USA - A bold and imaginative example of how to repurpose a neglected building and breathe life back into it could not be more vividly demonstrated than turning a 125-year-old church into a modern restaurant and nightclub.
Few would be so tenacious, but US based hospitality and venue operator David Cardaci not only had the vision, but also the ambition coupled with over 20-years’ experience in the hospitality and leisure sector. And so, in early December 2021, after a project taking well over two and a half years, and in the midst of a global pandemic, The Angeles nightclub and Holly Blue restaurant in Fort Lauderdale Florida USA opened their doors to a capacity audience and high praise from club and restaurant goers, and critics alike.
This is a high-end, high-profile 11,000sq.ft multi-purpose transformation for David and his team at Knallhart Management Group, as

The Netherlands - The Theatre of Vista College in Heerlen hosted the eleventh edition of Nieuwe Honden. The student-run production featured a plethora of lighting fixtures, consoles and accessories, and LED Screens from Infinity, Showtec, and DMT.
Nieuwe Honden 2021 was the biggest production of the year for the Arts, Theatre, and Media Department of Vista College. The previous year’s production of Nieuwe Honden was live-streamed as an alternative to hosting a live audience due to coronavirus restrictions. However, this year’s edition, which ran from 9-11 November, returned to welcome sold-out attendances.
An important theme of the Nieuwe Honden production was collaboration, meaning everyone was dependent on one another and had to communicate effectively. This theme was not only limited to the Art, Theatre and Media courses at Vista College, but also various other

UK - A group of enterprising locals have undertaken an initiative to celebrate Bradford’s industrial past and look forward to its future with Bradford is #LiT.
A festival of art and illumination, Bradford is #LiT aims to transform the West Yorkshire town’s post-industrial cityscape with light installations ahead of its bid to become Europe’s Capital of Culture in 2025.
Towering high above the Bradford skyline, the chimney within the former Albion Mills complex provided the appropriate canvas on which to highlight the wonders of one of Bradford’s industrial relics. To implement the resulting installation, entitled Tapestry of Light (one of the most visited landmarks during the two week festival), Chris Beardwell and his team at Pro Audio Systems (PAS) incorporated four Chauvet Professional Rogue 1 Outcast BeamWash luminaires to accent the structure.

France - A new Anolis LED lighting scheme is illuminating the exterior façade of the Rosary Basilica at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes (Sanctuaire de Notre-Dame de Lourdes), a destination calling pilgrims and worshipers from worldwide to the south of France.
The new lighting was designed and specified by Bruno Le Vacon, founder of audiovisual design office Blev Organisation and Sébastien Gaye from Ace Event Group. The physical installation of the luminaires - chosen from Anolis’ Divine, ArcPar, Eminere and ArcSource ranges - was completed by Ace Event who are locally based, with the equipment supplied via Anolis France.
Each luminaire was individually customised at the Anolis factory in the Czech Republic before dispatch to France.
The delicate and meticulous application of light on this special monument was a major challenge for Bruno whose task was

India - Christmas and New Year celebrations in Mumbai were especially dazzling thanks to a light and laser spectacular showcasing the beauty of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, a 5.6 km long, eight-lane wide bridge connecting Bandra in the western suburbs of Mumbai with Worli in the south.
Spectators in India’s largest city enjoyed the experience in which Claypaky Mythos 2 spotlights and versatile HY B-EYE K25 LED wash lights/beams/VFX projectors played a key role. The span of the bridge was illuminated with a string of lights in a changing array of colours as the towering arches and cables were bathed in rainbow hues.
“This was a benchmark holiday event in India for Christmas and New Year’s,” says Pankil Ahuja, sales manager for the Indian sub-continent for AMS-Osram ClayPaky . “The lighting set up and installation happened in just two days. With such a short turn

UK - Hever Castle recently had its façade and gardens beautifully lit by 96 Showtec Helix S5000 RGBW outdoor LED wash lights and 50 Showtec Festoon light Q4 Strings manufactured by Highlite International B.V. STL Lighting Limited supplied its services, decorating the estate in bright and colourful lights for the dark days around Christmas.
The double-moated 13th century Hever castle has a rich history. Once the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I, it can be found in the village of Hever, about 50km south-east of central London. Nowadays, the castle and its gardens are open to visitors, and accommodation for corporate and private events can be booked as well as hotel rooms.
To brighten up the dark days surrounding Christmas, Hever Castle and its gardens were submerged in beautiful festive lighting, provided by STL Producti

