France - French restaurant and leisure destination Pirates Paradise has specified a Coda Audio sound system to enhance the venue’s immersive environment.
The pirate-themed restaurant, located in Neuville-en-Ferrain near Lille, is a family destination that regularly welcomes more than 500 guests during the weekends; entertainment and audio excellence is key to its success.
Owner Jérôme Descamps explains: “My dream was to create the best restaurant I could, offering great decor, furniture, atmosphere and food supported by a fantastic sound system. It was important to me

Malta - The X Factor competition made its debut in Malta and quickly broke a long-standing record to become the most viewed programme on Television Malta.
Lighting for the series was entrusted to Nexos Lighting & Video who worked together with the rigging and technical team. Lighting designer Anton Borg Olivier joined the team to work on the live broadcast finals, helping to manage the increased TV lighting requirements and deliver that extra kick to the show.
Nexos Lighting & Video supplied 22 x Claypaky Mythos 2, 14 x SuperSharpy, 18 x A.leda B-EYE K20 an

Australia - In celebration of their third studio album, Lo La Ru, five-piece Australian band The Rubens performed for audiences across the country last November and December. The tour saw the band play Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Fremantle and Melbourne as well as eight regional cities across Australia.
Lighting designer Tim Beeston of Melbourne-based Flash Bang Productions was “delighted” to have Ayrton’s new Mistral-S spot luminaires on the tour, which were supplied by South West Solutions (SWS) of Yarraville, Victoria.
“I designed a ladder system incorporat

Australia - The Eurovision – Australia Decides national final recently took place at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre. The winner, Kate Miller-Heidke with her song Zero Gravity was chosen by the combination of a public televote (50%) and the votes of a professional jury.
Paul Collison, lighting designer for the show, voted for three grandMA3 light, one grandMA3 full-size, one grandMA2 light and five MA NPU (Network Processing Unit) for control, plus MA 3D for visualization of the show.
He commented on his choice: “We loved using the new gra

The world tour by Belgian tenor Helmut Lotti is one of the first to see the Rivage PM7 go truly global, accompanied by a Nexo audio system.
The five-month tour has seen Lotti promoting his latest album Soul Classics In Symphony with shows in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Scandinavia, South Africa and Switzerland. The tour’s audio rental company is Revolution Event Support, whose owner Bart Faut is the tour’s production manager and Front of House engineer.
For the tour Bart specified a Yamaha Rivage PM7 monitor console, with a CL5 mixing FoH sound. I/O is taken care of by Ri

UK - The 1975 toured in support of the release of their third album A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, which is their third consecutive number one album.
Lighting and visual designer Tobias Rylander enjoys a productive ongoing dialogue with the band - in particular lead vocalist and creative director Matthew ‘Matty’ Healy, whose thoughts and ideas are at the essence of every live show’s design.
This tour featured four dramatic moving elements – three large portrait shaped video cubes and a ‘blade’ piece derived from their logo – all of which wer

New Zealand - Packed houses greeted UB40 on their 40th anniversary summer tour of the Southern Hemisphere in January and February.
The band was doing so well and having so much fun on the tour that they added a final show on 8 February at the Central Energy Trust Arena Stadium in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Sourcing local suppliers, the band’s management contacted Sight & Sound Services, which provided them with a collection of Chauvet Professional Maverick, Rogue and STRIKE fixtures, supplied by MDR Lighting. It was a choice that met with the enthusiastic approval of UB

UK - Absolute Motion Control has returned to The Bridge Theatre for the fourth time to provide the automation for Alys Always. The show started previews on 25 February, and has its press night on 5 March 2019.
The show is designed by Bob Crowley, whose set incorporates a large stage lift, a sliding floor palette and a cloth roller. As The Bridge doesn’t have a fly tower, any full height cloths need to run on a roller. In this production a roller is used as a ‘blinder’ to hide scene changes inside a large gauze box.
For the floor palette, Absolute has rented the

