Japan - Formed in 2008, the three-piece Japanese rock band My Hair is Bad recently wrapped up the Ultimate Homerun Tour with final arena series concerts in the Osaka-Jo Hall and in a Tokyo arena. The tour, which began in the middle of 2022 as Japan’s pandemic restrictions on entertainment began to ease, culminated with these two arena concerts that featured a special immersive audio experience. The band’s sound engineer, Hironori Ochi had first learned of L-ISA technology from Masaaki Nagayasu, systems engineer at L-Acoustics certified rental agent Hibino Sound, who hosted Mr. Ochi to an L-ISA workshop in his personal studio. On discovering the capabilities of L-ISA, Mr. Ochi began working on the design of an L-ISA Hyperreal Sound system for the 10,000-capacity Osaka-Jo Hall arena concert. “I received L-ISA training with L-Acoustics in the spring of 2022. The im
UK - For the past 15 years, associate sound designer Hyder Khalil has been crafting the audio that brings the long-running London stage musical Wicked to life. Working alongside sound designer Tony Meola, Khalil abides by Meola’s philosophy when micing shows: whether you’re working with instruments or cast members, get the mic in the correct place without being intrusive, and then get the sound as perfect as possible. With these goals in mind, microphones designed to provide authentic audio were the obvious choice when upgrading the theatre’s sound system. DPA Microphones fits all of the sound needs for Wicked. After initially integrating the DPA 6061 Subminiature Lavalier Microphones, the theatre added the brand’s 2011 Twin Diaphragm Cardioid, 4055 Kick Drum and 4099 Instrument Mics to its lineup. “As a whole, DPA makes things easier,”
Italy - Vasco Rossi decided to delight his many fans again in 2023 with a short concert tour that criss-crossed Italy. As always, Giovanni Pinna was in charge of lighting, and made extensive use of Claypaky fixtures. “The set design changed radically this year," says Pinna. “We mainly used 70-by-26m stages based around a triangle: there were three triangles of automated battens of different dimensions around a large central triangular LED wall. Each batten was fitted with a modular rig complete with all the lights.” Pinna told us he deliberately chose to use only three kinds of moving light so that the stage was as uniform as possible. The ultimate goal was to achieve a high-impact, fully consistent visual result. Pinna used 148 Claypaky Hy B-EYE K25 units and 70 Claypaky Tambora Batten Squares as key lights, along with a few brand new Claypaky Skylos fixtures.
Europe - Touring in support of their ninth studio album, Will Of The People, Muse are back on the road with long time audio vendor, Skan PA Hire. Building on two decades of trust between the bespoke audio rental company and one of Britain’s most intriguing and progressive bands, the Will Of The People tour delivers with impact. The band have entrusted their nuanced repertoire to FOH Engineer Marc Carolan since 2001. “I’ve only missed one show since,” confirms Carolan. “It’s been incredibly satisfying working with them, and to hear their evolution; nothing has ever stagnated, and they consistently perform at the highest level. “As musicians, they are very good at expressing specifics, so working out the audio brief for the tour is always an efficient process.” Carolan, who is supported by FOH Tech Eddie O’Brien, has used Skan PA Hir
USA - June is Pride Month, a month honouring the 1969 Stonewall riots, but also a time to celebrate members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Pride Month brings parades, festivals, and more events. “We love seeing how designers put on productions to honour the month and community,” says software designer Vectorworks. One such creation is from Ami Hanna, a production designer, technical director, and LSO for Luma Box Designs. A stage designer for the Salt Lake City Pride event each year, Ami Hanna cites the community and her own sexuality as reasons why the event means so much to her. Hanna took over the Stageline production for Salt Lake City Pride in 2015. She inherited the job from a colleague, Nick ‘Murph’ Murphy, who went on to start Murphy's Production Services. Murph supplied Hanna with a detailed draft of the event’s Stageline 250 - a drawing he did in
Italy - With a wealth of platinum and gold records to his name, Italian singer-songwriter and ‘father of Italian blues’, Zucchero Fornaciari, affectionately known as Diavolo in Reggio Emilia, celebrates his 40-year career this year with his World Wild Tour 2023. The tour kicked off in New Zealand in April, before returning to Zucchero’s home- town of Reggio Emilia on 9-10 April where he played to capacity crowds at the RCF Arena, formerly known as Campovolo. With these two shows, Zucchero inaugurated the new-look Campovolo, which now has a 35,000-seat capacity, and a purpose-built 5% slope that ensures optimal views and acoustics across the whole site, making the RCF Arena the largest outdoor music venue in Europe. Zucchero’s lighting designer, Daniele De Santis, chose 60 Ayrton Cobras for the key feature of his lighting design for these two special show
