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31 July 2024

UK - An innovative event power solution was deployed by Energy Management Solutions to run the whole site from a large battery for the first time in the UK, reducing carbon emissions at Brighton’s series of On The Beach shows this month.

Sixty thousand people attended the concert series, featuring artists ranging from Bicep, Underworld, The Kooks, Sub-Focus, Carl Cox and The Libertines.

NW Live delivered the site planning and management and production, their project lead Joe Nichols, comments: “Having worked with Gerhard and James at Energy MS to introduce the solar panels for the production village last year, we were delighted to work with them again and be the first large event to run all of our site off a giant battery and be able to extend our carbon reduction protocols.”

Energy MS invested in a 275kVA battery with 500 kWh

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31 July 2024

UK - Opened in May 2024, Woodland Village is a new accommodation site at Legoland Windsor Resort. Offering a family stay in a woodland retreat, Woodland Village also encompasses an entertainment and hospitality space, The Clubhouse Restaurant and Bar, which required the integration of an immersive, zoned audio system to enhance the guest experience.

David Shepherd of DS Audio led the sound design on the project, having worked with Legoland Windsor Resort on previous areas within the park. Shepherd collaborated closely with the internal technical team and integrators, JPSL, to design and install a full EM Acoustics system that would provide immersive background audio and sound reinforcement for onstage performances. 

“The Clubhouse required highly intelligible, zoned audio and an entertainment system to support a small stage area that sits alongsid

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31 July 2024

UK - The stunning backdrop of the historic Ragley Hall in Warwickshire once again played host to the Adventure Bike Rider (ABR) Festival 2024, the UK’s biggest motorcycle festival returning to the estate for its fifth year.

Henley Theatre Services was commissioned by the festival organisers to provide all the stages, technical production support and onsite technical crew to operate the main Bikerhead Stage and five further stages located at various positions across the ABR Festival site. 

Adventure motorcycling enthusiasts from around the globe geared up for a celebration of freedom, exploration and community from 27-30 June 2024. Fifteen thousand bikers descended on the beautiful Ragley Hall estate over a sun-packed weekend, which provided the perfect location for guided test ride events with 29 leading motorcycle manufacturers.

The Milos

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31 July 2024

UK - This year, Stage Sound Services integrated Clear-Com advanced communication systems supplied by Amber Sound into two of the West End’s most high-profile shows. The technical capabilities of Clear-Com’s Arcadia system have been integral to the seamless execution of complex audio and communication requirements for Stranger Things at the Phoenix Theatre and MJ The Musical at the Prince Edward Theatre..

The critically acclaimed Stranger Things adaptation at the Phoenix Theatre has greatly benefited from Clear-Com’s communication solutions. Spearheaded by sound designer Paul Arditti, with associates Chris Reid and Rob Bettle, the production’s sound team deployed Arcadia.

Rob Bettle, leveraging his extensive experience with Clear-Com’s HelixNet Digital Network Partyline System and FreeSpeak II wireless systems, was

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31 July 2024

Saudi Arabia - On Saturday, 22 June, fans descended on the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh for the UFC Fight Night: Whittaker vs. Aliskerov. While Clair Global has previously provided audio services for UFC globally, this was the first partnership for live audiences in the Middle East.

The occasion was led by Phil Campbell and mixed by FOH Engineer Andy Banks, who opted for a Yamaha Rivage PM7 from Clair's ever-growing Middle East inventory.

To fully service UFC's live audio requirements, Clair Global regional manager, Stu Wright, oversaw the deployment of an in-the-round Cohesion PA. The system, which has been chosen for music tours by major artists including Bad Bunny, Blackpink, The Weeknd, U2 and many more, also delivers quality audio clarity for high end live sports performances.

Clair Global UAE COO, Al Woods, says: "The event is televised for

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31 July 2024

Spain - To celebrate their 25 years of musical success, the Spanish duo Estopa is embarking on a tour that is setting new benchmarks in every city they visit. Beyond their distinctive musical style and engaging stage presence, the tour's standout feature is its impressive stage design, which showcases an extraordinary lighting experience crafted by Juanjo Beloqui and supported by equipment from Fluge Audiovisuales and Stonex, the Spanish distributors of Claypaky.  Claypaky fixtures are playing a pivotal role in delivering this visual spectacle.

