UK - Scottish singer-songwriter, Gerry Cinnamon, concluded his 10-date summer tour of the UK and Ireland with two sell out dates at his hometown stadium, the 50,000-capacity Hampden Park National Stadium in Glasgow, in mid-July and simultaneously made history as the first independent act - and the first Scot - to sell out multiple nights at the venue.
Production and lighting designer Pete Hutchison of Illumination Creative Design chose Ayrton Khamsin S, Bora S and the new laser-sourced Cobra to provide the big looks the show needed.
Forty-eight Khamsin S were rigged across four pairs of side trusses and on overhead finger trusses from where they were used as the main workhorses for stage lighting and for lighting out towards the audience.
“The main reason I chose Khamsin was for the power of their LED source which matches up perfectly with old discharge lamps,” Hutchison says. “The added bonus is, you don’t have the issue of trying to match up the different lamp temperatures. As soon as you throw up an open white look, every single fixture in the rig looks exactly the same.
“Khamsin also has punchy powerful gobos which are great for brilliant air effects, and produce a really nice tight spot which I use a lot. The colours you get out of them are excellent too – Ayrton has done a great job with the colour flags.
“They are supremely fast, especially considering the size of the fixture, and move really smoothly. I like to use a lot of fly-out effects which can be quite fast, but Khamsin always reaches its home position aga

USA - Dave Matthews Band wrapped their November US tour with two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden, deploying a system anchored by Meyer Sound’s Panther large-format linear line array loudspeakers for the first time.
DMB has carried Meyer Sound for their 25+ years of touring, and FOH engineer Tom Lyon was excited for the chance to deploy UltraSound, LLC’s Panther system on this recent run. “I had a lot of fun mixing on Panther. I noticed a certain sparkle to the top end of Dave’s guitar that I hadn’t noticed before. Everything sounded nicer through the system. When we walked around, we could tell the improvement of the coverage consistency: it sounds great off axis as it does down the middle of the coverage. I hardly had to touch the EQ on the system at all.”
The system comprised 18 Panther-L loudspeakers for left and right mains with two Panther-W per side, 10 Panther-L, and six Panther-W loudspeakers per left and right sides. Two 270-degree side hangs of 12 Leopard compact linear line array loudspeakers complemented the left and right sides.
In addition, there were flown subs of nine 1100‑LFC low frequency control elements in gradient cardioid per side with two 1100-LFCs per side on the ground. Eight Leopard loudspeakers provided front-fill across the edge of the stage with extra fills of two CQ-2 per side. Everything was driven analogue from four Galileo Galaxy Network Platforms per side.

Singapore - Point Source Audio’s Confidence Collection CO2-8WLp have been specified by theatrical sound designer Shannon Slaton for The Sound of Music’s international tour. The multi-year tour began at the Marina Bay Sands Theatre in Singapore before moving on to Kuala Lumpur and Taiwan.
With more than 25 years of experience as a theatrical sound designer and Broadway audio mixer working on some of the biggest musicals in the world, Slaton has a deep understanding of what is needed to make a tour sound great. “Designing for a tour, I have to think about how much time people have to load the show in and out and the equipment has to sit in a certain amount of truck space,” he explains. “If you’re doing a Broadway show, you have three weeks and you install the equipment where you want it. But with a tour you have eight to 12 hours, so the equipment and ease of travel becomes part of the equation.
“I designed the tour of The Sound of Music in the U.S. for three years and this is the same production currently touring Asia,” continues Slaton. “The design for the International tour is pretty close to the U.S. sound design.”
When it came to microphones, Slaton opted for Point Source Audio’s CO2-8WLp dual element lavaliers for the cast. The lavalier’s design pairs two microphone elements into a single housing to create a form factor that is ultra-low profile. The paired elements are factory matched in frequency and sensitivity so that when a vital backup is initiated, any difference in audio performance is nearly undetec

