Italy - Twenty years after first opening in Italy, the complete original cast of Notre-Dame de Paris is back on stage to celebrate the anniversary. Following the success of the show in Paris, the musical made its official Italian debut at Gran Teatro of Rome in 2002, featuring the translated lyrics of Pasquale Panella. Produced in collaboration with Enzo Product Ltd, entirely curated and distributed by Vivo Concerti, and under the direction of Gilles Maheu, the 2022 tour will include over 180 shows throughout the Italian peninsula.
For this 20th Anniversary production, experienced sound team members were selected, including FOH engineer Alberto Alicandro, who was part of the original crew, monitor engineer Simone ‘Zeta’ Saccomandi, and microphone technician Andrea “Niski” Stanisci. The microphone equipment is entirely DPA, with 16 headsets, consisting of 4066

UK - Digital Insanity teamed up with house powerhouse Defected and disco-house connoisseurs Glitterbox in August to deliver visuals for London’s We are FSTVL, choosing up a Hippotizer Nevis+ Media Server to pump out extra VJ prowess.
Reading-based video production company Digital Insanity – which has created visuals for dance festivals including Snowbombing, Lovebox and Global Gathering – was at the helm of the Glitterbox/Defected stage over two days of fast-paced performances. Eight huge 512x1280 portrait, 3mm LED screens were rigged in a four stage-left, four stage-right formation, displaying branded punk style disco graphics, slogans, geometric beauty and live feed footage. A further two screens were positioned as a DJ riser and behind the booth, at the upstage position. The full canvas size was 7680 x 1440 pixels, and all of the screens were supplied by UK Events G

USA - The Nature of Light: An Exploration After Dark at The Paine Art Center and Gardens, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin is an immersive night time experience - created by visual design practice Lightswitch in partnership with art sculpture studio HYBYCOZO and the Paine - uses a host of Elation Professional fixtures in a number of evocative and transformative outdoor environments.
For nearly a decade, HYBYCOZO and Lightswitch have partnered on art installations and experiences but The Nature of Light: An Exploration After Dark is their first collaboration on a major large-scale exhibition. The Nature of Light features a collection of carefully curated experiences throughout the estate and grounds, spectacularly lit indoor and outdoor environments that incorporate more than 50 different sculptures.
The project began when Aaron Sherer, executive director at

USA - Frontman Ian Astbury and The Cult have “always been fans of warm blinder light from a low and back position,” says Matt Guminski, the band’s lighting designer, programmer, and operator.
For his part, Guminski is a self-described “fan of contrasting warm tungsten (or a proper tungsten emulating LED), that works harmoniously with the bold & saturated colors of LED or discharge lamp fixtures”.
This alignment of preferences came together this summer for the band’s We Own The Night North American tour.
“Doing bumps between a rich saturated LED look and warm bright blinder hits always provides big dramatic looks, which is what we did on this tour,” said Guminski. “We also went with multiple types of silhouette looks. This harkens back to Ian’s desire for a less traditional rock show, more like Bauhaus/Nine Inch Nails. Chiaroscuro is the na

USA - Bobby Glowacki does a bit of everything on country music artist Brett Eldredge’s current Songs About You U.S. tour and lights the singer/songwriter using a versatile lighting rig from Elation Professional. Production design, lighting design, lighting programming, lighting operation, even lighting tech, he’s a virtual jack-of-all-lighting-trades working behind the scenes to make sure the show runs smoothly and looks its best.
Eldredge has five No.1 singles on the Billboard country charts and multiple accolades to his credit. Glowacki, who shares production designer duties with Bryan Bobbys, has been working with Eldredge for the past few years. He lights the current show using an Elation lighting package of 32 DARTZ 360 narrow beam moving heads, 12 Paladin Panel flood and effect lights, 8 ZW37 beam/wash moving heads, and a pair of SixPar 200 IP. Lighting supply is

South Africa - Maranatha Community Church Johannesburg has invested in two sets of Astera Titan Tubes for its busy 3000-seater auditorium in Kempton Park.
Nereen Bradshaw is head of media at Maranatha, and is responsible for creating content and overseeing lighting, media and video weekly at the Kempton Park campus, with which she has been involved for 10 years. The auditorium is used for three Sunday services each week (reaching approximately 5,000 - 6,000 people across all three services), and a live event is staged every Friday for around 400 young people. Four times per year there is a large mid-week family praise & worship service to coincide with the end of the school terms. Services include a set of praise & worship songs, followed by a motivating message.
All these presentations and services include live musical performances.
Nereen and the tea

