UK - Taking in selected venues, Tokio Myers, who stunned the judges to claim victory on Britain's Got Talent has been showcasing his genre straddling fusion of classical and contemporary musical experiences on stages across the UK.
Collaborating closely with Vision Factory show designer, Sam Tozer, the VER London operation has supported the tour with a comprehensive video, projection and lighting package that helped realise the designer’s creative vision for the shows. Set against a 9 x 4m upstage LED wall, the show blends live performance with filmed footage, cutting edge graphics and intense colour that silhouettes the artist at work.
Speaking about the show’s visual elements, Sam says: “Tokio Myers Our Generation tour design revolved around the basic idea of cinematography and immersing Tokio in a halo like parallel cube of light. I found using VER high

France - Every year, the future graduates of the French school of architecture of Tournai organise the JNDA (Journée et Nuit de l’Architecture), an event that gathers over 4,000 visitors. A disused industrial site is specially transformed to host conferences as well as artistic and cultural performances. At dusk, the venue becomes a concert hall with three stages, where renowned and emerging bands entertain the crowds until late.
For this 34th edition, the event took up residence in the former 7,000sq.m Louis Carton industrial workshop. In order to cater for an eclectic crowd, three stages - each dedicated to specific music genres - were set up in the three workshop warehouses: EDM, Urban and Alternative.
For the technical side, the organisers trusted YES Event to manage the audio set up of all three stages. The event service provider turned to French manufacturer o

USA - The brainchild of The Who’s guitarist and primary songwriter, Pete Townshend, Tommy – a rock opera that tells the story of a deaf, dumb and blind boy who achieves a personal breakthrough when he becomes an expert pinball player – was first performed on stage in 1969.
Featuring some of Townshend’s best-loved songs, including Pinball Wizard and See Me, Feel Me, Tommy has enjoyed remarkable creative longevity as a staple of The Who’s live repertoire, as well as multiple theatrical and touring productions and a celebrated film directed by Ken Russell.
For the musical component of the new production currently being staged at Colorado’s Denver Centre, director Sam Buntrock and sound designer Ken Travis had several motivating ideas in mind. “This is not to criticise some of the more recent stage productions, but we wanted to get

USA - Leading AV industry manufacturers, L-Acoustics, d&b audiotechnik, Meyer Sound, Biamp, AudioScience, Avid and Luminex have joined together to create a new network solution that “will reshape the AV networking industry and future of high-performance professional media”.
All will be revealed during a presentation and live demonstration during InfoComm 2018 next week.
The solution is a result of over 18 months of close collaboration among industry leaders under the umbrella of Avnu Alliance.
(Jim Evans)

UK - Cardiff-based events services provider 11th Hour has been appointed by Associated British Ports South Wales to supply a temporary passenger terminal in Cardiff Bay for the Marco Polo cruise ship.
The terminal comprises a 57m marquee fitted out with a bespoke interior, with the company also supplying several security elements, including bag-scanning and metal detection equipment.
Project manager Bruno Hunt is in charge of the technical aspects of the terminal, whilst business development manager Jason Venables oversees the customer-facing side of the operation.
The project overlaps with 11th Hour’s involvement in the Volvo Ocean Race, a round-the-world yacht race that arrived in Cardiff on 29 May, with the company supplying a range of facilities for the Race Village.
(Jim Evans)

USA - After recently expanding its inventory with a large complement of Claypaky Scenius Unico and Mythos2 fixtures, Elite Multimedia Productions has provided a portion of that equipment to Cole Swindell’s nationwide Reason to Drink Tour.
The country singer-songwriter kicked off his headlining tour in Allentown, Pennsylvania in February and wrapped the first leg in LA in April. He resumed the tour a month later in Austin and will continue to play dates across the country through September. Nashville-based Elite Multimedia is the production provider for lighting, LED, video and IMAG video support.
Production designer James ‘Mo’ Butts deploys 16 Claypaky Scenius Unico and 24 Mythos2 fixtures for the tour. His design for the show, in which video plays a key role in the storytelling, depicts Swindell’s evolution as an artist from playing cover songs at a c