Canada - Country Music “rings true wherever you go” James Barker told an interviewer last year. The platinum certified chart-topping star is living proof of that. Born in Canada, the singer/song writer and his James Barker Band embody the heart and soul of the Nashville sound with their raw, down-home style - a brand of music that’s earned them two No. 1 hits along with a Juno Award.
Recently, the quartet appeared at London’s Centennial Hall for a country jamboree, Canadian style. Reflecting the upbeat, hard-driving power of the band was an Andrew Dawson lightshow that featured Chauvet Professional STRIKE 1 fixtures supplied by PA Shop Productions.
Like the band itself, Dawson’s show thrived on creating a strong connection to the crowd. Toward this end, the young designer from Toronto relied on audience lighting from the eight STRIKE 1 units in his rig.

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.

Australia - Jarrad Donovan from Juxta Design chose a full grandMA3 lighting control system for Hillsong Church’s recent Simply Christmas special production which was staged at The Hillsong Convention Centre in Norwest, Sydney.
The vibrant event was slightly different from the usual Hillsong Christmas Spectacular show, both to reflect the ‘mood of the moment’ and to comply with the current Covid protocols, which resulted in a smaller cast and a tighter timeframe for build and rehearsals. That said, the goal of achieving the same high standards and complex production values was still very much the objective for the entire team involved in creating a dynamic, memorable event that wowed both live and streamed audiences.
The six 90-minute shows took place over two days and were action-packed with a lively mix of 15 different back-to-back musical perform

UK - The National Trust team at Anglesey Abbey in the Cambridgeshire village of Lode recently opened its gates for its Winter Lights - a night-time trail through the heritage gardens of the listed Jacobean Abbey.
Pearce Hire were the clear choice for the Abbey’s events team as they designed and activated the brief for an enchanting 2km lighting and audio nature trail through the grounds and taking in the House, Mill and the aptly named Winter Garden.
“We may be better known in the industry for providing technical production support for festivals and tours, but this garden brief really got our creative side going”, says Jim Brown, general manager, Pearce Hire. “This year’s production took on another dimension and we were very happy to embrace this, and work in close collaboration with the team at Anglesey Abbey to help achieve their vision.

USA - Extreme Lighting & Sound (ELS) recently wrapped up its first season presenting Holiday Wonders at Bowie Nature Park in Fairview, Tennessee. The drive-thru holiday light show featured atmosphere-generating effects from a large amount of Elation lighting gear along with custom pixel products and proved a huge success.
ELS was approached by the city of Fairview in September to create and run the show after an initial contractor pulled out, which gave the design and production company only two short months to get everything together.
“We agreed to do the Christmas light show but knew we were on a tight schedule as opening day was scheduled for the day after Thanksgiving,” recalled ELS president Austin Grundberg about the start of the project. “We basically put the whole show together in eight weeks from design, product specification/supply and setu

Greece - Opened in October 2021 and located in downtown Athens next to the Old Parliament, the hotel Xenodocheio Milos boasts 43 luxury guest rooms and suites. Athens’ newest boutique hotel is also home to estiatorio Milos, a restaurant that joins a select group of Milos restaurants already established in New York, Las Vegas, Miami and London, delivering executive chef and founder Costas Spiliadis’ world celebrated take on Mediterranean cuisine.
With the concept of ‘philoxenia’ - the sacred art of making a stranger feel at home - at the heart of the Milos customer offering, the quality and discreetness of the restaurant’s sound system are of particular importance. Accordingly, the Milos group contacted local AV and hospitality technology specialists Stereopark who turned to their colleagues IMA Audio Lighting, Nexo’s distributor in Greece, to design a system that

Jordan - Amman Academy’s new theatre space is open for 2022, offering students and educators professional lighting with a range of Strand and Vari-Lite luminaires and control from Signify.
The private school, which is renowned in Jordan for its academic excellence, constructed the new theatre space to offer performance, rehearsal, and meetings facilities. Its lighting solution needed to be adaptable, encourage creativity and provide reliable workhorse and effects fixtures.
The Academy’s team approached Amman-based International New Technical Est. (INTE), a systems integrator specialising in theatre installations. INTE’s project manager Hashem Nazzal specified a Strand Neo console for control, with the Vari-Lite VL2600 Spot on colour-rich effects duty.
“One of the most important requirements of this project was flexibility and effects options, and the VL26

