear formations of 16 Aero 50s each were flown on eithe

USA - Following The Killers' wildly successful 2013 Battle Born world tour, performing in 50 countries and headlining arenas on six continents - including a sold-out Wembley Stadium show for which they wrote The Wembley Song - the Las Vegas-based phenomenon is back on the road this summer in support of their Direct Hits compilation. With appearances at North American and UK music festivals, the band's FOH engineer, Kenny Kaiser, is delivering their chart toppers with help from the new SSL Live console.

Kaiser works for Delicate Productions of Camarillo, California, serving as PA tech or system tech for Selena Gomez, Train and as monitor tech and crew chief for The Foo Fighters, among others. After moving to the Killers' camp last year, he took over the helm for their 2014 tour. However, Kaiser was not fond of their previous FOH console and knew instantly that he'd need to

Germany - At the World Cup Dome electronic dance music (EDM) festival in Frankfurt, a Meyer Sound Leo linear large-scale sound reinforcement system was selected for main-stage headliners Pet Shop Boys, David Guetta, Steve Aoki, and Tiësto.

With this latest deployment at the Commerzbank-Arena, the Meyer Sound Leo family of line array products continues its busy summer of EDM events, having recently powered the Mayday Festival in Germany and Soenda Festival in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

"Leo is strikingly elegant in appearance and relatively compact, particularly considering how it can project very clear sound over a considerable distance," says Holger Schwark, FOH engineer for the Pet Shop Boys.

Supplied and configured by POOLgroup of Emsdetten, Germany, the system featured dual main hangs of 14 Leo-M line array loudspeakers each, with two Mica line array loudspeake

UK - Creative producers Fuel Theatre have embarked on an adventurous project with the tour of their latest theatrical production, The Roof with lighting supplied by Stage Electrics. The Roof is a highly creative large outdoor production that has been created, produced and choreographed by artists Requardt & Rosenberg, commissioned by LIFT Festival and presented in association with the National Theatre, London.

Through three-dimensional sound, delivered via wireless headphones, this one-hour futuristic production transports its audience into the head of an avatar, who is a reluctant hero desperate to stay alive. The story is revealed using a blend of free running and contemporary dance by performers in a fast paced mix of death-defying acrobatics and choreography; all within a 360?purpose built arena. With an overall circumference of 100m, the arena is built with ei

USA - The National September 11 Memorial & Museum has opened in the footprints of the World Trade Centre in Lower Manhattan. Electrosonic provided the audio-visual systems for the museum, which is primarily located about 70ft below ground and offers a moving visitor experience.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is an educational and historical institution honouring victims of both the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 1993 bombing, while examining 9/11 and its continued global significance. The museum building was designed by Davis Brody Bond, LLP with exhibit designs by Thinc Design and Layman Design. It is accessed by an entry pavilion designed by Snohetta.

Bob Haroutunian of PPI Consulting was the audio-visual systems designer for the museum and education center. Arup was the designer for the Pavilion Auditorium. The majority of the content was provided by Local Proj

USA - The last in the line of a legendary dynasty: Space Shuttle Atlantis, is now housed at the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Centre, forming the centrepiece of its own 90,000sq.ft, $100m exhibit. The attraction was designed by PGAV Destinations, installed by Electrosonic and incorporates a pair of TiMax SoundHub audio showcontrol matrix systems to add immersive 3D spatialisation to a high-end multimedia history charting 33 missions of Atlantis, including maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the building of the International Space Station.

Visitors enter through a full-scale vertical replica of Atlantis's external tank and two solid rocket boosters, which tower 15-stories above the three-story exhibit building. Visitors are corralled through a learning area to wait for the start of the pre-show which describes the role Atlantis played in the Space Shuttle Program and how

UK - Leading European flightcase manufacturer 5 Star Cases supplied 250 lightweight flight cases complete with padded and semi-rigid bags to live video rental and production specialist Creative Technology (CT).

These are being used to house a variety of different monitors and screens that are in active service on major events and broadcast projects. The order comprised casing for 110 x 42 inch screens, 90 x 32 inch screens and 50 x 22 inch screens.

The cases were delivered in just a few days from the Cambridgeshire based manufacturer, while its specialist bag making facility - which has just been expanded to meet increased demands - was kept busy for around three weeks, as the bags are all individually hand-made and finished to order.

The cases and bags were purchased to refresh a whole raft of the protective cases and packaging for CT's television projects. They will be put

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