USA - Pomona College’s Seaver Theatre is tucked away near the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains outside LA. The school’s leafy campus is reminiscent of a New England Ivy League institution, with academic standards to match having been ranked among the top 10 colleges by Forbes and US News & World Report.
The college holds an attraction for visiting designers in the form of a lighting system that’s been enhanced with greater colour-mixing and zooming capabilities thanks to the addition of 60 COLORado 2-Quad Zoom Tour fixtures and 14 Ovation B-2805FC cyc lights from Chauvet Professional.
“Excitement and joy have been the main reactions to these lights by the designers who’ve used them,” said Janelle Asti, the master electrician and sound engineer of the school’s Department of Theatre and Dance. “The designers who have come in and used our new fix

UK - Star Events’ X Stage highlights the creativity at AEG Presents’ first All Points East festival in Victoria Park, where sets from LCD Soundsystem, The XX and Bjork drew sizeable audiences this Bank Holiday weekend.
Working with Loudsound and LarMac Live, including the main East Stage, a 20m VerTech, the North Stage, with its concentric arches, the West Arena and all the requisite support structures.
An ambitious in the round experience, with a hovering DJ platform, the X Stage “puts the finest electronic talent into the heart of the audience”.
Star Events’ design team joined two 5m wide/38m span arches at the apex to bring the X Stage to life, using kit from the yard together with ‘specials’ built for the project.
Alongside its considerable lighting capacity, each leg of the structure houses an inward facing speaker configuration, whic

Europe - Singer-songwriter Adel Tawil is again on tour in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Prior to the tour, he used a number of festival appearances to present his current album So Schön Anders before embarking on an extensive theatre tour that ended with three sold-out arena shows last autumn. These included all the essential production elements of his other shows.
The man responsible for the lighting design is Bertil Mark, who wanted to implement a symbiosis of clear spaces and chaos. Production rehearsals took place over three days at Black Box Music in Berlin, where most of the band now resides, and where the lighting designer now runs his own studio.
"Since the band is well-rehearsed, we were able to use the three days in the rehearsal studio almost exclusively for the design," reports Bertil Mark with satisfaction. "I had listened to the album in adva

UK - British rock band Marillion treated fans to a series of immersive shows in April, with theatrical-style lighting controlled using an Avolites Tiger Touch II with Titan interface.
The band worked with its long-serving lighting designer Yenz Nyholm on the light show, designed to synchronise with pinpoint accuracy to video content and on-stage action.
"Each song on this tour required lighting that would act as if it were a mini-play, reflecting the stark nature of the music and immersing the audience into the experience," says Nyholm. "The design was based on beautiful, symmetrical beams of light.
"Programming with Titan was a godsend - I used the Capture Atlas Suite, which integrates with Titan, allowing me to sync the lighting with the video and performance. Pre-programming using Capture meant that my position palettes were pretty much spot-on when I got to e

UK - Restaurant Sophie’s Steakhouse and its companion speakeasy lounge bar Jack Solomon recently opened in Soho, with Nexo’s compact point-source ID Series loudspeakers installed in three areas of the venues.
System control was also provided by Nexo’s DTD digital controllers and powered by DTD amplifiers.
AV design company Diamond AV specified and installed the system, which extends across three levels, including the double-height main restaurant. More than 30x ID24i cabinets have been used, carrying the same look/feel throughout the different parts of the venue. The tiny yet versatile double 4” cabinets handle a background music programme in the restaurant, jazz and club tracks in the lounge, and guest DJ mixes in a small VIP salon.
Guy Ayres is the technical director of Diamond AV who was responsible for speccing and programming the system: he is please

UK - Aurora Lighting Hire supported lighting director Gurdip Mahal on a major installation for Revolution, one of the largest entertainment sets on UK television.
SKY One took over the vast space at Cardington Studios for extreme sports show Revolution. Hosted by Jackass star Steve-O and Maya Jama, Revolution is an extravaganza of high speed action featuring BMX riders, skates and boarders going head to head across a spectacular custom designed course.
Working with award winning lighting director Gurdip Mahal for the eight-episode run, Aurora provided a vast array of lighting, control and rigging equipment to light up the large-scale production.
To achieve the intense colour applied throughout the show, a mix of over 200 Robe 1200, VariLite VL3500 and Martin Quantum Wash fixtures were installed to provide a highly controllable, vibrant

