Italy - The Rossini Opera Festival (ROF) is an international music festival held in August of each year in Pesaro, the birthplace of the opera composer Gioachino Rossini. The festival and its technical team have always paid close attention to technical innovation, often leading new trends in the field of operatic lighting.
“Here we’ve experienced the whole journey of theatrical lighting, starting 40 years ago with analogue systems, incandescent or discharge sources. Then there was the transition to digital, the advent of the scroller, the first scanners, the yoke, the moving head and now we have LEDs used to their full capabilities,” says Fabio Rossi, head of the festival’s lighting department.
For an event like the Rossini Festival, where almost all the shows are like intricate works of art, the technical equipment used is of utmost importance. “The products

Japan - As one of Japan’s host venues for the Rugby World Cup, the Toyota Stadium in Toyota City, is gaining a high international profile for its newly-installed Nexo Geo S12-ST line array sound system.
With a capacity of around 44,400, the Toyota Stadium in Aichi Prefecture is one of the largest football stadiums in Japan, and is also used for rugby. A major upgrade of its sound system was undertaken in preparation for the 2019 World Cup, equipping it with a world-class installation of Nexo loudspeakers and amplifiers, and Yamaha electronics. M&H Laboratory undertook design and sound consulting for the project, working closely with Yamaha Sound Systems (YSS) and the Nexo engineering support team.
The loudspeakers in the new system, primarily featuring Nexo’s high-spec Geo S12-ST line array modules, are discreetly installed amongst the steel beams of the stadiu

South Africa - Unlimited Events Group has purchased 16 Astera Titan Tubes through DWR Distribution with plans to double up in the future. They also invested in two ART7 AsteraBox CRMX, the interface between lights and controller.
“I had been looking for a product like this for several years,” says Marius van Rooyen from Unlimited Events, head of technical for one of the largest décor providers in South Africa. “The cabling and processing of some of the other systems I had seen made them complex, high risk for technical failure and time consuming to install.”
The Titan Tubes have already been incorporated into a range of events, from exhibition spaces where they were used at AutoMechanika Johannesburg held at Nasrec, to the Midstream Spring Fest, an outdoors event. The units were utilised at the TrendVision Awards hosted at Emperors Palace and the Afri Group Aw

Canada - Punjabi music star Gurdas Maan is guided by a simple theory when pursuing his art. People, he says, listen to songs “from their hearts, not just their ears”. Appreciating this, he makes it his mission to touch the emotional core of his audience, leaving them feeling better about their lives and the world around them.
This spirit was evident as soon as Maan took the stage at The Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on 22 September with his trademark tambourine in hand, and dressed in traditional Indian costume. His audience erupted with an outpouring of affection, and he proceeded to treat them to stirring performances of his classic songs like Sajna Ve Sajna and Heer while also weaving in inspirational stories and sharing heartfelt emotions.
Underscoring the deeply moving tone of the evening was an immersive Roosevelt Dsouza lightshow that fe

USA Rock back Halestorm are out on the road with a lighting system supplied by Bandit Lites, blasting audiences with both lead singer Lzzy Hale’s powerful vocals and a deluge of light that matches the ferocity and energy that the Grammy-award winning band is known for. The tour recently wrapped a co-headling tour with Alice Cooper and is now out with Godsmack on a fall run.
“As the co-headliner, we had access to the whole air package, however Alice Cooper had a large set piece that needed to be covered,” said lighting designer Craig Richter. “We had to trim the blackout truss low enough so that I could shoot over it with the US lighting truss, but high enough to not give away the Cooper set.”
To that end, Richter crafted a design with an old-school, massive wall of light behind the band. Using custom-built set carts made by Gallagher Staging on a mast in a

UK - The University of Northampton has deployed a network of interconnected Harman Professional AV solutions to facilitate a cutting-edge collaborative learning environment at their new Waterside campus.
The university leadership decided to build a new, centralised campus in Northampton’s Waterside district. The project allowed the school to completely rethink how to best serve their students, resulting in a radically different approach that eschewed traditional lecture halls in favour of flexible, collaborative learning spaces.
In order to achieve these goals, AV distributer Midwich supplied the university with a range of AMX, JBL, Crown, BSS and AKG solutions to accommodate the complex technical demands of the ultra-modern campus. The comprehensive Harman solution was designed and deployed by Kinly, a service-led integrator specializing in the design, implementatio

