d&b - Leaderboard - Dec 2024
Showlight (Tickets) - Banner - Dec 2024
ISE - Banner - Oct 2024 - Jan 2025

General

Details
UK - Peterborough-based technical production company Pearce Hire has received the accolade of Best Power Supplier at the recent Event Production Awards 2022.
The company specialises in temporary power and lighting systems for outdoor events on greenfield sites across the UK, including Royal Parks, stately home gardens and areas of outstanding natural beauty.
During the last two years, founder and managing director Shaun Pearce has campaigned for government support of the sector at local and national level, whilst working tirelessly to safeguard and future-proof the business he has built.
“It really has been one of the most difficult periods of Pearce Hire’s history but this really signifies the light at the end of the tunnel,” says Pearce. “Like the rest of the industry my company has battled to get through the past two years and we couldn’t have done

Details
Solidarity - All remaining performances of the Russian State Ballet of Siberia in the UK have been cancelled following the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Over the weekend, venues began to cancel planned performances by the company, with the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, the Royal and Derngate in Northampton and the New Theatre Peterborough, run by Selladoor, all pulling planned appearances by the company. Ambassador Theatre Group also cancelled performances planned at the Edinburgh Playhouse and the Bristol Hippodrome.
Now, Raymond Gubbay, which was producing the tour, has cancelled all remaining dates. “In view of the current shocking circumstances unfolding in Ukraine, the remaining performances by the Russian State Ballet of Siberia of their 2021/2022 tour will not be taking place,” it said.
English National Opera performed the Ukrainian national anthem before its
ISE - Banner - Oct 2024 - Jan 2025
Showlight (Tickets) - Banner - Dec 2024

Details
Reconnected - The organisers of the T in the Park and TRNSMT festivals have announced their newest event will be held in Edinburgh. The Connect Music Festival will take place at the Royal Highland Centre near Edinburgh Airport from 26 to 28 August. Promoters DF Concerts said the line-up for the weekend-long event will be announced this Wednesday. There have been two Connect festivals before, in 2007 and 2008, both at Inveraray Castle in Argyll.
Announcing the festival's revival, Geoff Ellis, chief executive of DF Concerts and Events, said: “During initial planning discussions around the relaunch of Connect, we realised that we had to make some changes and to remaster the original festival proposition for today's audiences. One of the biggest considerations we had was around public transport and ensuring the event was accessible to festival goers from across the country. Th

Details
China - DJ Wengweng, well-known electronic musician, the main founder of Acupuncture Records and the Lantern Club, has recently opened Solo, a new electronic music room in Bejing, with the help of Van Damme Cable.
Measured at only 18sq.m, the music space will be used to record live sets of or other artists, and make their musical talents and ideas better known through the internet.
The key aim is to establish increasingly strong relationships with domestic artists, labels and club operators, start discussions around the development of electronic music culture in China and create development opportunities together.
Despite its size, the sound, lighting, DJ and acoustic processing equipment are all professional standard. Installation was achieved with the help of Phoenix Audio, Van Damme’s Chinese distributor.
The audio configuration uses Funktion-One seri

Details
Massive Losses - Commercial theatre companies including Ambassador Theatre Group and HQ Theatres have revealed losses they incurred to March 2021, with theatre closures leading to 90% falls in revenue in some instances. Cameron Mackintosh Limited suffered pre-tax losses of £16.2m to the end of March last year, with the company’s turnover tumbling to just £20.8m. This is down from £206.7m in 2020.
The organisation, which operates eight West End theatres blamed the “disappointing trading results” entirely on the pandemic and warned that conditions remained “challenging”. It said a “consistent return to pre-pandemic audience attendance levels will take time to rebuild”, as domestic visitors, workers and international tourists return to London.
According to the accounts for International Entertainment Holdings Ltd, the parent company of ATG, the group saw

Details
Brit Awards - The 2022 Brit Awards take place at the O2 Arena tonight, with Adele, Ed Sheeran, Dave and Little Simz leading the nominations. All four artists are up for the night's biggest prizes - artist and album of the year - alongside Sam Fender. It will be broadcast live on ITV, and on YouTube for viewers outside the UK.
Last year's Brit Awards took place as part of the government's pilot scheme for the return of live events. COVID restrictions necessitated a mixture of live and virtual performances, with artists like Coldplay, The Weekend and Elton John appearing on tape.
This year, organisers have vowed to "keep everything in the room" - even when that meant scrapping a planned performance from US star Doja Cat, after members of her team tested positive for COVID. As a result, tonight's performances are exclusively coming from British artists - including all fiv

