Pharos - Leaderboard - May 2024

Projects

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USA - The Landon Arena at Stormont Vail Events Centre has been the place to see basketball and hockey games in Topeka since it was constructed in the 1980s. The 7,000-seat multi-purpose arena also hosts large events and live music. Avant Acoustics chose Fulcrum Acoustic loudspeakers to upgrade the sound system during the latest renovation.
Avant Acoustics specified Fulcrum’s FH15 Full-Range Coaxial Horn for its broadband pattern control to avoid interferences caused by the room reflections. “We considered a system of distributed line arrays, but that would have been cost prohibitive, as would adding acoustical treatment,” says designer John Hodgson. “We knew that Fulcrum’s FH series would provide the level of audio quality and clarity that was required even in the absence of additional acoustical treatment for the room. We listened to a demo of the new FH loudspeak

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Poland - Streamed performances have become a routine way of taking the performing arts to audiences on a scale that nobody could have anticipated just 18 months ago. After difficulties with the technical sound production of Opera Wrocławska’s first streamed production, a Yamaha Rivage PM7 digital mixing system has changed everything for its audio department.
Streaming has offered a vital lifeline for the arts during the pandemic, but there has been the question of whether larger scale productions like orchestral concerts and major theatrical shows can stream their performances with the necessary artistic effect? An essential part of achieving this is, of course, how the production sounds.
In 2020, Poland’s Opera Wrocławska embraced live streaming, but it was presented with two key problems: Firstly, of 300 staff, the venue’s sound department comprised just thre

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Sweden - Improving the sound for the congregation in an ancient church can be a difficult task. But Yamaha’s VXL series slim line array speakers make it much easier, as demonstrated in the medieval church at Säve, near Gothenburg.
“The church’s audio system was at least 20 years old. It was outdated, with a non-standard mixer and speakers/amplifier designed for home use. So it could not possibly deliver sound of acceptable quality,” says Sten E. Ranwald of Gothenburg-based Ljud & Säkerhet.
Sten was asked to improve the 13th century church’s sound but, because of its historic structure and decor, it needed to be done very sensitively. “We could not interfere with the structure of the church or place any equipment that would have a visual impact,” he says.
“After the old system was removed and while the church’s electrical system was being

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China - The Peacekeeper Elite League is the highest level of eSports competition for the videogame Peacekeeper Elite - the localised title of PUBG Mobile in the Chinese market. And while esports is a burgeoning market in the live production world, the production costs across these performances have traditionally been high due to the need for dedicated, on-site staff and expansive cable runs connecting many different video and audio feeds.
To mitigate this challenge, VSPN - a co-organiser of the Peacekeeper Elite League - recently experimented with a new way to host its events by relying on Audinate’s Dante for broadcast audio over a vast geographic distance.
On 3 May, the first weekly final of the Peacekeeper Elite League 2021 S2 season was held in Chongqing Banan Huaxi Sports Centre. Twenty professional teams from across the country gathered in the mountain city of

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USA - Dierks Bentley’s current Beers On Me tour is providing an emotional and welcoming reunion for the singer/songwriter’s production crew, who are savouring the experience of being together on the road again connecting to fans and entertaining them after a long lockdown.
Contributing to the positive atmosphere at the shows is a deep and immersive Bruce Rodgers production design, engagingly lit by Chris Reade with help from Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied by Christie Lites.
“My job is to piggyback on Bruce's vision, and really push a perspective that pulls fans into the performance and personalities on stage,” said Reade, who with his partner Jay Ballinger, is the owner of Las Vegas-based KYVA Design, LLC. “This design is very much about angles that engage you visually.”
A key component of the set design is a V-shaped video wall. Roughly 50ft

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UK - Part of the University of Surrey, Guildford School of Acting (GSA) provides its Theatre Production course students with a rounded education in all aspects of technical production. Part of this, is ensuring the equipment they learn on is not only cutting-edge but prepares them for their professional careers. To this end, GSA has recently invested in a DiGiCo Quantum 338, purchased through Autograph Sound.
“As a drama conservatoire, GSA is renowned for its musical theatre and actor-musician training, creating many opportunities for the Theatre Production students to support the sound needs of this diverse performance programme,” says Gareth Evans, teaching fellow in Sound at GSA. “When we were looking to upgrade our existing SD8, we knew we wanted a console that both represented an industry standard for our students and would support the efficient workflows needed t