Italy - RTS is well established as a go-to intercom choice for sports broadcasters all over the world. RTS equipment continues to be standard issue in OB trucks covering international competitions at every level.
A recent example is Global Production’s OB coverage of the European Under-21 football championships in Italy. The Turin-based company deployed its OB-8 truck to cover the tournament - the largest and most recently-equipped member of its fleet. In addition to this, OB-8 is also Global Production’s first truck to feature RTS intercoms.
“We have two other vehicles that use different systems,” recalls Luca Manfredi, OB manager at Global Production. “But when we came to making the technical choices for OB-8, we could see that the RTS system was superior.”
As a result of this decision, the large and modern production environment of OB-8 features an

USA - Lighting director Tellson James is using a High End Systems Hog 4 lighting console to drive Mark Knopfler’s Down The Road Wherever Tour 2019. The 10 band members backing the former Dire Straits front man collectively play 49 instruments - from guitars and whistles, to saxophones and fiddles.
“I’m doing lots of pixel mapping of the eye candy in this show,” James notes, “and the Hog 4 is great for that. It is so easy to do on a Hog.”
This is James’ second time as lighting director for Knopfler. Lighting designer Mark Henderson drew the lighting plots for the 2015 and 2019 tours, while James programmed both. The 2019 tour kicked off in April, and is more scaled down for the North American leg, which started 16 August.
“The Change Type cloning feature (for swapping fixtures) is a lifesaver when working club/theatre tours, where you are faced wit

Austria - For the fourth year in a row, Austrian multi-percussionist Martin Grubinger and his Percussive Planet Ensemble, supported by the St. Florianer Sängerknaben boys’ choir, performed outside Linz Cathedral during the annual classical concert series, Klassik am Dom.
Both outside and inside the cathedral, Grubinger, the professor of percussion at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and his ensemble delivered a combination of pop and classical music spanning the history of music. In addition to the audience on site, thousands of listeners followed the performance on TV, courtesy of a live broadcast by Austria’s public station ORF2. Lawo mc² mixing consoles were used for both the FOH mix and the audio mix for the telecast.
The 20 musicians of the Percussive Planet Ensemble - nine horns, bass, guitar, drums, keyboard, piano, five percussionists and Grubinger hi

USA - Stage rigging specialist TLS Productions Inc. (TLS) has supplied Stagemaker hoists and rigging expertise for two consecutive tours for contemporary Christian music artist Chris Tomlin.
The Hibino USA company is a distributor of R&M Materials Handling Inc.’s Stagemaker entertainment range of hoists and won two contracts to provide the rigging equipment and a traveling head rigger for the two-month-long Worship Night In America and Holy Roar tours. The 2018 tour included 24 shows, while this year’s circuit ended with an iconic 28th show, the Good Friday Concert, which took place at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. Jordan Yeo, production rigger / production manager at TLS, traveled with both tours.
TLS reported to two production managers and a tour manager over two years to deliver all of the lifting equipment, steel, shackles a

USA - Those fans lucky enough to see horror-punk pioneers Misfits on their sporadic 2019 US tour not only get to see a band that literally invented an entire genre in 1977 - they also get to check out a plethora of “rad tricks” from the lighting and video toolbox of lighting director and designer Jon Eddy, who is serving up his visual magic on an Avolites Arena console.
One of the stops on Misfits’ limited tour included headlining Psycho Las Vegas, a three-day music extravaganza held at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, that featured acts ranging from Electric Wizard and Opeth to The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, in addition to Lodi, New Jersey’s favourite punks. Eddy was the LD and designer for the entire festival, where he not only spec’d the rig and did the overall design but was the console jockey for all of the acts - more than 60 total - who were n

The Netherlands - The 2019 heatwave in northern Europe meant that swimming pools were in extra-high demand this summer. Fortunately for the residents of Purmerend, the Dutch town has one of the Netherlands’ largest swimming complexes - and a new Yamaha audio system to make the many activities it hosts even more enjoyable.
Owned by sports and leisure facility company Spurd, the Spurd-Leeghwaterbad complex has four pools in a 55,000m3 building, plus a large outdoor sunbathing area with two further pools. A 15m long by 1.5m high, 10cm thick glass wall in the side of the sports pool connects it with the foyer and reception area, creating a visual impact for swimmers as they arrive.
Based in nearby Edam, installation and rental company Boogy Brothers Showequipment is owned by brothers Johan and Ferdinand Boogaard. Having previously installed new audio systems at swimming pools i