Details
Ireland - In late 2021, VDC Trading was approached by Murt Whelan Sound to create a 48-channel stagebox which will be core to much of the company’s work in 2022.
Murt Whelan Sound (MWS) is a pro-audio rental and installation company based in Limerick in the Republic of Ireland. It provides professional services nationwide and is a one stop production shop, offering support from initial concept and design right through to the realisation and management of any large-scale event.
MWS constantly invests in responsive, state-of-the-art equipment to ensure it stays ahead of the market and exceeds its customer expectations. It therefore approached VDC Trading to design a custom 19” rack mountable, 48 channel stagebox, which will be central to many of the concerts it plans to do in 2022.
The stagebox has three passive splits for FOH / MON and REC, on 24 channel VDMs.

Details
On The Beach - The BBC Concert Orchestra will take up a three-year residency in a seaside town to "raise aspirations". Its arrival in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, is due to a collaboration with the charity Orchestras Live and arts organisations in the county. The aim was to "provide learning pathways and improve people's wellbeing", the charity said. It will run workshops in every primary school in the town and hold a free schools concert.
Part of the Create Yarmouth strategy, it hopes to encourage students to get creative with music. “The programme aims to raise aspiration, provide learning pathways and improve people's wellbeing through collaborations with world-class musicians, digital artists, producers and arts managers”, an Orchestras Live spokeswoman said. Pop-up performances in public spaces, as part of a Heritage Action Zone, will also be held.
Pride Restor

Details
UK - Abbey Road Institute is a specialist music production school and the training ground for the next generation of music producers and sound engineers. Its foundations are the expertise and innovation created at Abbey Road Studios.
Originally based in St Johns Wood as part of the famous studio’s complex, the school’s diploma became so popular with students that it needed to expand its facilities to accommodate the growing demand. During the summer of 2021, the Institute moved into and revived the historic Angel Recording Studios in Islington, near Kings Cross. VDC provided the Institute with a variety of Van Damme cabling as the foundation for the refurbishment; from custom manufactured D25 assemblies on 8 pair Studio Blue to microphone, speaker and console cabling.
The Institute opened the doors to its new home in June 2021. Building on the success of the existi

Details
Cover Up - Theatres across England have indicated they will continue to ask audiences to wear masks for the safety of their staff and other theatregoers, despite restrictions being lifted later this week.
Prime minister Boris Johnson announced last week that Plan B measures - including mandatory mask wearing in theatres - would be lifted this week. Following his announcement, numerous theatres have said that they plan to continue requesting face coverings inside their venues.
Sheffield Theatres said it had taken the decision to continue with mandatory face coverings beyond 27 January, with this decision reviewed every two weeks in light of the number of cases locally.
“Since the theatres reopened last summer we have been encouraging audiences to wear masks during their visit. We took the decision to introduce mandatory face coverings before Plan B in early Dece

Details
USA - Symetrix has launched Symetrix Professional Services, fee-based services that “leverage the experience and knowledge of Symetrix applications engineers to provide engineering support for their customers’ projects”.
Symetrix Professional Services include site file programming, custom intelligent module creation, and remote or on-site commissioning.
There is a dedicated in-house team of Symetrix applications engineers who can review the system design to ensure that the selected hardware will work seamlessly in a system. Because it is being reviewed by Symetrix, customers will have the peace of mind that it is approved by the original equipment manufacturer.

Details
Coachella Returns - Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Kanye West - known as Ye - will headline this year's Coachella festival. It's being held for the first time since 2019 after the 2020 festival was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The festival runs across two weekends in April in Indio, California, with the same line-up appearing on them both. Swedish House Mafia, Flume, Megan Thee Stallion, Disclosure, Doja Cat and Run the Jewels will also perform. Billie Eilish will become the festival's youngest ever headliner.
Celtic Connections - The organisers of Celtic Connections have launched a ‘hybrid’ online version of the musical festival after shows had to be cancelled due to Covid restrictions on crowds. Performances will now be shown online with some screened to smaller audiences at Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall. A small number of larger-scale shows will b

Details
USA - Amber Solutions has announced that its AC Direct DC Enabler is now available as a demo kit for technical evaluation by consumer, commercial and industrial electrical products manufacturers and semiconductor companies, such as Infineon Technologies, who have already announced an alliance around Amber.
This breakthrough Amber AC direct power system enables DC extraction directly from AC Mains without the use of transformers, rectifiers, or filtering. It eliminates many of the old-tech electromechanical components that are still standard today, enabling a dramatically smaller size footprint, while simultaneously delivering a much more dynamic, configurable power delivery capability. The result is an unprecedented opportunity for manufacturers and semiconductor companies to reinvent how electricity is leveraged, designed and feature-scoped in all electrical products, accor