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Denmark - Situated about 25km north of Copenhagen, Hørsholm is a community with diverse tastes in the performing arts and entertainment, and as such the small city’s principal venue, Kulturhus Trommen, hosts artists that span a broad spectrum of genres. To cater for anything from rock and folk to stand-up comedy, the venue recently invested in a new reinforcement system based on Meyer Sound LINA line array loudspeakers.
When the decision was made to replace the aging prior system, chief technician Thomas Love undertook a thorough evaluation of possible replacements from four other manufacturers before selecting the LINA line arrays. After a long delay imposed by the pandemic, the system finally was put to a grueling test during the reopening series.
“We had a full month of concerts with shows every day,” says Love. “We had everything from acoustic guitar and s

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USA - There are some productions where lighting is so intricately woven into the story that it becomes part of the narrative itself. Pagliacci falls squarely into this category as it cleaves dramatically between the bright frivolity of a clown’s life and the dark madness of murder.
Keith Arsenault reflected this dichotomy in vivid fashion recently when lighting the St. Petersburg Opera’s production of the Leoncavallo opera. With help from a collection of Chauvet Professional Rogue fixtures, he used bold and subtle changes in colour and brightness to reflect the spiral of events that gives Pagliacci its compelling power.
“Although a ‘one act opera’, Pagliacci is very specifically divided in two scenes,” said Arsenault. “One is set in a bright, sunny Italian day; the other takes place while night is falling. The story gets darker and darker dr

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USA - ATK Audiotek recently deployed a JBL Professional sound reinforcement system at the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Awards, one of the first indoor live awards shows of the year.
Now in its eighth year, the iHeartRadio Music Awards honours popular artists across 41 categories, ranging from Song of the Year to the Icon Award. The 2021 ceremony, which was hosted by Usher, was held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles in front of a crowd of 1,500. Performers included The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Dan + Shay, Silk Sonic, Brandi Carlile, Demi Lovato, H.E.R., Doja Cat and Usher.
With content ranging from acceptance speeches to high-energy musical performances, the event demanded a sound system with excellent dynamic range. And, with only the venue’s main floor and first of three balconies open, the event required a more focused sound system than a full-capacity show. To meet thes

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Poland - Puławy Cultural Centre, known locally as Dom Chemika, has been serving the cultural need of its local community in eastern Poland since 1984. A recent refurbishment has helped bring the centre up to modern standards and TW AUDiO has been at the heart of the renovations.
The idea of creating a cultural centre in Puławy was born in the 1960s as a place for entertaining workers from the local chemical plant. This led to the name of Dom Chemika (Chemist’s House) when it opened its doors in the 1980s. The facility focuses primarily on artistic education while supporting and promoting local talents. In addition to this, it hosts theatrical performances as well as concerts and film screenings.
The renovation project means Dom Chemika now boasts a 520-seat main auditorium, a 98-seat chamber hall, a music club named Smok and many smaller practice rooms for music and

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USA - Forced from the road in early 2020 due to the pandemic, tribute band Brit Floyd is back after kicking off a world tour 29 July at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado beneath an all-Elation lighting rig.
The tour is produced and promoted by UK-based CMP Entertainment, who own and supply all of the Elation gear. Elation has enjoyed an excellent relationship with CMP over the years and many of Brit Floyd’s past tours have featured Elation gear.
Chas Cole of CMP Entertainment comments: "Eric Loader was supportive of Brit Floyd in its early days with great product at a great price and even though we’ve worked the equipment really hard it’s held together really well and allowed us to produce a great light show year after year."
Many have had a hand in shaping the Brit Floyd look over the years, a design that echoes Marc Brickman’s original and classic Pink

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UK - 4Wall has won the tender to provide LED to the new extended reality studio at research and innovation centre XPLOR at Production Park in South Kirkby, West Yorkshire.
Scheduled to open in autumn 2021, 4Wall has provided all of the LED, processing and support systems for the new XR studio which features a 40.5 SQM LED wall alongside 18 SQM of LED floor.
The large-scale XR stage will be part of XPLOR’s Centre for Virtual Production and made up of 162 panels of Roe Ruby 2.3mm LED for the back wall and 72 panels of high-resolution Roe BM4 Black Marble 4.7mm LED for the floor, enabling the centre to deliver high-quality extended reality production, events and training to businesses and students across the region.
4Wall has been working in the field of virtual events for a number of years, specialising in recent years in the XR workflow, delivering high-profil

