Pharos - Leaderboard - May 2024

Business

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USA - Denver-based lighting designer and programmer Andrew Cass has been a fan of the f multi genre blues-rock-jam band String Cheese Incident (SCI) from Colorado since his schooldays. In April 2014 he was lucky enough to land himself in the hot-seat of designing their lighting - a long term dream job.

String Cheese are known for their intricate compositions, spectacular live shows and great connections with their audience - all parameters giving Andrew plenty of opportunity to focus on lighting for a client that appreciates his vision and gives him the creative freedom to do what he thinks will look best.

On the new design for this latest fall tour, he decided to use 18 x Robe BMFL Spots, which were supplied by lighting vendor, Upstaging.

The tour ran for three weeks around the U.S., concluding at the Suwannee Hulaween experience at Live Oak Music Park in Florida, and wi

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USA - The Silverlake Lounge, Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles has ordered a full sound system FOH and monitors from Acoustic Development to be installed prior to the NAMM show in January.

The system represents a major upgrade for the venue to handle the increasingly bigger bands the club is booking. The system produces over 7Kw FOH with over 4Kw of monitors on four discrete mixes. The system consists of AD2000LA, AD1000S, AD1000M and AD1000NF with our AD9000QQ amplifiers and AD48DX digital speaker management.

Deciding factors in choosing Acoustic Development were "the incredible headroom, low end projection, clarity and compact size", says the company.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - Grenfell Housing & Training has teamed up with local businesses, including drapes and rigging expert Blackout, in a bid to offer work experience placements to support local youngsters and help tackle unemployment.

Established in 1985, Grenfell has been providing housing, training and support to those within the local community for the last 30 years. Specifically, the association houses single homeless people aged 16 to 30, provides training to the local community and offers housing advice to families with young children at risk of losing their home.

In the last 12 months, Grenfell has helped over 250 people gain in excess of 400 qualifications, with many of these individuals progressing into further learning, work placements and volunteering. Recently, the association teamed up with one of the boroughs largest employers, Blackout, which supplies drapes and rigging to so

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USA - Located in Wayne, NJ, the Passaic County Technical Institute (PCTI) is a national award-winning high school with a 200 course curriculum which includes their School of Performing Arts. With a focus on the student's artistic development in preparation for life after graduation, the PCTI theatre recently underwent a systems renovation highlighted by the desire to immerse the audience into each performance.

To complete the project, Thea & Schoen was brought on as the systems integrator and they designed an energy-efficient Philips Strand Lighting retrofit installation that included PLFRESNEL1 and PLPROFILE4 LED luminaires along with a NEO lighting control console, Vision.net Touchscreens, an A21 Dimming System, and CD80SV Retrofit Dimmer Modules.

"We were originally brought into the project by Generations Electric who works on energy co-ops with a lot of schools in t

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USA - A group of broadcast and media industry suppliers including Grass Valley, Imagine Communications, Lawo and Snell Advanced Media have collaborated to form the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS).

This new, independent trade association's mandate is to bring IP solutions to market that offer complete interoperability, are based on open standards, and integrate seamlessly into media workflow environments to foster industry innovation and efficiency. The group's efforts will be focused on promoting the adoption, standardization, development and refinement of open protocols for media over IP, with an initial emphasis on VSF TR-03 and TR-04, SMPTE 2022-6 and AES67.

As broadcasters and other media companies look to use IP workflows to speed and streamline the movement and management of increasingly complex content and adapt their businesses to better compete with other con

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Switzerland - Following Intellitix's cashless success at the SummerDays Festival in Arbon, Switzerland over two consecutive summers, Intellitix and its strategic partner Swisscom Event & Media Solutions will deliver their proprietary Cashless Payment and Access Control solutions at next year's OpenAir St. Gallen festival held from 30 June to 3 July.

Intellitix's advanced Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology platform will enhance the event's previously used Cashless Payment system, offering more efficient and simpler organisational workflows and processes. The event organisers' have embraced adoption of Intellitix's market-tested Access Control and Cashless Payment solutions.

Chief financial officer, Cyril Stadler, was particularly impressed by the Cashless Payment system's data security, which fulfils the highest standards: "Intellitix, in collaboration with

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Czech Republic - Prague's O2 Arena , one of the most modern venues in Europe, with a capacity of up to 18,000, annually hosts sports, music and cultural events for domestic and international sports athletes, musicians, bands and artists. The O2 Arena embraces modern technology encompassing its very own television studio, an internal TV distribution system, sliding grandstands, superior acoustics and advanced telecommunications.