Details
UK - For the past 40 years, 5 Star Cases has been manufacturing flight cases that are already trusted by a vast range of industries, ensuring the safe transport of vital equipment around the world, even in the most challenging of environments, safely and securely.
Taking its four decades of experience and expertise, 5 Star is now producing a new range of custom-designed packing crates, which can be used as a cost-effective alternative when flight cases are not required, or as an added level of protection when they are.
Using the same advanced production techniques and extensive infrastructure at its dedicated manufacturing facility in the heart of the Cambridgeshire Fens, 5 Star packing crates are constructed with strength and durability in mind. They can be used for storing and transporting products across different industries and applications, from AV, entertainment,

Details
Overwhelming Loss - Bring It On the Musical has cancelled its planned UK tour dates after suffering an "overwhelming loss of income" due to omicron disruption. The show was forced to cancel 13 performances during its six-week run at the Southbank Centre in London due to self-isolation requirements, losing hundreds of thousands of pounds, producers said. It continues at the Queen Elizabeth Hall until 22 January, however producer Selladoor Worldwide has now announced that the touring dates that followed will not go ahead. It had been due to visit locations across the UK until 30 July.
A statement from Selladoor said: "Cancelling 13 performances has resulted in an overwhelming loss of income for the production during a peak period that would otherwise have provided a vital financial backbone of the tour. This lost income, amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds, ha

Details
Austria - The experience of Chameleon Event Production’s personnel, combined with the advanced pathogen eradication tools from sister company Entec UVC SafeClean, twice saved the day, and enabled a fashion-based sales meeting from one of their most loyal and long serving clients to go ahead - in spite of COVID lockdown.
Having worked with global sports and fashion headwear specialists, New Era, since 2014, they were booked to stage an interactive sales meeting for their sales force at the Hilton on the Danube in Vienna, and had done 90% of the prep when Austria announced its lockdown on 19 November 2021.
Chameleon production manager, Sam Parkins, explained how the flexibility of his team, coupled with the trust invested by the client, resulted in the production house reconfiguring its studio in Milton Keynes and staging the event virtually, in a simulated COVID-se

Details
USA - The Long Reach Long Riders and Behind the Scenes will host their annual fundraising raffle at the USITT Conference 3-5 March in Baltimore.
This year’s raffle will celebrate the 19th anniversary of the Long Reach Long Riders annual charity motorcycle ride. The Riders, who have raised over $800,000 for charity in their years of touring, will be riding 18-24 June on the Blue Ridge Ramble tour through the Appalachian Mountains.
The Behind the Scenes Boutique will also be open for business during the show featuring an assortment of great Behind the Scenes swag and the famous Long Reach Long Rider T-shirts and kazoos.
Tickets for the raffle are an affordable $5 each or 5 for $20 and can be purchased at the Behind the Scenes booth throughout the show. Winning tickets for nine regular prizes and one grand prize will be drawn at 1pm on Saturday, the final day of St

Details
Further Action - Labour is calling on the government to urgently take further action to support the arts sector - including widening eligibility for the Culture Recovery Fund - warning many “treasured theatres” face collapse without support. The call on the government follows an announcement from chancellor Rishi Sunak that £30m has been added to the CRF.
However, Labour said more needs to be done to ensure the “support is effective” and reaches “those most in need”. The party’s demands include: widening the scope of the Culture Recovery Fund Emergency Resource Grant so that previous recipients, commercial productions, and individuals can apply; speeding up payment through the Culture Recovery Fund so that the self-employed, and freelancers in the culture sector can have their contracts honoured, and an urgent review of the Live Events Reinsurance Scheme, whic

Details
World - As the LSi and PLASA teams finish up for the festive break, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued readership throughout 2021.
Whilst the pandemic continues to cast its long shadow, it has been encouraging to see the gradual return of the full spectrum of live events, and to bring you technical reports from some of the brightest concert touring, theatre and festival productions across both LSi Online and the magazine.
Our daily online news service will resume on Tuesday, 4 January 2022. Until then, if you fancy a read, you can access LSi’s full 36-year back catalogue free online here.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays - we wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous new year!
The LSi team