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Germany - Recently Audi revealed its new all-electric Q4 e-tron and Q4 Sportback e-tron vehicles in what the company called a ‘digital world premiere’. It was a complex production, with a total of 45 live streams, each one in three languages, routed to media in 28 different countries. The audio mixing for this high profile launch was entrusted to Yamaha Rivage PM digital mixing systems.
A live broadcast centre was built within Munich’s Eisbach Studios, with five themed studios. From these, Audi delivered a varied, interactive programme of digital workshops and interviews, Q&A sessions, round tables, virtual photo shoots, live presentations and a press conference, with senior Audi staff describing the design and many innovations of the new vehicles.
As well as delivering the elaborate production in high quality audio to Audi’s TV channel and all major socia

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Australia - Expressions of Interest are now open for Vivid Sydney 2022 under a unified, creative vision - The Soul of Sydney. The vision will inform all submissions across the Light, Music and Ideas programs as well as a new Cross Art Form category.
All sectors of the creative industries are invited to investigate what truly is the soul of the Harbour City - its people, places and essence. Creators from around the world are encouraged to share unexpected stories that will engage, inspire and excite audiences, drawing inspiration from Sydney’s hidden spaces, architecture, global icons, people, food, music and ideas.
Destination NSW chief executive officer Steve Cox said: “Vivid Sydney provides a global platform for artists, musicians, creatives and thought leaders, to continually push the envelope when it comes to creativity. I look forward to seeing the inno

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USA - Founded by a group of families committed to doing church differently, Auburn Community Church (ACC) in Alabama is a non-denominational worship centre that hosts both in-person and live-stream services for a diverse congregation. The church recently upgraded to a larger camera system and needed an intercom that could provide a reliable channel of communication between camera operators and the video director. With this newfound requirement, ACC turned to Pliant Technologies’ CrewCom digital wireless intercom system, as well as its SmartBoom headsets.
Although the system was originally purchased with the camera operators and the video director in mind, the church found many additional uses for CrewCom’s communication capabilities. With CrewCom, the church’s producer can communicate with the entire production team, ensuring seamless transitions within the program and

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Italy - Liguria, overlooking the country’s northwest coast has always been a favourite destination for writers and artists, such as Byron, Shelley and D’Annunzio, and the picturesque villages of the Cinque Terre, with their colourful houses, cliff-hanging trails and terraced slopes are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Almost 500 events took place during the region’s 2021 summer season, including many highly original projects, such as August’s Musica dal Mare (Music from the Sea), a series of evenings in three of the riviera’s key locations (Calata Mandraccio in Genova’s Old Port, Giardini a mare in Santa Margherita Ligure and Rapallo promenade).
The technical set-up for these events comprised a maxi video screen, a lighting rig combining moving head fixtures and conventional units and an impressive sound system, but the unusual aspect was that the whole

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UK - Recognising that the beleaguered live events industry needed an interactive live streaming platform when the first COVID-19 lockdown hit back in April 2020, a trio of production professionals collectively known as Be Square, pooled their resources to come up with precisely that.
They knew that if their idea was to have both relevance and sustainability, the event needed to offer a shared, online social experience for a group of up to five people - just as if they would all be attending in person. They should be able to appear as PIPs - tiny thumbnails in the foreground of the show - chat, mute, or generally discuss the performance via message posts on the scroll bar, all within the comfort of their respective homes.
In 15 months, the company has already supported a number of events, from shows at the Battersea Arts Centre, to After The Flood in the Spiegeltent, an

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UK - Describing himself as a jack-of-all-trades musician, Jesse Quin plays down his talent as bassist in the band Keane. For the last seven years he’s also run Old Jet, his own recording studio in Suffolk and recently got himself an iD44, calling his new Audient audio interface “a lifesaver”.
He explains: “The iD44 was the solution I was looking for to be able to incorporate people’s laptops into my setup. So I have it on my patch bay and can use fancy outboard EQs and effects, but also just plug a mic straight into the back of it if I want to. It’s like I’d written a list of what I needed it to do, and then Audient made it. Absolutely perfect.”
The most powerful of all of Audient’s audio interfaces, iD44 is 20in / 24out, offering ultimate flexibility in the studio and plenty of options for expansion. The two JFET instrument inputs are ideal for Jesse