Portugal - 17 Robe RoboSpot Base Stations controlling tracking Robe BMFL fixtures provided a remote followspotting solution for production lighting designer Jerry Appelt at the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest.
The RoboSpot system was specified onto the show by Jerry and his gaffer Matthias Rau, and used extensively throughout the event’s final and two live semi-finals, which were beamed and streamed live via host broadcaster Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP), reaching a final worldwide audience of around 200 million.
The RoboSpot system was supplied by main lighting contractor Flashlight from the Netherlands, who worked in conjunction with Pixelight from Portugal.
The RoboSpots, each with individual MotionCameras, were all from Robe’s powerful BMFL series of moving lights – a mix of BMFL Blades and BMFL WashBeams. Having these on the rig for key lighting

UK - Conor Cosimini, producer and studio co-owner got a call earlier last year asking him to join English singer/songwriter Dodie’s touring team as monitor engineer.
Catapulted into the role not long after graduating from London College of Music (LCM), Conor arrived loaded with zeal, ambition and an Audient iD14, all set for her You tour in October where the audio interface was invaluable in a live setup. “The iD14 has come on both tours - and every other show I've done since - and I couldn't be happier with it,” confirms Conor in the afterglow of Dodie’s most recent Spring Tour which ended in April.
Conor admits that he was already a fan of Audient. "I use iD22 in my writing and location recording rigs all the time," he says, making the decision the to choose iD14 for Dodie’s live setup even easier. "When I’m on the road, I like to have an in

USA - Country music singer, songwriter and rising star Kane Brown is on the road opening for Chris Young’s Losing Sleep tour, and lighting designer Andrew James wanted a practical and spectacular specials rig to give the young artist’s set full impact.
He turned to Robe moving lights - 18 x Pointes and five Spikies - supplied to the tour as a specials package by 4Wall Nashville.
James’ starting point for this design was that he and production manager Tyler Oplinger wanted something different for Kane’s set which needed to look fabulous and be set up onstage and de-rigged quickly and efficiently during the changeover.
He had already started to think along cart-based ideas for movability, and he also happened to have Atari’s Q*bert in his head! This inspired the basic shape of the set which he realized would also make a great base for lamp placeme

UK - While the 2014 Disney film production of Into the Woods garnered huge amounts of attention, thanks in part to its all-star Hollywood cast including the likes of Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp, a recent UCL theatre production has succeeded in stripping down the Stephen Sondheim classic to its thematic core - exposing the eternal battle between darkness and light.
Instrumental in this exploration of desire, ambition and relationships through classic Brothers Grimm characters such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Rapunzel was a combination of Chauvet Professional Maverick MK1 Spot and MK3 Wash fixtures, specified by LD Alex Forey.
With the general concept for the lighting based around the need to support the director’s post-apocalyptic vision, the cutting and powerful effects of the Maverick combination were called upon to create the atmospherics.

Portugal - Lighting designer Jerry Appelt chose more than 700 Ayrton fixtures for his design at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Appelt chose not to incorporate a video element in the show, instead returning to a lighting-based design in which Ayrton fixtures were a key creative feature, adding depth, architecture and variety to the visuals.
“The exemplary cooperation with Ayrton was vital for the success of the show and the almost 800 fixtures from Ayrton gave Jerry an important addition to his toolbox, enabling him to create a magnificent, multi-layered design that was absolutely needed to master this beast without having LED screens or any other video canvas in our set up,” says ESC head of production, Ola Melzig. “And guess what, we did not miss video for a second of the whole eight hours of spectacular broadcasts we created in the wonderful city of Lisbon.

USA - Long considered one of the main acoustic music festivals in North America, Wilkesboro’s MerleFest recently celebrated its 31st annual event, which was held over four days in late April.
Featuring the best in country, bluegrass and Americana, this year’s festival hosted performances by the Steep Canyon Rangers and Friends with special guest Steve Martin, Buddy Miller and the North Mississippi All-stars, Kris Kristofferson, Jamey Johnson, The Mavericks, Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, Rodney Crowell, Paul Thorn & Band, The Blind Boys of Alabama & The McCrary Sisters, and many more roots acts.
And as has been the case for a number of years, DiGiCo consoles mixed and processed nearly all of the music emanating from the festival’s stages, helping to cement MerleFest’s reputation as a highly celebrated perennial American music event.
MerleFest wa

