UK - Thin Lizzy are using a DiGiCo's 500th SD8 console on monitors for their current tour. Brian Downey, Scott Gorham and Darren Wharton are joined onstage by Marco Mendoza, former Almighty frontman Ricky Warwick and Def Leppard's Vivian Campbell. All are very much from the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of rock so, for the band's recent UK and European tour, monitor engineer Phil Shenton used the tried-and-tested formula that has served hard rock well for decades.

"My remit was that the band wants to keep it old school," says Shenton. "No in-ears, it's six loud wedge mixes, side-fills and an analogue rock 'n' roll sound.

"My good friend Matt Coton of BCS Audio had been lucky enough to win the 500th SD8 at PLASA 2010," Phil continues.

Italy - Lighting designer Massimo Tomasino has extended his relationship with SGM's popular Synthesis 700 and Giotto 400 moving head spots, featuring them extensively in the design for Patty Pravo's current Nella Terra dei Pinguini tour.

Having worked with the pop legend - whose own career spans four decades - since 2005, he has a clear fix on the type of set design that suits her best. "With her elegant pop/rock style I like to work with a lot of rear lighting," he says.

This time around, Tomasino designed both the lighting and the scenography, with a scalable set which would be equally dynamic in the smaller theatres as in the large arenas and amphitheatres. "I needed moving lights that would deliver a strong brightness and at the same time run very silent, especially when touring theatres.

"The set list contains many slow songs, with soft dynami

USA - Stage Technologies Las Vegas has announced the latest schedule of its popular three-day training course - An introduction to automation and the eChameleon suite. The first session dates are 1-3 August inclusive, with dates for last-quarter training sessions to be announced later in the year. This course is aimed at programmers and operators as well as professionals from other disciplines interested in learning the features of eChameleon software.

Utilising Stage Technologies control interfaces, delegates will be given an opportunity to get hands on with eChameleon and learn some of the current techniques and principles used to plot and run some of the biggest shows in the world. eChameleon is the common software platform across all Stage Technologies control consoles, offering unrivalled ease of use, power and flexibility.

The three-day course will cover the funda

Canada - Montreal's Les Grands Ballets Canadien recently purchased an Allen & Heath iLive digital mixing system following a trial run on a three week production of Leonce et Lena. The Company selected a system comprising an iDR-32 MixRack and iLive-R72 Control Surface due to its compactness, flexibility and versatility, which would be suitable for both touring and installed in their home venue, the Theatre Maisonneuve at the Place des Arts.

Audio sources included a mixture of pre-recorded tracks, sound effects and a live orchestra. Three Macbooks, two installed at FOH and one in the orchestra pit, were set up to run different software packages, including Cricket V2, Qlab V2 and ILive Editor. The pit Macbook contained organ tracks to be played by one of the musicians, while all additional music and sound effects had redundant back-ups and the musicians tracks were controlled from

India - Earlier this year, AbhangaNaad: The Voice of Devotion took place on the University Grounds of Shivaji University in Kolhapur. Featuring approximately 2,500 Warkari (devotees of Lord Vithoba) singing in unison and accompanied by 1,350 Dhols (traditional Indian 'dhangar'drums), the event celebrated divine love in the presence of His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, also known as guruji.

This massive concert attracted more than 120,000 devotees plus another 3m television viewers throughout India. Sound reinforcement for an event of this magnitude required loudspeaker systems that could project over a large area with excellent speech intelligibility and music reproduction characteristics. D.A.S. Audio's Aero Series line array system was chosen for the task.

Organised in a bid to attract youth to Indian folk traditions, AbhangaNaad featured devotional songs and meditation as

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