UK - Triple E beat the odds and the clock to provide Illuminate Design with a custom-built, motorised track for the Centre Stage venue at Butlins, Skegness.
AV specialist Illuminate called in Triple E Ltd when an existing tab system failed just before the start of a new Centre Stage show.
To follow the shape of the stage, Triple E Ltd’s design had to incorporate a double S set of curves. Illuminate sent a sketch across late Thursday evening and MD David Edelstein quoted it immediately. On Friday, Triple E drew the design up, assembled the Erail system and the 25m TDRIVE six-curve track was collected just after lunch.
Robin Shephard-Blandy, Owner/Director at Illuminate Design, comments: “The deadline was particularly tight because there had been difficulties with other ideas for the replacement track. Triple E’s solution enabled us to carry out the install

Iceland - Robe moving lights are making a big impact at the Icelandic National Theatre (Þjóðleikhúsið) in Reykjavík since they became an integral element of the available house lighting rig, a process that started in 2014 and has recently been continued with the addition of DL7S Profiles, LEDBeam 1000s and Actor6s.
The Robe fixtures were specified by Head of lighting Halldór Örn Óskarsson (Halli) and his team of colleagues.
Halli is an award winning LD and also a primary production lighting designer for this high profile venue which has five separate performance spaces and a busy and diverse programme of shows and events. This includes new Icelandic and international works, Icelandic and foreign classics, musicals, dance pieces and children’s productions. The theatre creates around 10 new productions each year and also collaborates with independent theatre

UK - Petersfield Festival Hall, the versatile multipurpose venue in Hampshire, can now create a truly immersive colour experience as well as white light for its audiences, events, and galas thanks to its new Chroma-Q Inspire lighting system installed by A.C. Special Projects Ltd. (AC-SP).
Because of the wide range of productions held at the Festival Hall, the venue wanted new colour changing LED house lighting that could provide a full range of colours, from deep saturates to smooth pastels, all with smooth, theatrical grade dimming. Similarly, it was important to provide quality white light for day to day use and corporate functions. Ultra-quiet running, low energy consumption and low heat generation were other important considerations.
Having enquired about Chroma-Q’s Inspire fixtures to meet these criteria, John Tucker, the Festival Hall’s technical manager, was

Australia - The Australian TV industry’s biggest night, the 59th annual Logie Awards, were held at Melbourne’s Crown Palladium on Sunday 23 April 2017, broadcast live on the Nine Network.
Always a great opportunity for the broadcaster to show off its tech capabilities, visuals were spread across three huge screens onstage, a wrap-around screen surrounding the audience, and pixel mapped to onstage fixtures and LED chandeliers. Helming the mission-critical media server and console operation was Lynden Gare, director of Melbourne-based lighting and production company Colourblind, who relied on Green Hippo’s Hippotizer media servers to ensure that the show went exactly to plan.
Green Hippo is no stranger to the world’s biggest televised events, with their media servers used on The Eurovision Song Contest and The Academy Awards. At the heart of Lynden’s set-up for

South Africa - Peter Rieck of Rieck’s Lighting and joint owner of rental company Event Lighting, was selected by Red Pepper Pictures for the second year running, as lighting designer for Lip Sync Battle Africa. This televised lip sync showdown, filmed at Urban Brew Studios, returned for its second season in April 2017, premiering on MTV Base, a DStv channel.
“It’s a dynamic show and funky looks have to compliment the entertainment, interviews and bantering between contestants,” said Peter, who controls the Robe lighting rig with a MA dot2. While each new episode opens with a generic look Peter holds back, only adding colour and pulse moments to the first song of the night. Then, with guns blazing, he lunges with explosive and vibrant lighting effects as the show heats up to complement the massive prop changes.
The set, an adaptation from the international form

UK - Based on the book by James Hindman and with original music by Patrick Brady, Pete ‘n’ Keely is the story of a famous musical couple, now estranged, who are persuaded into doing a TV reunion.
The current production of Pete ‘n’ Keely at London’s Tristan Bates Theatre, produced by Wallflower Theatrical, and directed by Matthew Gould, includes a colourful glitzy set. Designed by Emily Bestow, it’s reminiscent of classic 60s American TV variety shows, featuring bright colours and a kitsch style.
Tasked with designing the lighting for the show, BRIT School alumni Mitchell Reeve explains how he became involved: “Matthew Gould and I have worked on a few productions together now. I first met him a year ago when I was asked to light I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It On The Road. As a lighting designer, it is vital to have a good