UK - Ministry of Sound’s [MoS] orchestral tour, The Annual Classical, reimagines the Sony Music compilation, The Annual, the top-selling dance compilation, as a live production.
The live shows, mixed on a DiGiCo SD7 supplied by RG Jones, deliver mega sounds as much-loved chart toppers receive a classical reworking. Amongst the hits are The Chemical Brothers’ Hey Boy Hey Girl; Insomniaby Faithless and Moloko’s Sing It Back. At the helm of the complex live mix is sound designer, Phil Wright.
“In the last couple of years, we’ve see

India - Technosales Multimedia Technologies recently deployed JBL Professional by Harman cinema surround systems in two theatres at the Sai Teerth devotional theme park in Mumbai to provide a more immersive spiritual experience for devotees.
Sai Teerth is India’s first devotional theme park, featuring immersive exhibits dedicated to one of the most worshipped secular saints of all time; Sai Baba. With four major audio-visual attractions, Sai Teerth is home to one of the largest cinema screens in the country, as well as an innovative 5D theatre.
After surveying the location

USA - FedExForum, one of the nation’s premier arenas in the NBA and North America, recently updated its arena lighting with a lighting package designed and installed by Bandit Lites. Home to the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies and the University of Memphis Tigers men’s basketball team, the installation comes as part of the arena’s recent updates.
Bandit Lites installed a package comprised of HES Solaframe 3000, Chauvet Rogue 3 Spots, Claypaky AXCOR 300 Beams and Chauvet Ovation E-260WW w/ 10° Barrels.
“As FedExForum was one of the earliest projects that I and Roth Edwar

Belgium - Woven in and out of English, German, French and Dutch language fables since the early medieval period, the anthropomorphic trickster Reynaert the Fox has succeeded in eluding capture for centuries.
Keeping the legend of the fox alive was Expedition Reynaert, an immersive bike tour in Belgium that culminated in a captivating museum experience, complete with an informative exhibition and engaging performances.
Central to bringing the legend of Reynaert to life was local design studio CREATE.eu, which specified 24 Chauvet Professional Ovation E-260WW, 8 STRIKE 1 and

UK - White Light recently provided the lighting equipment for Gently Down the Stream which has opened at London’s Park Theatre.
Set at the turn of the 21st century, Gently Down the Stream is a delicate examination of the relationship between Beau; a 62 year-old piano accompanist from New Orleans, and Rufus; a 28 year old bi-polar lawyer, set over the course of 13 years in Beau’s London flat. It is written by Martin Sherman, directed by Sean Mathias and features a lighting design by Jamie Platt.
He comments: “The majority of the show is set in Beau’s apa

USA - Professional Wireless Systems (PWS) handled all wireless microphone and IEM systems management for pre-game, half-time entertainment and post-game, along with the wireless microphone utilised by the referee, during Super Bowl LIII held in the Mercedes-Benz stadium in Atlanta.
This is the 22nd year that ATK Audiotek has tapped PWS to provide wireless support for the Super Bowl.
“It is pretty amazing to think about all of the changes that have occurred in wireless technology over the course of 22 years,” explains Jim Van Winkle, general manager, PWS. “This year wa

USA - Late January typically doesn’t bring the kind of weather associated with music festivals to central Massachusetts, but the bitter New England winter wind notwithstanding, the mood at the multi-stage Birds of a Feather Festival was as care-free as a summer beach party.
Thousands of fans crammed inside the 90-year-old Worcester Palladium for four straight hours of jam and alt rock sounds on Friday, 25 January, and although summer vibes resonated throughout the building, the reality was that being indoors, Birds of a Feather offered no visual variety beyond the stage.