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USA - The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park in San Diego has installed three DiGiCo consoles. A Quantum7 is the front-of-house mix desk, with a DiGiCo SD10 for monitor mixing and an SD12 on hand for any auxiliary mix and processing needs. The three consoles, three SD-Racks located on stage, and a Mini-Rack in the amp room are all on a dual Optocore network, and the entire system was designed and integrated by Solotech.
“There are several reasons why we chose the DiGiCo consoles, and they are all areas that the brand excels in,” says Aaron Beck, business development manager and senior engineer at Solotech. “First, there’s capacity - the Quantum7 can run 200-plus inputs. Then there’s the Quantum processing power.” Becks cites features like Quantum’s Mustard Processing channel strips, Spice Rack plugin-style native FPGA processing options, and Nodal Processing all as stan

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UK - Cabaret venue Proud Embankment in London’s West End was determined to have a high-impact post-Covid reopening. One of the first venues to open its doors after the second lockdown, Proud had undergone a renovation, with a major investment in its production values and the installation of 14 new Robe Pointe moving lights.
The new Pointes were specified by Proud Embankment’s in-house lighting designer Jack Knight and purchased specially for the venue by regular lighting supplier, North London rental and installation specialist, Halo.
The Pointes are a completely new addition to the existing house lighting rig and are positioned all around the stage with several on a goal post at the back, from where they provide the main effects lighting looks.
Robe’s highly versatile Pointe was an easy choice for Jack. “It is a properly ‘multipurpose fixture’ in e

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UK - With Glastonbury Festival cancelled for a second year, an online celebration - Live at Worthy Farm - was held in its stead on Saturday 22 May 2021. Filmed over a week and beamed as live around the world, the five-hour virtual festival echoed the glories of the full event missed by so many, in spite of the access problems suffered by the online audience. For many artists it was the first opportunity to play live in a year or more.
The event highlight came with a performance from Coldplay, lit by multi award-winning lighting and show designer, Sooner Routhier of Sooner Rae Creative. Routhier incorporated 60 Ayrton Perseo Profile and 36 Ayrton Domino IP65-rated multifunction lighting fixtures, supplied by Neg Earth, into her design to handle the demanding outdoor conditions. “I needed a large format profile that was IP65 rated because the site was open to the elements in

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USA - The annual Red Wing Roots Music Festival in Mt. Solon, VA’s Natural Chimneys Park, offers the best of roots, bluegrass and string band music from Virginia and beyond.
Martin Audio rental partners, Southard Audio, have been providing audio services at this five-stage event since it began in 2013 (providing technical support for the four stages). The festival, which is attended by around 4,500 people, is a collaboration between Black Bear Productions LLC and The Steel Wheels - the latter a nationally touring band, who perform throughout the US, with many of the members living nearby in the Shenandoah Valley.
Southard Audio have a long relationship with Martin Audio systems, and business partner, Jason Misterka, was in no doubts why he wanted to redeploy the large, scalable Wavefront Precision line array system that had proved such a success last year. “When we

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UK - Part of University College London (UCL), The Bloomsbury Theatre works with students and researchers to ‘bring ground-breaking discoveries to the stage’. In 2018, 50 years after its first performance, the landmark Brutalist building reopened its doors following a major renovation project to update its main auditorium which now boasts more than 500 luxurious seats.
The final part of the renovation was the installation and commissioning of a significant EM Acoustics HALO-C PA system by theatre specialists, Autograph Sound.
Autograph’s Adam Broom explains: “There’s a bit of a back story here given that we in fact supplied the system before the renovation. As it made no sense to replace a system that had only just been replaced, it went into storage. Julian Brooks was appointed technical manager of The Bloomsbury in 2019 and he soon realised that the system n

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USA - To provide quality sound for the high-profile 2021 Billboard Music Awards, ATK Audiotek recently deployed a range of Harman Professional sound reinforcement solutions for indoor and outdoor stages at the Microsoft Theatre in Hollywood.
Since 1990, the Billboard Music Awards show (BBMAs) has honoured the music industry’s highest-charting artists, with this year featuring live performances by the Weeknd, Doja Cat, P!nk and Twenty One Pilots among many others.
Following an audience-free ceremony in 2020, this year’s BBMAs welcomed a crowd of more than 500 in the plaza outside of the Microsoft Theatre - one of the largest awards show audiences of the year thus far. Musical acts performed on a stage in front of the crowd, while nominees sat by the main awards stage nearby. Additionally, several performances took place inside the theatre.
Dick Clark Producti
  1. Steve Lieberman powers up Rolling Loud
  2. Chauvet lights Blue Ridge Mountains marathon
  3. Christmas comes to Windsor Great Park
  4. L-Acoustics K2 brings San Diego’s Shell to life
  5. Meyer Leopards reinforce Orlando church
  6. EAW in Bondi Beach installation
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