Norway - Kunsthøgskolen – Oslo’s National Academy of the Arts is a vibrant and high-profile university college in the Norwegian capital which is dedicated to education in design and fine art (including graphics, furniture, and clothing design) and the visual and performing arts.
The visual and performing arts faculty covers multiple genres – theatre, drama, opera, dance, ballet, jazz, etc., offering undergraduate and master’s degrees, and has nine busy stages that present 50 – 70 productions a year. Head of lighting for this busy and lively environment is Ronnie Tungland, who recently co-ordinated the specification and purchase of 20 x Robe Esprite moving lights to be used across the various stages.
As Kunsthøgskolen’s 1000 plus dimmer channels feeding the various stages were starting to age, explained Ronnie – who has been overseeing lighting at the ac

USA - Will Chandler has created a compelling design for Grammy winners Bob Moses, on the Canadian duo’s current summer tour.
The owner of Envizion Group, Chandler has created a flowing set and lighting design that seems to fit the stage effortlessly as it produces its immersive effect. Engendering this organic mood are his artful use of dark spaces, a blow through video wall, and a rig configuration that allows him to “hide” fixtures when not in use.
“My vision was to maintain a level of transparency in the set,” explained Chandler. “Going into the design process, I wanted to incorporate video into the rig, but more as a scenic element and light source than as a traditional screen. The use of blow through screens, along with the space created by the strips, allows me to hide moving lights and blinders behind the set so that they disappear when not in use. T

USA - Stage Right Lighting in Virginia Beach, Virginia expanded its Ayrton lighting inventory with 38 Perseo IP65-rated compact, multi-function luminaires, which have been flying off the shelves, according to production manager Doug Arble. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton lighting in North America.
“We’re based in the Tidewater area, which consists of seven cities, and from May to October we’re outdoors with concerts and special events,” he reports. “We were looking for a multi-function light with an LED source and an IP rating. We needed something that wasn’t excessively heavy that we could throw into a pre-rigged truss and use as a downstage wash or upstage profile, something that had gobo effects and framing shutters, which are in big demand on riders these days.
ACT brought us some Perseos for a shoot-out with other IP-rated fixt

Australia - In what became a must-see highlight for a record breaking 2.58m visitors attending the 23-night Vivid Sydney 2022 Festival, Progressum at Vivid House in Darling Quarter catered for audiences up to 100 people at any one time.
The collaborative 3D walk-through visual art experience and concept was created by Sydney based producer and sound system designer Des O’Neill, lighting designer Peter Rubie, and sound designer and composer Peret von Sturmer, combining art, light, sound and video to stimulate all senses.
Vivid Sydney is the annual festival of Light, Music and Ideas which transforms Sydney’s CBD into a fusion of creativity, innovation and technology for 23-nights. In 2022, the renowned Light Walk stretched continuously from Sydney Opera House to Central for the first time, passing through new parts of the city including The Goods Line and Cent

World - For Dua Lipa’s current Future Nostalgia world tour, Britannia Row Productions supplied DiGiCo Quantum consoles to deliver on power and functionality.
Future Nostalgia was originally scheduled to start in late 2019 but, like so many others, was repeatedly postponed until finally heading out in February 2022. It will finish in Perth, Australia in November, having visited North America, Europe, Latin America and Oceania.
Both the FOH sound and on-stage mixes are being created on DiGiCo Quantum digital mixing systems, by Will Nicholson and Alex Cerutti respectively. Nicholson is in his seventh year with Dua Lipa and specified a Quantum 7 console for this tour.
“The Q7 offers so much. It’s the only desk currently on the market with a dual brain, which negates the need for us to carry a spare board but gives us redundancy. That is very comforting,” he s

USA - Lightware Visual Engineering is supporting Esports Trade Associations’ (ESTA) inaugural EsportsNext 2022 event, as a gold sponsor. The event takes place in Chicago, USA on 22 – 23 August 2022.
The company’s presence will include demonstrating its AV signal management solutions to the global esports community, and also an opportunity for Lightware to explore and learn more about the ongoing needs of this fast-paced industry.
Lightware joins a list of advocates supporting EsportsNext 2022, including AVI-SPL, Morgan Stanley, Ultimate Gaming Championship (UGC) and more.
Megan Van Petten, ESTA founder and managing director, said: “ESTA is thrilled to have Lightware as part of our community both as a Corporate Member and a Gold sponsor of EsportsNext 2022 as the company’s solutions fulfill a definite need for our esports industry.”
Jason Tira

