Projects

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24 May 2024

Brazil - A colossal 624-loudspeaker concert sound system powered by 212 amplified controllers projected the Queen of Pop to the largest audience ever assembled for a standalone concert.

“Madonna is a creature of comfort and habit, so the first and foremost challenge of mixing her sound is to recreate her experience exactly, night to night, venue to venue, on every stage. That’s where L-Acoustics made all the difference,” shares Madonna’s FOH engineer, Burton Ishmael. He’s been mixing for the star from October 2023, at the O2 Arena in London to the massive, record-breaking show on the beach in Rio de Janeiro on May 4, 2024, when an estimated 1.6m fans took in what Pollstar described as “the largest audience ever assembled for a standalone concert”.

The Celebration Tour, supplied by vendor Eighth Day Sound, a Clair Global brand, visited a

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24 May 2024

Sweden - The Eurovision Song Contest, a broadcast seen by over 160m people worldwide, relies on wireless DMX. When Creative Technology, official event supplier, reached out to discuss the challenges of this year’s production, the LumenRadio team along with its OEM partners jumped into action.

Eurovision deployed seven Steadicams and shoulder cams to capture the performance for the broadcast. Each camera was equipped with Aputure MC Pro battery powered pocket lights that featured LumenRadio’s TimoTwo OEM modules for their DMX data reception.

With the concert-style lighting constantly changing, the cameras needed to have an adjustable light source to maintain the video quality being captured. Controlling them wirelessly allowed for full movement of the Steadicam Ops, freeing them to focus on getting the best shot. Using cables was never an option

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24 May 2024

Australia - The 2024 PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival celebrated some of the best of Australian fashion design with a main show space at the Royal Exhibition Buildings in Melbourne – recognised by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee as a prime example of 19th century international exhibition architecture.

All Lighting and AV equipment for the week-long festival was supplied by full production services provider, Harry the Hirer Productions led by technical producer Marcus Pugh.

He worked closely with lighting designer Hugh Taranto who used 28 x Robe Esprites to craft a flexible lighting aesthetic for the space that would deliver great looking shows for all the diverse and different collections.

The event also featured numerous associated off-site shows, business-related seminars, workshops, entertainment, and music performances across the c

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24 May 2024

Côte d'Ivoire - Located in Port-Bouet on the Atlantic coast of West Africa's Côte d'Ivoire, the Abidjan Exhibition Centre is the largest exhibition centre in West Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, with a capacity of 6,000-seated and 10,000 standing.

Designed by architect, Pierre Fakhoury, it first opened its doors in July 2023 to host trade shows, fairs and major events in the region. Its elegant sweeping exterior is matched by its advanced technology within. Its halls are equipped with a consignment of Ayrton Zonda 9 FX, Eurus and Huracán LED fixtures, specified by G.S.L lighting designer, Guillaume Sarrouy and supplied by PFO Construction and the State of Ivory Coast for installation by G.S.L of Avignon, France.

G.S.L. explains the reasons for its choice of Ayrton fixtures: “G.S.L. has worked with Ayrton products on several occasions and we find

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24 May 2024

UK - Stage Electrics has joined forces with Admiral Staging to deliver a key enhancement to Birmingham’s Resorts World Arena. Together, they have developed and implemented a new, dynamic disability viewing platform, significantly improving accessibility and convenience for patrons at one of the UK's foremost event venues.

The collaboration between Stage Electrics and Admiral Staging was initiated when Resorts World Arena sought a solution to enhance the mobility of their existing disability viewing platform. Recognising the challenges posed by the platform's weight and immobility, Stage Electrics' resident staging expert, Mike Clarke, devised a tailored solution to address the client's needs effectively.

Mike Clarke comments, "Our team's dedication to finding innovative solutions is at the heart of what we do. We were thrilled to provide the team a

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24 May 2024

USA - Built in 1917, and situated in the village of Hamilton, New York, Colgate Memorial Chapel provides the centrepiece of Colgate University’s campus activity.

Since it is a multi-use facility - incorporating a range of on-campus activity from university interfaith church services to lectures, presentations and orchestral concerts - it was vital that the public address system was sufficiently flexible to reproduce spoken word and full dynamic range alike, with absolute clarity.

The chapel’s long-term AV contractor is Syracuse-based TSH AV, who specialise in the House of Worship sector. They recently met the university’s requirement for a loudspeaker upgrade by specifying Martin Audio’s award-winning O-Line micro line array, with scalable resolution. This was designed not only to optimise the sound in the challenging space, but with its comp

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24 May 2024

Austria - Prolights Arena Cob4FC lit Christina Stürmer's MTV Unplugged concert, an event celebrating the 20-year career of the Austrian pop-rock singer. The live broadcast from the Volkstheater in Vienna was produced by Das Rund, set in an environment evoking the intimate atmosphere of a rehearsal room, creating a welcoming and relaxed ambiance.