USA - Season after season, through the ongoing upgrade and refinement of its installed live sound technologies, the 18,000-seat Hollywood Bowl has long ensured that concertgoers enjoy a premium experience at the historic outdoor venue. This year, with one eye on current production demands and another on the next step in the venue’s evolution, the Hollywood Bowl has installed a new pair of DiGiCo SD7 Quantum digital mixing consoles outfitted with 32-bit Ultimate “Stadius” Mic Pre-Amps.
“We aspire to do more object-based mixing, and to have the flexibility of many more inputs and many more outputs, distributing them as needed,” says Fred Vogler, principal sound designer and mixer for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which anchors the Hollywood Bowl’s summer season. “Looking at our options, we thought that taking the Quantum leap, so to speak, was the most

PhilippinesClaypaky fixtures have been working on an array of high-profile projects in Manila, Philippines. RSL (Rhythm Sound & Light Trading Corp.), which offers sound, lighting, video and rigging equipment to a wide range of entertainment and corporate clients, finds Claypaky lighting to be a popular choice among lighting designers.
“RSL owe its longevity in the business to the dedicated Men and Women working for the company and of course, the equipment we use,” says Neil B. Centeno, project manager of RSL. “With options increasing at a rapid pace, we have to adopt and be smart in our equipment choices. Equipment has to have class while being rugged, be refined while being tough, durable and most of all, be reasonably priced. Lopie Guzman, vice-president of RSL points out that most lighting designers go for C

UK - Cadac again provided the audio mixing capabilities for the IBC TV broadcast studio at this year’s convention. The CDC five with its compact form factor, courtesy of a single 23.5” touch screen and 16 fader operating surface, handled the audio duties for the studio.
“You get a lot of audio capability in a small space,” says Pete Craigie, sound supervisor for the channel. “Although IBC TV appears to be fairly straightforward technically, there are challenges with various record feeds going to different destinations and multiple monitoring stations to be set up. The flexible routing on the CDC five handled this well.”
The complete Cadac MegaCOMMS 96k / 24-bit audio mix setup comprised the 48 input / 24 assignable buss console, CDC I/O stagebox and CDC MC MADI bridge. “The use of the MADI bridge enabled quick, easy and stable connectivity to th

UK - White Light has recently supplied the lighting equipment for REDD, a new dance show at the Barbican Theatre.
Devised by the Olivier Award-winning hip-hop partnership Boy Blue, REDD is a piece of dance surrounding the five stages of grief. Told through the movements of nine dancers, it offers an introspective journey into loss and examines how we are affected by those irreversible moments in our lives. It features a lighting design by Charlie Morgan Jones.
Jones comments: “REDD is a beautiful show which takes its audience on an unforgettable emotional journey. In terms of lighting, it’s an interesting piece as there is no actual set! With that in mind, my main brief was to create the five distinct ‘worlds’ of grief - the solitude of depression, the featureless denial, the sharpness of anger, the bold bargaining and the bright

USA - JD Sound & Video has completed the design and installation of a new sound system for the 1,800-seat performing arts theatre at South Brunswick High School (SBHS) in Monmouth Junction.
Established in 1960, SBHS is the lone secondary school of the South Brunswick Public Schools, serving around 3,000 students in ninth through 12th grades.
Joe DiSabatino, president and lead design engineer of JD Sound & Video, explains: “Audio quality, coverage, reliability and value were all important for the performing arts theatre at SBHS so, based on previous experience we chose the Community IV6 Modular Vertical Array system. Being a passive system, it delivers a great combination of acoustic purity and long-term reliability and is easily configured for optimum coverage. Our design was verified by Hadi Sumoro of HX Audio Labs, who completed the EASE modellin

USA - Danley loudspeakers were recently installed at the Thomas Fieldhouse gym, the home of the Lock Haven Bald Eagles of Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania.
The university serves 4,600 students in the north-central region of the state and its Lock Haven Bald Eagles sports teams compete in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference’s Divisions I & II.
All Bald Eagle indoor sports are played at the Thomas Fieldhouse gym, its boomy acoustics putting a soggy blanket on the intelligibility of Bo Miller’s enthusiastic Lock Haven announcements. But this has now changed, thanks to the installation of Danley OS80 point-source loudspeakers and TH118 subwoofers, which deliver great phase-coherent intelligibility and tight pattern control.
“Admittedly, the poor intelligibility of my announcements was a big part of my desire to replace the nearly 25