After a successful tour across the United States and Latin America, Estopa is now bringing their anniversary celebration to Spanish cities including Valencia, Sevilla, Madrid, and Bilbao. From the grandeur of Civitas Metropolitano to the Ciudad de las artes y las ciencias in Valencia, the tour is offering audiences a

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31 July 2024

Switzerland - Schwingen, known colloquially as trouser wrestling, is a martial art practised almost exclusively in Switzerland. An unofficial national sport, the annual NWS Championship is a celebration of this cultural tradition. Hosted in an open-air venue designed to accommodate thousands of enthusiasts, alongside plenty of wrestling, this year’s event also showcased an audio system installation from Wharfedale Pro.

In a collaboration between technical event specialists, Powerlight and Pixava, distributors Sacher Music and Wharfedale Pro's own application and solution manager, Alex Lane, the event was an action-packed day of Swiss traditions accompanied by clear, high-quality audio.

The venue, featuring four grandstands, can host up to 4,500 visitors with two grandstands seating approximately 1,050 visitors each, and the other two accommodating

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30 July 2024

France - Robe’s new iBOLT made its French debut in grand style at a recent Monumental event at the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Laon Aisne in the Hauts-de-France.

Monumental is an interactive music and visual live experience concept imagined and presented by DJ, music producer and live experience innovator Michael Canitrot.

He has styled a series of these bespoke performances which are staged in and around some of France’s most striking landmarks. Built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Laon Cathedral heritage site is one of the most important and stylistically unified examples of early French Gothic architecture.

The event’s lighting was designed by Mikael (Mika) Trochu who specified the six iBOLTS, rented from Dushow, which were positioned in an arc around the DJ booth, so they were right at the epicentre of th

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30 July 2024

UK - Celestial, the Somerset-based drone show artists, lit up the skies above The Secret Garden Party in Abbots Ripton, Cambridgeshire, on Saturday night as part of the That’s Show Business spectacle with its drone show, Creativity Unchained.

The show was ‘a collaborative effort with Secret Designs and was a powerful ode to the freedom of creative expression, urging a break from the impact of consumerism on artistic expression and calling for a return to the roots of pure, untainted creativity’.

The drone show used vivid imagery, such as skulls, dollar signs and a phoenix rising from the ashes to underscore its message that creativity should have no bounds, winning over the attention of the festival goers. The show, spanning 130m wide and 70m high, featured an impressive 504 choreographed drones.

Celestial were invited

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30 July 2024

UK - DiGiCo is known throughout the industry for its high levels of support and customer care. The ethos of understanding is not just reserved for customers, as James Thompson found out when he landed the role as mechanical designer at DiGiCo.

Thompson is autistic and for him that means being hyper focused and having acute attention to detail. Thompson had not often used DiGiCo consoles and, as a designer, on the job experience is essential. As a freelancer for T&B Events, Thompson has mixed on a variety of consoles, so when they suggested joining them over the summer and mixing on a DiGiCo Quantum 225, he jumped at the chance.

T&B Events are a production company on the UK’s South Coast specialising in live events and during the summer they are kept very busy with festivals. Owned by Ben Wood and Thomas Hands, the company has been facilitat

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30 July 2024

UK - SWG Events extended their long association with the Glastonbury Festival, again deploying Martin Audio systems in a number of feature areas.

According to head of audio, Simon Purse, they made significant changes to two stages: BBC Introducing and Woodsies, while also providing Martin Audio systems for The Park Stage and Leftfield.

BBC Introducing embraced Martin Audio for the first time, having traditionally had its sound delivered by another brand.

The move from its usual enclosed tent behind the Pyramid Stage to a more open, saddlespan structure required a fresh, upscaled approach to the PA, as it was able to attract a larger audience. “We were able to swap out the previous system for a ground-stacked [Martin Audio] WPS system - so it was quite a major upgrade. Having more PA meant we were able to deliver a superior sound,” stated

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29 July 2024

USA - Hootie & the Blowfish are currently on their 43-city Summer Camp With Trucks tour, taking fans on a musical journey through 29 years of Hootie & the Blowfish hits, sprinkled with covers of classics by the likes of R.E.M. and Led Zeppelin

Dates have included Michigan’s Pine Knob, where 14,000 fans packed the amphitheatre earlier this summer.

There is even a point in the show where the set takes on an outdoorsy appearance with frontman Darius Rucker and the band singing in front of a campfire. That flourish, like so many other visuals on this tour, is part of a lighting and production design by Kevin Northrup and Will Lowdermilk of Silver Bullets Design.

