Europe - May saw the launch of Rod Stewart’s new world tour in support of Blood Red Rose, the artist’s 30th solo album and his first release in three years. Itself a product of life on the road, the new album features a string of relaxed recordings made with Stewart’s tour band in hotel rooms and private, post-gig, backstage sessions.
Helping to translate these new songs from ‘after hours’ to ‘centre stage’ is Colonel Tom Touring, who worked with lighting and production designer Mark Cunniffe to deliver a video rig for the full run of the European stadium, ar

Germany - Parookaville is one of the largest electronic music festivals in the world, and this year attracted around 200,000 visitors over three days to Weeze airport, a former military base in the Lower Rhine region of Germany.
This fifth edition of the event featured multiple stages, one of which was the Desert Valley Stage where Tillmann Stockschläder of service providers Entec, in cooperation with audio specialists Teqsas, deployed a Coda Audio system.
The Desert Valley Stage is one of the largest at the festival, covering an area of more than 5000sq.m and Coda Audio Ai

Poland - The Open’er Festival - one of the largest music festivals in Poland - has been an institution since 2002. Having welcomed international names including the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Pharrel Williams, Snoop Dogg and Coldplay, it has maintained its status in the Polish festival calendar.
Open’er Festival is held annually in the seaside city of Gdynia. Tasked with overall multimedia support of the five stages was one of Poland’s largest event engineering companies, VES.
Responsible for the overall design and operation of the Beat Stage, Michał ‘Kurczak’ Mazurk

USA - Halsey hit the road in May for a short run of shows in support of a new single release, Nightmare and lighting designer Jose Antunes chose Elation’s Artiste Monet and Rayzor 760 to light the special performances. Lighting vendor was DCR of Nashville.
The festival and specials run included shows at Webster Hall in New York City prior to the single release along with a string of radio performances in California in early June.
Antunes designed the shows around some of Elation Professional’s newest luminaires, the Artiste Monet and Rayzor 760, and was one of th

UK - When The Mavericks stopped at the Glastonbury Festival during their 30th Anniversary World Tour, their LD Landon Bloss did what he always does on fly dates: he walked over to look at the lighting rig that he would be running later that day.
Approaching the festival’s Acoustic Stage from a distance, Bloss was impressed with the looks the festival LD was conjuring up with some large spots. “I thought for sure, given how bright their output was, that they were 1700w arc lamp fixtures,” said the Nashville-based designer. “So, I was completely surprised when I learned tha

Europe - This summer, Muse continued their Simulation Theory world tour through the UK and Europe. The successful North American leg of the stadium tour put crew and equipment to the test in 23 cities.
“Jesse Lee Stout, the creative director for the tour, wanted the entire lighting rig and stage to feel like a spaceship straight out of the ‘80s/’90s sci-fi movies we all know and love,” explains tour lighting designer and programmer, Sooner Routhier.
“Making that all-encompassing vision brighter are 176 Solaris Flare LR and 51 Solaris Flare Q+ fixtures. Firs

Ireland - At the start of 2019, one of Ireland’s leading audio hire, sales and installations companies, Acoustik, took delivery of two DiGiCo SD10s to add to its existing stock of mixing consoles and, according to the company’s operations and systems designer Will Fitzpatrick, they are “flying out of the door”.
“For the past couple of years, DiGiCo has been at the top of the list on the riders we recieve and they are our crew’s console of choice, so the decision to invest in the SD10s was without question,” says Fitzpatrick. “We also had the option to upgrade to t

UK - Wireless headphone provider Silent Disco King partnered with Cineramageddon at Glastonbury festival for a debut screening of Ibiza, The Silent Movie.
Cineramageddon is curated by film director Julien Temple and returned to Glastonbury this year for its second outing after debuting in 2017.
The area has the UK’s largest outdoor cinema screen and includes 60 vehicles including Mad Max style cars, classic cars, fairground bumper cars and convertibles dug into the ground, which festival goers can rent out to watch an array of cult classic movies.
The activa

