disguise has announced its expansion with new offices in Shanghai and Los Angeles, which comes at a time of exponential growth with new staff appointments, an expanding client portfolio and product innovation. disguise is the creator of collaborative 3D visualisation software and powerful hardware, used at the centre of live entertainment and experiences. With a focus on innovation and delivering the most powerful technologies, it works with some of the world’s most talented visual designers working in: concert touring such as U2, Rolling Stones, Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Ed Sheeran; Californian music and arts festival Coachella; several West End and…
Author: James Robertson
Capital Sound recently completed one of their more unusual mini-tours when they provided sound reinforcement, including Martin Audio’s MLA, for three shows by Japanese ‘android diva’ Hatsune Miku. The ‘Vocaloid’ music sensation uses a computer generated voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media. This virtual persona is actually a 16-year-old blue haired girl, who is seen onstage as a 3D hologram projection. Her repertoire is entirely original and she has over 2.5 million followers on social media. The Expo 2018 Europe tour came to Capital via Jamal Chalabi of Proper Productions, with whom they work frequently. Since the London date was…
ADB Stagelight recently presented the Ocean for the first time ever in the world at JTSE in Paris. This innovative lighting console, designed for theatres, opera houses and multi-purpose venues, immediately attracted a great deal of interest among sector workers. The Ocean’s most striking feature, as well as one of its main strong points, is its high-resolution touchscreen, with a 70-cm-wide (27½-inch-wide) viewing area. It provides operators with full access to all functions and control of all parameters through a single screen, which greatly simplifies control desk ergonomics. Due to its ultra-stretched display format, the console and screen itself are…
At the end of 2017 Pete Tong, with Jules Buckley and the Heritage Orchestra, treated UK fans to a full-on live production of his acclaimed album, Ibiza Classics. Such was the reception that dates for this outing in the run up to Christmas 2018 were booked almost immediately. While the essential elements of last December’s tour remain the same including services from Video Design, changes have been made. “For me, what has made it different this time around is the change of musicians, with different players in the orchestra; their physical technique affects how it looks and feels and consequently…
To properly preserve the atmosphere of their latest album on a live tour supporting the release, Evanescence performed its shows accompanied by orchestra members that were individually handpicked in each city and brought together by the tour’s conductor, Susie Seiter. Furthermore, on the most recent second North American leg when violinist Lindsey Stirling joined as a co-headliner, featuring songs from her album, Brave Enough, and acted as an extra member of Evanescence for specific songs like Hi-Lo. LMG Touring, headquartered in Orlando, has worked with Stirling extensively in the past and served as the full-service audio, video, and lighting provider…
ETC, Inc. and Global Design Solutions Ltd. (GDS) have announced the development of their successful partnership. Since 2015, ETC has been manufacturing and selling GDS-designed products in North and South America. Under a new agreement this relationship is expanded. ETC has acquired the ArcSystem, BluesSystem and CueSystem product lines from GDS. There is no immediate change for customers of the two companies: ETC makes and sells the products in North America, and GDS remains as the maker and seller of these products in the rest of the world. In August 2019 ETC will take over manufacture and distribution of these…
The 19th Annual Latin Grammy Awards Show, held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas and broadcast live on Univision, used four DiGiCo consoles for the show Two SD7 desks for front-of-house music and production, and two SD10 consoles for monitors, along with a total of eight SD-Racks, all supplied by Firehouse Productions, whose VP Mark Dittmar and system technician David Crawford designed the event’s sound system, with Luis Espinal also serving as a system tech. Front-of-house music mixer Ron Reaves and production mixer Andrew “Fletch” Fletcher both used SD7 consoles, while monitor mixers Mike Parker and Mike…
S+H Technical supplied around 350 square metres of its LED Animation cloth and 450 square metres of standard RGB starcloth drape for the BBC’s 2018 Children in Need telethon, broadcast live on BBC One and BBC Two from Elstree’s Studio D. The star-studded line-up included a diversity of artists, some exciting special performances and cool collaborations. The whole event raised over £50 million pounds for the 2018 Appeal in what was the crescendo of this year’s fundraising activities for disadvantaged children and young people in communities across the UK. The telethon production design was created by Alex Craig – working…
Lighting designer Pablo Gutierrez utilized 52 of Robe’s Pointe multi-functional moving lights at the core of his lighting design for the launch of Mexican singer Fey’s new Desnuda (Nude) tour. As well as being spectacular, the design had to be scalable for an arena tour which follows in 2019 and for potential festival appearances. Gutierrez was recommended independently by three different people for the job of designing Desnuda. He is known for his fresh approach to lighting design and his imagination and flair in harmonizing the disciplines of lighting, video and set. For the Arena Ciudad de México gig, audio, lighting, staging…
