UK - This April, competitive gaming platform FACEIT partnered with the PUBG Corporation to host the first global event of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ 2019 Esports season.
The multi-stage tournament held at London’s ExCel saw 24 teams battle for the championship. Bluman Associates were commissioned to provide full video display solution and management.
The FACEIT platform is home to 12 million registered users, hosting 34 million monthly games with up to 90,000 gamers playing at any one time. The summit included teams from North America, Europe, Korea, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Oceania.
Streamed to registered internet and television viewers, the tournament started with three days of broadcasted heats, followed by three days of finals as the players competed for a $400,000 prize pool in front of live and broadcast audience.
The system provided by Bluman Associates comprised of 12 front project double stacked units, displaying onto a 10k pixel x 1080 high screen. The system also included 16 LED Screens, exhibiting the six individual teams battling it out for the title.
The gaming aspect of the project heavily relied on HTML5. This allowed player information and stats to be projected on to the wide screen display. The team sent a 2 x 2k HTML5 Rasta over a pre-rendered wireframe, programmed with data such as pod sizes and video screen layout. This allowed team logos, scores, stats and maps of different scenes to be routed to the relevant pod, enabling the audience to keep up to date with competition information

USA - Campbellsville University is a Baptist institution of higher education in Kentucky that serves 13,000 students and supports a robust athletics programme.
After a long hiatus that started during the Great Depression, the Campbellsville University Tigers football team reconstituted in 1987 with the construction of a new football stadium.
After several expansions, Finley Stadium today seats 3,500 fans. Its most recent addition is a new, fully-weatherised Danley Sound Labs sound reinforcement system that was designed and installed by the Campbellsville University alums at local integration firm JCA Media.
“The previous audio system had been in place for about a decade,” explains Alex Peake, audio/video integration specialist at JCA Media. “It was adequate when it went in, but a combination of time, weather, and aggressive over-driving of the small drivers had taken its toll; the system was dying in every form and fashion!
“We’ve been hearing fantastic things about Danley systems for a long time, but we didn’t think many of our clients would have the budget for it. That was before we really looked into the pricing. Although there are certainly cheaper boxes on the market, we were surprised at how fairly priced the Danley products are, and now that I’ve heard them, I know they’re worth every penny.”
Ron Finley Stadium is arranged with seating exclusively on the northwest side of the field below a press box and behind the northeast end zone, although fans regularly congregate on the other sides of the field during game

Europe - French singer, songwriter and producer Christine and the Queens has been touring her studio album Chris, bringing a blend of theatrical set, contemporary dance, and her own 'freakpop' to the stage. For the French leg of her international tour, systems engineer Vladimir Coulibre brought in L-Acoustics L-ISA Hyperreal Sound technology.
"Christine's show is a whole - a complete universe," he explains. "It has lots of machinery, lots of lighting, and lots of sonic details, as well as the amazing physical performances. We have to be able to create a strong interpretation for every song: to make sure the audience completely understands the sense and the story. Also, because the show is so theatrical, Christine didn't want technical equipment to be a distraction - she wanted it to be invisible.
“With L-ISA we get both - we can take a cinematic approach to the sound and use multiple shorter hangs that don't obstruct the set."
Coulibre’s approach to implementing the technology on the tour combines equal parts enthusiasm and method. "I had to think of the new system from three angles: creative for FOH, technical for production, and financial for the commercial side,” he recalls. “I had to learn as much as possible about this technology to satisfy those three aspects."
A primary requirement was to make sure the system was easy to load in and out. The solution was to create a double truss arrangement with the motors on the front truss and the system rig, including the speaker cable, on the rear truss. "It didn't cost any more t

