USA - Rising high over the flatland at the mouth of the Manitowoc River as it flows into Lake Michigan, the Briess Grain Tower in Manitowoc, WI, has served a familiar landmark for sailors and townspeople for generations. On the night of Friday 10 April, the venerable structure offered another kind of hope and reassurance. From 7:45 to 11 pm, it glowed in blue against the clear, dark sky as a show of solidarity and support for the healthcare workers and front-liners during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Local businesses, The Wharf Manitowoc, Powerhouse Productions and Brennan Seehafer Productions, came up with the idea of lighting the tower, along with another landmark, the decommissioned WWII submarine, USS Cobia, to honour these unsung heroes.
“They are making great sacrifices to ensure that things continue to function during the pandemic, and this is a way for our communi

USA - Created at The 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle, Bliss is a new musical fantasy full of emotion and humour that shatters assumptions about what a fairytale princess should be. The empowering tale had its world premiere run 7-23 February and was enthusiastically received for its catchy music and non-traditional storyline, plus its scenic and lighting design.
The unorthodox ethos carried into the lighting rig as well where lighting designer Yael Lubetzky incorporated Elation Rayzor 760 luminaires in her design, an LED moving head fixture you more typically find in a concert rig, which is exactly where the LD first discovered it. “I saw a Rob Thomas concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York and saw the Rayzor 760 and thought these are exactly what we want in the show,” Yael shares. “When I saw the units sparkle effect, I was so surprised. I had never seen anyth

USA - Every day, dancers at Sarasota Contemporary Dance, in Sarasota, FL, gather at the company’s studio to rehearse intricately choreographed routines that will later be performed before appreciative audiences.
On some occasions, the company’s studio in Sarasota’s bustling Rosemary District, will be turned into a performance space, either for a special dance, or a “behind the scenes” event put on for donors. When this happens those in attendance are invariably dazzled, not only by the graceful moves of the dancers, but also by the colourful and elegantly balanced lighting created with 20 Chauvet Professional Ovation P-56FC fixtures supplied by the New York-based Lighting Design Group.
The studio, which opened in 2018, is stylish and comfortable, but its relatively low ceiling presents a challenge for anyone lighting a dance performance. Fixtures that are rel

China - JX Investment Group is one of China’s leading entertainment brands, with a range of chains throughout the country. It has recently launched JX EDM Live, new clubs where Alcons pro-ribbon audio systems are installed.
JX EDM Live currently comprises two clubs, one in Yulin, Shaanxi Province and the other in Wúzhōu, Guangxi Province. Both are large venues, with a floor area of 640m2/6889ft2 and a height of 18m/59ft. Guangzhou-based EAD was asked by JX Investment Group to design audio systems that would deliver pure, driving low frequencies and clean highs seamlessly throughout the spaces.
“In China, the EDM club market is very competitive. They are using high-end speakers because customers want the best quality music experience,” says Locky Deng, marketing manager at Alcons Audio’s Chinese distributor EAD. “After tests with two other leading loudspeak

Australia - Astera AX1 Pixel Tubes are doing their bit - both as energising effects luminaires and as practical lights - marking out the social distancing spaces - onstage at Delivered Live, a new performance-based web streaming concept for music and comedy.
The show is broadcast weekly from The Studio at Harry The Hirer Productions’ HQ in the Richmond district of Melbourne.
The project is being driven by artist agency Handshake Management, technical and production rental company Harry The Hirer Productions and The Victoria State Government, offering a mix of entertainment from some of Australia’s established and rising star artists who are based in and around the city.
It’s also designed as a fundraiser to provide vital financial assistance for those directly impacted by the devastating effect of the Coronavirus pandemic on the live show and events

UK - The Church of St. Nicholas in Grosmont, Monmouthshire, dates from the early 13th century, making it one of the oldest churches in Wales. The Grade II listed building’s large medieval nave is widely considered to be the finest in the country.
During the late 19th century, the church was on the verge of collapse, but was saved by architect JP Seddon in a Victorian renovation which separated the nave from the transept and choir, leaving the nave – which is now used for village events, farmers markets, concerts, private parties and the like – in predominantly untouched original condition, while the church space remains as a place of worship.
As part of a recent 15-year programme of modernisation, which included restoration of the roof and lime-plastering the transept walls, as well as new lighting, heating and toilet facilities, provision was made for a new soun

