Colombia - DiGiCo Quantum338 consoles are an integral part of Maluma’s ongoing Don Juan world tour, the North American leg of which runs from 31 August in Sacramento to 4 November in Miami. The tour relies heavily on top technology, including Clair Global’s Cohesion series PA system, as well as other DiGiCo products, including SD-Racks, an Orange Box, DMI-Waves cards, and a complete Optocore network loop. The Quantum338 consoles, used at both front of house and monitors, are the central hubs for a complex but reliable audio infrastructure that performs at every show as flawlessly as Maluma himself. The implementation of the Quantum338 was a system-critical decision for the tour, says German Tarazona, who this year moved from mixing monitors to managing the FOH mix for Maluma (aka Juan Luis Londoño Arias). “We needed a system that could integrate with our require
UK - Martin Audio rental partner VME has announced a major commitment to the company. In making a heavy investment in the company’s MLA platform, they have at a stroke become the manufacturer’s largest global rental partner of the award-winning systems. Based in the north of England VME, run by brothers Dion and Andre Davie, recognised that after lockdown, the live events industry rebounded at such pace and velocity that inventories were quickly running dry. As a vital part of the MLA network, and sensing the heavy demand on stock, especially in peak season, they took a dynamic approach by repositioning themselves as dry hire specialists, as well as giving them a new cutting edge and marketing outreach for their own productions. The latest order for 475 cabinets is split into the following products: 179 x MLA; 24 x MLD; 80 x MLX; 40 x DSX and 152 x MLA Compact.
The Netherlands - In the picturesque town of Venlo, on the banks of the Meuse River, the annual free Zomerparkfeest is more than just a festival; it's an immersive experience where music, art, and culture come together. This year, the Zomerparkfeest unveiled its various stages, brought to life by an impressive array of lighting products from Infinity, Showtec, DMT, and Showgear, courtesy of Demo Productions from Ulestraten, the Netherlands. As the festival’s main stage blasted off, Demo Productions bathed it in a mesmerizing glow, thanks to a dazzling array of lighting products. Headliners such as Altin Gün, Peaches, and Rowwen Hèze took to the stage beneath the illumination. Piercing beams of light from 14 Infinity iB-2R moving heads were accompanied by 15 Showtec Stage Blinder 4 DMX and 48 Showtec DWE Audience Blinders. To set the mood, eight Showtec Heli
Japan - Since its world premiere in 2016, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has been a worldwide hit in London’s West End, on Broadway, in Hamburg, Melbourne, San Francisco and Toronto. For the latest production at Tokyo’s TBS Akasaka ACT theatre, the show’s Olivier and Tony award-winning sound designer Gareth Fry has trusted a Yamaha Rivage PM5 digital mixing system to handle a show which previously needed two mixing surfaces. The Tokyo production features more than 150 inputs, approximately 50 microphone inputs and 80 channels of playback, with around 500 cues. The audio is routed via a Dante network, fully digital from the wireless transmitters until it leaves the amplifiers. Key to the new production is the Rivage PM series’ advanced theatre software, which offers a number of advantages to theatre sound designers. “The Rivage PM5 combines the
UK - Chatham’s Central Theatre recently benefited from a sound system upgrade to improve the audience experience at its 1000-capacity venue. The Central Theatre, which hosts a variety of performances, from tribute acts and musicals to stand-up comedy and dance, required a sound system that would deliver clear and even audio coverage no matter the performance. Bose Professional collaborated with London-based integrator Tateside to bring this transformation to fruition. “Bose’s UK offices are a stone’s throw away from the theatre, so when we needed a new sound system it seemed sensible to open a dialogue with the team,” recalls Chris Stevens, technical manager at Chatham Central Theatre. “The theatre is operated by Medway Council, so we all strive to support and work with local companies where possible.” On receiving the project, Bose Professional re
Mexico - The recently inaugurated Olmeca Refinery, the largest oil plant in Mexico and one of the three largest in Latin America, has implemented several Christie solutions in its control rooms and offices, including LED and LCD video walls, video wall processors and a 30,000 lumen 3DLP projector. Located in the port of Dos Bocas, Tabasco, the Olmeca Refinery can process 340,000 barrels per day of crude oil. The refinery consists of 17 processing plants, 56 storage tanks, 34 spheres, workshops, administrative and service buildings, and control rooms across the 556-hectare site. The facility required a main control room to supervise and monitor oil production, several control rooms for surveillance throughout the refinery, and boardrooms to increase communication and productivity. Video walls were critical for displaying scalable content from multiple sources simu
Belgium - At a ceremony at the Brussels Expo Paleis 10, two women, Rika Coppens, CEO of House of HR, and Diane Govaerts of Ziegler, were named Manager Van Het Jaar (Manager of the Year) by Roularta Media Group’s Trends magazine, the largest circulation business weekly in Belgium, and Trends Tendence the Wallonia version of the publication. Rika Coppensand Diane Govaerts were both praised for their forward-thinking creativity and their ability to maintain high standards of excellence. Contributing to the success of the event was D-Dream, which provided technical support and creative vision for the evening’s activities. “We’ve been working together with Roularta Media Group for several years,” said D-Dream managing director Elke Scheirs. “This year, we were again chosen to supply all audiovisual support for the execution of the awards.”