UK - Richard Ashcroft’s lighting has been designed by Jonny Gaskell since 1996 and the heydays of The Verve. Ashcroft’s fourth solo album and top 10 hit Natural Rebel dropped at the end of last year and he was back on the road recently in the UK with lighting and video once again supplied by Colour Sound Experiment.
At the start of each touring project, Ashcroft will present Gaskell with a series of ideas. “He’s a demanding client but in a good way,” comments Gaskell. “He knows what he wants and what he doesn’t like, so that’s always an essential starting point, beyond that, he trusts me to come up with an appropriate design.”
For this leg of the tour they were playing several academies, theatre and town hall venues, culminating in London’s Olympia, so it was decided to bring video in just for the London show. For the other gigs, the visual emphasis was all on lighting.
Ashcroft originally only wanted Johnny to use variations of white light, but he managed to persuade him of the creative benefits of sneak in the odd bit of blue or red primary here and there!
It’s always been an edgy, stark look onstage, with Ashcroft preferring the emphasis to be on the music rather than himself, and to be lit by shadows, silhouettes and the margins and subtleties of negative luminance.
Given those specifics, any lighting also must have the capacity to go huge for the big anthemic numbers.
“I chose the fixtures for flexibility and to produce the multiple textures and layering needed to make the show look good on an ac

Belgium - For the past six years, Gala of Happiness has been operating on an interesting premise: to provide an uplifting explosion of musical enjoyment in the darkest depths of winter. At the 2019 event, which was organized by Vayamundo, an afterparty of epic proportions saw chart-topping Belgian band Please Don't Kill The Clown take to the stage at the Kursaal Oostende.
Brought in to create an uplifting visual backdrop for the performance were local production specialists Fluxx Eventing - Animatie, who specified 28 Chauvet Professional ÉPIX Strip IP as part of their lighting concept, all controlled via a ChamSys MQ80 console.
With the goal of the annual Gala of Happiness to foster feelings of well-being and enjoyment as an antidote to the long winter nights, Fluxx Eventing - Animatie utilised the ÉPIX Strips IP to develop an uplifting visual aesthetic. Thanks to their ability to create warm white wash effects - in addition to a multitude of pixel mappable looks thanks to the fixture's 50 pixel mappable LEDs - the 1m-long ÉPIX Strips IP served as a luminous interface between the music and the good vibes within the audience.
"The ÉPIX Strips provided the visual link between the audience, stage and band by giving the whole room a kind of visual consistency," commented Attila Dept of Fluxx Eventing. "By working with the linear form of the ÉPIX Strips, we were able to make a simple but highly variable lighting design that looked luxurious and created positive energy."
Dept and his team positioned the ÉPIX Strips in two arrangements. First

UK - West Side Story continues to delight audiences 60 years after its Broadway debut. The production at Manchester’s Royal Exchange theatre is the first not to feature Jerome Robbins’ original choreography, having been adapted for the theatre’s in-the-round configuration by Aletta Collins. The re-imagined production, directed by Sarah Frankcom and mixed by associate sound designer, Owen Lewis boasts sound designed by Richard Brooker and delivered by KV2 Audio.
“As a theatre, the Manchester Royal Exchange is brilliant because it’s so intimate,” says Brooker. “There are 700 seats, but not one is further than 9m away from the stage, so it’s a wonderful experience for audiences. However, it’s a very challenging venue in which to deliver good sound, especially for a musical, and particularly when the majority of the audience already knows every word and every note of every song.”
Brooker has been using KV2 Audio loudspeakers almost exclusively since 2013. “I simply can’t imagine how I could have achieved the same results using anything else,” he says. “One of the biggest issues in the Royal Exchange is that you’re extremely limited as to where you can put speakers, so as a designer it helps to know that the tools at your disposal are the very best and that you’re used to using them.”
Brooker’s design is based on concentric rings of loudspeakers to serve each of the three tiers of seats that are divided into seven separate blocks all the way around the stage. There are 14 front-fills sunk around the edge of the