France - Visitors to the Palais de la Bourse in Lyon can’t help but admire the white marble statue, near the stairs leading up to this Renaissance revival structure. Graceful and flowing, the sculpture represents the Rivers Saône and Rhône, their arms joining together as they point confidently towards the future. Since it opened on August 25, 1860, it has brought together the forces of commerce, industry, education and art for the betterment of its community.
This heritage made the Palais de la Bourse the ideal setting for a recent event hosted by Vinci, SA, a company that specialises in energy production, concessions and construction.
Lighting designer Romain Plantier, working with lighting technician Loïc Pollet, drew on the stunning architectural features of the building to endow the Vinci dinner gala with added elegance and style, while still conveying a welco

USA - A mecca for jam band devotees, the Peach Music Festival at Montage Mountain in Scranton, Pennsylvania is known for presenting a diverse, multi-genre array of artists most known for their free-flowing improvisation and danceable rhythms.
Headliners for 2022 included Billy Strings, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, Trey Anastasio Band, and The Black Crowes, with more than 70 bands total on the bill. From an audio standpoint, the 2022 Peach Music Festival was notable as the North American major festival debut of Meyer Sound’s new Panther large-format linear line array loudspeaker.
This year’s Peach Music Festival was also the first for Coatesville, Pennsylvania-based DBS Audio Systems as the principal audio provider. Company president Dave Brotman noted,
“Amphitheatres with tent roofs can generate a vast amount of reflections,” notes Brotman, who served as s

UK - Scandinavian flat-pack super chain IKEA’s flagship store in Wembley, North London, is immersing potential buyers into an interactive, projection mapped environment this summer, thanks to an inspired project by Motion Mapping using Hippotizer Karst+ Media Servers.
The popular furniture and houseware brand’s team approached Ipswich-based Motion Mapping, which specialises in video mapping, to realise the project. The initial brief focused on a furniture section of the IKEA store, constructed from an L-shaped wall with large desk, hung cabinets and a series of 12 differing-sized empty photo frames, each one video mapped to synchronise with the back wall projections across all of the cabinets, hung in a portrait and landscape formation to create a wide display canvas. The team wanted to turn this into the immersive environment, using projections and interactive elements.

USA - With its roots going all the way back to 1847, the LCMS (The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod) is a traditional, confessional Lutheran denomination with 1.8m members, making it the second-largest Lutheran body in the United States.
Their triennial Youth Gathering is a five-day meeting which has been staged since 1980, providing an opportunity for thousands of young adults to come together as a community of God’s people to learn about the Christian faith and their Lutheran identity.
The 2022 event was held in Houston (Texas) across a number of venues, the largest being Minute Maid Park, a baseball stadium which is normally home to the Houston Astros.
Special Event Services (SES) of Mocksville, NC were contracted to supply a major sound system capable of delivering live music and, most importantly, perfectly intelligible speech to a very large area contai

Japan - Founded in 1946, Ikegami Tsushinki Co is a manufacturer of high quality professional broadcast equipment, particularly known for their television cameras. Indeed, Ikegami introduced the world’s first portable hand-held TV camera which debuted in the US in 1962 when CBS used it to document the launch of NASA’s Aurora 7 crewed space flight.
In 2022 the company, which is actively working on next-generation broadcasting standards with IP workflows, is celebrating its 75th anniversary – a milestone that has been marked by a comprehensive renovation of its office buildings in Tokyo, including a sophisticated new seminar room equipped with Smart IP loudspeakers from Genelec.
Today the world of broadcasting is in the midst of dramatic change with the advent of Internet broadcasting with IP transmission. Ikegami is actively pursuing its development along these lin

Thailand - For the eighth season of The Voice of Thailand, the show’s lighting designers used Cameo spotlights for the first time. More than 180 moving lights, spotlights and LED bars were used in the studio and live shows in Bangkok. The lighting solutions were supplied by Cameo’s Thai distributor, L&E Lighting & Equipment PCL.
“Cameo is a relative newcomer to the Thai event technology market,” explains Arocha Kittivittayakul, product manager at L&E. “We are therefore all the more pleased that those responsible – Pat Jareeyatana, managing director of EXIT365 Company Limited, the owner of The Voice All Stars Thailand licence, and the lighting designers Arthorn Luempetch and Junchay Baomaroeng – showed great interest in the spotlights and ultimately decided on Cameo as a brand.”
For lighting in the TV studio, the lighting designers use