China - November saw the opening of the 16th Guangdong Provincial Games and the 9th Guangdong Provincial Games for Persons with Disabilities in Qingyuan and, with more than 20,000 athletes, coaches and related staff taking part, it was the largest Guangdong provincial games to date.
The visually stunning main venue for the games, the Qingyuan Olympic Sports Centre, is designed in the shape of a soaring phoenix and consists of a 30,000-seater stadium, a gymnasium with 9,000 seats, a natatorium with 2,000 seats and an Olympic sports park capable of hosting large-scale competitions, concerts, and exhibitions.
AV solutions provider EZPro was handed the responsibility to supply the sound reinforcement system for the centre with two criteria in mind: “First, reliability is absolutely critical for the sound reinforcement system when hosting large-scale competitions,” explains ZHANG Yangyang, senior technical manager of EZPro. “Additionally, due to the long reverberation time of the large venue space, the sound field design needs to be augmented with selective equipment to achieve the ideal sound pressure levels and, importantly, speech intelligibility.”
With these requirements in mind, EZPro decided to deploy Allen & Heath SQ mixers at the heart of the audio system. In the stadium, a pair of Allen & Heath SQ-7 mixers, with 32 onboard preamps and six layers of 33 faders, run as primary and backup systems to ensure no downtime in the audio output.
Both SQ-7 mixers were equipped with SQ Dante cards with the Primary and Secondary ports be

UK - Project Audio has installed a K-array background music system of Vyper compact line arrays at London’s historic Burlington Arcade.
Established in 1818, the 196-yard-long covered shopping Arcade runs from Piccadilly through to Burlington Gardens and houses a selection of luxury boutiques much favoured by London’s well-heeled patrons.
When the Reuben Brothers bought the Arcade, the new owners decided that they wanted to create considerably more atmosphere in the naturally lit, galleried Georgian space to provide a more welcoming ambience for shoppers. A discreet, high quality music playback sound system was what was needed, and the brothers approached Crystal Palace-based Project Audio, specialists in custom-designed and high-end bespoke audio installations.
Claire Munnelly, Project Audio’s director and project manager, comments: “The challenge for us was to design a sound system that was not in any way intrusive either sonically or visually, which meant it had to be to all intents and purposes invisible. Additionally, because the system had to be plug-and-play and essentially maintenance free, it had to be electronically bullet-proof.
“We knew that Italian speaker manufacturer K-array offered a good range of solutions for this kind of application, and so we got in touch with K-array’s UK distributor 2B Heard who helped us to define the specification with an unobtrusive compact line array.”
Due to the relative inaccessibility of the hardware once installed, the Project Audio design team decided to implement a uniquely in

USA - San Diego State University recently completed its new $310m 35,000-seat college football venue, Snapdragon Stadium, and crystal-clear sound was of the utmost importance throughout the project.
To achieve a new level of stadium design, complete with the latest technology, audio and video design firm WJHW called on Clair Global Integration to install a wide range of future-proofed products. Most notably, Snapdragon Stadium now features over 100 AC6 ADAPTive Column Loudspeakers from Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW).
“EAW supported the design team during the various phases of the project including early demonstrations, proof of concept and modeling for the AC6 loudspeakers, and exporting data for consultants’ integration into the full system design,” says Mark Graham, associate principal, WJHW. “The brand also remained involved throughout the construction process with onsite pretesting, as well as being an integral member of the commissioning and testing team during tuning and calibration of the installed system.”
In selecting the PA system, Graham and the WJHW team found EAW’s AC6’s ADAPTive features to be flexible and customizable while delivering pristine sound to every seat. “The ADAPTive technology of the AC6 loudspeakers allowed us to select mounting locations that better integrated into the stadiums’ architectural and structural elements while maintaining the output levels and coverage patterns needed at the spectator seating,” adds Graham.
“From every seat in the stadium, EAW has allowed us to create a truly wonderf

