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11 February 2025

USA - Billed as an 'evening of music and solidarity', the FireAid Benefit Concert – hosted by the Intuit Dome and Kia Forum on 30 January – saw 35 artists perform in a live broadcast that helped to raise millions for wildfire recovery efforts.

Organised by the Annenberg Foundation, as the event began, $2m dollars were raised thanks to a $1m donation from Irish rock band U2 matched in contribution by Clippers Organisation and Intuit Dome ownership Steve and Connie Ballmer. At the time of press, an estimated $100m has been raised, with funds allocated to the rebuilding of LA communities and wildfire prevention methods.

Clair Global’s team was led by Meegan Holmes, general manager of Clair’s Sun Valley, CA location. Clair, together with group brands Eighth Day Sound and Sound Image supported client rehearsals for Billie Eilish, Jelly Ro

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11 February 2025

UK - Oliver! has made a triumphant return to the West End at the Gielgud Theatre. With Simon Lipkin as Fagin, Shanay Holmes as Nancy, and Aaron Sidwell as Bill Sikes, this latest revival brings Charles Dickens’ tale of young Oliver Twist to life once more.

Cameron Mackintosh’s new production, directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne, with co-direction by Jean-Pierre van der Spuy, showcases a lighting design by multi-award-winning Paule Constable and Ben Jacobs. To realise their creative vision, they turned to White Light – a d&b solutions company – to supply the show’s lighting rig.

Since its original West End premiere in 1960, Oliver! has seen numerous revivals, yet each iteration brings a fresh perspective. Paule Constable, having previously lit the 2009 Theatre Royal Drury Lane production, relished the opportuni

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11 February 2025

UK - IPS (Impact Production Services), supplier of staging and structures, technical production, and equipment hire to the events industry, is proud to announce a major milestone in its growth and development: the opening of a new, state-of-the-art, purpose-built warehouse in Milton Keynes this April. This expansion represents a pivotal chapter for IPS as the company continues to build on its steady growth since the pandemic, strengthening its capacity to deliver efficient, sustainable, and innovative services to clients.

Since its inception, IPS has experienced remarkable growth, doubling in size with each move to larger facilities. This latest expansion, located just a mile from the current site, is no exception. The impressive 6.5-acre site features newly constructed buildings purposefully designed to meet modern standards, with significantly upgraded inf

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11 February 2025

Germany - Stars of German stage, screen and music walked the red carpet at Leipzig’s Messe Halle 1 for the Golden Henne awards ceremony, with tvONE's Green Hippo brand of Hippotizer media servers on video duty.

Some of Germany’s biggest stars performed at the gala, on a stage backed by a 32m LED screen and a LED floor, which dominated the proceedings. Producer MDR Fernsehen (Television) worked with content design agency Lupixx to create individual content for 15 acts, with a brief to showcase the country’s best entertainers with glamour and an upbeat, celebratory vibe.

Media technology solutions company ICT supplied two Hippotizer Tierra+ MK2 and three Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Media Servers to power Lupixx’s creative ideas.

“We created mood boards and discussed ideas with the producers and the director of the show and brought them to

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11 February 2025

Japan - Creative studio FragmentNine (F9), led by Jeremy Lechterman, was asked by creative director/production designer Jason Ardizzone-West of JAW Studio to collaborate on the lighting elements of an impressive production design for J-pop singer/songwriter Hikaru Utada’s 2024 tour. The artist returned to live performance after a six-year hiatus for an extensive tour of Japan and Asia, supporting a new album project, Science Fiction.

The lighting design included large amounts of Robe fixtures including 81 x Esprites, 72 x MegaPointes, 26 x TetraXs and three Robe BMFL Wash Beam EVs running on a three-way RoboSpot system, all supplied in Japan by lighting vendor Kyoritz.

Jason’s initial discussions with the artist started a year prior to the tour. "We talked about wormholes, portals, Kubrick's monoliths, Emma McEvoy's sand dune photographs

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11 February 2025

Brazil - Inaugurated on 28 November, 2024, during the 200th anniversary celebrations of the city of Franca in Brazil, the latest Sesc unit opened its doors with over 100 free activities for people of all ages. Covering an area of 35,555 sq.m, Sesc Franca is the largest facility of its type in São Paulo’s interior, and as such is one of the most important in the country, supporting social, cultural and educational projects.

The supply and installation of the sound systems for both the theatre and gymnasium were entrusted to Gobos do Brasil, a company with 24 years of experience in the professional audio and lighting market. For this project, they chose premium equipment from Martin Audio.