Spain - When one of the world’s largest night clubs puts on a special season-end event, its magnitude is difficult to ignore. Open since 1993 on the Spanish island of Ibiza, this mammoth club can host up to 10,000 guests at one time. On the season’s finale evening, Privilege Ibiza made the decision to employ the Clair Brothers C12 loudspeaker system, along with an assortment of more Clair Brothers gear, to cover the entire venue.
The size of the venue allows management to redesign facilities for individual parties and artistic shows. For this event, they didn’t hold back, c

UK - Indie rockers The Vaccines are back on the road in the UK, continuing their world Combat Sports album tour with lighting designed by Dan Williams and equipment supplied by Colour Sound Experiment.
The Combat Sports album cycle started in April 2018 and having already played extensively around the UK last year, Dan and the band wanted to treat fans to a new visual experience and ensure that the Vaccines - known for their enthusiastic and ebullient live shows - saw something different.
Last year’s UK tour design was inspired by the album track Nightclub

UK - Pointing a microphone directly at a PA speaker is likely to generate feedback, but sometimes when you are trying to achieve a particular vision, you have to tear up the rule book and see what happens. This was the situation FOH engineer Simon Honywill found himself in when he was asked to tackle sound design for a new live music and dance production called The Nature of Why.
Using a combination of DPA microphones and EM Acoustics loudspeakers positioned in a circle around the stage, Honywill pulled off the task of creating an ambient acoustic ‘bubble’ for this unus

USA - Outdoor walking attractions that immerse guests in an experience have become increasingly popular, especially around the holidays. This past season south Floridians had the chance to experience NightGarden, a new enchanted walk-through experience at Miami’s Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden magically illuminated by lighting designer Chris Werner. Produced by Kilburn Live under the creative direction of Max Painter, the attraction featured such magical curiosities as talking trees, fairies, and 10ft tall dandelions.
Werner has an abundance of know-how from lighting t

USA - Martin Audio’s new Wavefront Precision Longbow (WPL) system was recently purchased by two US-based live event production companies - Soundworks in Richmond, and Southard Audio in Mount Crawford - the first to acquire the large format line array worldwide. Both companies, who share a cooperative relationship within the Middle Atlantic region, purchased systems that include 24 WPL cabinets, 12 SXH218 hybrid subs and 12 iK42 amps.
Officially launched at ISE 2019 in Amsterdam, WPL is designed as a complete system with external iKON multi-channel amplifiers, automated DISPLAY

France - The Paris Institute of Political Studies, commonly referred to as Sciences Po, is a French university with seven campuses across the country. The new Grand Auditorium at its Reims site features an Alcons Audio system.
Founded in 1872, Sciences Po quickly became a highly influential academic institution for the social sciences. Currently it has 13,000 students based at its seven centres throughout France. The Reims campus opened in 2010, with just 100 students, but a recently-completed €75m expansion has meant it will be ready to accept 1600 students in September 2019. A

USA - On Circa Survive’s recent tour in support of their Top Ten Billboard Rock Chart LP The Amulet, lighting designer Lenny Sasso devised ‘a perception-bending asymmetrical rig’ with Chauvet Professional fixtures, supplied by Squeek Lights.
“This was my second tour with the Circa Survive guys, and this one in particular has been extremely creative and experimental,” said Sasso. “I’ve never designed a true asymmetrical rig before, so it has been an interesting journey. It definitely took me a bit to get out of a very strict symmetrical mindset. I was still tw

UK - December saw the ninth year of Huawei Technologies’ sponsorship of the London Winter Concert, held at London’s Royal Festival Hall (RFH) in aid of the Prince’s Trust. This event featured the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, conducted by Paul Bateman, and had a line-up led by tenor Joseph Calleja, with special guests soprano He Wu and young singing talent Beau Dermott.
Although the Winter Concert is long-established in the RFH calendar, this year saw a completely new approach to audio production, with L-ISA Hyperreal Sound delivering an extra frisson to proceedings.

UK - London-born singer-songwriter and composer Ben Howard released his debut EP 10 years ago. Since then, he has won two BRIT Awards, been nominated for both the Ivor Novello Award and the Mercury Prize and had a number one album. His third album, Noonday Dream, was released in June 2018 to much critical acclaim. Now, Howard is on the road touring it, with FOH engineer Andy Magee and monitor engineer Niccolo Antonietti both working from DiGiCo SD5 consoles.
“It's very much art: Seventy minutes of non-stop music, which is never the same twice,” Magee explains. “We're

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