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26 June 2024

Slovakia - For almost half a century, Jean Michel Jarre has pushed the boundaries of studio production and live performance.

Jarre’s most recent appearance saw him take to the stage in the Slovakian capital Bratislava to perform his Bridge From the Future show in front of 100,000. The gig opened STARMUS, a science and music festival founded by Queen guitarist Brian May and astrophysicist Dr Garik Israelian, with the aim of uniting science, art, and music to explore critical questions about the future of the planet.

For what would be an audio tour-de-force involving additional contributions from Brian May, the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and a 19-strong chorus form the Slovak Philharmonic Choir, delivered from the largest stage ever constructed in Slovakia, Jean Michel Jarre specified a Coda Audio system to meet the challenge.

Exp

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26 June 2024

UK - The Olivier Awards 2024 took place on Sunday 14 April 2024 at the Royal Albert Hall, from where it was broadcast by ITV1, and streamed internationally on YouTube and by BritBox. It was presented by Emmy winner and multi-Olivier nominee Hannah Waddingham who opened the show, accompanied by the London Community Gospel Choir, with a performance of Anything Goes.

The three-hour long Awards show was interspersed with performances from the casts of West End musical theatre including Hadestown, Sunset Boulevard, Operation Mincemeat, and Guys and Dolls.

Lighting designer Ben Cracknell, lighting the Olivier Awards for his 11th year, chose 78 Ayrton Perseo Profile fixtures, provided by White Light, as his work horse fixtures. He wanted to modernise and unify under one fixture type his previously mixed rig, so h

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26 June 2024

France - Poised at the gateway to the Champagne vineyards, Châlons-en-Champagne is steeped in heritage and culture, blending history with innovation. Its cathedrals and gothic architecture house a vibrant creative community. Le Capitole en Champagne's multi-purpose venue showcases creativity, serving the community with events ranging from one-person shows to live music and musicals in a versatile space. Opened in 2012 and managed by S-Pass TSE group, the modular space can hold 3,600 in a mix of seated and standing audiences.

In 2023, faced with an expanding lineup of events, Le Capitole en Champagne updated the existing audio system, aiming for top-tier sound quality and versatility to meet diverse demands. Julien Dejonckeere, technical director at S-Pass TSE, which manages the venue, specified an L-Acoustics professional audio system and contacted local ce

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26 June 2024

UK - Currently running at the Ambassadors Theatre in London’s West End, Kathy & Stella Solve a Murder! is an award-winning musical comedy which follows Kathy & Stella – hosts of Hull’s least successful true crime podcast. However, when their favourite author is killed, the pair find themselves thrust into a thrilling whodunnit of their own.

The show features a lighting design by Peter Small who approached White Light (WL), a d&b solutions company, to supply his rig, having previously done so for the show’s Bristol and Manchester run. For the London production, an addition to the rig included the Macula remote follow-spot System – distributed in the UK by Sound Technology - making the show the first in West End history to use this technology.

Kathy & Stella arrived in London following its previous sell-out r

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26 June 2024

Finland - Mikki Kunttu brought Richard Wagner’s epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, also known as the Ring tetralogy, to a conclusion at the Finnish National Opera with the performance of the monumental, nearly six-hour-long Götterdämmerung featuring Claypaky Xtylos, the world’s first laser-based beam lighting fixture.

The first instalment of The Ring Cycle, Das Rheingold, was performed at the Finnish National Opera in August and September 2019. The Covid pandemic delayed the second opera, Die Walkure, until autumn 2022, with performances of Siegfried following in March and April 2023. Over these past years, The Ring played to full houses. Its visual aspect and direction, the Orchestra of the Finnish National Opera, and the soloists’ world-class singing have been acclaimed by audiences

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26 June 2024

USA - The David H. Koch Theatre, nestled in the heart of Lincoln Centre and renowned for its dedication to dance, has recently undergone a transformative technological upgrade. In a collaborative effort with Clear-Com, the theatre has revamped its wireless intercom, and installed all new panels to enhance communication efficiency.

Originally constructed in 1964 as the New York State Theatre, the venue was designed by the esteemed architect Philip Johnson. Over the years, it has played a pivotal role in the cultural landscape of New York, serving as the home to the New York City Ballet and hosting various other theatrical performances, including classic Broadway musical revivals. Most recently, the 2024 Tony Awards were held at the theatre, utilising Clear-Com's advanced communication systems to ensure a smooth and successful event.