With a capacity of 370 seats, the Sesc Franca theatre features one of the largest stages of all the Sesc units in the state of São Paulo. The venue itself offers

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10 February 2025

USA - The official announcement for Apocalyptica’s just launched North American tour refers to them as ‘cello rockers’.

The three classically trained musicians from Helsinki's prestigious Sibelius Academy fuse two different worlds, playing metal rock (often covers of Metallica hits) on their cellos with ‘an unbridled ferocity that ranks with the best bone crushing bands of the genre’.

Among Apocalyptica's admirers is renowned lighting designer Mikki Kunttu, who has worked with them on a few occasions since 2007. "I love the band, and it is always so great to work with them," said Kunttu. "I have the highest appreciation for what they do – and for who they are."

Kunttu is showing this appreciation in stunning fashion with his lighting design for Apocalyptica's current APMB4C Vol 2. tour, which began its 24-city North American leg 6

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10 February 2025

Puerto Rico - An Audient ASP8024-HE console has recently been installed at the Universidad Profesional Dr. Carlos J. Borrero Ríos (UP University) in Puerto Rico in the new, on-site recording lab. Designed to be centred around an analogue recording console, the studio comprises a control room, live room and isolation booth.

Taking advantage of Audient’s modular console design, UP University was able to specify a console which aligned perfectly with their needs: a 36-channel console with dual layer control and patchbay.

Armando Sepulveda, an audio engineer professor at the university, outlines the decision: “The Audient console is a great fit for us here at UP University since it gives us the flexibility and capability to run big live sessions and mix in the console. It's also a great tool for teaching how to run a recording studio in the hybrid s

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07 February 2025

South Africa - Truth Nightclub in Midrand Johannesburg, recently celebrated its official reopening with a new lighting setup from Elation. The Production Warehouse, Elation’s exclusive partner in South Africa, collaborated closely with the venue to select the equipment for the upgrade.

The installation was completed under a tight schedule, just in time for the pre-launch of the revamped The Terrace dance floor. The new lighting rig was crucial for the club’s 25 Years of Truth anniversary event featuring Township Rebellion on 30 November and the New Year's Eve 2025 celebration with Pleasurekraft.

Truth, known as the Home of the Underground, is a regional landmark and one of South Africa’s best-known nightclubs. With five dance floors, it has hosted artists like Paul Van Dyk and Richie Hawtin, among many others.

The Terr

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07 February 2025

Singapore - Claypaky Sharpy X Frame hybrid luminaires illuminated the inaugural 2024 World Taekwondo Virtual Championships in Singapore where more than 120 athletes from 23 countries participated in the first-ever event of its kind.  

The competition took place at the Singapore Sports Hub OCBC Arena. The event marked the return of the sport to Singapore after the city successfully hosted the first Olympic Esports Week in June 2023, where Virtual Taekwondo made its debut.  Virtual Taekwondo uses a motion tracking system and virtual reality headset in matches of non-contact sparring.

Lighting designer Michael Chan of Singapore-based Lighting Insomnia selected 36 Sharpy X Frames for the landmark event. Chan has worked on a wide range of arts, entertainment and installation projects. His experience ranges from consulting on installations and major even

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07 February 2025

USA - When Sunset Blvd. made its return to Broadway, sound designer Adam Fisher turned to Masque Sound to bring director Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical to life at the St. James Theatre.

Fisher’s collaboration with Masque Sound was his first with the rental house and his first as a lead designer on Broadway. “I had never worked with Masque Sound before, but my associate sound designer Josh Hummel and production sound engineer Mike Wojchik have a good relationship with Scott Kalata at Masque Sound, which ultimately convinced me to work with them.

“I had many excellent conversations with Scott and the level of support and innovation Masque Sound brought to the table exceeded all expectations. I was also very impressed with how the company handled the complex and unique outside RF requirements that were required

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07 February 2025

USA - Allman Betts Family Revival wrapped a 19-stop USA tour at the San Francisco Fillmore on 21 December. What has become an annual tradition to celebrate the music of the Allman Brothers Band is led by Devon Allman and Duane Betts, sons of original members Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts.

The touring show relied on Meyer Sound MJF‑208 stage monitors that went on the road to stops at legendary venues around the country. Devon once again specified the Meyer Sound wedges for the tour. “Absolute best in the biz,” he said about the Meyer Sound touring wedges after wrapping in San Francisco.

The Fillmore features a house system anchored by Panther large-format linear line array loudspeakers and 2100‑LFC low-frequency control elements.