Meyer Sound has announced significant upgrades of its MAPP XT system design tool and Compass control software, including greater integration between the two platforms along with new, streamlined workflows and inclusion of data sets for new products. The new release of MAPP XT (1.2.2) now offers users the ability to perform copy and paste operations within the sound field, a feature that speeds up the design process. Other important additions include design data sets for the new USW-210P subwoofer and Acheron loudspeakers with woven screens. Predictive capability is now available for ground-stacked configurations for LEOPARD line array loudspeakers with companion…
Front of House engineer Jon Schumann used DPA microphones for MØ’s latest tour because the transient response and character of DPA’s products helps him blend the live sources into a heavily processed electronic soundscape with ease and confidence. “DPA mics have always been a benchmark for a lot of my studio work and when I had the opportunity to take a larger pack out on the road, I was amazed at just how well the DPA sound also translated to live duties,” he explained. “Doing FOH is a different beast to capturing a performance in a great sounding studio where you…
As a leading lighting supplier to West End and UK touring theatre, White Light once again supplied to a range of pantomimes this Christmas. Pantomimes are many venue’s biggest production of the year, with these classic childhood stories often starring household names. An all-time favourite is Aladdin and, this year, White Light is supplying several versions of the show, including one at Hackney Empire which is lit by David Howe. Howe commented: “Hackney Empire’s Aladdin evolved a lot in the rehearsal process, with a lot new music being written specifically for this production. My brief, as ever, was to enhance…
The high point of Pope Francis’ three-day, early autumn visit to Lithuania was an open-air Holy Mass celebrated for more than 100,000 of the faithful at Sàntakos Park in the city of Kaunas. For flawless audio reinforcement of the momentous event, Lithuanian rental company NGR Service deployed a massive 228-loudspeaker Meyer Sound system anchored by LEO Family line arrays. “The biggest challenges we faced were the overall size and irregular contours of the audience area,” said Valdemaras Karpuška, a partner in NGR Service who also served as location manager and live broadcast sound engineer. “The area we had to cover was around…
Adlib was back on the road with pop rockers 5 Seconds of Summer supplying a CODA sound system, monitors and a top Adlib crew to work alongside the band’s engineers Phil Gornell (FOH) and Pavan Grewall (monitors). Richy Nicholson project managed for Adlib, Sam Proctor was the systems engineer on the road and he worked alongside Marc Peers – another talented Adlib engineer – who co-ordinated all things in monitor world. Gornell and Adlib have worked together before on several previous tours including All Time Low and Bring Me The Horizon; the Liverpool based company has been his preferred equipment…
The President and CEO of Groupe Solotech, Martin Tremblay has announced the appointment of Mr. Daniel Méjean as Vice-President, Strategic Sourcing. In this new position under the direction of Nicolas Lavoie, Chief Financial Officer, Méjean will actively contribute to the performance of the rapidly growing Sourcing Department as a key player in strategic planning, as well as long & short-term alliance building with our suppliers and partner. Méjean holds an Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) conjoint degree from the Université Paris-Dauphine and the Université du Québec à Montréal. He has over twenty years of experience in strategic sourcing management…
Pearce Hire recently collaborated with corporate production specialists Hawk Audio Visual providing a circus-themed entertainment and dining space for over 1,000 company staff and stakeholders at the BGL Awards Ball held at Manchester Central. BGL Group is a financial services company based in Peterborough and the biennial event which celebrates and rewards staff achievements, was also part of the company’s 25th-anniversary celebrations. Pearce Hire’s project manager John Huson provided some insight into the support and co-operation between Hawk and Pearce Hire: “Hawk Audio Visual has been a client of Pearce Hire for over 20 years and during that time we’ve…
Niclen a German dry hire provider, invests in lights and lighting technology from Cameo Light. In doing so, the Dortmund-based company is expanding its extensive rental park to include the innovative lighting solutions of the Adam Hall Group brand for the first time. Spotlights from the Zenit series will soon provide NicLen’s international customers with compact, robust and powerful products for indoor and outdoor events. NicLen’s investment in Cameo Light includes over 1,000 Zenit W600 outdoor wash lights, Zenit P130 PAR spotlights, Zenit B60 battery-powered spotlights with W-DMX, and chrome Zenit B60 Cs with a redesigned bracket and iDMX CORE…
Former Marillion singer and front man Fish chose Allen & Heath’s SQ-6 on his current solo tour for FOH and monitor duties. Despite leaving Marillion in 1988 to pursue his solo career, the Scottish singer and actor is widely known for his charismatic stage presence and his latest, extensive tour across Europe and the UK debuts his new solo album “Weltschmerz”. Sound engineer for Fish, Steven Kent, uses the SQ-6 at FOH and an AR2412 and AR84 AudioRack on stage. The SQ-6 also houses a Waves Card for low latency external processing using Waves SoundGrid. “The main challenge of the…