Australia - The Star Casino in Sydney has unveiled its immersive indoor light and water display, featuring a crescent-shaped video screen based on Black Onyx LED panels by ROE Visual.
The Grand Foyer experience at the Star Casino in Sydney, combines LED screens, aquatic water fountains, lasers, light and live performances to offer an interactive arrival experience for its approx. 20,000 guests that pass through the foyer every day.
Big Screen Projects were commissioned by Ramus Illumination to supply the LED equipment for the refurbishment of the Grand Foyer, the total immersive installation amounting to a 22m dollar investment for the Star Casino.
For this project Big Screen Projects have been working together with lighting specialists Ramus Illumination, who specialise in the design of grand-scale theatrical experiences that encourage public engagement.
The screen showcases the works of Australian artists, university students, cinematographers and animators, the content reacting dynamically to the real-world environment and human movement, encouraging guest interaction. “Creating an installation that combines architecture, contemporary art and technology, states Dino Mezzatesta, the Star Sydney chief operating officer, inspiration behind the artworks was drawn from The Star’s proximity to the busy Sydney Harbour shoreline.”
“With The Star Sydney Grand Foyer experience, we wanted to design an experience full of compelling encounters that enrich the journey,” comments Bruce Ramus, who heads Ramus Illumination, we envisioned a

USA - House of worship AV specialist MABE was recently tapped to design and install new audio, video, and lighting systems for Grace City Church’s freshly-renovated Lakeside Campus in Lakeland, Florida. Anchoring the audio system in the 792-seat auditorium are loudspeakers from Adamson Systems Engineering’s install-focused IS-Series, selected for their pristine audio performance and sleek, unobtrusive aesthetic.
“We had many discussions on which line array would offer the performance and warmth that Grace City was looking for,” begins Steve Griner, lead account manager with MABE. “Our conclusion was Adamson’s IS-Series, which provides plenty of volume and impact while maintaining a smooth sound at higher SPLs with no harshness.”
“We wanted to give 800 people an amazing experience in church, and not have one seat with a different audio experience than another,” adds Chase Wagner, Grace City’s creative arts pastor. “We also wanted a warm-sounding speaker that didn’t need to be run at an overly loud volume to still sound huge. Adamson delivered an amazing product that fulfilled all of our needs.”
The solution for the Lakeside Campus auditorium includes main left-right arrays of eight IS10 two-way, full-range cabinets in front of four flown IS119 subwoofers per side. Three IS10p point-source cabinets are flown as left, centre, and right fills, and an additional complement of seven PC5 compact two-way coaxial loudspeakers was sourced for front-fills.
“MABE has worked closely with us at every step of the process of our

Sweden - Gruppo Italiano’s latest restaurant venture in Stockholm, Ciccio’s is the fourth establishment of the family-run restaurant group, and perhaps the most ambitious. Inspired by New York’s Little Italy district, Ciccio’s is designed to be “a meeting place that blurs the boundaries between work, eating, drinking and socialising”. To help create the right atmosphere, Gruppo Italiano turned to systems integrator, Hages in Stockholm, who supplied and installed a Genelec sound system.
Hages specialises in audio design for public spaces, and especially restaurants. CEO Thomas Axelsson explains that they were contacted by the restaurant group in the very early stages of the project and asked to design the audio environment for the new restaurant: “Being involved so early in the construction process was a huge advantage as it enabled us to measure and calibrate the space accurately and include the speakers in the blueprints. As a result, we knew that once the speakers had been installed, we would achieve the same level of sound distribution throughout the entire space.”
For this project, Axelsson opted for a total of 16 Genelec 4030C loudspeakers from the installation-specific 4000 Series. “We chose the 4030C because the sound is incredibly precise, and it has great range and power. In fact, the low end is powerful enough that it makes the need for an additional bass speaker almost redundant. We did add bandpass subwoofers in a few places because we had the budget to do it and it just fills out the sound a bit more at the bottom end, but