Nathan Gilberg, FOH engineer and production manager on the tour, comments, “We’ve been using M

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06 February 2025

Austria - Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Medieval morality play Jedermann has become a classic centrepiece of the world-renowned Salzburg Festival. First performed in 1920 – directed by Max Reinhardt – when the festival was inaugurated, it has been staged most years since then in the city’s magnificent Domplatz (Cathedral Square).

2024 saw the staging of a new, fresh, contemporary, and acclaimed version created by Canadian director Robert Carsen, who was also the scenographer, and costume designer Luis Carvalho. Lighting was designed by Carsen and Giuseppe di Iorio, with the latter specifying Robe iForte LTXs to deal with all the essential key lighting needed to bring the work alive and disrupt preconceptions about how the play can be presented.

Jedermann was performed nightly throughout the five-week 2024 event, either in Cathedr

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06 February 2025

USA - Country Music Hall of Fame member and 15-time Grammy winner Ricky Skaggs spent December sharing the gift of bluegrass on the Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder Christmas holiday show. Bandit Lites provided the lighting for the acoustic style concert that included classic songs as well as original hits.

Bandit Lites lighting designer and project manager Craig Richter designed the system to wrap around the stage, laying it in an arch and stringing festoon fixtures between the pipe and base fixtures. 
“I chose to go with fixtures that would not blind the audience and would give a nice look onstage even when they are not on, and the Portman P2 EVO was the perfect fixture for that,” said Richter. “I added Robe Halos to help compliment the P2 EVO’s as well as give the lighting director a fun fixture to do some pixel effects with.”

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06 February 2025

UK - London’s University of Greenwich has unveiled its Shared Hub for Immersive Future Technologies (SHIFT), a £1m facility dedicated to advancing multichannel sound composition, immersive audio and visual performance. Central to SHIFT’s success is Genelec monitoring, which provides the spatial precision needed for innovative sound production.

At the heart of the new Immersive Sound Lab, located in the King William Building of the Old Royal Naval College, is a 32.4 spherical array of Genelec Smart Active Monitors comprising 32 8331 three-way monitors and 4 7350 subwoofers. Calibrated using GLM software, the system supports high-resolution ambisonic recordings and formats including Atmos, DTS:X and Auro 3D – pushing creative boundaries in sound composition.

“There was only ever one choice for our new Immersive Lab,” says Andrew Knight-Hill,

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05 February 2025

UK - A team of engineers from audio specialist tube uk worked through freezing temperatures, icy winds and snow to deliver sound systems for the two key areas of Bradford’s spectacular UK City of Culture Opening Event, staged in City Park.

The show, RISE, was created by award-winning director Kirsty Housley and Bradford-born magician Steven Frayne (formerly known as Dynamo), with a cast of around 200 including poets, rappers, aerialists, dancers, an orchestra, community choirs and more. Attended by 20,000 spectators over two fully sold-out nights, it kicked off Bradford’s year as the UK’s Capital of Culture.

tube uk’s work was system designed, and project managed by Melvyn Coote. The Manchester-based company was working directly for Bradford 2025 under the direction of the production and technical management of Thomas Reilly and Jaco

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05 February 2025

Italy - Turin’s Kappa FuturFestival was billed as Italy's largest EDM event. It was staged at Parco Dora, an evocative urban park where metal pylons, rather than trees, mark many paths.

Rising out of the ruins of an abandoned Fiat and Michelin manufacturing complex, the 456,000sq.m park exudes a stark and hauntingly moving aura with concrete towers and 30m high metal beams dotting its grounds.

For the 85,000 or so who attended the music was performed by many of the world's leading EDM artists, including Tale of Us, Skrillex, Tiësto, and Carl Cox.

Accenting that music with a bold, futuristic lighting design that incorporated the architectural elements of Parco Dora, was Giovanni Ricciardi, who described the process this way: "This year, in addition to taking care of the lighting part of all the stages of the Kappa FuturFestival, I took care

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04 February 2025

Sweden - Launched in 2004 and part of a global franchise, Swedish Idol is one of the most popular shows on Swedish television. Broadcast live on channel TV4, it provides a platform on which hopeful Swedish singing stars can showcase their talents and compete to gain widespread recognition.

The latest series of live performances ran from 12 October to 7 December at the Filadelfia Convention Centre in central Stockholm, and was lit by lighting designer, Linus Pansell, who included Ayrton Kyalami, Rivale Profile and MagicBlade FX fixtures in his rig.

