Founded in 1993, The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity was originally created as a one-off event to raise money for medical equipment, raising over $1.5m that year. Part of the WOŚP Foundation, the event has since grown to become Poland’s largest non-governmental, non-profit charity organisation, raising money for paediatric and elderly care and featuring annual ‘Grand Finale’ live events in towns and cities right across the country. 2022 saw the 30th edition of the numerous events supporting the charity and their purpose this year was the purchase of medical and diagnostics equipment for eye diseases in children. The largest single…
Author: Jacob Waite
When three-time GRAMMY Award-winning country duo, Dan + Shay hit the road in March 2020 with their first headline US arena tour, playing three consecutive sold-out shows before the COVID-19 pandemic halted proceedings. Over 18 months later, the production hit the road, resuming 30 remaining sold-out shows on the three-month run, which carried an L-Acoustics K Series loudspeaker system supplied by PRG. Presented by AEG Presents, The Arena Tour, was in support of the duo’s latest album, Good Things, with PRG supplying all audio, video, and lighting systems from its Nashville location. “This was our first tour with PRG, and…
Figures released by Connection Crew CIC have revealed that its Impact Account holders – qualifying clients across events, film and TV, and construction – collectively created 23 jobs and over 12,000 hours of paid employment in 2021 for people who are ex-homeless or at high risk of homelessness. This is despite one of the toughest years for events businesses in the UK. The scheme started in 2012 as a Corporate Social Responsibility account package to help clients boost their own social impact credentials, and has since evolved into the newly titled Impact Account – reflecting the addition of environmental impact…
PK Sound has revealed Trinity Black Robotic, its latest robotically controlled line source element. Distinguished by a new all-black aesthetic, Trinity Black is loaded with PK Sound’s revamped v4 presets to offer significant acoustic enhancements over previous iterations. As the flagship of PK Sound’s core system offering, Trinity Black systems work in tandem with the new PK Cell touring rack and upcoming .dynamics software platform for optimal performance. They are exclusively available in North America and Europe to members of the PK Alliance network. “Over the past year-and-a-half, we’ve developed a modular, scalable, and globally standardised core system offering spearheaded…
The joys of lighting panto are many. High on that list is the opportunity it affords a lighting designer to unfurl a rainbow of colours and transform the stage into a playland that delights actors and audiences alike. Johanna Town, award-winning designer and Chair of The Association for Lighting Production and Design (ALPD), will readily attest to that. “Panto is all about being bold with colour,” she observed. “It also has some big traditions of happy good fairy and wicked bad fairy; so it’s a lot of fun to reflect this in colour by doing things like making dramatic transitions,…
Avid Technology will continue to pause on exhibiting at large trade shows throughout 2022. Due to the ongoing ebb and flow of COVID-19 conditions, the company’s leadership maintains it is ‘not yet feasible to reliably predict the pandemic’s path, nor to ensure that large groups of its employees can be expected to convene at events that typically draw thousands of attendees’. Therefore, consistent with its strategy from 2020, Avid will not host exhibits at the annual NAB, NAMM and IBC shows this year. Avid CEO & President, Jeff Rosica said: “In the two years since we’ve exhibited at large trade…
Naveen Deshpande, founder of Ground Control, is an award winning lighting designer from India. His creative team work on progressive and futuristic lighting design and audio visual experiences for artists, festivals, corporates and other large scale events across the globe. Following his latest tour with Prateek Kuhad, Deshpande speaks with admiration of the Showtec Sunstrip MKII blinders. Around 12 Showtec Sunstrip MKII blinders fitted well into Prateek Kuhad’s latest tour of India, performing in places such as Bangalore and Pune, where the Showtec fixtures were used on stage. The tour was led by production company WMS Online and the lighting…
Woodlite Sweden AB, a lighting and stage equipment rental company with offices in Karlstad and Stockholm, was one of the first companies to invest in the Claypaky Xtylos. In 2021, the firm took delivery of 200 Claypaky Xtylos fixtures. “For the last several years we have enjoyed a good relationship with Claypaky and their Swedish distributor, Interlite,” said Woodlite CEO, Magnus Jansson. “Niclas Arvidsson, who runs Interlite, is very proactive in introducing us to new fixtures, especially those that have great potential. We considered buying some Xtylos fixtures, but then we were approached by Ampco Flashlight, a significant client of…
It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that the industry mourns the loss of Juan ‘JC’ Faxas. A former employee of the ADJ Group of Companies and a beloved friend and colleague to many, JC sadly passed away unexpectedly on 12 February 2022. He leaves behind a devoted wife, two loving daughters, and many friends who were drawn to his outgoing personality, keen sense of humour, but most of all his big heart. Juan Faxas, known to his many friends and colleagues as JC, was born on 21 February 1962. At the age of six his family fled communist…