UK - Various landmark installations that have been lit with Anolis lighting fixtures have been turning blue on Thursday evenings for the Clap For Carers initiative in support of the National Health Service (NHS) and other essential workers.
This includes Rhyl Promenade in North Wales where several key features are lit; Bromley High Street in Kent, a major thoroughfare in the heart of the city and popular live music venue the O2 Guildhall in Southampton, Hampshire.
All the Anolis-lit areas across the seaside town of Rhyl are turned blue for the NHS including the Pavilion Theatre, Clock Tower, Sky Tower, waterfall, and seafront viewing shelters.
The 80m-tall Sky Tower is highlighted with ArcSource Outdoor 48MC RGBW integrals which transform it into an elegant beacon of light at night with smooth and even coverage of lumens up and down the mast.
The current Pa

UK - Stage Electrics has supplied High End SolaFrame 1000s to the Gala Theatre Durham, owned and operated by Durham County Council.
The company’s Davie Bell says Stage Electrics “were able to demonstrate a number of fixtures to the Gala Theatre and assist in their process of choosing the right solution for their venue.”
Tez Errington, the acting technical manager at the Gala Theatre who made the purchase decision, explains: “This unit was considerable quieter than its rivals, offering more features, with clean cut colours and great shutter control, too. But the thing that sold it was both the light output and how quiet the fixture was.” The venue purchased eight in total with flight cases.
“Despite the difficulties facing everyone in the industry, I am pleased Stage Electrics was able to deliver these units ready for when the venue re-opens - let’s

Europe - American singer Halsey kicked off her Manic world tour in Madrid in February, supporting her just-released studio album, also called Manic. The tour spans 48 shows, with the next legs currently being planned for Asia and North America later this year. disguise gx 2c media servers were selected by All Of It Now to drive the show’s video and Notch IMAG realtime effects.
Numerous features of the disguise solutions came into play for the tour starting in pre-pro. “The show’s video design used a multi-layered frame, and the 3D workflow of disguise Designer allowed us to create parallel maps that placed content on the screen spatially without requiring specific renders for certain songs,” explains Danny Firpo of All of It Now, a disguise rental partner and workflow specialist based in San Francisco, who did the tour’s video programming with Cade Mo

Canada - Toronto’s El Mocambo live music venue is set to reopen following a five-year, multi-million-dollar renovation by new owner Michael Wekerle, a Canadian financier and television personality.
The building, originally constructed in 1910, has been completely gutted and rebuilt with three live performance spaces connected to an audio broadcast and recording control room equipped with a Solid State Logic Live L550 digital mixing console.
“It’s not quite a club anymore. It’s an event space with a very beautifully designed interior inside a broadcast facility,” says Jamie Howieson, executive designer and production manager at the iconic venue, which has long been affectionately referred to as the El Mo.“The main reason I went with the L550 desk is that, when I was using it in the past, I never heard a better combination of preamp, clock and converter in a

USA - It was over two years ago that Dallas-based music store and AV integration specialist Romeo Music designed and installed a fully-weatherproof Danley sound reinforcement system to cover Madisonville High School’s baseball and softball fields. The project was a huge success. Not only does the system sound intelligible, punchy, and musical, but Danley’s weatherproof options have made the system resilient in the face of east-central Texas’s humid, stormy climate.
Thus, when the aged sound reinforcement system at Madisonville High School’s 3,500-capacity football stadium was no longer acceptable, the school again turned to Romeo Music and Danley Sound Labs.
“They love the baseball/softball system, which uses four fully-weatherproof Danley OS12CX loudspeakers,” explained Kevin Deal, regional sales manager with Romeo Music. “Their football stadium’s old

UK - International law firm Dentons has upgraded audio-video systems at its One Fleet Place, London, offices as part of an initiative to streamline the efficiency of its global communications. Supplied and installed by the Torpedo Factory Group, the new integrated sound and vision systems have been welcomed by colleagues, who have commented on the improved quality as well as increased productivity.
With more than 185 offices in 75 countries around the world employing in excess of 10,000 lawyers, effective global communication is a critical component of Dentons’ day to day activities, relied upon to conduct board meetings, face-to-face meetings with colleagues, and stream video conferences and large scale presentations from any part of the world.
TFG’s proven track record of successful previous Dentons projects in Edinburgh, Milton Keynes and Dublin, led TFG techni

