Projects

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10 October 2024

USA - The Struts recently concluded the 28-date USA leg of their Pretty Vicious tour. Lighting designer Carlos Katsurayama transformed the stage with a shifting variety of dramatic looks throughout the show that wrapped themselves tightly around the mood of the music. Helping him create this evocative canvas on stage was a rig supplied by LIT Lighting of Phoenix, which featured 14 Chauvet Professional Maverick Force S Profiles.

Positioned on the riser, behind the guitar amps, the compact moving fixture with a seven-slot colour wheel and 14,000 lumen output was used to create a dynamic backdrop for the band. Drawing on features like the profile’s 120-degree complete module rotation and wide zoom ranges, Katsurayama was able to conjure up a variety of captivating looks.

“The Force S Profile brought a good level of intensity to everything,

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10 October 2024

Europe - This past summer, K-array featured in several high-profile festivals around the globe – ranging from intimate gatherings in historic Italian towns to large-scale beachfront festivals in Sweden.

The Festival of the Sun, an exclusive two-day event held in a small town near Siena, Italy, was shrouded in secrecy until its launch on 21 June. Masterminded by record executive and producer, Rick Rubin, the festival was spread across multiple locations, including a historic church, a town square and a nearby castle. The mix of performances required an audio solution that could adapt to each setting whilst delivering a consistent audience experience.

A performance by singer-songwriter, James Blake, in a centuries-old church posed a significant acoustic challenge. A Pinnacle KR402 system, supplemented by Pinnacle KR102 as delay and Kayman KY

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10 October 2024

UK - With six gym locations across East Anglia, the New Revolution fitness chain offers members 24-hour access and a wide range of classes from spinning to Boxfit and yoga each week. The company’s newest facility in Lowestoft recently underwent a significant renovation and upgrade programme, extending to the gym’s audio system.

Responsible for the AV aspects of the project, Norwich-based Hughes Electrical was tasked with addressing specific concerns with the existing audio offering. Hughes ultimately specified an array of Optimal Audio products to significantly improve performance, as the company’s Karl Topley explains.

“We’ve been working with New Revolution for around five years and as part of our contract review, we asked for feedback on the previous audio system at the Lowestoft venue. With customer expectations growing as far as audio

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09 October 2024

USA - Plainfield Public Schools, located in Plainfield, New Jersey, recently hosted a ribbon cutting for its $4m renovation of the Plainfield High School auditorium, new eSports gaming arena, and black box theatre. PureTek Group, of nearby Boonton, New Jersey, designed and installed Electro-Voice sound reinforcement systems for each venue.   

“The auditorium was completely refurbished to serve as a hub for school performances, community events and assemblies,” explains Dan Litvin, president of PureTek Group. “We outfitted the auditorium, which seats 1,525 people, with left-right Electro-Voice EVA line arrays to cover the main seating area and EVC loudspeakers for balcony fill.”

Each EVA line array comprises three EVA-2082S/906, two EVA-2082S/1220 loudspeaker elements and two EVA-2151D subwoofers. EVA’s efficient crossover and driver desi

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08 October 2024

Denmark - Robe moving lights – Esprites, Spiiders, iSpiiders and iForte LTXs used as followspots – all had impact on the lighting and set designed by Simon Corder for Opera Hedeland’s La fanciulla del West (Girl of the Golden West) by Puccini, which is set in a Gold Rush prospecting town in 19th century western USA.

Opera Hedeland offers Denmark's largest permanent outdoor stage, and an elegant 3,000-capacity amphitheatre sculpted into the landscape, a haven for opera lovers with open minds where they can imbibe an extraordinary site-specific experience each year with a series of special performances. The beauty of the former gravel quarrying area – now returned to natural heathland and forests – permeates the venue which nestles amidst a 15sq.k recreational area, approximately 20km out of the central Copenhagen hustle.

Th

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08 October 2024

Brazil - In 2024, Rock in Rio celebrated its 40th anniversary. For nearly 15 years, Outline’s audio systems have made a notable impact on the event’s sound reinforcement, with São Paulo-based Gabisom Audio Equipment taking on the sound reinforcement role for Rock in Rio, aligning with the festival's stature and demands.

This year, Outline’s GTO, GTO C-12, Superfly, and Mantas 28 models, driven by Outline power amplifiers, were deployed across three of the festival's key stages: New Dance Order, Global Village, and Supernova. Gabisom has made significant investments in Outline audio technology in 2023 and 2024, following earlier purchases that included a substantial GTO C-12 system and Newton processors in 2020.