In a generous comm

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25 June 2024

UK - Keane20, Hope and Fears, was the hotly anticipated tour from Keane, celebrating 20 years since their debut album was released in 2004. The tour continues with festival dates around the world over the summer.

For Philip Harvey at the front of house position and Hannah Brodrick on monitors, it was important the set-up was as streamlined as possible, so using DiGiCo consoles for shared stage racking was essential. Utilising KLANG for immersive mixes kept the monitor footprint compact, while at front of house, the integration of Quantum’s onboard technologies ensured the workflow was efficient and consistent across all venues.

Harvey is an engineer with over 25 years of experience touring. For the Keane20 tour the brief was clear: working within the ethos of a striped back, clean-lined stage design, the sound set-up needed to justify every centime

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25 June 2024

Poland - Sixty million pixels of content is being driven to 18 HD projectors and three LED screens as part of an immersive installation at the Bieszczady Cultural Heritage Centre, with tvONE's Green Hippo Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Media Servers at the core of the visuals. More than 200GB of animated graphics are being handled by the Boreal+ MK2s in a show designed to educate, inform and entertain.

The Centre, called Bieszczadzkie Centrum Dziedzictwa Kulturowego in Polish, is located in the southeast town of Ustrzyki Dolne. Its multimedia rooms, exhibition zones, and concert hall have been constructed in an old refinery, offering ample space for the AV show, which takes visitors into a virtual reality space to tell stories about multiculturalism, the richness of nature, and economic development. The room in which the project is installed measures 15 x 15m.

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25 June 2024

Europe - Lighting designer Andre Beekmans from design studio The Art of Light buckled up for hardcore techno rave action with Scooter on their Thirty Rough & Dirty tour celebrating 30 years of dance music!

Andre’s technical rider specifies several Robe moving lights – 78 x Pointes, 45 x Spiiders, 82 x Tetra2s and three Fortes used as follow spots on a remote follow system – all picked for their speed, functionality, and robustness for a genre of music that seriously challenges the build quality of any piece of lighting kit!

Andre – whose clients include Armin van Buuren, Afrojack and a string of other high profile dance artists – started working with Scooter in 2022 on a stadium tour of German-speaking countries.

One of Andre’s starting points for Thirty, Rough & Dirty’s production lighting design was M

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25 June 2024

France - The latest edition of ibis RockCorps returned recently with a major gig at Paris’s Accor Arena, featuring the triple bill of Macklemore, Franglish and Rosinia. The concept of the event is that anyone giving four hours of their time as a civic project volunteer in the French capital is eligible for tickets to this free concert.

Martin Audio partner, production company 22live, tendered and won the contract, having worked for the show’s producers CC-Lab in the past.

However, 22live director Paul Timmins was aware that to service a gig economically within the Eurozone would require a marriage of careful logistics and high-octane sound - knowing that working in Europe post-Brexit poses a bureaucratic nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions.

He rationalised that by flying Martin Audio’s large format Wavefront Precision W

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25 June 2024

UK - The new Coyote Ugly Saloon in Bristol is bringing a slice of the Big Apple to south-west England with a high-energy audio installation powered by Powersoft T Series amplifiers.

Inspired by the original Coyote Ugly bar in New York, immortalised in the cult 2000 film Coyote Ugly, the first UK Coyote Ugly Saloon opened its doors in 2016 and instantly proved popular in Liverpool and Birmingham. The newest venue, which also has sister bars in London, Cardiff and Swansea is located on Bristol’s Bordeaux Quay, with long-time integration partner Spartan Audio Visual adding the audio muscle.

“We’ve worked with the UK franchise owner for a long time and understand a lot about how they like to work in order to deliver maximum value without compromising the overall AV product,” explains Dave Morgan, Spartan Audio Visual’s sales and instal

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25 June 2024

USA - Guitarist and singer/songwriter Gary Clark Jr. is out on his Hyperwave tour in support of his most recent album, JPEGRAW. Bandit Lites provided the lighting for the North American dates, which covered nearly every type of venue, from mobile stages to Red Rocks to Radio City. When assembling the scalable lighting system, designers John Adamo and Robert Fuller took inspiration directly from Clark Jr.’s music.

“We really wanted to try and pay respect to the sonic diversity and range we felt was such a standout feature of the project,” explained Adamo. “We wanted the lighting design to try and reflect what we heard in the music: A combination of strong, defined layers that stand strong in their own right but really shine when woven together.”