USA - After 21 years in the dark, the classic Grain Belt Beer sign is once again brightening the Minneapolis skyline. Built in 1941, the 50x40ft landmark was the largest free-standing signage in the region, but since 1996 the old incandescent lamps have been dark. A recent renovation by S.M.L. Electrical, supported by JTH Lighting, features over 1,000 Intelligent Marquee Systems (IMS) RGBW LED lamps.
"Pat and Sean Lawrance of S.M.L. Electrical approached us to find a colour changing, power line control solution,” explains Mike Steskal of JTH Lighting. “They wanted to use existing wiring and S14-style lamps to maintain the sign’s historic look. The system also had to handle the harsh Minnesota cold, which was amply proven last New Year’s Eve when fired up with the thermometer at -8 °F."
"Located 100ft above a river, you don’t want to be replacing lamps," says

USA - Matt Calabrese says he thrives on spontaneity. Good thing, too. As lighting designer for the increasingly popular and much travelled progressive funk jam band Kung Fu, his career has taken him on a wildly original, and thoroughly enjoyable, ride. Every show is a new adventure for the Connecticut-based LD, not just as a result of his client’s constantly changing set lists, but also because of the wide variety of venues where they perform.
“Designing for Kung Fu is a great experience, where things never repeat themselves,” said Calabrese, as he finished a gig with the band at the legendary Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY, where they opened for more. Helping him navigate his way through his long and winding tour schedule is his consistent and reliable ground package of Rogue R1 Spot and COLORdash Batten-Quad 12 fixtures from Chauvet Professional.
“The f

USA - After a severe storm flooded their sanctuary, Castle Hills Church of San Antonio, Texas, undertook a major rebuilding project and added a new AV system with an Allen & Heath dLive S Class Digital Mixing System at FOH and an ME-1 Personal Mixing System at monitors.
The church partnered with Skylark AV of Oklahoma City to design and install the new AV and lighting package and help them develop a masterplan for this project and future expansion.
Tim Vencil, Castle Hills, technical director, explains the church’s mixer choice: “We had been using a smaller digital mixer. But, for the new worship space, we needed more than just a bigger board. I wanted an ‘infrastructure’ that would support our in-ear system, our streaming broadcast and everything else in the room.”
After research and consultations with other engineers, Vencil chose the dLive S7000

USA - High End Systems lighting fixtures were riding high in the rig of RodeoHouston. with LD Nathan Brittain having specified 14 SolaSpot 1000s and 10 Sola HyBeam 2000s to meet his demands for lighting with an impactful kick, while reining in power consumption.
LD Systems provided the gear for the nightly concert series during February and March at Houston’s NRG Stadium.
After each day of bull riding and mutton busting, with horses, clowns and kids kicking up the dust, the self-propelled stage steered itself to the centre of the arena for the evening’s performance with top name acts. This year’s new concert stage - designed and fabricated by Tait, with support from LD Systems - unfolded like a flower, revealing its five-pointed star shape.
The stage used vertical motion control for the star point stage sections and its rotating centre stage section. Its

USA - Late in 2016, research agency Gallup conducted a survey of jam band fans to determine the “approval ratings” of different groups. The Vermont-based quartet Twiddle earned the highest score, even edging out fellow Green Mountain State stars Phish. Although the first-place finish might have surprised some, it wasn’t particularly shocking to the legion of Twiddle fans that turn out to see the band play at festivals and music halls from Maine to California.
Twiddle has recorded upwards of 50 EPs as well as multiple studio albums, but for the band’s true fans the greatest pleasure comes from seeing them perform live. Joyfully blending reggae, funk and rock, with some spirited dashes of hi-def shred thrown in, the band takes fans on a carefree journey, where a delightful surprise seems to wait around every musical bend.
Adding to the magic at a recent Twiddle

USA - Updating the audio system in traditional churches to successfully host a wider variety of worship styles is a problem faced by many systems integrators. It’s a problem that Alcons Audio pro-ribbon systems are well-equipped to solve, as the latest in a number of recent US house of worship (HoW) installations proves.
Since the early 1990s, First Baptist Church in Thomasville, Georgia, has diversified from being a largely traditional HoW to hosting a much wider variety of events and has grown to serve a larger more diverse congregation as well as a variety of worship events and services.
The primary use of the audio system is on Sundays, which begin with a traditional service - featuring the church’s pipe organ, choir, piano and orchestral instruments - followed by a contemporary, praise and worship-style service with modern instrumentation, including drums, ele

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