In 2020, Gabisom became the world’s largest owner of Newton inventory, utilising these [patented] FPGA-based proce

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08 October 2024

Turkey - Gen Z-oriented Fanta Fest returned for 2024 to visit seven of the country’s biggest cities, with five large LED screens displaying more than 43m pixels of performer-specific content, all driven by a Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Media Server.

Video designer and programmer Gürkan Çalışkan worked with Fanta Fest’s technical director Can Besbelli to deliver strikingly different visual content for the range of artists playing each venue, including prominent Turkish singer Tarkan Tevetoğlu and Turkish rapper CEZA.

Çalışkan was given media content from each performer’s production team, designed to the dimensions of the LED screens, which he loaded onto the Boreal+ MK2 Media Server using Hippotizer’s Media Management feature to organise the show.  

The LED screens were rigged stage left and stage right and as a backdrop, with two

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08 October 2024

New Zealand - Produced by Semmel Exhibitions, Marvel: Earth’s Mightiest Exhibition, offers a fresh perspective on Marvel’s rich 80+ year history. With its world premiere having taken place in Wellington, the exhibition gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the creation of some of popular culture’s most famous stories and characters – enhanced by an immersive soundscape from Genelec.

The audio for the project was a collaboration between Sebastian M. Purfürst of Berlin-based LEM Studios and acoustic scenographer, Markus ‘Hossi’ Hossack. Commissioned to realise the artistic and technical concept of the immersive sound installation, they developed a soundscape that guides guests into the world of Marvel.

“As composers, media artists and engineers, we like to call the development of the sonic layers of the exhibition experience 'a

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08 October 2024

Canada - Salle Odyssée, the cultural performance theatre at the Maison de la Culture complex in Gatineau, Québec, has installed a wide range of Ayrton and Robert Juliat lighting fixtures and a new grandMA3 console provided by Perfecson, also in Gatineau. All three brands are exclusively distributed in North America by ACT Entertainment.

Salle Odyssée is a busy venue which daily hosts a variety of shows, including music and stand-up comedy. The new equipment is part of a CAD$5m project for a state-of-the-art upgrade of the theatre.

An AV equipment rental facility, integrator and production services company, Perfecson worked closely with Salle Odyssée to provide the right equipment for the upgrade. Perfecson also continues to supply local labour to supplement the small team of in-house technicians during performances.

“The theatre was usi

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08 October 2024

UK - Holotronica was part of Brighton Festival this year, the largest annual curated multi-arts festival in England.

“We were very happy to install Hologauze for the visionary string orchestra, 12 Ensemble. Max Ruisi, the orchestra’s artistic director worked with art director Ben Ditto to create an immersive sensory experience using audio reactive, AI-generated holographic visuals on Hologauze,” says the company.

Holotronica installed a 10m by 5m Hologauze XL at the Corn Exchange venue in Brighton Pavilion Gardens. “We provided the installation so once our production team were on site, everything worked perfectly. We used a Panasonic RZ21, which provided the optimum brightness for the venue and the holographic visual piece enveloping the orchestra looked incredible.”

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07 October 2024

UK - Production company, RG Jones Sound Engineering, needed to pull out all the stops when RG Live and Merlin Entertainment staged a mixed programme of four back-to-back concerts within the medieval setting of Warwick Castle. It was the perfect ‘picnic on the lawn’ scenario, and an occasion which challenged the Martin Audio MLA loudspeaker array to the maximum.

Opening with The Music of Hans Zimmer vs John Williams – an epic showdown between the film composers – the programme journeyed via Ministry of Sound Classical to McFly, before soaring further into the atmosphere with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds as a finale. As a bonus for the audience, joining Gallagher were Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr and The Waeve, featuring Blur’s Graham Coxon and ex-Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall.

All played out through Martin Audio’s flagship PA, whi

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07 October 2024

USA - Donald Glover’s recently completed The New World Tour was his last run of shows as the Grammy-winning artist Childish Gambino before he retired that stage persona.

“The idea of the whole tour was to build a world – The New World, as a sort of parallel universe, conveying a feeling of high tech but LOFI,” says production designer Tobias Rylander. “The world was to be dystopian and futuristic, not revealing if we’re headed toward darker times, or if we have just come out of them. It is a world where technology is modern but broken – and a world of not so high resolution.”