UK - The 2022 World Gymnastics Championships were held at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena over nine days in October and November, with 500 gymnasts from 75 countries competing at the 7,500-capacity venue.
The lighting supplier for the tournament was Adlib, who specified Martin’s latest MAC Ultra, amongst other fixtures. In total, 146 x MAC Ultra Performance and 24 Wash fixtures were deployed.
Elliot Tutt, Adlib’s account manager, said, “The client originally proposed the event to feature MAC Viper fixtures, so a large part of our proposal was the switch to the efficiency of LED and the performance of the MAC Ultra.”
Lighting designer for the event, Dominic Main, commented, “The MAC Ultra range is simply incredible. The light output is beyond anything I have used before in this size of moving head. The MAC Ultras allowed me to deliver a field-of-play lux level that was insanely bright and flat for both athlete and the camera. Using the MAC Ultra in the Sports Presentation sections, the Performances and Washes created looks that became the visual of the event worldwide.”
The MAC Ultra is Martin’s flagship high-output moving head fixture. Powered by the same 1150W LED engine, the Performance (46,500 lumens) and Wash (63,500 lumens) feature high-definition optics and astoundingly low noise levels.
Reliability was critical in an event that was broadcast worldwide, an area in which the Martin MAC range has a well-deserved reputation. Dominic Main concludes, “The MAC Ultras had 100% uptime for the 18 days they were on.”

USA - Los Angeles-based DCLighting has been successfully lighting The Kelly Clarkson Show since its debut in 2019 and was recognised for Outstanding Lighting Direction with a Daytime Emmy Award in 2020 and in 2022. DCLighting founder and lighting designer Darren Langer is understandably proud of his team, who have lit over 600 musical performances on the show to date.
For the show’s fourth season, which first aired on12 September, 2022, Darren and his team are keeping the lighting looks fresh using a rig of Elation DARTZ 360 narrow-beam LED moving heads, SixBar 1000 linear LED bars and Cuepix 16 IP LED matrix panels.
Produced by NBCUniversal Syndication Studios and taped at Universal City in Los Angeles, The Kelly Clarkson Show is an American daytime television variety talk show hosted by American singer Kelly Clarkson. More than a simple sit-down talk show, the programme includes games, demos, interviews, outdoor shoots, and a host of musical performances.
DCLighting handles all the visuals for the show including design and programming and built a lighting system that can adapt to the diversity of performances and the needs of a multiple-camera setup. “The Kelly Clarkson Show was an opportunity to show the level of lighting design we were capable of, and an opportunity to craft a vibrant and versatile design,” Langer commented.
Clarkson opens each show with a performance - called a Kellyoke - usually accompanied by her band from a barn-like studio that is a reflection of her country roots. The show often i

USA - As the amplified vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth head audio engineer, Randall L. Squires is no stranger to the band’s haunting, hypnotic vocals. After starting with the group in 2015 alongside boss and mentor Damon Lange, Squires eventually took over full audio operations, including recording, mastering and FOH engineering.
Most recently, the group entrusted Squires with recording its latest album, requesting that he create a completely new audio canvas from which they could work. To complement the unique sound and get consistent, reliable audio, Squires turned to DPA Microphones’ d:facto 4018VL Vocal, 5100 Mobile 5.1 Surround and 4011 Cardioid Condenser Microphones.
“The d:factos were perfect for us,” Squires says. “Roomful of Teeth is primarily a live act, so they’re used to amplification and having a handheld vocal mic on a stand directly in front of them. I wanted to find a solution that still fit the look of the handheld mics they were used to, but with a higher fidelity. The d:facto felt familiar to the singers, allowing all the mic techniques for their overtone singing and yodeling to translate directly, while also giving them a more open sound.
“Hitting those higher notes and hearing the overtones is also easier with a d:facto than it is with a dynamic mic. They hear all the upper mid-range sounds that they can go for, and they hit them easier. The singers had a major push after they heard the mics, literally every single one of the performers said, ‘we need these mics’.”
Recorded at the MASS MoCA (Massachuset