World - One of the most successful, if at times controversial rap/rock stars, Post Malone has shown on his current world tour his total command of arena stages as a solo performer. The multi-platinum artist has been assisted in no small part by his lighting designer Ben Dalgleish.
The LD showed his creative skill six months ago at PostyFest, the artist’s one-day festival in his native Texas, where he used 133 of his favoured GLP’s X4 Bar 20 battens at the Dos Equis Arena in Dallas. But on this latest arena tour, which began in February in Dublin, moved to mainland UK and Europe, and is presently in Australia and New Zealand, his approach was entirely different.
Explaining the conceptual background, the American-based New Zealander said that with beams intending to fire between an overhead ‘top box’ and a ‘runway’ on the ground, they had found they could replace the proposed sheet lasers entirely with the X4 Bar 20s . . . an epiphany of sorts discovered during the month spent in pre-production at Fly By Nite rehearsal studios. “That was the major change,” he said. “We then replicated the lighting under the riser, and with the beams shooting up we could create a good interplay between bottom and top. We created an iconic look for the song Candy Paint, based off a unusual rainbow effect with the X4 Bar 20’s.”
The rig was based around making the Bars in perfect symmetry around the side of the boxes to produce clean lines. “The fixtures locked together well to create those straight lines,” he says, “but it required great atten

Japan - Maxell Aqua Park Shinagawa collaborated with Hibino and Harman Professional Solutions to implement an audio system that provides immersive live entertainment while showcasing the charms of marine life.
Maxell Aqua Park Shinagawa is an aquarium in urban Tokyo that showcases the mysterious and colourful marine world. The aquarium offers a range of programmes reflecting seasonal characteristics and popular trends - especially The Stadium which is a massive round pool, featuring performing dolphins.
“To ensure that all visitors can hear the performances clearly, the management requested us to implement a system that would produce crystal clear, immersive sound in every corner of the venue,” said the spokesperson at Hibino. “To provide balanced audio coverage, we used JBL's AWC Series waterproof speakers along with Crown amplifiers and a range of other Harman accessories. This new system delivers seamless coverage across the entire venue, ensuring that every guest receives the same, compelling listening experience.”
To improve performances and immerse the audience, JBL AWC Series speakers were installed in The Stadium. AWC159 loudspeakers were installed to provide more extensive coverage and cover a greater area with fewer speakers. AWC15LF subwoofers were utilised for additional low-frequency support.
In addition, Crown DCi 4|600N amplifiers and BSS BLU-160 digital audio processors were installed, enabling flexible control over the outputs of 16 AWC Series speakers. Also, to add high-quality, realistic sound effects to moving obj

USA - The youngest country music artist to be inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, Kelsea Ballerini began her career with the release of her album, The First Time in 2015 followed by Unapologetically released in 2017, the same year in which she received a Best New Artist nomination at the Grammy Awards.
Ballerini just finished her Miss Me More tour with audio support from Spectrum Sound of Nashville using a d&b audiotechnik KSL line array system. “We have been thrilled with the product and are long standing fans of d&b,” states Chris Diener, production manager and front of house engineer for the tour.
“The KSL System offers unprecedented control for an enclosure of its size. Coupled with the SL-SUBs, I was amazed at the evenness of coverage from the pit to the top seat in the arenas. This system has changed the way that fans experience Kelsea's show, and we couldn’t be more impressed with the reaction.”
Diener said that Bobby George and the rest of the Spectrum Sound team have been very supportive and really turned the crew loose to see what the KSL can do, noting, “It was crazy. On more than one occasion, I had to walk out past the stage just to make sure walk-in music was still playing. I can’t wait to take this rig out again."
The d&b configuration includes 28 KSL8 boxes with ArrayProcessing for the main hang, 12 V12 loudspeakers for the side-hang, 12 SL-SUBs on the ground, eight Y10P loudspeakers for front-fill and two DS10 Audio network bridge systems for stage control.
“The KSL is an i