India - ABR Cinemas The Next is a multiplex located in historic Gudivada. With three luxurious theatres, ABR Cinemas is one of Andhra Pradesh’s premier cinemas. To create a more immersive AV experience, ABR Cinemas hired sound integrators Digital Sound System to install three Harman Professional Solutions cinema audio systems featuring JBL loudspeakers, Crown amplifiers and Dolby Atmos processors.
“We are proud to have been associated with Harman Professional Solutions and all of the products recently installed at ABR Cinemas,” comments Dariya Hussain Syed of Digital Sound System. “The JBL Professional 4732 loudspeakers and 4642A subwoofers have delivered exceptional audio results. We received the products promptly and the technical support from Harman Professional Solutions helped us complete the installation on time.”
Digital Sound System equipped the Audi

USA - John Clark, the production ministry lead at Red Rocks Church in Littleton, has had to dig deep and explore new ways of doing things now that worship services have moved completely online.
On Easter Sunday, Clark created a rich and engaging visual setting for Red Rocks’ online service that was, at once, powerfully moving, yet warm and intimate enough to engage viewers through sometimes small, mobile screens. Live-streamed on Living as One and featuring a 50-member ‘virtual choir’, the harmoniously balanced service was illuminated by a rig that featured Chauvet Professional COLORado, Ovation and Rogue fixtures.
“I like to think of challenges as opportunities,” explains Clark. “Lighting a completely streamed or online service definitely changes the game. A fair amount of principles stay the same, but by and large LDs are called upon to ‘throw out the p

USA - Popular Nashville bar, restaurant and live music joint Rebar At The Dam has recently upgraded its stage with a new AV system. Featuring a rig comprised mainly of ADJ fixtures, the new setup offers touring quality production to the local performers and visiting artists who play at the venue each week.
Owned and operated by Nashville entrepreneur Rhonda Russell, Rebar At The Dam is a sister location to the original Rebar that has been a staple of Nashville’s Midtown area for the past decade. Located on the outskirts of town beside the J. Percy Priest Dam, the new Rebar opened a couple of years ago and is a considerably bigger facility with plenty of space to host live music. However, bands playing the venue had to bring in their own PA and had very little in the way of lighting, which led Rhonda to look at installing a permanent AV system towards the end of last year.<

Croatia - House music DJ and producer David Morales has produced and remixed over 500 records for an all-star roster of multi-platinum artists, including Mariah Carey, U2, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Madonna, and Whitney Houston. His current rider for live performance specifies a KV2 Audio ES System as his preferred monitoring setup and he also has a full KV2 setup in his studio at home.
Morales has been using a KV2 setup at home for a while - he currently has two EX10s and two EX2.2 subs which he loves - but hadn’t used a KV2 system on a gig until his show at the Boogaloo club in Zagreb, Croatia on St Valentine’s Day this year. He tried out a full ES System comprising an ES1.0 high power active mid/hi loudspeaker stacked on a pair of ES1.8 high output subs per side, powered by two EPAK2500R control and amplification units (one per side).
“These speakers s

USA - Harman Professional Solutions has announced the continuation of the free Learning Sessions eLearning programme in conjunction with Harman Professional University. Available Learning Sessions include lighting or audio experts who have worked with Maroon 5, Bad Wolves, Halsey, Taking Back Sunday, Nicki Minaj, Madonna, Queens Of The Stone Age, My Chemical Romance, The 1975 and the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts.
The Learning Sessions and Live Workshop Series provide a range of free on-demand and instructor-led webinars hosted by leading knowledge experts from around the world. The Industry Expert workshops feature tips and tricks from front of house engineers, lighting designers, technicians and other industry experts, while the Expert workshops feature in-depth product and solution webinars by Harman product spec

Belgium - A short time ago, a group of road cases loaded with gear left the Sound&Co warehouse for what was supposed to be a four-month rental. Then the Covid-19 outbreak brought live events in Belgium to a sudden halt.
Although the lockdown is still very much in place, the cases are now playing a new role in bringing entertainment to the people. This time as backdrops in the improvised livestream studio that Sound&Co has set up in its 1,200sq.mfacility.
Quite a few people have been seeing those cases-turned-backdrops too. At last report, Sound&Co had streamed seven post-lockdown performances by DJs like Kaaprisun, Twallie, Lloyds and Sound of the Basement. Supporting them is a rig anchored by four Chauvet Professional Rogue R2 Wash fixtures and run with a ChamSys MagicQ MQ80 console.
“We wanted to create the look and feel of a club or party with