USA - Bandit Lites partnered with 46 Entertainment to provide the lighting package for the American sports and comedy group Dude Perfect 2022 summer tour. The group boasts more than 58m subscribers and 14.6bn views.
Production manager/designer Mason Felps of 46 Entertainment crafted a new design based around the core fixtures from the last tour, working with creative producer Lauren Charboneau and Bandit lighting director Chris Noll.
“We knew we needed a ton of key light to cover all of the playable area,” said Felps. “I started there and worked my way backwards.
“With Dude Perfect being social media based, it's really important to keep everything to brand: be it tour branding or artist branding,” said Noll. “This tends to influence colour selection or overall feel of a given segment.”
Noll worked with Gordon Droictcour of Cour Designs (cont

Canada Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre Theatre (HCT) is the jewel in the crown that is the city’s famed waterfront park. Seating only 350 patrons in its normal configuration, the theatre has impressively hosted intimate performances by A-list musical artists like Celine Dion and Julio Iglesias, top theatrical performances including the musical STOMP, and its own 2001 World Leaders: A Festival of Creative Genius which featured appearances by Quincy Jones, Frank Gehry, and Stephen Sondheim.
Music, dance, theatre, or spoken word, the HCT hosts it all, and now it has a sound system that can cover every base - a new L-Acoustics A15 system designed by Toronto-based Engineering Harmonics and installed in late-2021 by Solotech.
The venue’s new PA typically comprises 19 L-Acoustics A Series enclosures arranged in a flown LCR configuration - seven A15 Focus for the l

Denmark - Roskilde, Denmark’s largest and highest profile international music festival, celebrated 50 years this year with a fantastic line-up across multiple stages, with Robe moving lights playing a major role on the famous Orange Stage and in the expansive Arena Stage venue.
The 50th anniversary had been due to take place in 2020 but was delayed two years due to the pandemic, and while a small version of the festival took place in 2021 in one of the barns on its site just south of Copenhagen, this edition had an extra special resonance in addition to guests being able to enjoy the dynamics of live music and real human interaction again.

Arena Stage
Lighting designer Sune Verdier and his team once again ran production lighting for this stage, ensuring that all visiting lighting designers, directors, and operators were well accommodated and that al

UK - To facilitate students with a space for drama production and rehearsals, the Wimbledon campus of University of the Arts London has dedicated two large studio spaces to acting and performance. Currently undergoing a major site re-development, the Wimbledon college has high-end rehearsal spaces now fitted with quality audio-visual equipment, thanks to Flipside AV.
Previously built for a Print and Time-Based Media programme, the Wimbledon studio spaces are spread across two floors. The downstairs space, being more enclosed, can split itself into two rooms for workshops and independent rehearsals, while the upstairs room provides an ideal performance hub the with sky light installations to let the room bring in natural light and air and church-like wood panels on the ceiling for acoustical balance.
Being simple, flexible enclosures; the acting and performance students

Saudi Arabia - The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, referred to colloquially as KAUST, is a science and technology. It takes its name from the former King of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, who decreed its foundation, intending it to “serve the people of the Kingdom and benefit all the peoples of the world
The Museum of Science & Technology in Islam (MOSTI) was created later, on campus. MOSTI seeks to highlight the plethora of contributions made by Muslim scholars to science and technology during the first Golden Age of Islam (650-1650) and demonstrate how these contributions shaped the world as we know it, laying the groundwork for modern civilisation. Interactive technology leads people through the exhibits, forming an immersive exploration of the various artefacts and relics.
formula D_, an experienced design company that specialises i

Canada - The lighting rig that George Gorton designed for Dallas Smith’s Somethings Never Change tour took on a life of its own over the course of the early summer, seeming to expand, contract and morph in new directions with every show.
After a 19-month pandemic-caused hiatus, the Juno Award winning multi-platinum country star (12 of his songs have reach the top of the charts in Canada), took off to play some live music on 24 May, and invited some friends to join him. A total of seven different acts have supported Smith on his 24-show, five-week tour. This diversity made it essential that Gorton devise a rig with an organic-like quality to grow and change.
“There was a constant dialogue with the band,” recalled Gorton. “We had multiple guests joining Dallas, so we were constantly building and updating the show as the tour progressed and got new songs in the m

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