USA - With its 400 lighting fixtures and video panels, the 103-universe main stage rig at this year’s Made in America festival packed an intense punch. That was very fitting, given that it was located at the foot of the “Rocky Steps” outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But like the famous underdog pugilist, the “Rocky Stage” rig drew its power from something other than size.
“This was our boldest rig yet, but ironically we used a little less gear overall this year than in the past,” says Patrick Dierson of The Activity, who oversaw production on this, and two of the festival’s other stages. “It’s never about the amount of gear you have, but what you do with it.”
What Dierson and his team “did” with their gear package, which included 68 Chauvet Professional COLORado Solo Batten fixtures supplied by 4Wall Entertainment, was creat

Vietnam - Ba Sao Investment Co., Ltd recently installed a Harman Professional Solutions networked audio, video, light and control solution at Van Lang University to deliver pristine sound and alluring lighting for performances, presentations and events.
Founded in 1995, Van Lang University is one of the first and most distinguished private universities in Vietnam. With three sprawling facilities across Ho Chi Minh City, Van Lang University offers an array of educational amenities, including an expansive technology center, a smart library and a world-class concert hall. In order to provide exceptional sound and lighting for events in the concert hall, Van Lang University hired Vietnam's premier AV distributor, Ba Sao Investment Co., Ltd to install an AV solution. After surveying the location, Ba Sao Investment assembled a comprehensive Harman Professional Solutions

India - Martin Audio has appointed Vardhaman Megatech Pvt. Ltd (VMT) as its exclusive distribution partner for India. The appointment was confirmed by David McKinney, managing director of Generation AV, who undertake Martin Audio sales strategy, account management and technical support duties in the Asia Pacific territory.
“VMT has a strength in all the vertical markets that Martin Audio is present in including both Touring and Installation,” he comments. “VMT are headquartered in Mumbai but have teams all across the country and are set up to ensure Martin Audio customers have quick support across all parts of India.
“Having a dedicated team will enable VMT to provide special support and attention to all Martin Audio customers in India. We are proud to be working with such an established distributor, with a rich history in professional audio.”
Martin

Chile - When Chile’s national police force, the Carabineros, needed a new intercom solution for the lecture theatre at its Santiago headquarters - one which would be unaffected by the building’s busy RF environment - the organisation turned to local AV integrator VGL.
The solution - a digital intercom system from Green-GO - would mark a technology milestone as the first IP-based intercom system to be installed in the country.
VGL had recently encountered Dutch manufacturer ELC Lighting and its Green-GO digital intercom system at the Prolight+Sound exhibition in Germany and thought it would provide the answer that the Carabineros were looking for.
“They needed an intercom system with a good quality of sound, which was easy to use and would be scalable in the time,” says VGL’s Daniel Vinagre. “They didn’t want matrix-based or RF technology, as they

Ibiza - Best known for his hit singles We Found Love, This Is What You Came For, Summer, and Feel So Close, Calvin Harris recently completed his six-week DJ residency at Ushuaia in Ibiza, flying out for each of his tour dates in-between. FOH engineer, Nathan Lettus, was brought on to the tour last minute, specifically requesting that an SSL console was used to support Harris mixing songs on the fly.
Having been with American rock band, Chicago, for 10 years, FOH engineer Nathan Lettus is very much used to working on rock and pop music. During that entire run with the band, he was happily using a console of his choosing, until he met up with a good friend - FOH engineer for The Killers, who was using SSL.
“I’d seen one of the SSL Live consoles before, but I hadn’t had a chance to play with it much; I ended up mixing most of the opening act

USA - When Juan Ocampo sets up a festival rig one of his primary goals is to make it versatile enough to accommodate the varying styles of different visiting LDs. True to this philosophy, he designed the rig at this year’s Winnetka Music Festival to be as flexible as possible, selecting Chauvet Professional Rogue R2 Wash and Strike 4 fixtures, in part because they can play so many different roles well.
However, shortly before the festival started Ocampo learned that most of the 28 bands performing at the event wouldn’t be traveling with LDs. Instead of relying on the rig to work with various individual styles, he and his team would have drawn on its versatility to create unique looks for the different acts themselves.
“Initially, the biggest challenge I had was to make sure that the lights were positioned and placed in a way that would make the visiting LDs hap

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