Drawing on the performance features of over 100 Chauvet Professional fixtures, supplied by Special Events Services, Northrup and Lowdermilk have created a multi-layered

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29 July 2024

USA - Located in the heart of Ocean Drive in Miami’s South Beach, the Palace Bar, renowned for its status within the LGBTQ+ community, has been serving up dining experiences for more than three decades. The venue recently went through a complete overhaul of its sound system, including 14 Powersoft amplifiers.

Since its first opening in 1988, the Palace Bar has built a nationwide reputation thanks to its exuberant drag brunches and live entertainment, with more than 1,500 guests visiting each weekend. With music serving as the lifeblood of the venue, the owner of Palace Bar, Tom Donall, was keen to improve the previous audio equipment with a sound system that would be capable of conveying the energy of the Palace Bar shows.

“Being one of the most well-known gay restaurant bars in the world and putting on a famous drag show, the sound and the clari

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29 July 2024

USA - Country music singer-songwriter Alexandra Kay is out on tour with a lighting system provided by Bandit Lites. With her 2023 release All I’ve Ever Known, Kay used her lyrics and powerful vocals to weave stories fans can relate to and identify with. In addition to the album debut at #1 on the iTunes Country Charts and #1 on the iTunes All Genre Chart, Kay is featured on Jelly Roll’s Leave the Light On single from the summer’s hottest blockbuster film, Twisters.

Lighting designer Corbin Alvae drew inspiration for the lighting from All I’ve Ever Known. “When I was working on this design, I had to go into her shoes and feel the emotions she was feeling. That’s when the concept came about: something hard hitting, but visually appealing that fit her style in a way that made her fans feel even more of the emotion

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29 July 2024

USA - Free Chapel Church, a contemporary Christian congregation based in Gainesville, Georgia, is redefining the worship experience with innovative audio solutions from EAW.

The flagship main campus in Gainesville boasts a comprehensive EAW setup, including Anya ADAPTive line arrays and EAW SB828P dual drive subwoofers, meticulously engineered to cater to the venue’s unique architectural nuances. Glenn Setchfield, the global audio director at Free Chapel Church, emphasised the importance of EAW’s ADAPTive technology in tailoring sound dispersion to optimise acoustics.

According to Setchfield, “Our main campus presents challenges due to its fan-shaped layout. The decision to implement EAW’s Anya line arrays was driven by the need for superior coverage and clarity. EAW’s ADAPTive technology empowers us to precisely direct sound, expanding hor

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26 July 2024

USA - Sonic Sphere is an ever-evolving concert hall for the 21st Century. Conceived in the tradition of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Kugelauditorium, a nearly spherical concert hall built for the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, Sonic Sphere is the Brainchild of Ed Cooke, a British cognitive science expert and entrepreneur, sound architect Merijn Royaards, and engineering director Nicholas Christie.

Since 2021, Cooke and his team have built Sonic Spheres in France, UK, Mexico, and the United States, including Burning Man. Each time, the hall has grown bigger; the sphere at The Shed in New York City is the eleventh and most advanced sphere, after iterations of increasing size and technical sophistication.

The result is the first Sonic Sphere to be suspended in air, costing more than $2m. The infrastructure includes 1,178 steel struts, 3,500 yard

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26 July 2024

South Africa - Designer Chris de Lancey from Immersive Show Technology was asked to create a stunning architectural lighting scheme for the Union Buildings in Pretoria, to help celebrate the recent South African presidential inauguration.

Chris chose to work with Robe Esprite moving lights and one of the new Robe iBOLTS, which were applied with great effect together with projection mapping of the South African flag onto the building.

Cyril Ramaphosa was inaugurated as South African president and leader of a national unity government made up of representatives from four major parties – the ANC (African National Congress), the DA (Democratic Alliance), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the Patriotic Alliance (PA).

The final inauguration events are organised on a tight timescale once the actual election results are confirmed and certified

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26 July 2024

France - A ‘secret’ event on the roof of the Terminal One Building, Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport on 17 July was planned as part of Olympic Celebrations and live streamed via Amazon Music’s Twitch channel to huge audiences. The entire proceedings, from set-up to pack-down, were also recorded for a feature film to be aired later in the year. Tristan Mazire captured the whole event live, whilst mixing for the live stream and the roof-top audience of 2,000.

The specially created audience areas were filled with a mixture of invited guests and lucky Parisians who had won the chance to be there on the night via an event ticket lottery. There were live performances from Phoenix, AIR and Zaho de Sagazan, plus DJ sets from Etienne de Crecy and Inès Mélia. The event highlighted the role of the airport as a gateway to the summer’s festivities.