Lit by a carefully curated collection of fixtures, including the Chauvet Professional PXL Curve, this show opens with Gambino appearing on one of the two side stages dressed in a futuristic space suit surrounded by smoke, lights and laser beams. As he be

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07 October 2024

UK - Holotronica provided a bespoke Hologauze installation for the Island in a River exhibition created by Matthew Rosier at the refurbished Yarm Town Hall Heritage Centre in Stockton-on-Tees.

The Island in a River film was designed to be viewed from outside at night. Reflections of the river Tees are projected onto the Hologauze and float past a canoe, connecting river use past and present.

The exhibition features a collection of local artefacts interpreted by 10 films, created by the artist in collaboration with local residents. The objects are displayed inside the exhibition centrepiece – a replica iron age canoe, carved by local volunteers throughout summer 2023.

The exhibition room is open to the public in the daytime, and so the installation was designed so that the Hologauze could be deployed each night for the Island in a River film

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07 October 2024

USA - The expertise of live sound engineers Malcolm Gil and Ben Rothstein converged at Lollapalooza this summer, where they were part of the team supporting US breakout pop star Chappell Roan.

At Full Sail University, Rothstein built a solid foundation in audio engineering and pursued a position at Clair Brothers. "I've been with them for almost 18 years, starting as a PA tech and working my way up through various roles," he shares. His career-defining moment came in 2018 when he was entrusted with mixing monitors for Queen.

After gaining experience at Third Encore in Burbank, Gil took a leap into touring with a West Coast reggae band, Rebelution, in 2017, and has been on the road ever since. He now mixes for artists including Ice Spice, Khalid, Labrinth, and now Chappell Roan.

At Lollapalooza, Gil, serving as both monitor engineer and stage

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04 October 2024

USA - Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Sammy Hagar was on the road for two months over the summer with his Best of All Worlds tour that played across the USA with a line-up including Joe Satriani, and a lighting design created by Jamie Fadden featuring Robe moving lights prominently on the rig.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Fadden started working with the prolific artist four years ago and took over the LD position in 2021 and is also LD for Satriani. For this tour, a completely new lighting design was produced utilising 22 x Robe BMFL Spots and 10 x BMFL WashBeams, 40 x MegaPointes, 42 x Spiiders and five Tarrantulas together with eight Forte FollowSpots running on four RoboSpot BaseStations. All lighting equipment was supplied by Felix Lighting.

Fadden also produced most of the tour’s video content and the band risers were part of her

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04 October 2024

Mexico - Guadalajara-based production house Star Producciones deployed its Nexo STM modular line array system at a major corporate event at the Arena Ciudad de Mexico.

Multinational nutritional and cosmetic products company Omnilife took over the large arena in Mexico City on 7 September for its annual leadership meeting, which is held in a different country each year.

Under the guidance of local production manager Juan Pablo Dominguez, the Star team rigged a total of 180 boxes from the STM system.

The setup at the Arena Ciudad de Mexico comprised main left and right hangs of 18 x STM M46/B112 with three M28 down-fills, and out-fill hangs of 12 x STM M46/B112 with three M28s. The main sub arrays featured 18 x STM S118 in cardioid mode with separate stacks of six S118 per side, also in cardioid mode.

Nexo’s industry-standard PS15R2 p

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04 October 2024

Denmark - At the heart of its northern city Aalborg’s cultural life is the Aalborg Kongres & Kultur Center (AKKC), one of Scandinavia's busiest entertainment and convention venues. Hosting concerts, theatre, ballet, exhibitions, and conventions, it welcomes over half a million guests annually.

After years of relying on traditional incandescent lighting, the venue decided to upgrade to a more versatile and energy-efficient LED system to better accommodate its diverse events. AKKC lighting technicians Jakob Krøyer and Thomas Nowakowski were instrumental in the search and eventual specification of a new LED lighting system for the venue’s main performance space, ultimately opting for Elation Fuze Max Profile and the KL Profile FC luminaires.

Krøyer explains the specific lighting requirements: “We needed an ellipsoidal fixture for static fron

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04 October 2024

Canada - This August, Pierre E Roy was the LD for Rock La Cauze, a festival that takes place over three days at Parc Terre des Jeunes in Victoriaville, Quebec. The main stage hosted 19 acts, mostly rock and metal artists, along with some reggae bands, like Atreyu, Thrice, Arch Enemy, and Sublime With Rome.

Roy’s versatile festival rig featured the Chauvet Professional Maverick MK1 Spot, seven Rogue Outcast BeamWashes, six Rogue R2 Beams, and 25 Colorado 2 Solo fixtures, all supplied by DGM Sonorisation.