Switzerland - Each spring, the Cully Jazz Festival immerses jazz fans in a blend of music and picturesque scenery in the heart of Switzerland’s wine country. The most important event in Swiss Romande's vibrant cultural calendar, the festival was born in 1995 from the passion and dreams of two Daniel Thentz and Emmanuel Gétaz. Since then, the festival has grown from a humble two-day event, to one of Switzerland's most influential jazz festivals spread across nine days. This year marks Cully Jazz Festival’s 40th anniversary, and the event now includes the entire village in its festival atmosphere. Year after year, the festival's demanding yet accessible programme attracts more than 70,000 festival goers. The festival line-up features musical performances across various genres and over three stages, including new Chapiteau, an outdoor stage, designed to elevate the live pe
Germany - Prolights illuminated the world's largest inclusive sporting event, the Special Olympics World Games Berlin 2023. The event was all about visibility, social participation, empowerment, and integration, as 7,000 athletes with intellectual and multiple disabilities stepped into the limelight to take part in 26 different sports. Under the artistic direction of Sven Sören Beyer, the collective phase7 performing arts was responsible for the creative concept of the opening ceremony, as well as its planning and implementation in collaboration with mediapool Veranstaltungsgesellschaft on behalf of the local organising committee. Technical services were provided by the POOLgroup and the lighting fixtures were provided by Lightpower, the Prolights distributor in the region. On behalf of phase7, Flo Erdmann (von | BERG) developed the lighting design for the impressive
USA - The US leg Tori Amos’ 2023 Ocean to Ocean tour kicked off in West Palm Beach, Florida in June with a fresh and varied setlist, ready to rouse fans across the States. The crew joining this year’s US leg are armed with an array of Green-GO Digital intercom products. At the heart of the setup is a Green-GO DanteX Interface, which is directly converting digital audio streams from Dante to Green-GO and vice-versa without loss of quality. “The Green-GO DanteX Interface was key to our system,” says Alex Penn, commercial director at UK-based 22Live, which supplied a complete audio system for the Ocean to Ocean tour in both Europe and the US. “The tour was already using an extensive Dante network that covered many jobs including the PA returns, and shared stage racks for both the FOH and monitor mixing consoles. “Utilising the DanteX Interf
Germany - On 18 May 2023, the sixth edition of the Tante Mia Tanzt Electro Festival took place in Vechta, Lower Saxony. Top DJs such as Netsky, Steve Aoki and W&W played on the 68m-wide and 14m-high stage in front of around 20,000 spectators. As in the previous year, Eventures was responsible for the technical event equipment of the open-air festival in 2023. Tante Mia also relies on continuity behind the lighting console: lighting designer Milan Spira previously used a lot of moving lights from Cameo for the 2022 edition, and this time opted for the Otos, Opus and Zenit series. For Milan Spira and his video partner Paris Yilmaz - who form the creative collective Clubkind Design - the challenge was to deal with the organiser's reduced budget: "We used fewer lights overall this year than in 2022 and also reduced the LED walls on stage. So the challenge was to make
USA - Tempest’s new Oasis projector enclosures recently debuted in an inspiring outdoor projection mapping experience at the National WWII Museum in the heat and high humidity of New Orleans. Expressions of America is an immersive night-time sound and light experience, transporting audiences to the 1940s through projection, special effects, songs and words of the everyday people serving the US during World War 2. Solomon Group carried out the install, which included a total of eight Panasonic projectors protected by Tempest Oasis enclosures. Medici Media (formerly known as Mousetrappe) were responsible for concept design and production. “The Museum constantly upgrades its campus to appeal to a new generation of learners and keep the story alive through new and inventive ways,” says Barry Mendelson, audio/visual programmer, Solomon Group. “We were tasked
UK - One of the UK’s longest-running leisure operators, Potters Resorts, has recently completed a multi-million pound refurbishment of the luxury Five Lakes resort in Essex, which they purchased in 2021. The improvements include a new leisure complex, upgrades to numerous existing facilities and the repurposing of a former sports hall into the Glade Theatre, a multi-functional performance space equipped with modern sound, lighting and video systems. Already an established DiGiCo user (the theatre at their original site in Hopton on Sea features an SD10), following consultation with Autograph Sound the company chose two DiGiCo consoles for the new facility, a Quantum 338 for FOH and a Quantum 225 for stage monitoring. Autograph subsequently supplied the two consoles plus two SD Racks fitted with the new 32-bit SD cards and an Optocore fibre network. The FOH con