France The Domaine de Mas de Pierre is a newly refurbished, five-star hotel and resort located in Saint-Paul de Vence, on the Mediterranean coast. Set within the heart of a 20-acre garden, the resort comprises nine authentic, Provencal country houses with 76 suites and a selection of restaurants, bars, a spa, and several indoor and outdoor meeting spaces.
As part of the resort’s recent renovations, hotel management wanted to upgrade their AV system to a networked, multi-zone installation with local and centralised control to best manage sound for its many different spaces. And because some distance separates the resort's guesthouses and main buildings, a sound system built upon a blended analogue and digital audio network with standard and Dante-enabled amplifiers from LEA Professional was needed.
The hotel brought in local systems integration firm Inovasystem to des

Belgium - Studio Zuid in Antwerp has transformed its entertainment offering with the purchase of a TiMax SoundHub-S64 spatial processor with MADI I/O. The venue’s semi-circular amphitheatre-like auditorium plays host to a wide and popular variety of immersive musical dining experiences, the first of which was an immersive production of The Bodyguard, originally made famous by the Whitney Houston film and award-winning soundtrack.
Sound designer and venue audio director, Erik Loots, had a big vision for the type of production the venue needed and the level of audio flexibility he wanted for shows like The Bodyguard. For him, “TiMax was essential”. He explains: “I needed TiMax because of its capability of dealing with both channel-based and object-based audio. I have always been a fan of TiMax and its flexibility when it comes to immersive applications an

The Netherlands - The Mariakerk church in the small town of Oirschot, in the southern Netherlands, has been fitted with Prolights EclDisplay fixtures, a series of small LED spotlights made for fixed installations.
The retrofit included the EclDisplay DATWhite black fixtures, in 3,000K, with 25° - 50° wash lenses. The units are currently set in stand-alone mode but prepared to take a DMX data line, so it can later be controlled through the lighting protocol.
The EclDisplay series includes a 25W white LED emitter and data control through DMX, Dali T6 or knob-dimming. The series score over 90 in CRI and have a very efficient output thanks to the redesigned source and optics. “We wanted to change the older tungsten units with a more efficient source,” said Jos Tra of Muziek Service Schijndel, the company behind the installation. “The EclDisplay series looked like

UK - Although American production manager Jon Bumgarner has wide experience working arenas in the UK’s major cities, for the recent Christmas With Il Divo tour - earlier postponed because of COVID - he relied on the help of Entec Live’s techs.
Representing Los Angeles-based production company Eighteentwentysix, he says that one of the reasons he partnered with Entec for the UK shows was for their intimate knowledge of smaller 2000-3000-cap venues in secondary locations that the multi-national quartet were playing. The other reason was that they could single source all the technical infrastructure required.
“I have done a lot of shows in the UK over the last 15 years but mostly arenas in big cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester. But a lot of places on this tour were new to me,” he admits.
Il Divo is a new account for Eighteentwentysix. Explaining

France The Domaine de Mas de Pierre is a newly refurbished, five-star hotel and resort located in Saint-Paul de Vence, on the Mediterranean coast. Set within the heart of a 20-acre garden, the resort comprises nine authentic, Provencal country houses with 76 suites and a selection of restaurants, bars, a spa, and several indoor and outdoor meeting spaces.
As part of the resort’s recent renovations, hotel management wanted to upgrade their AV system to a networked, multi-zone installation with local and centralised control to best manage sound for its many different spaces. And because some distance separates the resort's guesthouses and main buildings, a sound system built upon a blended analogue and digital audio network with standard and Dante-enabled amplifiers from LEA Professional was needed.
The hotel brought in local systems integration firm Inovasystem to des