Under the artistic direction of Thomas W. Kiennast from Das Rund, Manfred Nikister designed a lighting setup that included 29 Arena Cob4FC units from Prolights, strategically positioned to maximize visual impact both on stage and in the surrounding scenery.

These LED blinders, supplied by Prolights distributor Lightpower, stood out for their ability to visually define the stage space and provide quality lighting - essential qualities for television filming.

"When designing for an unplugged s

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24 May 2024

USA - In the space of just over a month, Salem, Oregon-based church sound specialists Alpha Sound has designed and installed Nexo Geo M6 line array systems in two houses of worship: Salem Heights, a gospel-centred church with music at the heart of the celebration and, on the other side of the country, St. Catherine of Siena in Wake Forest, North Carolina, a traditional Catholic church.

“Geo M6 proved to be the perfect solution for both, even though the worship spaces and requirements for the systems were very different,” says Alpha Sound’s lead engineer Devin Sheets. “In fact, we put 36 boxes of Geo M6 in both churches, within 36 days.”

At Salem Heights, the significant expansion of an existing Alpha Sound installed Nexo system coincided with a major building renovation, with the new system required to perform with the punch and SPL require

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23 May 2024

USA - Elation lighting has long been a staple of Coachella shows, and this year’s edition of Southern California’s premier music festival was no exception, with the event awash in Elation lighting technology. The newly revamped Sahara Tent, an anchor of the festival’s electrifying atmosphere, was adorned with over 950 Elation lights, while Elation gear also graced the Main Stage, Quasar Stage, and Outdoor Theatre.

Coachella delivered yet another diverse and eclectic experience across two weekends in April, featuring 147 acts across eight stages. Todd Roberts, of Production Design Works, spearheaded the production and lighting design for the Sahara Tent, incorporating a myriad of Elation lighting fixtures supplied by Aspect Lighting.

Roberts is a Coachella production original, having worked the festival since its inception. Shifting from the Out

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23 May 2024

USA - Empowered by X-Laser fixtures and Mercury Laser Control firmware, Ben Jarrett of Squeek Lights in Sayreville, N.J. designed the lighting for metalcore band Beartooth on their 2024 North American tour.

“In our early design meetings, Caleb [Shomo, lead singer for Beartooth] talked about bringing an arena-style show to smaller and mid-sized venues,” Jarrett said. “Whether that night’s stop was at a 3,000-capacity theatre or a 900-capacity club, he wanted every show to come at you and feel like it was taking place in a much larger setting.”

To accomplish this, Jarrett and the Squeek Lights team knew the Beartooth stage had to generate immense lighting output to provide that big arena feel from a smaller footprint. The band wanted numerous special effects as part of the design, and lasers played a major part in creating those big, impactfu

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23 May 2024

UK - Despite having a population of less than 5000, the North Yorkshire town of Malton enjoys top quality music, comedy and touring theatre shows at its much-loved local venue and community hub The Milton Rooms.

First built in the early 1800s, the venue is now run as a not-for-profit organisation by an active team of volunteers and features a 300-seat main theatre space with a new, world-class Nexo sound system supplied by Nexo distributors A.C. Entertainment Technologies, in collaboration with installers North Star Engineers.

After an independent assessment concluded the venue needed expert advice to overcome its poor acoustics, AC-ET calculated the best options for the new sound system using Nexo's NS-1 acoustic prediction software, which enables users to configure their speaker placement in any venue setup, and then predict the optimal sound cover

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23 May 2024

USA - The Detroit Lions held a reveal event for their new uniforms at their Ford Field home, drawing thousands of fans. The same stage was also used for the Detroit Lions NFL Draft Party. Both events were executed flawlessly, thanks to the dedicated effort and teamwork of 4Wall Entertainment’s Detroit crew.

Led by VP of live events Joe Leahy, the 4Wall team of Kareem Harris, Gary McGarity, Ross Zhang, Xavier Williamson, Jason Dunk, Robert McGoldrick, Jon Sogoian, Johnny Pike, Michael Gallacher, Brian Lavender, Tommy Minkowski, Joshua Ruhlman, and Rahul Samuel set a stylish, upbeat tone for the reveal event.