China - The Trophée des Champions returned to Shenzhen on 3 August, for its 24th edition, which saw Paris Saint-Germain go head-to-head with Stade Rennais. This is the second year that the French Super Cup has been held at the Shenzhen Universiade Centre.
Absen was the exclusive and official LED display supplier of the event, providing 200 panels of perimeter LED and onsite support throughout the event.
The game, which was attended by over 31,000 spectators, saw the defending champions Paris Saint-Germain retain their title following a 2-1 win, making it their seventh Trop

The Netherlands - Violinist Nigel Kennedy played an engaging concert as part of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Neumünster. The violinist was accompanied by the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, which comprised young musicians from 27 nations, who were selected from 1,500 applicants through international auditions.
Dutch loudspeaker manufacturer Alcons Audio teamed up with Kennedy's sound engineer Andreas Adelhofer of Headroom Media Service or the sound experience. Adelhofer, who has been working as sound engineer for Nigel Kennedy for more than five years, is respo

UK - White Light recently provided the lighting equipment for the Apollo Nights season at the Eventim Apollo - a week of live performances from a range of music artists.
The inaugural Apollo Nights season at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, London, brought together a premium VIP dining experience and a roster of headline artists for a week of shows at the landmark venue.
Curated by Ollie Rosenblatt at Senbla, the season delivered an audience experience with the front stalls seating removed to create space for VIP pre-show dining with live jazz piano before opening up the

UK - Version 2 is supporting a growing number of crews with low energy solutions both in the studio and on location.
Working with a number of leading lighting directors, the Buckinghamshire based lighting rental specialists have supported coverage on a selection of premier summer events with products form their low energy inventory. First up was a visit to Worthy Farm, Somerset as broadcast partners for the BBC’s comprehensive coverage of the 2019 Glastonbury Festival.
Making use of a selection of V2 low energy fixtures, lighting director Oli Richards and gaffer Paul Evan

Europe - Having recently purchased their own Allen & Heath SQ-5 digital mixer, British rockers Don Broco chose to pair it up with a full dLive system this summer for a short festival run across the UK & Europe, including appearances at Mad Cool (Madrid), Meo Mares Festival (Porto) and Truck Festival (Oxfordshire).
Supplied by SSE Audio, a DM64 MixRack fitted with gigaACE and fibreACE cards formed the core of the system; paired with a dLive S3000 surface at FOH (fitted with a Dante card), while a digital split from the gigaACE card allowed the band to use their own SQ-5 for

Belgium - Main stage artists at the 2019 Ghent Jazz Festival were illuminated by 86 Robe moving lights - including 35 new T1s - in a slick lighting design created by Bart Weyts of company L&L Stage Services, who provided technical production, including lightning, audio and video, for that stage.
The event was located in the attractive surroundings of De Bijloke, a charismatic historic site formally a hospital that now houses the Ghent Music Centre in the Belgian city. L&L has been involved in the main stage technical production for the last few years, working directly for

USA - Jackson Browne is back on the road for the next leg of his tour with a lighting package supplied by Bandit Lites, and while the singer-songwriter’s last few tours featured big, saturated looks and backdrops, lighting designer Steve Comer designed this year’s run around beams rather than a set.
“I chose to do ladders behind the band and some side trusses at a downward angle to wrap around the band and provide beams of light that surrounds them,” Comer explaines.
“It was 12 years ago now that Jackson himself with designer David Davidian led the charge to go t

Japan - Uplink’s Tokyo cinemas can be described as mini theatres, including the city’s smallest such venue, which is located in the city’s Shibuya district. The company has embarked on a quest to offer cinema goers the best indie and foreign films in a country where Japanese blockbusters are becoming increasingly popular at the expense of both Hollywood movies and foreign arthouse titles.
Over the last decade, the number of mini theatres has declined as multiplexes have flourished, but Uplink and its president, Takashi Asai, have remained true to their belief that the future