UK - Built in 1894, Theatre Royal Wakefield is a Grade II listed traditional proscenium arch theatre in the heart of Yorkshire’s cathedral city of Wakefield. The design and vision of the famous British architect, Frank Matcham and one of the smallest remaining Matcham auditoriums today, Theatre Royal Wakefield is a good example of his ability to create a beautiful theatrical environment within a very tight space.
The time had come to replace the theatre’s old and failing PA with a new, modern system that would provide high quality, even coverage across all the seats in the auditorium. Theatre Royal Wakefield’s technical manager, Ms Di Clough, turned to Huddersfield-based systems integrator, Sound and Light Concepts, who supplied and installed a full Halo-C compact line array system from EM Acoustics.
Despite its bijou proportions, Theatre Royal Wakefield nevertheless has a capacity of 499 seats and the old system was no longer providing the level of service required for a theatre of this calibre. As well as producing around half of its performances, Theatre Royal Wakefield is also a receiving house, so Ms Clough invited several local hire companies and independent sound engineers as well as the theatre’s own sound designer to be present for a number of demos from well-known manufacturers, including a comprehensive demo of the Halo-C line array.
“We were looking for a high quality system with excellent intelligibility and sufficient reserve power to meet the wide range and styles of performance we have here,” explains Clough. “Budget wa

France - Creating an immersive environment at a music festival starts with the stage, but it by no means ends there. This was the guiding philosophy that Vincent Rautureau and his team at Giglam SA followed when lighting the Weather Festival, which returned to Paris’ La Seine Musicale on 27 April after a two-year hiatus.
Rautureau and his associates certainly endowed the stage with dynamic looks to support the pulsating sounds of international EDM and alternative music stars like Daniel Avery, OKO DJ and Ciel, but their creative vision also extended beyond the immediate performance area. Seeking to engage the festival crowd on multiple levels, they turned much of the event’s island venue into a vibrant panorama with help from 140 Chauvet Professional EPIX Strip IP fixtures, supplied by Alive Events Angers.
“We positioned the EPIX Strips on all of the festival site’s bridges,” says Andreas Monschauer, lighting engineer at Giglam. “This turned the bridges into graphical elements, which really integrated the whole festival into one panorama. Using the strips this way gave our design a whole other dimension.”
Adding to the impact of the EPIX Strip IP fixtures were the stunning video images and patterns that Giglam pixel mapped on the one-meter RGB LED strip fixtures, using a ChamSys Magic MQ500 console.
“Displaying the graphic effects on the ÉPIX Strips was very important to creating an overall look that tied the festival together,” says Monschauer. “The ChamSys console made it much easier for us to create these looks. We c

Sweden - One of the largest and most beautiful of Stockholm’s churches, the Gustav Vasa Kyrka, in the city’s Vasastaden district, has carried out a major refurbishment and technical upgrade.
The Gustav Vasa Kyrka was designed by August Lindegren and completed in 1906, with a capacity of up to 1,200 worshippers, generations of whom have no doubt marvelled at the lavishly decorated marble surfaces, and soaring arches. They also can’t have failed to notice the remarkable reverberation time.
Jacob Julin of Soundcop, the company brought in to solve the church’s intelligibility woes, says, “The acoustics was the biggest challenge. When we started, the hall had an acoustic reverberation of six seconds, so that was of course an issue.”
Later however, following the building’s refurbishment, including new treatments to the floor and walls, that reverb time had risen to seven-and-a-half seconds. Julin continues, “The worst of the reverberation is between 300-500 Hz, so it is possible to improve it with a little bit of system trim, but the reverberation is very long in full frequency as well.”
Representing Svenska Kyrkan, facilities manager Urban Paulander says: “What we wanted was a system which would make speech and music as clear as possible for all the listeners in all areas of the church.”
d&b xC-Series column loudspeakers, which SoundCop had used successfully in Stockholm’s Maria Magdalena church the year before, were well suited to the task. Purchased via ARVA Trading, the d&b audiotechnik distributor for Swe