The modular rig had a baseline width of 41’ that would need to compress inward or even have ent

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24 June 2024

UK - Take That’s This Life world tour takes in arenas and stadiums with audio design, equipment delivery and crew from Skan, a Clair Global brand. Led by tour director Chris Vaughan and production manager Wez Wearing, Take That still attract multi-generational fans in their tens of thousands per night.

Now a three-piece comprising Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard Donald, FOH engineer Gary Bradshaw has had the same objective since their inception in 1993: “I must get the show to sound as close to the records possible, it’s what their fans expect. With the live band, the arrangements are different, but the overall sound needs to be similar. Mike Stevens, our musical director, is very good at arranging the music, and the musicians are brilliant.”

Gary has used DiGiCo desks since they came to market, this time taking an SD7 Quantum out.

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24 June 2024

USA - Lighting designer Tom Kenny utilised Elation lighting for both the indoor and outdoor stages at the 2024 CMT Music Awards earlier this spring. The lighting package, supplied by 4Wall, included Proteus Excalibur, Artiste Mondrian, and Dartz 360 luminaires, among other fixtures.

Broadcast live from the Moody Centre on the University of Texas campus in Austin, performances took place inside and on an outdoor stage in front of the University of Texas Tower. Lighting direction for the indoor show was by Felix Peralta, David ‘Fuji’ Convertino, and Michelle Griesmer, with Han Henze and Matt Piercy handling lighting direction on the outdoor stage. Production design was by Anne Brahic, her 15th year working the awards show.

Kenny was in his 12th year designing for the CMTs and his experience and proven approach are integral to the successful team ef

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24 June 2024

USA - The architectural design of the Insomniac Events Electric Daisy Festival’s bassPOD stage is impressive by any measure. With a 65ft high trim and a width of approximately 250-feet, it is clearly massive. But there is more than size to this impressive metallic structure designed by Stufish Studios. With its shapes and forms extending in every direction, and at multiple levels, it presents a labyrinth of possibilities, inviting all who look at it to let their imaginations run wild along its myriad paths.

Erik Mahowald spent countless hours delving into every nuance of this stage design long before it was ever constructed. He was tasked with making it come alive and accenting all its compelling power with light.

“Once we received the architectural design from Stufish Studios, my team and I closely evaluated the size and material of the structur

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24 June 2024

USA - In 2024, rockers 311 from Omaha, Nebraska, celebrate 34 years as one of America’s most popular indie bands with a massive ‘cult following’. The band celebrates biennially with a ‘311 Day’ concert event - two nights of ‘unapologetic 311-core music’. Since 2018, this has been staged at The Park Theatre at Park MGM, Las Vegas.

Lighting designer Bobby Grey of Notan Creative has been working as their production designer since 2018. But before then, he had completed his first ever 311 tour as a fresh-faced fresh out of school lighting tech, back in the day when Joe Paradise was pushing the buttons.

The 2024 event featured a completely new production design – which will be followed up by a heavy touring schedule – and Bobby took the opportunity to spec nearly 200 Robe moving lights – a mix of Fortes, Esprites, Tetra2s and MegaPoint

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21 June 2024

USA - Sphere Entertainment has announced that Sphere will celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Exosphere’s first illumination on 4 July with an all-new Exosphere content and audio experience – the Sphere Fourth of July Celebration presented by Verizon.

The Sphere Fourth of July Celebration will also mark the launch of two new features of the Exosphere experience: XO Stream presented by Verizon – an official livestream of the Exosphere that will be available 24/7 on thesphere.com, and XO Audio – custom audio synced to content on the Exosphere that will be audible both onsite within Sphere’s property and online via XO Stream.

Earlier in the evening, Sphere will honour the Las Vegas-based student artists who participated in the Sphere XO Student Design Challenge with a special pre-show ceremony

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21 June 2024

Denmark - The new Lion Productions show Cinderella the Musical (Askepot the Musical in Danish) premiered at the Tivolis Koncertsal, København, (Tivoli Concert Hall, Copenhagen) and is being followed by an ongoing national tour.

Motor Stage Automation (MSA) has provided two elements of automation equipment for this acclaimed production – MRD750 7.5m double revolve comprising a 5m centre circle and a 2.5m outer ring, plus two tracking video screens on a rear truss.

All of this is being operated via a Kinesys Vector control console, programmed by Lion Productions’ head of automation, Erik Mølgaard Jensen, at the start of the tour. A touring operator runs the automation day-to-day, with Erik also overseeing the moves to different venues.