Helping them in this effort were 113 Chauvet Professional fixtures, including 14 Maverick MK3 Washes, 48 COLORado PXL Bar 16 motorized battens, 14 Color STRIKE M strobe-washes, 14 STRIKE Array 4 blinders, 20 EPIX Strip IP one-meter linear units,

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23 May 2024

USA - “Pretty much any time the church staff calls me up and asks if we can do this or can we do that, the answer I can always give them is, ‘Yes!’” says Parker Gann, system engineer at MessengerAVL, the Conyers, Georgia-based integration firm that designed and installed a new audio upgrade for Church Unlimited.

The Corpus Christi, Texas campus of the non-denominational, evangelical, multi-site church, which seats over 1,500 worshipers and is also its broadcast centre, completed a major audio systems upgrade in February in which MessengerAVL installed a KLANG:konductor immersive in-ear monitor mixing system routed through a new DiGiCo Quantum338 front-of-house console.

A Quantum225 desk, used as the church’s new broadcast console, was also part of the upgrade package. “It’s their largest campus and their flagship campus, and now it’s

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23 May 2024

USA - Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors recently wrapped a run promoting their latest album, Strangers No More. With deep Tennessee roots, the band is now no stranger to working with neighbours Bandit Lites, who provided lighting designer Dominic Hickman a package consisting of Elation Smarty Hybrids, Martin VDO Atomic Bolds and Robe Spikie fixtures.

Hickman drew inspiration from classic theatre shows, balancing the same timeless, dramatic ambiance with modern technology to transform the stage where past meets the present.

“A lot of Drew’s big hits in the show are a CTO colour,” said Hickman. “I believe white was only used for two songs (and for just a chorus), but I loved being able to capture the warmth of stages on big songs then with the slower songs bring it down to cool tones. With the set of songs, colour was the pictures in Drew

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22 May 2024

The Netherlands - Located in a former Amsterdam bicycle workshop that’s been transformed into a nightclub as well as a record label and agency representing DJs and producers, The Other Side has put itself squarely at the forefront of European nightlife with its new L‑ISA spatial audio system.

The world’s first nightclub to offer an L-ISA immersive experience, The Other Side’s main, 900-capacity room boasts a fully immersive 14.1.5 L-ISA configuration designed to wrap the audience in a 360-degree auditory experience.

“If you start a club like this, the main product has to be sound.” Doeshka Vrede and Jasper Löwik, the multi-hyphenate duo behind The Other Side – in addition to owning and managing the club, both are producers, musicians, and artist managers as well - explained that from the outset, optimum audio quality was at the forefro

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22 May 2024

Portugal - Event provider Europalco has once again leveraged Christie integrated solutions for a spectacular synchronised multi-projection display for the annual meeting of Millennium BCP, Portugal’s largest private bank, held at Lisbon’s Carlos Lopes Pavilion.

DCE Loving Brands agency organised and created the employee recognition-themed event, which was integrated into all levels of production for the approximately 1,600 people in attendance. Europalco provided a wide range of services, which included sound, lighting, video, cameras, automation, kinetic elements, stage set-up, and furniture.

A gigantic 60 x 8m main screen divided into three sections (each 20 x 8m) served as the focal point of the stage. Supported by 12 Christie 30,000 lumen, 4K 3DLP projectors, a Christie Spyder X80video processor, and Christie Pandoras Box Servers for show con

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22 May 2024

Denmark - Regan Vest is a new museum in Skørping, exploring the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War. A detailed and informative look at a conflict that lasted over four decades, Regan Vest tells the story in a newly-built exhibition space that’s equipped with a comprehensive audio solution from Genelec.

"We wanted to create an exhibition in which the audio-visual elements supported the storytelling in very subtle ways," begins Taintec’s Tue Selmer Friborg, the audio-visual consultant that worked on the project. "The sound had to offer guests an immersive element, whilst being unobtrusive, and at the same time we wanted to make an exhibition which – though complex – would require as little maintenance as possible."

The museum is made up of three parts; a 5,500sq.m secret bunker hidden 60m underground, which takes guests to the centre of the

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21 May 2024

South Africa - Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) recently returned to the stage on a Greatest Hits Live World Tour, which saw the return of the band to South Africa for the first time in 12 years. The first performance took place at Cape Town’s Greenpoint A-Track, with another following event in Johannesburg two nights later.

The South African tour, organised by Breakout Events with the Cape Town leg managed by Rogue Entertainment, required a sound system that would do justice to the band’s electronic anthems. Ultra Events were responsible for supplying and implementing the technical solutions for this much-anticipated show, including a V-Series sound system from d&b audiotechnik.