India - Christie has announced that its Griffyn Series RGB pure laser projectors are illuminating the façade of the Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi Temple for a spectacular son et lumière that pays homage to the timeless legends of Lord Krishna. Situated in Mathura, a sacred city in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi Temple is traditionally regarded as the birthplace of Lord Krishna, one of the most widely revered divinities in Hinduism. With its origins dating back to the 6th century BC, this temple stands as a site of profound importance and ranks among India’s most frequented religious destinations. The nightly 40-minute light and sound show which portrays Lord Krishna’s life as a symbol of tenderness, patience, compassion, and love, was inaugurated by Agra’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath. This mesmerising presentation was
UK - The spectacular production of The Wizard of Oz, directed by Nikolai Foster and with lighting design by Ben Cracknell, transferred from Leicester’s Curve Theatre to the London Palladium in the West End for a summer run. With Martin MAC Encores and VDO Atomic Dots specified in the original design, the rig at the Palladium was expanded with additional MAC Encores and with over 50 Martin VDO Atomic Dots after the compact, high output fixtures were described by the LD as being “a revelation” at the Curve. For the West End production, the previously specified MAC Encore Performance CLD fixtures were joined by additional MAC Encore WRM fixtures, positioned both overhead and on side ladders. “The MAC Encore Performance CLD is my go-to," stated LD Ben Cracknell, “and by swapping out [a competitor fixture] to the MAC Encore WRMs we had just one typ
UK - During what has proved to be a non-stop summer of activity for SWG Events, the production company has relied on its Martin Audio PA rig. By the time they arrived at Blur bass guitarist Alex James’ farm near Kingham in Oxfordshire, where each year the three-day Big Feastival takes place, they were able to offer visiting sound engineers - who accompanied most of the acts - a deluxe set-up at front-of-house. With a combination of food and music spread over some 10 fringe stages, SWG Events supply audio, lighting, video and staging solutions alongside artist services, whilst deploying their class-leading audio inventory on the extraordinary width of the main stage. According to Simon Purse, SWG Events head of audio, special care had been needed to ensure the VIP area, set off axis, was still within the coverage area of the out-fills. Fully satisfied with the c
USA - Singer/songwriter Becky G’s long list of achievements thus far includes four Latin Grammy Award nominations, four number-one hits on Billboard’s Latin Airplay Charts, and her debut album Mala Santa was certified eight times platinum. Her first solo headlining tour, Mi Casa, Tu Casa, covered 16 cities, starting in Boston on 14 September and hit Orlando, San Antonio, El Paso, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and more. It was a big show, with a band, a DJ, and numerous guest artists. Monitoring on the 64-input stage would be a challenge, one that the KLANG:fabrik immersive in-ear monitoring solution handled night after night. The tour’s visual production set its complex tone. Monitor engineer Lucas Pinzón describes it as “a theatre tour, but easily adaptable to arenas, that travels with a lot of scenery. In each show, Becky's childhood ‘house’ is rec
Mexico - Scores of luminaires from Elation Professional’s Proteus, Artiste, KL and other lines were used by lighting designer Miguel ‘Miki’ Molina on the latest season of La Casa de Los Famosos Mexico which airs on Televisa Univision. Its season four grand finale took place 13 August, reaching more than 195m viewers. The Elation package was used throughout the season across six different sets, including the grand finale, with the main stage alone boasting some 400 Elation lights. Other Elation lines used on the programme included Pixel Bar, SixBar, Chorus Line, and DTW Blinders, along with Therma Tour 600 haze effect generators from Magmatic effects. Additionally, EN12 nodes and RDM10 splitters from Obsidian Control’s Netron line were used for signal distribution. The supply of the Elation fixtures and the lighting technical production for the project w
Estonia - The grand opening of phase one of the third floor in the redeveloped T1 Mall in Tallinn saw invited guests enjoy drinks and snacks before being treated to a series of presentations and demonstrations. Global Productions organised the event with funTIME Showservice supplying equipment for the occasion. Following new ownership and management, the T1 mall is undergoing renovations designed to broaden its appeal. The building is already home to many shops and offices and now adds a number of sports clubs too. The new sports clubs have all been housed on the third floor, making it the place to go for sports enthusiasts. In addition to climbing facilities, there’s a boxing and wrestling club, a fencing club, a dance school and even a capoeira school. The opening event included demonstrations from all of these sports with the equipment supplied by funTIME Showser