Argentina - For the more than 90,000 fans who attended Lollapalooza Argentina 2017, the two-day festival served up a musical smorgasbord that satisfied their every taste. In addition to traditional Argentinian sounds like the highly danceable folk music of El Plan de la Mariposa, this South American version of Chicago’s famous Lollapalooza festival featured a rich mix of international superstars from EDM and alt rock, to metal and iconic pop rock on its four stages.
Metallica, The Chainsmokers, Rancid and The XX performed on day one, followed by The Stokes, The Weeknd, Martin Garrix and Duran the next day. Although the musical mix may have been a swirl of diverse voices, the festival’s grounds welcomed visitors with a unifying message, helped by a collection of 50 Chauvet Professional WELL Fit fixtures installed by Buenos Aires-based Descableados and supplied by NASH Ing

Turkey - Turkey’s national horse racing TV channel has invested in a new audio system as part of a digital upgrade based around Allen & Heath’s dLive S Class and GLD mixing systems.
Established in 1950, Turkey Jockey’s Club (TJK) is based in Instanbul, founded and endorsed by the Ministry of Argriculture as the only official horse breeding and racing organisation in the country.
“We really needed to upgrade our current analogue mixing desk to improve total system latency, network audio options and expandable input/output options,” explains Mr. Nizamettin Korkmaz, sound director at TJK.
The dLive system comprises a S7000 Surface with DM48 MixRack fitted with a Dante network card, plus a DX32 expander rack for AES inputs and another one for AES outputs. The Club also has two GLD-80 mixers with AB168 Racks for smaller studios, which are also Dante-enab

UK - Created as a space to “celebrate artistry and indulge the senses”, Spiritland’s bespoke sound system makes it one of London’s most exciting new venues. Combining café, bar and radio station with an in-depth musical programme seven days a week (already featuring the likes of guest DJs Jarvis Cocker, Andrew Weatherall and La Roux), Spiritland has quickly established itself as a paradise for lovers of music, from the aficionado to the curious.
A recent collaboration between Spiritland and Audio-Technica UK has seen a variety of the company’s brand product portfolio installed in the venue to help deliver the diverse offering of interviews, Q&A sessions, DJ sets, album playbacks and radio output.
The heart of Spiritland is its sound system, featuring a pair of Living Voice loudspeakers, valve amplification from Italian manufacturer Atelier du Triode and

UAE - Disney and Cameron Mackintosh's Mary Poppins tour continues. With sell out dates across the UK and in Zurich, the perfect nanny has just landed in the United Arab Emirates where the musical will play to a full house until 25 May.
Eighteen sea containers were loaded with set and stage equipment in order to bring the show to Dubai - except for the rigging and a truss frame for new front of house scenery, which has been supplied locally by Unusual Rigging and Engineering LLC.
Chris Boone, production manager on the show, explained: “The Dubai Opera House is a truly massive venue – bigger than anywhere else we’ve ever staged Mary Poppins. Because of this, we decided to have extra proscenium scenery – essentially creating a false proscenium - soI contacted Denis Bramhall at Unusual Rigging and Engineering LLC, who subsequently supplied all the rig

India - St. John the Baptist, a Portuguese style Christian church situated in the Indian city of Thane, north of Mumbai, can trace its origins back 500 years. Having been declared a heritage site by UNESCO, it recently underwent a massive restoration project spanning 18 months, including a complete sound system upgrade.
The older system had consisted of multiple speakers that were spaced along the wall of the church, and neither provided suitable intelligibility nor venue coverage. With the extension to the church (enabling it to expand the congregation size to around 5,000 for Sunday mass), the parish priest had initially requested a demo from another vendor to provide coverage for the growing number of people.
“We were not very impressed with the sound,” admits Cleo Pereira, from Martin Audio partner Zoodio, who has been specifying the British brand for the past

North America - WE Day gives impassioned and empowered young people across Canada, the US, and the UK the opportunity to hear from global luminaries like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Malala Yousafzai in between performances by major stars like Demi Lovato and Alicia Keys.
WE is an organisation that aims to empower young people to affect positive change in their local and global communities by adopting an inclusive, communal “we” mentality. WE Day is a physical manifestation of that mission, combining the energy and excitement of a live concert with education and inspiration delivered through shared stories of leadership and change.
It’s paramount that the arena full of amped-up youth can clearly hear every word of those messages, and thanks in large part to a substantial Adamson Systems Engineering loudspeaker system supplied by Cleveland, OH’s Eighth Day Sound,