UK - “It’s been a while, but we’re going on tour in November and can’t wait to see you again.” So read the official statement announcing the recently completed UK tour by the Kaiser Chiefs.
The multi Brit-Award winning band played 13 sold-out venues, with a dynamic lightshow run on a ChamSys MagicQ MQ250M console that featured ample amounts of engaging audience lighting.
“This is a band that thrives on interacting with the audience,” said Jason Hyne who co-designed the show with Mike Darling. “Ricky Wilson, the band’s charismatic leader feeds off the crowd’s response to his actions. Our goal was to create one space for the band and crowd to share this connection.”
Facing a tight time schedule and a limited budget, Darling and Hyne worked concepts from previous tours into their new design. After only one-day of production rehearsals, the tour kicked off on 2 November in Liverpool using a kit supplied by Adlib. Hyne ran the first five shows before turning the tour over to Steve Mccracken, Both ran their shows on MQ250M consoles with MQ80s as backups.
“The show was run seamlessly throughout the tour,” said Hyne. “Mike and I designed, drew and programmed the show in Capture, which ChamSys works very well with. It is very easy for Steve and me to do some pre-programming of the show on the 250M when required. We ran the show as a cue list per song. A nice thing about the 250M is that the Cue Stack Tracks are very easy to navigate.
“As far as my running the show goes, I just purchased a new MQ250M,” continued Hy

USA - The 90-minute Christmas at Hillcrest concert, which took place at the church’s Nine Mile Campus in Pensacola, FL, featured purples and blues, along with a host of other inspiring hues transforming the stage.
“As we listened to the songs that were to be featured in the production, we asked ourselves does this feel like a certain colour?” said the church’s production director Gavin Crane. “Different colours also have different biblical significance, so we tried to keep this in mind as well. For example, blues convey the calmness that comes with the hope and peace of Christmas. They also represent the clear moonlit night of the first Christmas.
“Throughout each song we varied our palette to reflect the different thoughts and feelings. So, we might start a song with the deep blue or purple, then as it built, we changed the colours to fit that moment. One song had 28 different colour changes.”
Helping Crane weave these changes through his show, all while maintaining impeccable key lighting during a production that featured roughly 200 performers on stage was a recently upgraded lighting rig that featured over 65 Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied by Relevant AV Solutions.
“When I came on staff a few years ago, Hillcrest was in the middle of planning some renovations,” recalled Crane. “Lighting upgrades were part of that discussion as the church wanted to become more energy efficient. We did not have a catwalk at that point, so every time we had to replace a lamp, or move a fixture for any reason, we had to get a lift.

USA - The Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences (CRAS) recently hosted an in-house event with recording engineer, mixer, and record produce Bob Clearmountain and Apogee founder and CEO Betty Bennett with CRAS’ AES student section at the school’s Gilbert, Ariz. campus.
The Apogee CRAS Takeover included Apogee product demos and interactive mix sessions, alongside more intimate student discussions. Clearmountain and Roger Robindoré hosted Dolby Atmos demos in CRAS Studio D. Apogee Product Specialist George Williams showcased Apogee products and answering student questions.
“It was gratifying to interact with the inspiring, dedicated and professional students I met during our recent visit to CRAS,” said Clearmountain. “I was impressed by the facilities, especially those offered as part of the broadcast audio curriculum. After my visit, I have high hopes for the rising generation of audio engineers.”
Added Bennett, “What an inspiration to encounter the young men and women of CRAS - the future of our audio industry. As much as technical expertise is important, I’m glad to see that the CRAS curriculum accentuates personal responsibility, professional etiquette and good old tenacity, a message I reinforced in my communication with the assembled student body. We at Apogee look forward to continued collaboration with CRAS.”
Apogee VIP Artist Theron “Neff-U” Feemster also showcased music production using an Apogee workflow. He discussed how he adapts his workflow to follow the inspiration, from hotel room to world-class stu