“The Kyalamis and MagicBlades were crucial for me to build the show,” says Pansell. “I’m usually quite negotiable to changing fixtures to fit the suppliers’ inventories, but this time I really wanted these specific fixtures. I could easily swap out other lights in the rig, but I was very

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04 February 2025

USA - A two-storey Levantine themed bar restaurant has been set up in Washington DC’s Union Market District by Michelin-starred restaurateur, Michael Rafidi.

On the ground floor is Yellow Café, the second location in an already successful bakery concept, and this has now been joined by the vibrant La’ Shukran restaurant. Both areas have been equipped from top to bottom, along with the outside rooftop patio and back stairs alley, linking the two venues, by the recently formed Beltway Audio Group. This is a merger between two young audio entrepreneurs, Doug Cyr of Precision Event Rentals, and his friend Brady Rall - both known in the region as engineers for large local sound systems, largely at raves and warehouse parties.

Rall was first introduced to Martin Audio over a decade ago at Washington DC’s once-beloved underground music venue, U Stree

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04 February 2025

UK - An Audient ORIA Immersive Audio Interface and Monitor Controller has been installed as the ‘go-to’ monitor controller and sound card in Challow Park Studios. One of the first facilities to take advantage of Oria’s ability to integrate with Dante technology, the Oxfordshire facility has used Oria for all its most recent projects across a range of genres.

“I find the sound quality astonishing on the analogue outputs,” confirms Will Biggs, the on-site producer and engineer, who has been overseeing their transition to immersive audio.

“We recently moved Oria into my main recording room so I can monitor in Dolby Atmos. We run a hybrid system, but all of our converters connect to Pro Tools via Dante,” he explains. Although they had been running Dolby Atmos in the studio for nearly two years, finding a suitable controller to run the speak

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03 February 2025

Kuwait - For the opening ceremony of the Arabian Gulf Cup in Kuwait in December, lighting and production designer Roland Greil deployed 173 Proteus Maximus LED wash/beam fixtures along with 49 Proteus Excalibur beam lights, both IP65-rated moving heads.

“When lighting a magnificent, 360-degree, theatrically produced stadium ceremony, where you’re dealing with throws of 50-100 meters or more, besides lighting the stage or field of play you also want to achieve some magic and theatrical spice, and what you need there is firepower,” says Greil.

Using 222 moving heads to light a major event stadium ceremony may sound like a substantial number, but compared to many similar opening ceremonies, the fixture counts for the Arabian Gulf Cup was more modest. For the Asian Cup opening ceremony in Qatar a year earlier for example, Greil had over three times

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03 February 2025

Mexico - Café Tacvba from Naucalpan de Juárez, have blended Mexican musical influences with mainstream rock sounds in their 35-year career. Inspired by the likes of The Smiths, The Cure, and Violent Femmes, they've added alt rock and psychedelic elements to their inimitable style. Later, the Grammy and Latin Grammy winners also invited hip-hop to their party.

"Their music is super eclectic, going from the simplest Mexican folk songs to the blistering electric punk & rock sounds they are accustomed to belting out night after night," observed Felix Peralta.  "They are one of the most amazing live bands I have ever seen - and I feel fortunate to have seen a lot of live bands throughout my 30-plus years in the industry. Most importantly, they’re some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet."

Peralta has been lighting Café Tacvba for about eight

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31 January 2025

Europe - Denmark-based entertainment automation specialist Motor Stage Automation (MSA) is supplying a full rigging, control and automation package for the current Les Misérables: The Arena Spectacular world tour, co-produced by Cameron Mackintosh Ltd (CML) and Nick Grace Management and performing in over 15 countries and regions worldwide.

Cameron Mackintosh’s production team led by technical director Chris Boone directly approached MSA wanting an ingenious touring solution and global technical support for the tour.

Nick Grace Management, who is responsible for contracting the touring personnel, asked Roger Smissen onboard as head of rigging and automation, with his company, Van Der Smissen Production, providing a touring crew team to work with the production’s rigging and automation requirements.

Smissen worked in conjunction

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31 January 2025

UK - The Royal Shakespeare Company, a major British theatre company in the UK, has selected ETC control and fixtures to upgrade its flagship Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST), including Apex 10 and Apex 5 consoles, Eos Apex Processor, Eos Programming Wings and more.

The theatre is a leader in creative technologies and digital development. The RSC recognised the urgent need to upgrade the lighting equipment to increase the theatre’s environmental sustainability and efficiency for the future. ETC dealer Stage Electrics supplied the new equipment to the venue. This upgrade has been made possible with the support of Arts Council England’s Capital Investment Programme.

Together, the teams at both the RSC and Stage Electrics identified the technical requirements and, following several conversations and hands-on time with Eos Apex, determined that it was