In addition to the spectator areas within the O2 arena floor, including VIP boxes and seating areas, there are lots of commercial areas with vast lounges, restaurants and bars, in addition to a number of hireable spaces for press conferences, seminars or conferences.

The prestigious VIP Premier Club within the 02 Arena recently undertook an upgrade to its installed audio system in order that VIP guests can enjoy a better background music experience wi

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UK - KV2 Audio's range of products has played a key part in some of the UK's most high profile Dance music events.

Production company Just Lite has grown their formidable stock of KV2 products over the past three years and have been providing audio and production services to a range of high profile Dance events throughout the UK.

These events include regular nights at Sankey's Warehouse, Victoria Warehouse Manchester featuring Basement Jaxx and Arman Van Heldon, Dublin's Metropolis Music Festival and Blackpool's Pier Jam amongst countless others.

Having formed predominantly as a lighting-based company over 20 years ago, KV2 Audio has worked with Just Lite since the inception of its audio division in 2012. Director Paul Smith and head of audio Evin Doyle recognised KV2's clarity, definition and incredible output to footprint ratio would be a great foundation to build this

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Sounds of the City - The city that spawned The Beatles has been recognised as a City of Music by the United Nations. Liverpool earned the accolade due to music's "place in the heart of the city's life", following a bid by Liverpool City Council. Unesco noted especially a commitment to a "clearly defined" music, education and skills strategy for young people. It is the second city in the UK to be given the Unesco honour, which Glasgow received in 2008. A further 10 global destinations have also been given the title, including Kingston in Jamaica, the home of reggae. The City of Music award is part of Unesco's Creative Cities Network, which was created in 2004 to promote "cooperation with and among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development."

Billy Leaves London - Billy Elliot the Musical<

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UK - Roger Kirby along with the in-house design and installations team at Liverpool, UK based Adlib have worked their magic again with a new L-Acoustics installation in The Quays Theatre at The Lowry in Salford Quays.

The 440 capacity Quays Theatre is a fully flexible performance space used for staging drama, comedy and a variety of music events, and was upgrading its sound system for the first time since The Lowry complex opened in April 2000.

The upgrade project was co-ordinated for the theatre by Dave Woodward, the head of technical services. Due to budget restrictions, the new sound system design was required to utilise as much of the existing cabling infrastructure as possible.

For Adlib, the process started with detailed discussions with Woodward and the in house theatre technicians about the sonic requirements within the space. It was established that the new syste

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South Africa - When 24 year old South African R'n'B singer, music producer and rising star Cassper Nyovest blew everyone away at the 2015 Metro FM Awards in the Spring, scooping five trophies - including Best Male Album for his debut Tsholofelo work released last year and the popular Listener's Choice category - that was just the start of a truly stellar year.

Recently, his #FillUpTheDome concert on 31 October featured over 130 Robe lighting fixtures and played to an ecstatic sold-out audience of 20,000 in the Ticketpro Dome in Johannesburg, making history as the first 'local' artist to ever sell out the venue.

Nyovest himself approached Cape Town based design agency Formative to provide creative direction and technical production, including video content design, for the epic show. The pressure was on to do something awesome production-wise, and the realisation was le

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Russia - Clay Paky's lights were the big stars of the Circle of Light Festival. The distinguishing feature that determines the success of this major international event, which is held annually in Moscow, is visual technology (video and lights) applied to the metropolitan context. In 2014, the event drew no less than six million people.

This year's Circle of Light was held from 27 September to 4 October and entailed setting up several stages all over the city of Moscow, including one that consisted of a bridge over the Moskva River, and another at the Ministry of Defence Building.

Aleksey Zhuravlev, Anton Maltsev, Sergey Pankovets from Global Show Trade were the Circle of Light Festival's lighting designers.

Alex Zhuravlev explained that the importance of the event has grown exponentially in recent years. His work was so highly appreciated last year that he was asked to pl

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Laos - Earlier this month, a spectacular light show created entirely with DTS moving heads, was the peak of the celebrations of the 40th National Day of Laos.

The National Day is the most important event in the country, in commemoration of the abolition of the monarchy and the proclamation of the Democratic Republic of Laos.

The lighting system, installed by rental company ProPacific (Thailand) Co., included 200 x Raptor moving heads, 40 x XR1200 WASH, and 60 x XR3000 Spot.