Germany - VDC Trading is providing Van Damme cables to the motorsports industry where they are used in real time professional driving solutions. These simulation tools accelerate product development and innovation across the motorsports and automotive industries by enabling designers and engineers to experience the full ‘experience’ and performance of the vehicle they are developing without having to build a prototype.
Simulators are vital to the motorsport and automotive industries, as they not only reduce time-to-market for new vehicles but they also ensure they are totally safe when finally on the road.
Recently, Van Damme’s German distributor, Audiosteps Commerce, supplied Van Damme Black Series 18x2.5mm Speaker POWER multicore cables to a business in Europe for several simulator projects.
Andre Masterati Freitag at Audiosteps commented: “Audiosteps regularly supplies a specific business with custom cables for projects in the automotive industry. The most recent job was for a high-profile automotive client with an exciting plans for the future. These organisations rely on Van Damme cables because they have been proven to be 100% robustly reliable and can be adapted for any particular situation.”
Herpreet Kaur Singh, commercial director at VDC Trading said: “It’s been a pleasure to work with Andre and Christian at Audiosteps in providing our first-rate cables for such an interesting business. We look forward to supporting them in further ventures in the automotive industry. In today's competitive business environment, it is ve

The Netherlands - In October, MHB of the Netherlands provided sport lighting for Indoor Friesland, one of Europe’s top equestrian competitions. MHB delivered, using their recently expanded inventory of Elation KL Panel LED softlights.
Indoor Friesland returned after a 15-year absence as top national and international riders competed in dressage and horse jumping at the WTC Expo in Leeuwarden.
MHB collaborated with the event for the first time as technical AV partner, providing sport and show lighting as well as LED screens and other technical essentials.
MHB has plenty of experience designing and suppling AV solutions for sporting events, having worked with clients such as Triple Double sports marketing and EMG media group. The company added to their inventory of KL Panels in September with 100 additional units and immediately deployed the full-spectrum LED softlights on the equestrian event.
The biggest challenge was to light the large arena in an even wash of consistent colour temperature daylight white, light that would neither distract nor ‘dazzle’ the horses. A smooth field of light also meant that spectators could view the competition without dark areas or strong shadows, and the high illumination levels and uniform field also benefited the broadcast cameras.
Because of MHB’s positive experience lighting the Olympic Qualification Tournament in curling with KL Panels last December, MHB owner Marten Hylkema again opted for the Elation unit. After contacting Elation’s Bert Schmeits, key account manager Benelux, to set a

USA - Monster metal band Lorna Shore’s 18 December To The Hell Fire Christmas Show at the Wellmont Theatre, Montclair, NJ, featured songs from group’s albums, including the hit And I Return To Nothingness.
Powering his way through the explosive set on his ChamSys MagicQ MQ70, lighting designer Nate Haber kept pace with his client’s music, serving up a variety of potent looks, all while preserving an instantly recognisable Christmas flavour complete with brightly lit 12ft high holiday evergreens on either side of the stage.
Helping him accomplish this feat was a Squeek Lights supplied rig that featured Maverick Force S Spot, Rogue Outcast 1 BeamWash, and Nexus 4x1 fixtures from Chauvet Professional.
“Lorna Shore wanted to set the mood of a Christmas show, but with death metal music,” said Haber. ‘Given that directive, I wanted to accentuate all the Christmas lights decorating the set. We hung Christmas stringer lights in the trees, around the amps and risers, even across the drum kit. We did this in a theatre with over 2,500 people - not outside at night. I was trying to capture a little bit of that familiar feeling of being outside in the cold when you look at houses decorated for the holidays.”
Contributing to this mood were the snowflake effects Haber created from his rig’s four snowmaking machines. “When we were brain storming, I just mentioned the snowflake effects off hand towards the end of our discussion,” he said. “Adam (lead guitarist Adam De Micco) came up with the idea of using the snow making mac