The Netherlands - For 77 years the locomotive repair facility in the Dutch city of Tilburg was a vital part of the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS, or Dutch Railways) network. Employing hundreds of local people, its 2009 closure had a profound effect on the area. But now the building has been reborn as a major cultural and learning centre, where Yamaha audio systems are helping to drive the train of new innovation forward.
Originally opened in 1932, the impressive 90m by 60m steel and glass building was a busy workplace, playing an important role in local employment. When it closed, rather than demolish it there was a strong desire to ‘return the building to the Tilburg people’. It was decided to use it to form the centrepiece of a contemporary, fashionable new ‘railway zone’ in the city.
“Impressed by the enormous size of the space, the design team realised that it is more than just a building,” says Dennis van der Vleuten, owner of Klundert Audiovisueel, who was commissioned to install AV solutions in the redeveloped facility. “It is a part of the urban fabric of the city that, with its heavy construction and internal ambience that gets lighter the further up you go, would provide a fantastic spatial experience.”
Reopened in 2019 and renamed LocHal (short for Locomotive Hall), it has been converted into a modern, sustainable art and cultural centre, featuring a relocated Tilburg Central Library as well as spaces for meetings, education, hospitality, artistic and cultural development, a cafe and more. Each space has been carefully desi

UK - LED illumination specialists LED Creative supported scenic designer Andrew Gates, lighting director Stuart Pring and the team at Joe Lycett's Got Your Back.
Filmed in front of a studio audience at h Studio, London, the series features comedian Joe Lycett serving up a healthy dose of consumer justice as he exposes a variety of scams, appalling customer service and unacceptable consumer standards on behalf of the people of the UK.
Helping to acheive the show’s bright, playful look, LED Creative provided their Pulse Wands, Alpha 60 and Byte System to deliver vibrant colour and optimum control over the set illumination.
In building the boldly coloured design, the scenic designer cleverly integrated LED Creative Alpha 60 throughout the structural components and backdrop. Additional runs of Alpha 60 were concealed above and below the raised stage area to create a halo effect around its perimeter.
LED Creative Pulse Wands were also applied to the installation dynamic shape and form.
Lighting director Stuart Pring says: “The plug-and-play nature of LED Creative’s Pulse Wands make them ideal as a simple to rig, highly controllable solution. The ability to manage the colour and intensity of the output allowed us to add some interesting effects to the set.”
The LD continues: “The design featured semi opaque perspex lightboxes which were rigged with Pulse Wands to form abstract illuminated shapes. We also positioned them behind the windows that flanked the stage and behind the audience adding a further dimension to the wi

UK - Taiwanese singer and film star Jay Chou has starred in Hollywood blockbusters, broken records for the most expensive live production in Australia and sold over 30 million albums worldwide.
Chou recently entrusted Britannia Row Productions to deliver one of the biggest PA rigs that London’s O2 Arena has ever seen.
For the final three concerts of his 120-date The Invincible 2 World Tour, Chou played two nights in London before deploying the Britannia Row rig for a final show at Paris’ Accor Arena. These three shows were promoted by Magic-Sound Entertainment.
Britannia Row crew chief, Scott Maxwell, says: “Jay is a huge star. We’re essentially working with a stadium-sized PA in an arena-sized production. Everything else in the design had to shrink down to fit inside the venue, but the PA remained the same.”
The entire production weighed in at 107 tonnes and used 208 overhead motors, 44 automation points, 274 rigging points, 14 under-stage lifts and featured a four-minute 180kg confetti hit, meaning the audio delivery had to have ample impact. Britannia Row’s Josh Lloyd designed an L-Acoustics system for the European dates, which featured main hangs of K1, flown K1 SBs, K2 delays and K2 under hangs below the main K1 hangs. The system was powered by 72 LA8 amplifiers and used Lake processing.
Maxwell continues: “One of our biggest challenges in the audio team was working between multiple departments who were all using aerial equipment - there are so many design elements going on, it’s unlike any other show I