The ceremony was held at the Laos National Stadium in Vientane, on 2 December LD Karin Chaisompongpan divided the stage into four zones, each with a different setup.

Chaisompongpan comments, "From my experience using DTS products for this event I was impressed by the reliable performance of the Raptors and also by the light quality of its beam. It is really bright enough to light the football f

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UK - Sometimes the most original solutions are formulated from the most haphazard moments of abstract thought. Take Steven Douglas, LD for the Killers frontman, Brandon Flowers: "I had a weird thought while we were in Las Vegas for rehearsals of the promo leg of the tour way back in March. I was looking out of the window at the beam coming from the top of the Luxor Hotel and was wondering how much brighter and more defined it would be if we could switch off all the other ambient light coming from the rest of the strip. It got me thinking about how I used wash lights on stage to light the band members; how I can lose impact sometimes from the all spot and beam fixtures.

"So I started thinking if I could find a way to light the band members from really close up. Then I wondered, 'Would I need so many wash lights?' And, as a resuIt, I would also have a whole lot of black

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World - Popular comedian, actor, writer and producer Kevin Hart has been on a successful, sold-out tour of the U.S. and Canada for the last nine months with a Martin Audio MLA system provided by Showtime Sound LLC of Frederick, MD. In January 2016, Hart continues his What Now? tour in Europe, Australia, Singapore and South Africa.

One of America's fastest rising comedy talents, Hart has released four comedy DVDs and appeared on numerous TV shows and in blockbuster films; he has over 20m worldwide followers each on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Asked about the challenges of producing the current tour, Showtime Sound's Scott Tydings says, "We've worked with Kevin since 2010 and did the last tour, so we know what to expect - but there are always a few surprises. Showtime has been in business since 1996 and we do a lot of music tours, but lately there's been more of an e

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UAE - The Spendlove Group has announced the launch of Force Logistics, a UAE based company specialising in event logistics and freight forwarding.

The business will offer a complete suite of flexible freight forwarding services including airfreight, sea freight, land transport, removals and project cargo for fairs and events. The newly launched company has already secured contracts with theme parks, set construction companies and global brands.

The new business will be spearheaded by Anthony Miles, who brings more than 17 years' of event logistical experience to his role as managing director of the start-up. He has lead onsite logistic management services for international fairs and events worldwide including the 2012 London Olympic Games, Arabian Travel Market, CEBIT and Paperworld.

Commenting on the launch, Ian Spendlove, chief executive and founder of the Spendlove Gro

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South Africa - Professional audio distributor Wild & Marr has relocated its Johannesburg head office and at the same time revealed a fresh new look.

The move was prompted by MD Joe Copans who had the vision to completely transform the existing layout of the newly acquired property into a spacious and efficient headquarters and warehouse.

He says, "We are proud of the outcome. Wild & Marr as a company is growing, so the move has come at the right time. We have space available for hosting training and product related events and the warehouse has a more functional layout for packing stock."

The new Wild & Marr headquarters is situated in Isandovale, Edenvale in the Johannesburg area. To coincide with the move, Wild & Marr revealed a new logo and corporate identity.

"The brand refresh is something that we have been contemplating for a while," says sales

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South Korea - Following demos at the manufacturer's headquarters in Brescia, Italy, during which company representatives from South Korean rental house Blessway saw that the system maintained stable response, even at high-power outputs and that it was also very easy to operate, the company purchased the first large Outline GTO C-12 system to be sold into South Korea.

A Blessway spokesperson explains, "We were aware of the Outline system through marketing material and exhibits in Korea and, when we make purchases, we take the quality of both customer service and the product itself into great consideration."

Outline CEO, Giorgio Biffi comments, "Our South Korean distributor recently brought this important sound reinforcement company to our main facility near Brescia, and we chose the nearby multi-function Palabrescia Theatre as the venue for conducting extensive

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Australia - October saw the United Nations' 70th anniversary celebrated around the world with key global landmarks including the Empire State Building and the UN headquarters in New York, Tokyo's SkyTree Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Athens' Temple of Zeus and Edinburgh Castle, lit in celebration. The international Turn the World #UNBlue campaign aimed to unite global citizens by promoting the UN's message of peace, development and human rights.