“I only had 14 of the Mavericks, so good placement was important,” said Roy. “I studied all the light plots for each band programmed in our festival. I then introduced the light plan in a way that made it as easy for them to clone their show.

“Given how many acts we have to please, flexibility is important and a priority in the rig,

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03 October 2024

Italy - Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest continuously running opera house in the world, is based in the historical heart of Naples. Renowned worldwide for its rich musical tradition, it presents over 250 performances of opera, ballet, and music every year.

As a leading cultural hub in Naples and one of Italy's most esteemed theatres, it features a modern lighting system equipped with numerous ETC products.

Nunzio Perrella, head of the lighting department and lighting designer, has had a long career at San Carlo, inspired by his father, who was also the venue's lighting designer. Starting young, Perrella staged small performances in his early teens and became a chief electrician for touring companies by his late teens. After gaining experience in television and touring with renowned artists across Italy, Perrella returned to Teatro di San Carlo at 23 a

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03 October 2024

The Netherlands - Located in Baarn, in the Utrecht region right in the centre of The Netherlands, Speeldoos Theatre is a vibrant local and national hub for culture including film screenings and all types of live performing arts. Last year, the venue, which has a 343-seat theatre space, invested in Robe T1 Profiles as part of a lighting upgrade.

Overseeing this was technical manager Kevin van Boeijen, who explained that they will typically stage over 100 events across a year, screening movies on Mondays and Tuesdays with live shows the rest of the week including opera live streams. Discos and parties are often hosted in the foyer, bands also play in the bar area, and the spaces are available for private events. There is constant activity.

The 16 x T1 Profiles were purchased to replace all the theatre’s generic PC and profile front light in the theat

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03 October 2024

Malaysia - The Hilton Kuala Lumpur hotel’s grand and junior ballroom, as well as its meeting room, have replaced their audio system with a cost-saving new setup powered by Powersoft’s Mezzo, Duecanali and Quattrocanali amplifiers.

The hotel, located in the Malaysian capital’s transportation hub in the vibrant Kuala Lumpur Sentral area, wanted to refresh the sound system in order to have high-quality and clear-sounding audio in its newly renovated function spaces.

After winning the tender, Concept Audio chose Powersoft’s Mezzo, Duecanali and Quattrocanali amplifiers to play a central role in the audio overhaul, selected to meet the diverse requirements of each venue within the hotel. “We chose Powersoft due to the amplifier flexibility and enhanced efficiency, as well as the seamless integration they provide,” says Castrit Lim Lit Seong, m

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03 October 2024

Japan - At FUL Kyoto, a restaurant, bar, and lounge in the Kawaramachi district, customers are surrounded by a collection of greenery from South and Central America and gentle sounds to create an appropriate ambiance.

FUL is a ‘sound forest’ where you can savour natural wines and cocktails while immersing yourself in music that flows like forest rain. FUL’s ‘sound forest’ concept was inspired by 1 Sound’s American-made loudspeakers.

Sound forest is the brainchild of multidisciplinary producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, better known as Fantastic Plastic Machine. As a DJ, he has performed at Coachella and the Reading & Leeds Festival in 1999. As a music producer, his songs are featured in an Austin Powers movie (1999), the British sitcom Spaced and recently, he earned acclaim as the music director for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

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03 October 2024

Europe - On 22-23 August, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra hosted two outdoor concerts in its home city, offering a magical experience for both musicians and audiences alike – under a customised ‘invisible’ Milos roof.

Partnering with Creative Technology Norway, Milos engineers designed and installed a one-of-a-kind venue featuring an arched roof constructed from Keder profiles and transparent canopies. This innovative design allowed the orchestra to perform under the open sky while being fully protected from the elements, ensuring the show went on without a hitch – rain or shine.

“This bespoke design was so successful that we are now working to have this unique roof system included in our catalogue,” says Milos.

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03 October 2024

Belgium - The organisers of Brussels’ Listen Festival selected the three-tunnel complex under Marie Louise Square as one of the sites for their city-wide event.

Fans crowded the tunnels to see international stars VTSS, Crystallmess and Mary Lake, along with local favourites like CJ Bolland and Nosedrip. Setting the visual tone for the shows was a dramatic lighting design by the John & Jane team that accentuated the intensely raw aesthetics of the tunnel structure.

“This was the third year in a row that we provided sound and light for multiple stages of Listen Festival,” said Lowie Lesage, technical supervisor of the project. “Listen Festival is known for their unusual locations. This year, having the festival take place in tunnels was a fun challenge. Our successful cooperations rely on good equipment and light and sound designs that matc