UK - Gary Numan’s three-night, “one thousandth celebration show” residency at the Electric Ballroom featured an evocative David Howard lighting design that often split the stage into two sections. “The design took inspiration from the concept of us living with, or living against, machines,” said Howard, of David Howard Lighting Design. “A lot of Gary Numan’s tracks explore this theme, and much of our design inspiration comes from this aesthetic. Being able to split the stage in two creates an immediate visual juxtaposition. So, for example, we did things like divide the stage between a Cadbury purple with an electric green and had a constant bass note of low-level fizzling strobe to mimic machine workings.” Balancing this duality on stage was a distinctive triangular-shaped video wall made with Chauvet Professional F4IP LED panels, which, like the rest
Europe - Muse are currently on tour, featuring songs from their album Will of the People. Matthew Bellamy (vocals, guitar), Christopher Wolstenholme (bass, vocals) and Dominic Howard (drums, percussion) have been playing arenas and stadiums throughout the US and Europe. As the band’s FOH engineer for over two decades, Marc Carolan is making sure the sound quality on stage exceeds every expectation. To that end, Carolan employs the Austrian Audio OD505 WL1 for vocals on the Will of the People Tour. The OD505 WL1 is a solution for those in the band who are mobile during their performance and depend on a wireless system. In many live situations, ambient sound is a big problem and mic’s supercardioid polar pattern smoothly rejects unwanted interference and focuses on the voice. Monitor engineer Matt Napier, part of Carolan’s team and on his first tour with the
USA - The Suzanne and Walter Scott Aquarium in Omaha Nebraska features a stunning environment and a spectacular after dark light show, controlled by ETC’s Mosaic system. The Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) added special citation for ‘playful use of integrated colour to its outdoor lighting award’. The playful element starts with the re-designed entry canopy that established the aquarium as the focal point of the Omaha Zoo. Blue stainless-steel panels with a rippled surface texture and a front canopy of perforated metal suggest a coral reef seen from underwater. The theme carries upwards to a roof decked with eight stainless-steel wave sculptures. The stainless steel oceanic-inspired structures reflect sunlight in daytime and become a pallet for dynamic lighting after hours. Lighting designers Steve Gollehon and Jeff Frank of Morrissey Engineering were part
UAE - Lighting designer Aaron Russ of ARLD turned to Elation Professional’s Proteus Excalibur and Proteus Maximus as the building blocks of a lighting design for the closing ceremony of the 2023 Dubai World Cup, a Thoroughbred horse race held at Meydan Racecourse each March and the world's richest horse race. The brief for the large-scale production called for something spectacular and different, a show that highlighted the horse race, its creators and Dubai as the host city. The creative team delivered a spectacle with pyro glider planes, drones, lighting, video and fireworks all working as one choreographed scene to the delight of onlookers both live and on television across the globe. Technology solutions provider Creative Technology Middle East (CTME) worked as a key supplier for the closing ceremony event, delivering a full turnkey solution of audio, video, li
Saudi Arabia - Since 2016 when the Saudi government opened the doors to public events, MDLBeast has been at the vanguard of nurturing local musical talent, hosting live and online events, producing artists on its MDLBeast Records label, and establishing XP Music Futures to accelerate the growth of MENA’s music industry. Since 2019, MDLBeast has also curated Soundstorm Festival, the Middle East region’s largest gathering of artists and fans with over 200 acts and three quarters of a million visitors over four days. For the most recent edition, the push to offer innovative experiences saw Soundstorm invite Polygon Live and their L-Acoustics L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal technology to create and curate a stage for VIP audiences. Polygon Live is a 360°, immersive sonic experience where speakers play spatialised sound synchronised with an immersive light installation, whi
UK - At Glastonbury 2023, one dozen Claypaky Skylos seachlights held their own against headlining acts on the Pyramid Stage, including the UK’s last live touring performance of Sir Elton John. Placed on the ground and producing super-concentrated beams of lights, the Skylos searchlights showed themselves to be extremely versatile fixtures that are more than simple searchlights, creating dense, solid beams of light and ever-greater light output. Terry Cook, partner and principal designer for Woodroffe Bassett Design, was committed as lighting designer for Guns N' Roses and Sir Elton John. He recalls seeing Skylos for the first time in Italy and recognising that “this was a fixture that would cut through the summer twilight sky at Glastonbury. We knew we wanted an ultra-bright, large beam fixture that would sit behind the iconic Pyramid stage creating fingers of light shi