Future Yard is a brand-new, 300-capacity community music venue in Birkenhead. This new space aims to bring some of today’s most exciting new artists to the Wirral region, while at the same time providing key early performance opportunities and training for emerging local musicians and technicians. A diverse range of acts including Nubiyan Twist, Gruff Rhys, Pongo and Mono Neon have recently played the venue, while an exclusive autumn highlight featured synthpop legends Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, giving their first Wirral performance since 1979. Craig Pennington, co-founder of Future Yard, explains the community space represents a framework, and not…
Adamson Systems Engineering has released Adamson Load Library 5.3 for Lake Processor. Default settings for E, S, and IS-Series cabinets use linear phase crossovers with subwoofer presets using corresponding latency compensation, and are time-aligned when placed equidistantly to the reference position. Additional settings for S and IS-Series point source cabinets offer 5 ms less latency by using conventional crossovers. For full flexibility, additional subwoofer presets time-aligned to conventional crossover presets are included in the subs folder. These can also be deployed when subwoofers are positioned further back from the reference position to avoid applying additional delay to line arrays or…
Obsidian Control Systems has expanded its team with two new hires, tasked with providing the support, programming advice and training capabilities Obsidian customers expect from the lighting controller brand. Matthew Gerardi will lead Obsidian Control Systems’ Technical Support division with focus on ONYX, NETRON and Capture, working out of Obsidian’s headquarter office in Los Angeles. Gerardi comes to Obsidian with an extensive background as a technical director and lighting technician and brings with him wide-ranging field experience with lighting control systems and AV networking across all major lighting control platforms. In his new role, Gerardi will work alongside Obsidian users…
While the outcome of Super Bowl LVI remained uncertain until the final minutes, the performance of Shure’s wireless audio technology could not be questioned on or off the field. On the biggest stage in football – with 70,000 in-person fans at LA’s SoFi Stadium and more than 100 million TV viewers tuning in from around the world – RF coordinators, referees and performers relied on Shure gear. The lineup featured a Shure Axient Digital Wireless System which captured audio from the game, including the pre-game show, key parts of the halftime performance and fourth-quarter referee decisions. Off the field, Shure…
Valve’s 10-day long tournament for their smash hit Dota 2 game was held in Bucharest’s largest stadium, the 50,000-capacity Arena Națională, and assembled the world’s top-ranking teams to battle it out on screen for a world record-breaking prize pool of over $40m. The virtual part of the event was produced by virtual production company Myreze, who turned to Pixotope to help leverage the power of Unreal Engine in a live and complex broadcast environment. In a true test of Pixotope’s stability and reliability, the 10-day live production saw 18 teams and their in-game triumphs and tragedies across 22 matches, generating…
Birmingham Rep’s new stage adaptation of George Orwells’ classic novel, Animal Farm has opened to rave reviews with a d&b audiotechnik Soundscape-powered sound design curated by Tom Gibbons. The ambitious production sees War Horse puppeteer Toby Olié’s beautifully crafted horses, pigs, birds and more revolt against their human farmer master. Pre-recorded dialogue is played back live, with on-stage actors moving the mouths of the puppets. A key aspect to the realism of the surreal piece was accurately positioning the audio script parts to each puppet as they speak. “I knew from early conversations with the director, Robert Icke, that there…
The Seattle Space Needles’s New Year’s Eve fireworks and light show is arguably the most iconic NYE celebration on the U.S. West Coast. This year, in spite of a recently upgraded lighting system, organisers called upon Illuminate Production Services (IPS) and Elation Professional products to illuminate the legendary NYE show once again. IPS were the first worldwide to debut Elation’s new Proteus Excalibur beam moving head as part of a larger Elation lighting package and were excited for the opportunity. “We received the first 12 units in the country and put them to use two days later,” said IPS President,…
ChamSys has attracted an ever-increasing following in Benelux in recent years with many lighting programmers and designers making the company’s product their console of choice for major festivals like Reverze, as well as at clubs and on tours. In response to this growing demand, the company has joined with AVL, its longtime distributor in the region, to found ChamSys Benelux. The award-winning ChamSys line is now available for sale in Belgium directly from the company’s affiliate, CHAUVET Europe BVBA (ChamSys Benelux). While in the Netherlands ChamSys will continue to be distributed by Aukes Theatretechniek, with the support of ChamSys Benelux…
AMPD Lighting and Audio Visual in Spokane, Washington has purchased 24 Ayrton Diablo-S profile luminaires and a grandMA3 light console to add to the company’s rental inventory and use for professional event production to a wide range of markets in the Pacific Northwest. The company’s investment in the Diablos and grandMA3 light has been paying dividends since the products arrived. ACT Entertainment exclusively distributes both brands in the US. “We saw the Diablos at a trade show and had our eyes on them for a while,” says Justin Haas, Owner of AMPD Lighting and Audio Visual. “They checked a lot of…