USA – The new Chaparral High School in the central Texas city of Killeen opened its doors in August 2022 with a modern performing arts wing designed to elevate student learning. It is equipped with an array of luminaires from Vari-Lite, including a Neo and Vision.Net control system, VL800, Acclaim LED and Coda LED fixtures, and Aurora LED Strips.
The arts centre within the $147m school boasts a 1,200-seater auditorium, band, choir, and orchestra rooms, a black box theatre, set design workshops and teaching spaces, built by American Constructors and designed by James Fauver at PBK Architects.
“Our mission was to provide an integrated, fully networked, professional standard stage lighting system that would be intuitive to learn, access and use for both students and staff,” says Erich Friend, principal consultant at theatre consultancy, Teqniqal Systems. “Our desired outcome was that they would be able to create compelling stage shows, in any format or configuration, quickly and efficiently.”
To achieve intuitive operation and powerful, wide access to the lighting system, the team installed Vision.Net touchscreens, button stations and sensors at strategic locations around the building. “We wanted granular control from every part of the building,” Friend says. “The lights in the auditorium, including the blue backstage running lights, work lights and house lights are DMX- controlled individually. Multiple network switches feed over 73 DMX 3 Port Nodes throughout the facility.
“Each lighting control panel is programmed to perform

USA - Jennifer Lucas has a first-hand appreciation of the power of Christmas traditions as the director, programmer, and lighting design of the Taylor Family Christmas tour.
The annual series of concerts was started in 1994 by B.E. Taylor a founding member of the popular ‘80s progressive rock band Crack The Sky, as the B.E. Taylor Christmas Show. Taylor, who became a Christian music star in the 90s, brought a warm and engaging style to Christmas classics, ensuring that the show became a beloved holiday tradition for fans throughout Pennsylvania and the eastern Great Lakes.
At the time Lucas joined the tour in 2005, it included 14 dates in four states. As the tour continued to grow in popularity, Taylor sadly was stricken with brain cancer. After he passed away in 2016, the Christmas show stopped touring. His family tried to revive the tour, but then COVID happened, forcing its cessation again.
But The spirit of Christmas traditions has a way of coming back! This year, Taylor’s son and brother, BC Taylor and Dan Taylor, along with a group of other musicians revived the annual event as the Taylor Family Christmas tour with four dates in December.
As a designer, Lucas reflects the loving emotional aura of the show by creating warm, friendly and engaging looks on stage. Helping her accomplish this is a lighting rig from Star Design Event Services that features seven Maverick MK 2 Spot and 10 Rogue R2X Wash fixtures from Chauvet Professional.
In addition to using her fixtures to colorise the stage with inviting season

USA - Slightly off the beaten path, Bethlehem United Methodist Church in Bethlehem, Georgia, has thrived in the same location since 1848 due to its dedicated members. Each successive generation has looked to the future, acting as servants to determine how best to minister to the community.
The old audio system consisted of two 12” two-way loudspeakers flown sideways in a vertical array with two small side fill loudspeakers to cover the front left and right seating areas. When on-axis with any one of the four loudspeakers, the intelligibility was acceptable. However, intelligibility dropped off significantly in the remainder of the sanctuary. Small incremental improvements could be made by removing even more low-mid energy from the existing system. However, the real solution proved to be a highly targeted audio solution featuring Renkus-Heinz loudspeakers.
Church staff reached out to William Collins, account executive at Georgia-based S&L Integrated, to implement a new audio solution that would eliminate the intelligibility issues. S&L Integrated contacted independent manufacturer’s representative Richard Hembree of Griffith Sales Associates to assist with the design.
“The main loudspeakers are located in the centre, which is usually the best location in a sanctuary,” said Collins. “However, the sanctuary in Bethlehem UMC has a beautiful barrel shaped ceiling. Any sound generated from the centre of the room is magnified significantly by this feature. The result is a significant percentage of the sanctuary with poor intelligibility.