USA - As technical director at the Collinsworth School of Music at California Baptist University, Matthew McConnell holds the equipment he purchases to the same high standards expected from the school’s students.
When McConnell recently found that he wasn’t satisfied with the sound he was capturing on the string bass and cello instruments during performances, he turned to Jeff Suchy at Apex Audio to find the best solution. After testing various clip-on mics and pick-ups, the duo ultimately selected DPA Microphones’ d:vote 4099 Instrument Microphone as the right tool for the job.
Though these have now become a staple at the school, the use of the d:vote 4099 wasn’t McConnell’s first foray into DPA mics. “I initially discovered DPA a decade ago, when I was trying to close-mic a grand piano, with a closed lid, through a PA system,” he explains. “DPA’s d:screet 4060 Miniature Omnidirectional Microphone helped me get the sound I was looking for, for that application. Soon after, I used a d:screet 4060 on a solo violin (with the included string mount) with similar success. From that point on, I was a big fan of DPA.”
More recently, McConnell turned to DPA after having a tough time finding a good mic position for string bass and cello performers who moved around the stage while playing. “I heard about the d:vote 4099 and purchased three of them, based mainly on my previous experience with the brand,” he says. “It was better than I could have hoped. The microphone stayed in place while the musicians performed. After that, I bought

UK - On the three days before Good Friday, the streets of central Birmingham were taken over by The Birmingham Passion Play 2019, an ambitious, contemporary retelling of the Easter story, organised by Christian charity and theatre company Saltmine Trust, with support from The Passion Trust. To help bring the creative vision to life, Saltmine partnered with UK audio visual production supplier SFL.
The Saltmine Trust Theatre company puts on regular public, partner, and education tours, as well as one-off shows, all inspired by the Christian faith. Even for Saltmine though, The Birmingham Passion Play 2019 was an ambitious undertaking as it was delivered on the move - a travelling street performance that started at Birmingham Bullring, progressing along New Street to Victoria Square, and finishing inside St Philip’s Cathedral - effectively making the stage over half a mile wide. It required a team of around one hundred community actors, musicians, and stewards alongside the core theatre company’s cast and crew, as well as extensive technical support and planning.
AV specialist SFL supplies and supports a wide variety of events across the UK and internationally as part of SFL Group, as well as being the official AV partner of The Royal Albert Hall and UK sales partner for d&b audiotechnik. SFL project manager, Mitch Jones comments: “This production was only possible with an incredible effort by all the Saltmine and SFL team members spreads across six locations - each telling the next part of the story as the cast performed through the streets betwe

UK - Lighting designer Stuart Pring has used Chroma-Q Space Force LED soft lights to illuminate the JW Anderson February Autumn/Winter Fashion Show.
Pring has previously worked on The 2018 Teen Awards, a variety of television studios including for NBC/ESPN’s Wimbledon Studio, and TV series John Bishop in Conversation.
The JW Anderson Fashion Show was hosted on an 11m square catwalk, which required Stuart to deliver an even coverage of light across the entire area. For this, Version 2 - lighting rental specialists for the Television, Broadcast and Event industries - provided Stuart with 36 Space Force tuneable white LED soft lights.
Pring comments: “I needed to achieve an even wash of daylight white light, to faithfully reproduce the colours of the models' clothing. The fixture's output was flawless in creating a seamless coverage across the entire catwalk area. In addition, being LED there was minimal heat emission, which was perfect for the room's low 5m high ceiling with 300 attendees.”
He also praises the quality of the light for photography applications: “The output of 5,600K gave the perfect colour temperature for the photographers, and the adjustable PWM, flicker-free operation ensured the live stream on the JW Anderson website and Facebook page rendered beautifully on camera.”
(Jim Evans)