UK - The Princess Alexandra Auditorium is a stunning 750-seat performance venue based on the banks of the River Tees at Yarm School. The final piece of the jigsaw was to upgrade the sound system to one that matches the quality of the Civic Trust Award and RIBA Award winning auditorium.
The space is fully flexible with tiered retractable seating and hosts a varied and versatile programme of material – from school productions and lectures to touring bands and leading comedians.
The existing system was struggling to put across the clarity and detail needed for such work and the decision to audition a variety of loudspeaker brands was taken.
Steering away from the existing distributed speaker concept KV2 were brought in by Richmond based audio suppliers Sound Hire to show what could be achieved by a more simplified Left Right Point Source approach.
Dan

South Africa - Ruud de Deugd visited Johannesburg to present the Prolyte Campus Workshop hosted by DWR Distribution from 14 to 17 March 2017. With his roots securely founded in the engineering office of Prolyte and trained as a mechanical engineer, Ruud has combined his expert engineering skills with the daily practice of rigging projects. For the second year running, he presented the hands-on Prolyte Campus Workshop in South Africa with the emphasis on safety which ended with a practical build-up session.
“There is a health and safety standard in South Africa as found in the South African Bureau of Standards titled SANS 10366 which is general and a guideline to Health and Safety at Events,” explained Ruud. “I believe this will evolve but at least it’s a good starting point. That said, the South African rental companies are not behind Europe in their knowledge and m

Located in the city of Borås, 60 km East of Göteborg, the Borås Stadsteater is a municipality-owned theatre. Founded in 1964, it moved to its current building in 1975. A typical 1970s-style provincial venue, the theatre features a 500-capacity main auditorium with raked seating and a balcony. The main focus is conventional theatre for the most part reinforced by lavalier microphones, but the theatre also hosts musical productions and occasional concerts. The programme of events includes both in-house productions and visiting acts.
By 2016, the ageing PA system had become too small and outdated to meet the demands of modern audiences, so the management team worked with the local authority to find a solution. An Alcons LR7 system was installed, along with a new Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing system.
Borås Stadsteater’s head of sound, Tobias Walka, explained the ch

Ireland - Prolyte Group distributor A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) has recently shipped Verto truss to Light Source, the first company in Ireland to receive this product.
The Verto truss is based on a new principle of truss connection, where the sections are joined by a rotating coupler system, meaning a simple flick of the wrist will connect and lock the truss sections together. Installation is fast, silent and safe.
Managing director, Billy Mahedy and his team are delighted to be the first users in Ireland of the versatile Verto truss system.
With a long history in the industry, Billy knows how to value a truss system on its merits. Based out of Sandyford, Dublin, Light Source brings a wealth of experience to the custom installation market. They design and install solutions specific to their customer’s needs, always looking to improve and expand on

Germany - Since 1975, audiences have flocked to the Freilichtbühne open air stage in Hamburg's Stadtpark each summer to enjoy an eclectic selection of music - including pop, rock, hip-hop, soul, singer/songwriters, children’s entertainers and much more. Production company Cobra Sound Light relies on Yamaha digital mixers to ensure each night’s programme is enjoyed without a hitch.
Cobra Sound Light has been the season’s technical production supplier since 1981. The season runs from May to September and features performances from high-profile international artists (including, in recent years, Lionel Richie, Simply Red, Wu Tang Clan, Imagine Dragons and, this year, Rag 'n' Bone Man, Norah Jones, Paramore and Alan Parsons), through well-known German performers (this season including Lotto King Karl, Philipp Poisel, Roland Kaiser and Deine Freunde) to local acts.
B

UAE - Abu Dhabi’s annual Mother of the Nation (MOTN) festival is the UAE’s largest cultural celebration. For 10 days last month, over a kilometre of Abu Dhabi’s Corniche beach was the setting for workshops, exhibitions, dining, and entertainment.
A fully integrated A/V and lighting package was provided by Production Technology (Protec) of Dubai, whose careful planning and work was challenged before opening day by Mother Nature. Hurricane-force, 75 mph winds, with an accompanying torrential downpour, could have easily delayed the event, had it not been for Protec’s experienced crew and some quality, IP-rated gear, including 100 of the new, tough and resilient Nuri*Lites Hurricane LED fixtures.
“We used Nuri*Lites Hurricanes in the Happiness Zone of the festival, which also happened to be the most exposed area during the storm,” says Protec’s project manage