Cambodia – To transform the Bar Menaka into a modern entertainment venue, Nano Tech Co installed a range of Harman Professional audio solutions.
Located at Phnom Penh, Bar Menaka is a popular venue for upscale parties, fashion shows, dinners and corporate events. Elaborately decorated with lush jungle terraces, Khmer sculptures and a long Angkor-style hallway, the venue exudes an alternative ambience while offering Cambodian hospitality.
To deliver captivating live music experiences for guests, Bar Menaka’s management wanted to repurpose the venue’s cafe into a premier bar and entertainment space featuring a world-class audio system. With live bands and DJs performing on a regular basis, it was imperative that the new system had tour-grade power and versatility. To meet these requests, NanoTech Co partnered with Harman Professional and installed a diverse range of JBL Professional, Crown and Soundcraft audio solutions.
The JBL VTX F15 multi-purpose loudspeakers provide the main stage with a full spectrum of dynamic sound.
NanoTech Co installed the JBL STX812M for powerful on-stage sound. Featuring a low-profile design that is only 12 inches above the stage, these professional monitors provide accurate sound for the performers without obstructing the audience’s field of view.
The Crown ITech 4x3500HD amplifier delivers substantial power for the entire loudspeaker system.
Bar Menaka also received the Soundcraft Si Performer digital live mixer. The mixer’s built-in DMX controller grants seamless control over the light fi

USA - Self-described as “mission-minded”, Madison, Mississippi’s Broadmoor Baptist Church began meeting over 65 years ago following the rapid expansion of the city of Jackson after WWII. Over the decades, membership has grown to nearly 6,000 people, with over 1,500 attendees regularly attending services at the multi-structure campus located on 35 acres.
Music has always been an integral part of the church’s worship experience, and that has expanded with the church itself. Today, there are between four and eight vocalists and as many as ten musicians onstage for weekly Sunday services.
With that many musical participants, the stage at Broadmoor Baptist Church can be a busy place. That’s what led media and communications Pastor Michael Bowen and his staff to look into a more sophisticated and personalizable in-ear monitoring system. The choice, which he said was clear early on, was a pair of KLANG:vokal immersive in-ear monitor mix processors, applied one each to the band and the singers as groups, matched with a dozen individual KLANG:kontroller personal monitor controllers onstage. These were purchased and installed in September through Andrew Hicks at Stage Centre Lighting of nearby Pearl.
“We’ve been using in-ear monitoring since 2009 when we first opened this worship centre, and it served us well for over a decade, but we realised in recent months that audio technologies and quality have improved in that time,” Pastor Bowen explains. “It was time to move up.”
He notes that the church had already invested in a pair of DiG

USA - To support his fourth and newest studio album, Twelve Carat Toothache, Post Malone hit the road last fall for a 38-date North American arena tour with special guest Roddy Ricch. With PRG recently re-joining the singer/rapper as his touring sound reinforcement provider, one thing that remained unchanged on the Twelve Carat Tour was the artist’s reliance on L-Acoustics K Series loudspeakers, which had also been deployed on his last major run, 2019/20’s Runaway Tour.
Manning the FOH mix each night was Burton Ishmael, known for his previous work with Lil Baby, Nas, Big Sean, Miguel, H.E.R, and others. Supporting him at FOH was systems engineer Ben Bruns, who toured with both Jack Johnson and Harry Styles between the Twelve Carat and Runaway Tours.
According to Bruns, the sound system approach for Malone’s latest tour was somewhat unconventional, which was a direct answer to the unique layout of the stage. “The stage featured three parallel thrusts - I called it ‘the trident’ - which really made the show about Post,” he describes. “He had access to the entire arena floor, which fans absolutely loved. This design required re-thinking the classic approach of two large hangs of PA flanking a normal stage, but with a distributed system approach of eight hangs of L-Acoustics K2 arrays, I could be more precise with my Soundvision predictions, which allowed a more consistent SPL around the entire arena.”
With three arrays per side lining the left and right thrusts and two more arrays firing out at the end, much like a typical left