The Netherlands - The Tivoli music venue at Vredenburg, one of the most well-known music venues in The Netherlands, recently installed 64 Ayrton Eurus S Profiles within two of its halls - Ronda and De Grote Zaal - via Ayrton’s exclusive distributor in The Netherlands, Ampco Flashlight Sales. This large venue built in 2014 has six halls with a total capacity for 7,500 people. De Grote Zaal, the original building from 1979, was built as a symphony hall with a seating capacity of 1,717, or standing room of 2,000. “Being a symphony hall, many orchestras perform here,” says Jolijn van Iersel, lighting technician for the venue, “but the stage also hosts pop and rock shows including, in 2003, the Rolling Stones. More recently the likes of Iggy Pop, The Four Tops, Wadruna, Phillip Glass, King Crimson, Nils Frahm, Steve Hackett, The Temptations, Paul Carrack have also
USA - This autumn, Holoplot partner, Creative Technology US, used the attributes of the X1 Matrix Array for orchestral performances of musical scores of The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario at this year’s Nintendo Live experience at PAX West, the destination event celebrating gaming and gaming culture, in Seattle. Nintendo Live is billed as ‘an all-ages celebration of Nintendo fun’. An in-person event, it debuted in Kyoto, Japan in 2018, with the 2023 edition being the first Nintendo Live event in North America. Across a large-scale themed area, guests were invited to play Nintendo Switch games together at the Variety Stage and Experience Zones, watch NintendoVS championship tournaments, and enjoy live entertainment on the Live Performance Stage, equipped with a Holoplot X1 sound system operated by Creative Technology US. The challenge was to provide
USA - Grammy winning American rapper LL Cool J has been rocking cities across the US over the summer with a star-studded celebration of hip-hop formed as The F.O.R.C.E Tour - with pre-made and live visuals fired by a team of tvONE's Green Hippo Hippotizers. With a line-up of special guests including DJ Jazzy Jeff, The Roots, and Ice-T, the tour was LL Cool J’s first headliner live shows in three decades and, in the run up said he wanted to ensure “everything is done right”. VUE Show Design Group was brought into the LL Cool J Camp through production designer Gary Westcott, with a brief of programming visuals “from top to bottom”. “We were tasked with re-creating the show visuals to elevate what existed before,” says VUE Show Design Group’s design associate/screens producer, Bransen Black. “This show wasn’t like your typical concert tour - it
USA - Rock band Paramore are engaged in a world tour supporting their sixth studio album, This is Why, which was released in February. The live show features an eye-catching and interesting stage and lighting production design crafted by Sooner Routhier of Sooner Rae Creative and Trevor Ahlstrand of Ahlstrand Productions. The lighting rig includes 67 Robe Esprite moving lights, three Robe BMFL FollowSpots and six BMFL FollowSpot LTs working on a three-way RoboSpot system, plus six iFortes. Approached in the fall of 2022 by tour manager Andrew Weiss, it is Sooner’s first work with the band. Trevor and Sooner were keen to collaborate on a project for some time, and for this one, all the stars aligned for it to happen. They also worked closely with creative director and video content designer Mike Kluge of Cour Content. Mike’s history with Paramore dates
UK - A spectacular eco and pet-friendly alternative to fireworks will set the skies ablaze above London’s Hammersmith and Fulham with a new show marking this Guy Fawkes season. The 12 innovative Lights and Laser Spectacular shows at Ravenscourt and Bishops Parks are being staged over two nights during the Fawkes Festival, run in partnership with the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. Designed and produced by the team at GC Live and delivered by technical partners, 21CC Group, the festival promises an action-packed, environmentally, and animal-friendly evening. Themed around A Night at the Movies, the shows feature an immersive light and laser display with sky trackers, flames and special effects all choreographed to a soundtrack of light and laser-themed film scores and classic movie music. The displays have been created by award-winning light