USA - The history of Market Square in Knoxville, Tennessee stretches back to 1854, when it was first used by local farmers to sell their produce and wares, a use that continues today. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, its use was (and is) much more than a farm stand, however. Booker T. Washington, William Jennings Bryan, and Ronald Reagan all made speeches at Market Square. And musicians, from Duke Ellington to Steve Winwood, have long used its pedway and dedicated stage for performances.
In recent years, however, lacklustre sound quality from the stage put a damper on enthusiasm for concerts. Local A/V integration firm Stellar Vision and Sound fixed that problem with the design and installation of a stereo pair of Danley Sound Labs SH-96HO point-source loudspeakers, which now fill Market Square with colossal, reference-monitor quality sound.

“During the early days of design discussions with the band and their management it became pretty obvious that the show design should be focused around the stunning video content created by Strangeloop Studios out in Chicago. So, as lighting designer, it was clear that I needed to choose fixtures that could hold their own with such dynamic company.” So declares Tom Campbell, LD for Zeds Dead, one of the biggest names on the EDM scene.
“Ayrton’s DreamPanel TMTwin and MagicPanel TM602 were the obvious choice,” continues Campbell. “My concept was to use fixtures, mapped in with the video content to ‘push’ the content out into the audience and through the band: the DreamPanel with its 8x8 matrix was exactly what was needed.”
The DreamPanelTwin is a hybrid luminaire with a modified MagicPanel on one side and a DreamPanel Shift on the other. This means it can alte

Croatia - Prljavo Kazalište celebrate 40 years of hits and stardom with a world tour which kicked off with a show at the Spaladium Arena in Split, with lighting designed by Sven Kučinić of LumiLas LLC, who has worked for the band for the last six years and is also a big Robe advocate.
Sven again specified Robe fixtures to light this show, where the challenge was on to create a spectacular but scalable design to work for the whole of the upcoming tour which plays various sized venues and is scheduled to run for the rest of this landmark year in the band’s amazing career.
Sven had carte blanch to come up with cool, practical and spectacular ideas, although as always, budget was a consideration and the goal was to create something really impressive without busting the bank!
Known for his imagination, style and ingenuity, Sven produced another great looking resu

USA - Here Lies Love is an immersive theatrical and musical experience. Produced by the Seattle Repertory Theatre with concept and lyrics by Talking Heads founder David Byrne who also wrote the music with British DJ Fatboy Slim, the show charts the life and times of former first lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, retracing her rise to power and subsequent descent into infamy and disgrace at the end of the People Power Revolution.
The show originally premiered Off-Broadway in 2013. Set within a dance club atmosphere, the disco-musical had no traditional seating and theatregoers mingled with the actors throughout the show. The Seattle production offers seating for those who’d like it in galleries surrounding the main floor area as well as standing-only room on the floor itself which features a central (moving) stage as well as the traditional proscenium stage.

Having released Automaton - the band’s first album in seven years - at the end of March, Jamiroquai are soon to embark on a world tour of arenas and festivals. A Yamaha Rivage PM10 console will be mixing the front of house sound at every show, beneath the experienced fingers of engineer Rick Pope.
Rick has worked with the band and its frontman Jay Kay for 23 years, both live and in the studio, and with Yamaha digital consoles for almost as long. So he jumped at the chance to show the world what the company’s new flagship console can do.
“I grew up on the Yamaha PM1D and then the PM5D,” he says. “I have always liked the workflow and the way that Yamaha digital consoles have their own operating system from the ground up. It makes them incredibly stable - I’ve never had a single fault in the 20-odd years I’ve been using Yamaha digital boards, which you can

Poland - One of Poland’s leading bands, Golec Orchestra, recently staged six concerts in the biggest halls across the country, travelling with two dLive S Class mixing system from Allen & Heath.
Rented from Konsbud Audio, the systems comprised two DM64 MixRacks with a S3000 at FOH for engineer, Damian Kubacki, and a S5000 for monitors, with engineer, Michal Mika.
”dLive is a great board. The huge capabilities of the system, and the number of available inputs and outputs allows you to manage really big artist events,” explains Michal Mika. “The ability to use a large number of built-in FX and dynamic processors eliminates extra outboard gear for wedge and in-ear monitoring, and the control surface is designed with great thought, and I am convinced that after 2 or 3 concerts, every engineer can use dLive without any problems.
“Finally, the number of e

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