Details
More Cancellations - Almost half of London's major theatres were forced to cancel performances last weekend because of Covid infections, as Omicron plays havoc with live events. Of the 46 full members of the Society of London Theatre that had shows running, 22 scrapped performances.They included Hamilton, Matilda, Wicked, The Lion King, Cinderella, Cabaret and Come From Away.
Producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh said it was "hugely disruptive" and the industry was in a "dreadful state". He told BBC News: "It's literally day-to-day. We spend all morning trying to work out if we can do the show or not. The important thing is, when we do it, it is safe, and the public have been remarkable in that they are, in our experience, turning up mostly to the shows."
Bookings for the first part of 2022 are well below expectations, which i

Details
Record Spend - A record £4bn was spent making TV shows in the UK in the past year - almost double the figure before the pandemic. TV production slumped during lockdown but rebounded to a new high between October 2020 and September 2021, the British Film Institute (BFI) has said.
Some £4.14bn was spent filming British and foreign shows like Bridgerton and Peaky Blinders in the UK in that time. That compares with the £2.3bn spent in the same period in 2018-19 and is 10 times more than was spent in 2013. The latest figure includes money spent by British TV channels on home-made series like Doctor Who, The Bay, Shetland and Ghosts.
It also includes forthcoming streaming shows like The Essex Serpent from Apple TV+, Andor from Disney+ and Netflix productions like The Sandman and the new series of Bridgerton.
Ne

Details
Freelancers in the Dark - The coronavirus lockdowns have had a major impact on theatre freelancers, leaving them pessimistic for the future, says the leader of a study. Dr Holly Maples, of the University of Essex. said the "stops and starts" of the lockdown prevented freelancers from being able to plan ahead. She said many did not know whether they would be able to carry on in their profession.
The first part of the report, called Freelancers in the Dark, found 72.4% of respondents felt more pessimistic about their future as a theatre freelancers. Dr Maples, a senior lecturer at the East 15 Acting School at the Colchester university, said: "The closures of theatres greatly affected people's ability to plan and to carry on with the work they had been doing. A lot of people were kind of left high and dry, both by the organizations they were working with [that] couldn't

Details
Canada - After another uncommon year, Solotech has maintained its ninth position in Systems Contractor News’ Top 50 systems integrators.
At the same time, Solotech confirms its place as Canada’s prime integrator, being the only Canadian company to make it on to the list. The acquisition of CBCI, a Solotech company, in May 2021, has further strengthened Solotech’s expertise in systems integration from coast to coast.
‘’This recognition is the result of the hard work of our team of experts,” said Philip Giffard, global president, sales & systems integration division. ‘’We have kept our place of choice in the market thanks to our strategic approach based on diversification and a wider geographic footprint. Our employees’ innovation and passion remain at the heart of our success, despite the many challenges they had to overcome. I am very proud of t

Details
Sondheim Remembered - The lights in London's West End were dimmed on Monday night as theatres payed tribute to US composer and songwriter Stephen Sondheim who has died aged 91. The composer and lyricist, famous for creating the musical Sweeney Todd, was described as one of theatre's "greatest geniuses" after his death on Friday.
Sir Cameron Mackintosh said the world had "lost one of its greatest and most original writers". The theatrical producer renamed his Queen's Theatre venue after the composer in 2019. During his illustrious career, he wrote the scores of some of Broadway's best-known shows including Company, Follies and A Little Night Music. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story.
In The Courts - Two ticket touts who made millions of pounds reselling tickets to theatre shows and gigs including Harry Potter and the Curs
  1. ABTT announces co-chairs
  2. The Week in Light & Sound
  3. Spain waives visas for UK touring artists
  4. The Week in Light & Sound
  5. The Week in Light & Sound
  6. The Week in Light & Sound
Page 17 of 240
Robe - Large MPU
MA Lighting - Large MPU - Dec 2024
Astera - Banner - Dec24
Sennheiser - MPU - Dec 2024

Latest Issue. . .

PLASA Media Limited is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 4111709 - VAT Number GB 762 5913 14
PLASA Media Ltd, Redoubt House, 1 Edward Road, Eastbourne, BN23 8AS, UK Tel: +44 (0)1323 524120

 

login

Save
Cookies user preferences
We use cookies to ensure you to get the best experience on our website. If you decline the use of cookies, this website may not function as expected.
Accept all
Decline all
Analytics
Tools used to analyze the data to measure the effectiveness of a website and to understand how it works.
Google Analytics
Accept
Decline
Advertisement
If you accept, the ads on the page will be adapted to your preferences.
Google Ad
Accept
Decline