Mazir

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26 July 2024

USA - Close collaboration between a lighting and video team is always essential. Anyone who’s been a part of an arena show where lights and screens flow seamlessly together can appreciate that. But the fine points of this relationship take on an extra level of urgency when the sun starts setting on an outdoor broadcast production.

This point was driven home to Emmy Award winning lighting designer/director Jon Kusner on 6 June, when he lit the grand reopening of the Michigan Central Station, a 90-plus minute event that started in the early evening, and featured stars like Eminem, Diana Ross, Jack White, Big Sean and Jelly Roll, as the sky darkened.

The tallest railway station in the world when it opened in 1914, the 230ft-high Beaux-Arts building was abandoned in the 1980s; its decaying façade quickly becoming emblematic of urban decay. Today, its

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26 July 2024

Germany - Bremen-based Folk band Versengold have recently enjoyed their biggest tour ever. With a string of sold-out performances ahead of them, they knew their current sound set up would need upgrading. A more transparent monitor mix solution was required to allow them to re-engage with their larger audiences, plus a mix that would offer space to hear the bigger crowds, but not allow them to over-power the acoustic instruments which are key to their six-piece ensemble.

KLANG was their solution and the man behind implementing it successfully was Tjado de Vries. Choosing KLANG:konductor meant the band could enjoy effectively spaced monitor mixes while still maintaining the clarity they need to communicate with each other as they perform.

Since 2018, Versengold have been on a steep trajectory, both in terms of venue size and recognition. Going from a s

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26 July 2024

UK - Plymouth Argyle FC recently hosted its first two-day concert weekend at its Home Park stadium. Run in conjunction with the local Depo nightclub, who also hosted the after parties, day one was EDM-oriented, and dubbed ALIVE at Argyle, followed by the more family-focused RELIVE at Argyle on the Sunday.

The two days were quite distinct in that while house music and drum and bass dominated the first day, with a Becky Hill DJ set, Bru-C, Ben Nicky and others, the following day saw heritage acts and radio DJ’s (including Gareth Gates, Five, Liberty X, Chris Moyles and Craig Charles).

Local production company, and Martin Audio partner, Nub Sound were brought in to provide technical infrastructure. Having worked with the promoters on various events at their nightclub, in addition to the PA, they also provided the stage structure and upstage video elem

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25 July 2024

UK - Following a near two-year break from touring, Elbow are taking their new album Audio Vertigo on the road with a Skan PA Hire audio package.

Operated by the band’s long-standing engineers, Danny Evans (FOH) and Julien Helme (monitors), the system features Avid VENUE S6L 24Cs at both ends, and a d&b audiotechnik GSL Series PA system design by Skan’s Scott Essen.

Tour and production manager, Tom Piper, comments: “We have a very long-standing relationship with Skan, who are the long term and very much preferred audio supplier for Elbow tours. They provide state-of-the-art systems and are super-efficient operationally, a pleasure to work with.”

Danny is both the band’s FOH and studio engineer. He comments: “There’s generally a lot more time pressure when working live. I don’t mix particularly loud, but I think tha

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25 July 2024

UK - Shangri-La - a festival within a festival that is entirely dedicated to creativity, arts, and underground and independent culture - has been a special area at Glastonbury for many years now. It is where the NowHere stage is located and where fans of electronic music feel like they’re in a club. For the lighting set-up, designer James R. Dickson from Elixir Lighting opted to use the Cameo OTOS H5 and ZENIT W600 SMD.

“The NowHere stage is very different from the festival’s other stages. Everything here revolves around electronic music and creativity,” acknowledges James R. Dickson, who – together with his company Elixir Lighting - is responsible for the lighting design, operation, and provision of lighting technology on the medium-sized stage. “Our job was to create a nightclub in the middle of a green field. To do this, we put the lights on t

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25 July 2024

USA - At its Spring 2024 opening, Flyover in Chicago became the newest of Flyover Attractions’ immersive indoor flying rides, joining existing installations in Las Vegas; Vancouver, Canada; and Reykjavik, Iceland.

Located within Chicago’s landmark waterfront Navy Pier, the multi-sensory experience, which incorporates leading drone technologies along with impressive aerial shots and first-person narratives, showcases the city from perspectives never seen before. Flyover’s signature Chicago journey is shown on an impressive 65ft spherical screen with flight motion seats engineered to swoop, dip and turn, giving guests the feeling of flight. The attraction transports 61 guests at a time, with complete sensory immersion using wind, mist and scents, as fliers hang suspended.

The ride employs a massive number of audio sources, which are controlled an