Europe - From mid-February to early March, German-Canadian singer Alice Merton was on the road to promote her debut album Mint +4. Merton is also known in Germany as a jury member of the popular TV show The Voice of Germany. Her Mint +4 tour took the artist to Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Denmark.
The artist presented her repertoire of indie pop songs supported by a versatile lighting setup from GLP. The lighting and set design was a co-production between Merton's manager Paul Grauwinkel - with whom she also runs her own label Paper Plane Records International - and lighting technician Maximilian Hermsdorf, in close coordination with Merton herself. It was Hermsdorf who joined the tour as lighting operator.
The technical team around Merton and Grauwinkel had been in constant communication about new and existing products from the GLP ca

UK - White Light (WL) and Gasoline Productions have announced the recent launch of Brave New World Comedy, an online pilot which uses the latest broadcast technology in order to deliver a range of virtual stand up performances which bring together audiences with comedians.
With most comedy clubs and venues temporarily closed across the UK, a void has been created for those usually present both on and off stage.
By combining the technical wizardry of WL’s SmartStage and Gasoline Productions’ experience of producing comedy evenings, Brave New World Comedy offers an interactive way of bringing a comedy club directly into the homes of its audiences.
“We’re using SmartStage as it’s an immersive video environment, which replaces the traditional green screen element of a virtual studio and allows both the comedians and audience to see and intera

Sweden - The Mill hotel in central Malmö, has recently reopened after a full-scale, top-to-bottom renovation. Part of the successful Nordic Choice chain, in addition to its 244 rooms, The Mill boasts 10 conference rooms of varying sizes and a gym to cater for all the needs of the business traveller. All of the conference rooms plus the gym are equipped with Genelec sound systems complete with Crestron control for a flawless audio experience.
Nordic Choice turned to Swedish integrator, Informationsteknik, to design, supply and install the AV systems throughout the hotel.
The conference rooms are all named after the various spices that are sold at the famous Möllevångstorget market nearby. As a result, each room benefits from its own rich colour scheme according to the spice after which it is named. Cocoa, saffron and cinnamon are just some of the names that have ins

Bahrain - The BLAST Pro Series Global Final, one of the highlights of the booming international e-sports market, was hosted in the Kingdom of Bahrain in December 2019, with Green Hippo’s Hippotizer Media Servers looking after the complex playback requirements. The event, an action-packed first-person shooter tournament spanning two days, attracted gaming fans from around the world to the 7,000-seat Isa Sports City Arena.
Working directly for the tournament organisers, Copenhagen-based specialist 4K Projects supplied all of the Hippotizers and AV equipment for the fast-paced event. Project manager Mikkel Samuelsen oversaw the project, along with operators Kasper Lange and Balder Thorrud.
Lange was in charge of lighting, video and design, whilst Thorrud set up and operated the Hippotizer Media Servers. The Green Hippo package consisted of three Boreal+ units, two of wh

Sweden - Riksteatern, the Swedish National Touring Theatre, was due to take its production of Love Songs on a three month tour of Sweden from early March, with lighting director and designer, Jörgen ‘Hajen’ Haimanas, choosing six Ayrton Diablo LED profile luminaires as a major feature of his lighting design, in what would be Diablo’s first national tour of Sweden. Due to the current Covid-19 crisis, the tour was only able to complete the first five dates before it was necessarily postponed by lockdown.
Love Songs is described as a ‘sentimental love bomb’, a musical evening depicting love in all its forms, featuring the musical talents of Arja Saijonmaa, Frida Beckman, Lisa Hu Yu, Robert Hannouch and Peter Järn. Haimanas used his considerable lighting talents, to create an incredible array of looks using the six strategically placed Diablo units in a desig

France - The coronavirus pandemic has already seen many examples of those in the entertainment technology and production industry putting their skills and resources to good use - from morale-raising actions to physical contributions and manufacturing items to aid the massive efforts worldwide to contain the spread of infection.
In normal times, S-Group is a busy full production and rental operation with four regional bases and a HQ in Alès, north of Nimes in the South of France, and this time of year they’d have an average of 20 tours on the road as well as servicing numerous long term rentals.
However, with the live show and event Industry at a complete standstill, S-Group’s manufacturing division has instead energised its 3D printing capabilities to assist in producing protective visors for workers engaged in the various frontline healthcare and first response s

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