Canada - Corey Hart has sold more than 16m records worldwide and earlier this year was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. The singer-songwriter recently undertook his first full arena tour of Canada since 1986, having twice taken long sabbaticals from the road during his 35-year career.
The hotly anticipated Never Surrender tour demonstrated that he has lost nothing of his ageless star quality and reviews of the shows praised his skill, showmanship and the quality of his powerful eight-piece band.
Supplying audio for the shows was production specialist Solotech

Switzerland - Around every 20 years, the ‘once in a generation’ Fête des Vignerons takes over the Swiss town of Vevey for a month in July and August. Featuring nearly 6,400 performers, musicians and singers, 2,000 lighting fixtures, 612 loudspeakers and over 300 channels of wireless microphones, 11 networked Yamaha digital mixing systems were needed for the centrepiece production of the 2019 event.
Fête des Vignerons is a spectacular event which pays homage to the centuries-old traditions of the Brotherhood of Winegrowers, which covers the area from Pully to Vevey, in the La

UK - White Light supplied the lighting equipment for the UK premiere of the Broadway musical Amélie, which completed its UK tour.
Originally performed on Broadway, Amélie is based on the 2001 romantic comedy film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and tells the story of an astonishing young woman who lives quietly in the real world but loudly in her mind. This UK premiere is directed by Michael Fentiman, stars Audrey Brisson and Danny Mac and features a lighting design by Elliot Griggs.
Griggs explains: “Amélie is unlike anything I’ve ever worked on before. The film

UK - Independent event production specialists Light Fantastic Production Services returned to The Old Truman Brewery, London to support innovation festival Unbound with a complete event solution.
Featuring presentations by a host of leading brands, the two-day symposium attracted over 5,000 visitors.
The LFPS team worked with Unbound to transform the capacious venue into a series of zones, including the Main Stage, Future Stage, Networking Zone, Partners Lounge plus individually-branded spaces for over 140 exhibitors.
The guest speaker presentations and panel style dis

France - The Printemps department store at the intersection of Boulevard Haussmann and Rue du Havre became the first store in Paris to use 100 percent electric lighting in 1883. For this year’s Fashion Show Spring Vélizy 2 at the store, battery powered and Wi-Fi controlled LED WELL Fit fixtures from Chauvet Professional supplied by Axilum provided the lighting.
Axilum used 36 WELL Fit units in its lighting for the fashion show event. Many of the fixtures were used to illuminate displays, while others, positioned by the runway itself, played a more unusual role.
The WELL

Thailand - Mahajak Development Co recently outfitted the Toyota Buzz Co headquarters with a Harman Professional Solutions networked AV system to deliver audio and video in nine locations.
Toyota Buzz Vibhavadi is a Toyota dealership and headquarters of the Toyota Buzz dealership sales channel. In order to broadcast and distribute AV content throughout the facilities - and to eight additional branch locations - Toyota Buzz recruited the help of pro audio distributor Mahajak Development. Mahajak deployed a networked AV system in the boardroom, hall, fitness room, sky garden and mobi

Spain - ETC dealer Stonex has supplied 19 Source Four LED Mini fixtures to light the installations of acclaimed Indian artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar at the Thyssen Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid.
The museum hosted the work of Amar Kanwar - Testimonios Relámpago and El Bosque Soberano. ETC lighting was used to enhance his exhibition which focuses on the concepts of nature, landscape, climate and human presence whilst criticizing the political state and lack of justice in his native country, India.
Kanwar’s artwork in La Sala de Las Semillas, is chara

USA - With a career spanning 19 years, 12 songs that have made Billboard's country charts, and word of a new major label record deal in the offing, country artist Craig Morgan is on the road this summer, touring with new gear in the form of an Allen & Heath dLive S5000 console/DM0 MixRack at front of house, an SQ-7 for monitors, and four DX168 I/O expanders on-deck.
“I had been looking for a new console since last year,” opens Morgan’s FOH engineer, Robert Harmon. “I narrowed down my search to three, but none of them worked out. Then I ran across a console I did

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