UK - British loudspeaker manufacturer EM Acoustics returned to Glastonbury’s Acoustic Stage, following the success of last year's outing. Housed inside a large bright red tent, the Acoustic Stage is said to be a ‘festival within a festival’. Blues, folk, contemporary and country music are the order of the day. This year’s line-up included the Magic Numbers, Seth Lakeman, Badly Drawn Boy, Richard Thompson, Newton Faulkner, Paul Carrack, Steve Earle, and Rumer, among others. In conjunction with De Brabant Audio, EM supplied the full PA package for the Acoustic Stage. “We are thrilled to have returned to the Acoustic Stage for the 2023 festival,” says Mike Wheeler, operations director at EM Acoustics. “Returning to Glastonbury for a second year confirms our belief in the capabilities of the HALO-A system. The feedback we’ve received has yet again been univ
UK - Facing their third year of providing technical services for Access The Festival (ATF), the three-day EDM dance party in Warwick’s Sherbourne Park, events specialist Sound Access turned for the first time to Martin Audio’s Wavefront Precision (WPS) for the sound reinforcement. The festival, organised by DJs Will Darley and Alex Neidhardt, continues to evolve its concept (this year adding a third day). But mindful that with three stages in close proximity, and a lot of low-frequency energy to contain, Sound Access owner Joe Baker’s rationale was simple. “The organisers wanted to upgrade the audio this year because we all felt that the listening experience was the most important.” In order to mitigate sound spillage, tight control was required. “Last year, noise rejection out the back was quite bad with the system we used,” acknowledged Baker. But there
China - Hosted by the Entertainment Times and co-organised by the Longjoin Group - who are also the creators of the event - the Rave Jam Music Carnival is a massive outdoor music festival that combines a spread of electro, rap and pop music to appeal to a wide audience. The first edition took place in Linjiang’s Cherry Blossom Park over the May Day holiday weekend and welcomed nearly 24,000 festival-goers over the course of the two days. To cover such a vast area, the Longjoin Group provided a front-to-back KV2 Audio system based on the flagship VHD5 Constant Power Point Source system supplemented by smaller VHD systems for side-fill and front-fill, plus a full complement of ESSeries DJ monitors and ESM stage monitors. The festival boasted a line-up of Chinese and Asian artists including Aryue Zheng Yue, one of the world’s top 100 DJs in 2022, DJ KAKA-the first Ch
Romania - The Bucharest Opera recently staged The Phantom of the Opera, Broadway’s longest-running musical, with a wide array of Claypaky fixtures illuminating the action. The production at the Bucharest National Opera House ran from 31 March to 14 May, with the first performances selling out hours after tickets went on sale. The show’s staff worked with teams from Broadway and London’s West End to ensure a high artistic level was achieved. Lighting designer Bogumił Palewicz selected the Claypaky fixtures, which were supplied by Bucharest’s Marbo Trade, Claypaky’s distributor in Romania. The package consisted of 33 Scenius Profiles, 20 HY B-EYE K15 and three HY B-EYE K25 moving head washes, four Arolla Profile HPs and four Sharpy X Frame compact hybrid fixtures. “Claypaky represents good quality and innovative solutions,” says Palewicz. “T
UK - Several years in the making, Harmony of The Worlds, composed by Satya Hinduja, began as a visionary notion of spatialising and immersing sound all around an audience. What started with an orchestra of eight and just four singers, quickly tripled and grew again, artistically combining the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a choir, and hundreds of pre-recorded sounds to totally immerse its audience in 360 degrees of musical wellness. The DiGiCo Quantum 7 was the only digital mixing console on the market with the flexibility and technical capabilities to handle such a project, and controlled by sound engineer, Mark Rogers, it delivered. Harmony of The Worlds, conducted by David Murphy, was a free concert held at St Mary’s Church, Luton, created and composed by Satya Hinduja to explore the connection between music and human wellness. The arrangement of H
UK - They might not have been as common as flags at Glastonbury, but Chauvet Professional fixtures were widely deployed at Worthy Farm. The company’s products were used to add extra colour and excitement to 17 of the festival’s stages. Included in the group were main attractions like the Pyramid, Greenpeace, Flying Bus and new Levels stages, as well as more specialised attractions like the Avalon Stage, nightclub-like Salon Carousel, The Hive Stage, Outside Circus Stage, and the San Remo Stage. At the Pyramid Stage, John Luke Roles used 30 of the Color Strike M motorised strobe/blinders, supplied by Solotech, UK Group, in his floor package for Lizzo’s performance. A collection of 14 Color Strike Ms lined the base of the central stage riser, which had a sliding backdrop that the Detroit singer exited the stage through, while 16 other units lined stage left and r