UAE - Despite the pandemic, Dubai celebrated the arrival of 2022 in style, with a grand festival of events. Principal among these was the Laser & Light Show at the mesmerising Burj Khalifa, created and produced by ECA2 with Patrick Awouters (LSE) at the helm of the light and laser element of the production.
The company also drew on its inventory of PR Lighting fixtures, deploying 250 of its newly-acquired Aqua 580 Beam waterproof moving heads. These lined up alongside 60 RGB lasers, ranging from 60W up to a powerful 100W.
The fully-featured IP66-rated Aqua 580 Beam produces a powerful output from a 550W engine, housing PR's patent optics and a tight 2° beam angle. They were recommended by LSE MD Patrick Awouters, project managing the lighting with his son Nathan. The fixtures had been purchased specifically for this project.
Awouters admits that rigging th

Albania - The Lift Steak & Rooftop Bar is a new 500-capacity venue in the Albanian capital of Tirana - owned and operated by the Revo Hospitality Group and situated in the ABA Business Centre.
Specialising in providing a mix of lounge, dance and pop music, the venue brought in Prosound, Martin Audio’s Albanian distributor, to provide the sound reinforcement, having earlier provided the sound system for another well-known pub restaurant in Tirana, operated by the same owners.
Prosound technical director, Endrit Veleshnja, designed the system based around Martin Audio’s cost-efficient BlacklineX and CDD (Coaxial Differential Dispersion) series, explaining, “BlacklineX series has continuously proven to be the ideal speaker in situations where quality sound with moderately high SPL levels needs to be combined with affordability.”
Inside, they have install

Thailand - Established in 1955, the Chonprathan Wittaya School is a private institution with over 6,000 students attending elementary, primary, and secondary level programmes in both Thai and English. Located just outside Bangkok, the school has recently built a planetarium to screen earth and space documentaries as part of the educational curriculum.
System integrators Be Balance, along with local L-Acoustics certified provider Vision One, used L-Acoustics Soundvision software to develop 5.1 and 7.1 surround systems, considering the architectural specifications of the space, which was still under construction. The school’s technical team was confident with the pedigree of L-Acoustics solutions, recognising the brand from projects such as the high-profile Royal Cremation Ceremony of the late Thai King Bhumibol, where Vision One provided audio across the 66-day event. Rely

USA - After operating as a mobile church for more than 20 years, Grace Chapel opened a multi-purpose facility in Wilsonville, Oregon for church services and community outreach. In addition to a sanctuary (which doubles as a basketball/volleyball court), the facility hosts classrooms, meeting spaces, and even a non-profit coffee shop.
The main loudspeaker location is immediately in front of the proscenium wall. Any rear-radiating energy would reflect off the wall, interfering with speech intelligibility and clarity of music. Additionally, the wide footprint of the audience area required a solution with precise pattern control to optimise coverage.
Nick Moon from Tone Proper AV was chosen to create a high-fidelity sound system for church services and other performances in Grace Chapel’s new sanctuary. Moon installed five FL283T Line Array Modules on either side of the

Taiwan - A thriving hub for the arts in the capital city of Taipei, the Taiwan Traditional Theatre Centre is now the permanent home to the Guoguang Opera Company and the National Chinese Orchestra while also hosting a wide variety of other events on a rental basis.
With the recent installation of a Constellation acoustic system - the first in Taiwan - the centre has enhanced the audience experience across all musical genres while at the same time reducing operating expenses and often eliminating costly down time between performances.
The impetus behind the eventual installation of Constellation stems from the original concept behind the centre’s main 1,055-seat performance hall, as explained by technical director Huai-min Jen.
“When the centre was first proposed nearly 10 years ago, the resident opera company was transitioning to the use of wireless reinforce

South Africa - Just a short drive from Cape Town’s vibrant business and commercial centre, GrandWest Casino and Entertainment World is home to various dining establishments, an ice rink and the renowned Grand Arena - a 5,000-capacity multi-purpose venue that has played host to international acts such as Bryan Adams, Sting, James Blunt, Rammstein and Kylie Minogue.
In 2020, the venue underwent a complete refit of its PA system, with L-Acoustics K Series chosen for its ability to fulfil international touring riders and deliver quality audio.
“Our previous PA system was installed when the venue was built in 2007 and had served us well for almost 14 years. It had allowed us to establish the Grand Arena as the go to destination for well-known local and international artists and bands, corporate events, launches, conferences and spectacular banquets,” says Dave Lombard

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