Canada - On completing a string of European performances in July, pop star Faouzia began preparations for a fall North American tour that saw the Moroccan-Canadian singer playing dates across the U.S. and Canada. Jon Stanners of entertainment production company Red Rover Entertainment of Winnipeg designed lighting for the outing and specified an Elation rig of Fuze SFX moving heads, SixBar 500 linear bars, and SixPar 200 6-color PAR lights.
Both Faouzia and Stanners have roots in Winnipeg’s French community and the designer says he has been familiar with the singer since she was a young artist. “The French community of Winnipeg always had high hopes for her and now she’s really realizing her potential,” he stated. “We’re from the same city and have been doing the same calibreof shows over many years so I’ve known her a long time.” Stanners even lit one of her music videos years ago and has done several one-off shows with her. Faouzia’s fall Citizens tour, which ran from 15 October to 17 November, was Stanners and Red Rover’s first chance to work with her on a tour.
Faouzia and Stanners have worked together enough that he knows how best to coordinate the lighting looks with her music, creating the right moods for old and new material alike. “For her older songs, which are more intimate piano numbers, I often put the focus solely on her,” Stanners describes. “But for her newer material, which is more Moroccan-influenced with offbeat rhythms, I’ll use more layered looks.”
The show also features a number of pop numbers. Sta

Belgium - Two Halloween-themed haunted houses set up by Production Pirates drew massive crowds using light and audio products from Showtec and DAP. For the two weeks around Halloween, Bellewaerde Park in Ieper, Belgium, turned into a Halloween immersion experience, with the two main attractions being the Funerarium and Mexican Massacre.
Bellewaerde Park is both a fully-fledged animal park as well as a complete theme park with many impressive coasters and rides. For Halloween 2022, Bellewaerde offered their visitors something special. They asked Production Pirates from Herentals, Belgium, to create an immersive Halloween experience by designing two haunted houses and preparing the park for opening its doors this late in the season.
Production Pirates turned to Showtec and DAP and found the light and sound equipment they needed. To dress up the haunted houses, they used 60 Showtec Club Par 12/4 RGBW LED pars. To add to the immersive experience, they installed 50 DAP Xi-5 compact but powerful installation loudspeakers. Twelve Showtec DIM-4 dimmer packs and 12 Showtec RP-405 MKII relay packs ensured that even “old fashioned” light bulbs were controllable through DMX, to have full control over all details of the scenes.
“Creating the ambiance was not the only application we have used Showtec’s products for,” says David Stuyck of Production Pirates. “They do double duty as emergency lighting. In the haunted houses we have implemented an emergency button that stops all actions in that location and sets the light to white at 100% brightness. The

USA - Located in Salem, Oregon, Alpha Sound is rapidly establishing a reputation for excellence across the US for its work in designing and installing sound systems in houses of worship. Following a recent project at St Mary’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland, lead engineer Devin Sheets and the Alpha Sound team have added further to their credentials with another successful installation at the prestigious Mount Angel Abbey monastery of Benedictine monks, established 140 years ago in St. Benedict, Oregon.
“The brief at Mount Angel Abbey was to amplify the spoken word throughout the abbey with the exact same sonic character and timbre as that of the unamplified choir, while also providing pristine audio capture for the live streaming of choral music,” reports Devin. “And, of course, the system had to be as unobtrusive as possible in such a historic building.”
With line array clusters and delays deemed inappropriate in this case, thoughts turned to Nexo’s ID84 column speaker. “In a highly reverberant space with up to five seconds of decay, it’s difficult enough to understand speech at 15 feet, let alone 150 feet away at the back of the abbey,” says Sheets. “The sound of the ID84 is amazingly smooth and natural, and it fires like a laser beam to deliver total clarity right to the back. It’s just perfect for this type of application.”
Also from NEXO’s ID Series, ultra-compact ID14s are deployed to cover the nave, the choir area, an additional side chapel and organist waiting area, and six per side along the tri