Denmark - SPOT, an annual music festival in Aarhus showcasing up-and-coming Danish and Scandinavian talents, saw 300 artists and bands perform across 25 stages throughout the city.
Lighting designer and programmer Heiða Kristín Ragnarsdóttir used a grandMA3 light console to run lighting on her stage, reserved for WILM (Women In Live Music) a European non-profit organisation that supports women working behind the scenes and backstage. For the first time, this stage was run by an all-female tech crew.
Ragnarsdóttir reports: “The MA system is my first choice for everything from theatre to concerts. It is very important for me to be able to personalize the setup to fit my needs of the moment which the grandMA2 software does easily. It is highly reliable, has intuitive controls and a lot of flexibility in programming which makes it ideal for ‘busking’ festivals.
“For a stage with a very varied genre of performers it was important that each performer had a lighting design to fit their aesthetic. A play on warm and cool along with dramatic side and backlighting gave us a good foundation to accommodate everything from Greenlandic metal to reggae for children.”
Lighting trainee Louise Bagger adds: “Being a self-taught lighting technician and coming from a different type of console I was excited and a little bit nervous to try out the grandMA3, but thanks to Heida, I quickly gained an understanding of the console, and of how easy it is to personalize a setup to your exact needs. The console design offers a nice straightforward outlook of

Turkey - Allen & Heath’s Turkish distributor HEC PRO recently completed a four-year project to construct its new four-floor HEC Plaza ‘experience’ centre in Istanbul. The grand opening of the new facility took place in the presence of influential designers and installers, as well as prominent figures in the Turkish music industry.
The vision of director Berk Ozan and his team was to create a setting comprising different environments into which relevant integrated technology solutions were placed, allowing customers the chance to experience first hand the practical application of the brands HEC PRO represents. The suites include a fully immersive cinema room, a hotel suite, conference facilities, office areas and an impressive bar/nightclub.
As part of HEC PRO’s impressive portfolio, Xone products feature prominently at HEC PLAZA, with all models on demonstration in one of the facility’s dedicated showrooms. In addition, the nightclub area has a DJ booth which is home to a Xone mixer that was straight into the thick of the action when a succession of A-list DJs took part in the opening night celebrations.
David Morbey, senior product manager at Allen & Heath (DJ) attended the opening night. He comments, “HEC PLAZA is a stunning achievement and a testament to the imagination and commitment of the HEC PRO team. The way in which the technology is integrated and presented in ‘real’ scenarios allows visitors to fully experience the possibilities afforded by HEC PRO’s extensive portfolio. With the entire Xone range on show and a

Philippines - Resorts World Manila (RWM) has created El Calle Food and Music Hall – a space that celebrates the Filipinos’ passion for jam sessions, delicious food, and good times over drinks.
El Calle, the city’s latest acoustic chill-out spot, features nightly entertainment from some of the best acoustic performers in the country today and special performances from the country’s top acts. Past performers have included True Faith, Ben&Ben, Clara Benin, Top Suzara, Luke Mejares, and more. With El Calle’s special focus on raising the bar for live acoustic music, choosing the optimal sound system was essential.
“El Calle is a very intimate space seating a maximum of eighty people, so we needed a sound system that could deliver powerful sounds but with the necessary clarity for clean acoustic performances,” said RWM technical director for theatre and entertainment Ernesto De Leon. “Since our theme is almost exclusively acoustic and unplugged acts, our wish list for the right loudspeaker and monitor brand was efficiently accommodated by Clair Brothers.”
Wayne Grosser, managing director of Clair Brothers Australia, specified the equipment he knew would possess the sound quality the team at RWM expected. Grosser describes the system’s technicalities, “The main FOH speakers are two Clair Brothers kiT12s that are flown horizontally, left and right, on the downstage edge at 4.8 meters high, with two Clair Brothers CS18-IIs recessed into the stage front on the left and right. The system is running in tri-amp mode, which delivers the