Singapore - Thousands of children of all ages are visiting Universal Studios’ Pantages Theatre in Singapore to see Trolls: Hug Time Jubilee which debuted on 15 September. Inspired by the Trolls film series, the new live theatrical productions features Queen Poppy, Branch, Guy Diamond, Cloud Guy and all the other refreshingly original characters that have made Trolls movies a favourite of parents and children across the world. Helping the Trolls cast of characters come to life at Pantages is a dynamic and richly texture colourful lighting design by Nick Ho that features 44 Chauvet Professional fixtures, including 32 Rogue R3X Washes. Working with programmer Justin Poh, Ho deftly uses intense, focused light to enhance the vivid quality of the cast members (all of whom are dressed in character costumes), as well as the inflatable timecode-triggered flowers
Spain - Created back in 2011, the Coca-Cola Music Experience (CCME) set out to become the first Gen-Z focused music festival, creating a strong link between the brand and teens through their passion for music. Twelve years later, it has fulfilled that aim, as the recent two-day festival, which was held at the Caja Mágica (Magic Box) in Madrid, proved. Taking place in front of 23,000 people, it was accompanied by a simultaneous live stream. Situated in the Manzanares Linear Park, the multi-functional space was designed to embrace all the scenic, technical and artistic elements expected of a TV gala and a music festival. Entrusted with the lighting design was the in-demand, locally based LD and programmer, CaCo García, who has wide experience in lighting large-format one-off events such as this. He selected a vast armoury of more than 300 GLP fixtures, which were
Belgium - Popular trance festival Sunrise celebrated its 10th anniversary in style with more stages, artists, and production values at its waterside site of De Lilse Bergen near Lille. Upping the ante on lighting was a brief that lighting designers Kristof Blancquaert and Mattijs van Looy Kristof of design studio KB Lighting were happy to deliver - lighting all six stages with the help of some Robe moving lights. As a freelance LD, Kristof has been involved with lighting Sunrise for some time. He designed a high impact rig for this year’s Main stage which included 14 x Robe MegaPointes, 18 x Spiider LED wash beams, six T1 Profiles, 20 x T2 Profiles, 10 x Tetra2 moving LED battens together with blinders, strobes, and deco lights. Eye-catching décor was designed by Roxxi, and the main stage video elements were also integrated with the scenography. Kristof’s o
UK - Following a successful stint in North America, the Australian Pink Floyd Show (TAPFS) tribute band has returned to the UK for its #DarkSide50 Tour 2023. This celebrates 50 years since Pink Floyd’s original Dark Side Of The Moon tour. Significantly, the tour will also marry Martin Audio’s latest Wavefront Precision line array technology, as fielded by 22live - who handle all audio production for TAPFS -and the original rig conceived by Martin Audio founder, Dave Martin and Bill Kelsey for that 1973 tour. The idea of recreating this for the cover band came from Chris Hewitt (of CH Vintage) who floated the idea back in April. Hewitt is known for having salvaged and curated much of the equipment that toured concert halls and festivals in the 1960s and 70s, and selected items from his emporium can frequently be seen on show, lovingly restored, a
Japan - Nikon Creates Studio, a new subsidiary of Nikon Corporation, has recently unveiled its new Heiwajima Stage, a multifunctional shooting facility created with the support of Global Vision Multimedia (GVM). Located at Nikon Creates’ imaging complex in Tokyo, Japan, the stage features the latest technology, including volumetric video recording systems and a large LED volume for virtual production (VP) setups, driven by Brompton Technology LED processing. The studio's close proximity to Haneda Airport makes it easily accessible for domestic and international clients. It also allows for easy transportation of equipment, such as lighting and special machinery, enabling efficient shooting for productions of various sizes, including music videos, commercial films, movies, TV dramas, corporate video packages, and video distribution services. Its impressive LED setup co
USA - The Treetop Trail is reimagining what it means to visit the Minnesota Zoo. As the longest elevated pedestrian loop in the world, the 1.25-mile Treetop Trail brings guests up to 32ft into the canopy, offering a breathtaking birds-eye view of the zoo and animals below. In addition to creating a sense of awe and wonder, it connects guests with nature and inspires action to save wildlife in Minnesota and around the world. The zoo has already named the new ambassador to the trail's habitat: a North American porcupine named Quillber. There are several ‘lookouts’ along the trail, which serve as areas of interest in which zoo docents inform visitors about the area they're in or animals they can see. These lookouts will also be used for small-scale musical performances through the zoo’s planned Music in the Trees program. Featuring a rotation of different musicians and st