“The A-Track comes with challenges that need to be navigated with care when setting up a concert system,” explains Patrick Dudgeon, audio HOD at Ultra Eve

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21 May 2024

USA - Magic Reinvented Nightly, magician Mat Franco’s current Las Vegas residency, is staged at the Mat Franco Arena at the LINQ Hotel+Experience.

Production lighting designer Scott Chmielewski from design studio DMDS7UDIOS was first asked to create a lighting environment for this show in 2020 when it launched. Scott has worked with creative director / producer Brian Burke on top TV shows like American Idol and America’s Got Talent and has crafted his own multidisciplinary lighting aesthetic blending the theatrical with the televisual.

The Mat Franco show – under the artistic direction of scenic designer Joe O’Neill was initially planned to run for five years – and received a quick refresh during the COVID period, followed by a full production and room re-design in February 2023. This last update brought large qua

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21 May 2024

Spain - Home of Zarzuela - a form of Spanish traditional musical comedy – central Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela was restored to its historic beauty in 1913 after a fire destroyed the original 1856 building. Now owned by the Ministry of Culture and a designated Asset of General Interest with Monument status since 1994, the Teatro is Spain’s first and only Spanish lyric theatre.

The most famous Zarzuela performances have premiered here and the best works of its repertoire are still sung and heard here to this day to audiences in excess of 1,200.

Theatre, television and event rental company, CityLight Iluminación, has supplied 32 Robert Juliat Dalis 860 Cyclorama lights to the opulent venue, procured from Robert Juliat’s exclusive distributor for Spain, EarPro & EES.

Teatro de la Zarzuela’s technical team carried out some in dept

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21 May 2024

USA - Il Divo are currently on their 20th anniversary global tour, which is animated by a vibrant Ignacio (Iggy) Rosenberg lighting design that represents a dramatic departure from previous shows.

“This being the group’s 20th anniversary tour, we wanted to give them a refreshed, modern look,” said Rosenberg. “It was the best time for them to get a total revamp.  Some of the band members had ideas they wanted (including lasers and video), and I wanted to minimize the orchestra to express the individual identities of the four singers more dramatically.”

As part of new design, Rosenberg revamped the production’s audience lighting. To accomplish this, he added eight Chauvet Professional Color STRIKE M fixtures, supplied by The Lighting Design Group, to his rig.

“The band loves seeing their audience,” he said. “I wanted to push

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21 May 2024

China - Colombian singer-songwriter Juan Gomez’s concert at Beijing’s Zhongshan ‘Forbidden’ City Concert Hall has used the ethernet-based Green-GO digital solution to improve efficiency.

The Concert Hall is known as the ‘pearl of music in China’s royal garden’ as it is situated inside one of Beijing's most beautiful parks, Zhongshan Park, and surrounded by historic gardens and landmarks. Its main stage measures 23m wide and 14m tall, offering more than 1,400 seats on two floors. The venue hosts both international tours, the Beijing International Music Festival and concerts by the China Philharmonic Orchestra and Beijing Symphony Orchestra.

China Green-GO dealer and AV expert EZPro was tasked to provide a high-quality intercom system for sound engineers and stage staff for the show. “The technical team had no previous awareness of the

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21 May 2024

Poland - MSD Animal Health, part of Merck & Co, based in Rahway, New Jersey, has opened a new experience centre located at the company's production plant in Psary Małe (Greater Poland Voivodeship), established to present the company's solutions in the field of animal health identification and monitoring.

The unit's activities will support breeders and veterinarians in learning about the latest technological solutions supporting animal breeding and production.

IT integrators Koma Nord called in architectural sound installation specialists Lauda Instalacje who proposed a Nexo sound system comprising a pair of the French manufacturer’s ID84 column speakers mounted either side of the main screen, with LF extension from two ultra-compact LS400 subs mounted and hidden on the wall to the right. Processing and amplification are provided by Nexo’s DT

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20 May 2024

Australia - Based on Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy tale La Belle et la Bête, Disney’s Beauty & the Beast was the first full-length stage show to be produced by the newly created Disney Theatrical Productions (DTP) company. The musical has since grossed more than $1.7bn worldwide and played in 15 countries and 115 cities and remains one of Broadway’s biggest successes.

A new Australian production – based on the 2021 UK revival - is currently mid-way through a tour across Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. This latest production features sound from KV2 Audio, designed by sound designer and long-time Disney collaborator, John Shivers.

Shivers first started work on Beauty and the Beast for the Shanghai production in 2018. He and his associate designers, Kevin Kennedy and Greg Pink along with sound engineer Andy Sha