The MRD750 high gloss surfaced revolve is in constant motion throughout the performanc

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21 June 2024

Norway - The newly launched Grandeur is the sixth luxury ship to come from Regent Seven Seas Cruises. With 10 decks that can host up to 744 guests, the cruise ship promises a deluxe vacation experience with beautiful design throughout. The ship landed on many ETC solutions to outfit its lighting plot.

Filling many roles on the vessel, Travis McHale shared his experience working with ETC. Part of Travis’s responsibilities includes working as a contractor for Norwegian Cruise Lines, designing the light plot, producing paperwork, and creating the layout of all the networking, as well as specifying the equipment. Additionally, for Norwegian Creative Studios, he was the lighting designer and programmer for most of the production shows on board.

This is the third vessel in the class of ship. Prior to Grandeur, Travis worked on the second ship with a Gio

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21 June 2024

USA - Paul Maloof says he’s the kind of person who loves a challenge. He’s also always open to new experiences. He’s getting his share of both with indie icons Say Anything on their 27-city Is A Real Boy 20th Anniversary Tour.

Although they’ve recorded nine albums, in addition to appearing in films and on network TV shows over the past two decades, the popular six-member band has never carried their own LD with them on tour. For his part, Maloof, though admiring their music, was not very familiar with Say Anything’s songs.

“From the get-go, I knew that this was going to be a show of firsts for all of us,” said Maloof. “I started building a show file based on the album track listing and was not very confident it was going to be successful. I decided to take on the challenge of busking the show. It seems to have been the right choice.

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20 June 2024

USA - Country superstar Thomas Rhett’s tour is hitting US arenas and festivals with an “awesome” lighting and visual show driven by tvONE's Green Hippo brand of Hippotizer Media Servers.

A vast LED screen is constructed in each venue behind a wall of lighting fixtures, which are rigged on a scaffolding-style structure. Wrapping around the top of the stage, mirroring the thrust, a series of LED panels add height and drama. For each show, creative designer Alec Takahashi of BKD plays with depth, texture and layering to create what he describes as a “sense of wonder” with video surfaces.

Two Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Media Servers – one as main, one as backup – are being used to provide the processing power, programming ease and eye-candy effects, with a Hippotizer Karst+ MK2 at FOH for HippoNet access.

“To create this show we utili

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20 June 2024

UK - A Thameside location in the well-heeled town of Marlow is the setting for Tom Kerridge’s firmly established Pub in the Park festival.

Thiis is more of a four-day community event than a festival - complete with stages, pop-ups and a line-up of top chefs, mingling with the DJs and artists of the calibre of Van Morrison, Paloma Faith, Busted and Example, while the array of DJs ranged from Judge Jules to Gok Wan via Vernon Kay.

Martin Audio partner SWG Events have a had a long history with the event, this year bringing their flagship WPL line array to main stage. The rental company will also be providing a turnkey solution for the other three Pub in the Park events, in Chiswick, St Albans and Reigate.

In Marlow, they populated the stage with hangs of 10 WPL enclosures a side, with four of the smaller Wavefront Precision WPS arrays providin

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20 June 2024

UK - Forty years in the business have seen Nils Edstrom cover the full range of audio engineering duties. Having started life as a performing musician, Nils moved into studio engineering, where he amassed credits on more than a hundred and fifty commercially released albums. After that, itchy feet took him out on the road as a freelance touring engineer, a role he occupies to this day alongside his gig as an educator at South and City College (SCCB) in Digbeth, Birmingham.

Nils has enjoyed a plethora of career highlights, not least of which was the Easy Star Allstars performance of Dub Side of the Moon on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, next to the Lovell Telescope at Bluedot Festival. Punjabtronix at Washington’s Kennedy Centre, Maximo Park at Kendall Calling, and a series of TEDGlobal events, are further examples of Nils’ versatility. He is a

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20 June 2024

USA - Elation supported the British Music Embassy (BME) stage at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and music festival in Austin, Texas. Partnering with the Academy of Live Technology at Production Park, Elation lighting was used to illuminate the stage and artists while serving as a valuable training ground for the next generation of lighting technicians and operators.

The BME stage is a high-profile platform at the renowned festival and is run on behalf of the UK Government International Department for Business and Trade. It provides a valuable showcase for the UK's best emerging acts and has played host to a number of artists who went on to global fame such as Amy Winehouse, Sam Fender, The 1975, and more.

As an ongoing partner of the Academy of Live Technology, and Production Park, Elation was pleased to supply 18 Proteus Lucius,