More than 25 Australian landmarks turned blue, including the Sydney Opera House, the MCG, Perth's Bell Tower and Canberra's Old Parliament House. However the most notable event was held at the iconic red rock Uluru, the only icon to have the UN logo projected onto it.

The event was held with the cooperation of the traditional owners - the Anangu people - and was the first time an image had been projected onto the rock face. The p

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USA - When Lord of Life church was built in 1997, its leaders wanted to create an open uplifting atmosphere inside its spacious worship area. With this in mind, they included plenty of windows and skylights in the design of their building so the sanctuary would be flooded with natural sunlight. The clear rays of a Minnesota morning sun played off beautifully against the oak wood stage and sandstone walls of the church during Sunday services, just as its designers had planned.

Unfortunately, the ample splashes of solar light also made it impossible for Lord of Life to incorporate video displays into its services a few years later when that technology became available to churches. That changed recently though when Excel AV Group provided the church with a video wall that was bright enough to stand up to the sun by installing PVP X3 modular indoor 3.9mm pixel pitch LED panels from

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USA - Updating the audio and acoustics at a historical church while trying to keep its 1950s-era sound and traditional sanctuary charm intact is no easy feat. However, that's exactly what SLR International and Jackson & Ryan Architects (J&R) did at the Westheimer Campus of St. Luke's Methodist Church in Houston.

In order to amplify the speakers and ensure the clearest musical recordings while retaining the original acoustics of the church, SLR, a multi-disciplinary design firm, selected a variety of DPA Microphones' podium, instrument and recording miking solutions.

The update to the main sanctuary is the first portion of an ongoing project at St. Luke's Westheimer Campus, which, under the guidance of J&R principle architect John Clements, AIA, will encompass the construction of additional buildings. SLR has collaborated with J&R on several projects requiring AV and acoustic

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Poland - Trzebnica Culture House is a multi-purpose venue for a wide range of local events, including concerts, theatre productions, cinema, and conferences. Located in the town of Trzebnica, near Wroc?aw in southwest Poland, the Culture House has recently undergone a full programme of modernisation, including a new sound system for the venue's updated 420-seat main theatre.

A+V, a specialist integrator, was awarded the contract for installing the sound system, with Damian Cieciora of A+V handling the project management. The company designed the system around Community's new I Series loudspeakers to meet the quality required for each of the wide variety of applications.

Left and right clusters each consist of a Community IP6-1122-94 loudspeaker to cover the closer seating, with a longer throw IP6-1122/64 for the rear seating. The full-range units hang under IS6-212 subwoofer

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Australia - Novatech Creative Event Technology have sent out the first Avid S6L digital mixer for hire in the Asia-Pacific region to handle the high channel and bus count of Adelaide's Carols by Candlelight, a large and beloved event with a 71 year history, set in the beautiful surrounds of Elder Park.

As the crowd was entertained by stars such as Anthony Callea, Rhonda Burchmore, Samantha Jade, Nathaniel and Peter Combe, the S6L used all 64 inputs, as well as 16 outputs which fed eight front of house audio zones to the system and eight orchestral submixes to the AVID SC48 monitor console.

Legendary Australian sound engineer Jon Lemon, who has worked on the global stage with artists as diverse as Seal, Christina Aguilera, Smashing Pumpkins, Pink Floyd, INXS, and Sia, was full of praise for Novatech and the S6L. "The S6L only arrived in the warehouse last Tuesday; it was

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UK - The Minack open-air theatre in Cornwall, built on a craggy cliff overlooking the sea at Porthcurno, is the last place you would expect to see SGM's award-winning G-Spot strutting its stuff. Situated just four miles from Land's End, and constructed above a gully with a rocky granite outcrop jutting into the sea, this unique theatre has been staging performances in front of up to 800 people for 85 years.

One theatre company that visits regularly is the Cambridge University Gilbert & Sullivan Society, and for this year's week-long presentation of The Sorcerer they decided they would light the stage from vantage points up in the cliffs entirely with LED - the first time it has been done at the theatre.

Lighting designer Jon French, who had been part of general crew last year, immediately turned to SGM's IP65-rated G-Spot, having seen its features and weatherproof pro

  1. JoeCo brings festive surround sound to Melbourne
  2. Ashly amplifies Charlotte Sports Park
  3. Subfrantic at The Experience gospel concerts
  4. Chauvet adds flair to Global Spin Awards
  5. Pacific Lighting named Altman Distributor of the Year
  6. Clay Paky on the wings of a powerful sports car
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