It is very fitting that confetti plays a prominent role in Above & Beyond’s global tour in support of their Common Ground album. Originating in northern Italy during the Middle Ages, confetti (literally “small sweet”) became symbolic not only of celebrations but also of the shared joyful experiences that bring people together. This ebullient mood resonates throughout the Grammy-nominated EDM trio’s latest music with every synthetic hook, bouncy turn and transcendent keyboard melody. Above & Beyond’s performance overflows with hope and inspiration, qualities that are reflected in their tour’s uplifting Neil Marsh-designed light show. Running his 48-universe show with a…
Author: Jacob Waite
Since their start in Newbury Park, California in 2011, alternative indie rock band The Neighbourhood has gone on to chart multiple times in the US, release three albums (including the certified Gold album I Love You), tour internationally, and perform multiple times at Coachella. The band stepped up to an Allen & Heath dLive Digital Mixing System at FOH and monitors, with two C1500 Control Surfaces, a DM32 MixRack and a DM64 MixRack. Monitor engineer Jason Hines sums up the dLive system as being “intuitive and flexible.” Hines noted a number of particularly useful features for touring monitor engineers. “The…
John Moore launched Trinity Productions in the early 1990s in response to his frustration with the lack of truly professional sound production companies in Northern California at the time. He was trying to put on a “concert in the park” series and getting little help from the companies whose sole reason for existing was to offer help to event organisers and audio engineers like himself! Flash forward twenty-five years, and, in addition to expanding operations into A/V integration, Trinity Productions continues to raise the bar for the audio production industry. After extensive research, Moore recently added 2 Ashly digiMIX18 digital…
TW AUDiO is delighted to announce the appointment of Thomas Vestergaard will play key roles in the company’s customer product training, application and education sector. Vestergaard brings a wealth of experience to his new position, having held high-profile positions over the course of a career of more than two decades. A sound engineer at heart, he has worked as technical sales manager and senior application engineer for internationally respected brands, earning a world-class reputation for both his expertise and skill as a communicator. His appointment marks the continued expansion of the global TW AUDiO family, and a further deepening of…
TW AUDiO has appointed Mick Whelan to the position of Business Development Director for TW AUDiO Americas Inc. where he will join Vice President Philip Van Peborgh and his team. In this role, Whelan will be responsible for defining and creating the path to ensure long-term value between customers and the organisation. This role will also include market intelligence and identification of key opportunities, thus addressing new business opportunities effectively. The latest TW AUDiO recruit has extensive experience inside the professional audio community as both a purchaser and a provider through his touring career with major rental house Electrotec and…
Every year, the future graduates of the French school of architecture of Tournai organise the JNDA (Journée et Nuit de l’Architecture), an event that gathers over 4,000 visitors. A disused industrial site is specially transformed to host conferences as well as artistic and cultural performances. At dusk, the venue becomes a concert hall with 3 stages, where renowned and emerging bands entertain the crowds until late. For this 34th edition, the event took up residence in the former 7,000sqm Louis Carton industrial workshop. In order to cater to an eclectic crowd, 3 stages – each dedicated to specific music genres -…
The first North American production of the acclaimed 2016 London revival of Jesus Christ Superstar took place at Chicago Lyric Opera for a 4-week run. Billed as Lyric Opera’s annual spring musical, this ambitious staging of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice rock opera featured an all-star cast supported by an operatic chorus and six-piece rock band, requiring 74 wireless microphone channels. Nick Lidster, the Sound Designer from the creative team at Autograph that staged the show’s revival in London’s Regents Park, worked with senior sound engineer Peter Wiejaczka of OSA International to create a viable rock-based musical within the challenging…
Production Park, a unique cluster of live event based companies in Wakefield, has announced that it will fund university places at its industry-leading training centre, Backstage Academy, making an initial pledge of £20,000 per academic year. The Backstage Academy Bursary Fund will provide a fully funded three-year place on one of the Academy’s BA courses to an outstanding candidate for whom university would not otherwise have been an option. Funds will also be available for part-funded places and support for accommodation costs. In addition, a percentage of the fund will be allocated to provide assisted places on Backstage Academy’s outreach…
The Knight of Illumination Awards, which in 2018 marks its 11th year of celebrating the achievements of show lighting and video designers in Television, Theatre, and Concert Touring & Events, welcomes 8 new additions to its judging panels in 2018. The judging panels for each of the 3 disciplines consist of a range of critics and specialists with expert knowledge in their field who, once nominations have closed, will meet to select the 3 final shortlisted designs and a winner for each award. David Benedict’s theatre panel welcomes 3 new judges: Zoë Anderson, critic for Dancing Times and author of The Royal Ballet:…
Event production house GVPmedia of Houston is responsible for lighting Ring of Honor events, a popular pro wrestling touring circuit that incorporates high-flying wrestling with mixed martial arts. Ring of Honor (ROH) puts on a high-energy, electric live show and GVP uses the power and dynamism of an all-Elation Professional automated rig to help build excitement and support the drama. ROH matches are intense affairs that are also filmed for TV, Internet Pay-Per-View or DVD release. An important step in building up the exciting atmosphere is the energy created from pre-match introductions as loyal fans anticipate seeing their favourite wrestler…
Allen & Heath put performers in control of their monitors with a new personal mixing app for its SQ mixers. The SQ4You app is available for both Android and iOS and up to eight phones or tablets can be connected at the same time, making it a great time-saver for the busy audio engineer who is mixing the whole show single-handed. SQ4You’s main ‘Four Wheel Drive’ view is designed to be big, bold and easy to use, providing straightforward level controls over 4 groups, a master level and mute. Double tapping on a group gives access to more granular controls,…
Mountain View Staging (MVS) opts for FLEXTour LED video solution from Nashville-based PixelFLEX. “We have been in business for 18 years and have been using LED products for the last 10,” began Peter Johnson, Mountain View Staging CEO and Owner. He continued: “Since LED now rivals projection, we have switched priorities to the new technology to keep up with changing demand from our clients. It’s all about the increased resolution, contrast, dynamic range and image quality, and the FLEXTour solution checked all the boxes for our priorities.” A robust, high-definition and curve-able LED video display, PixelFLEX FLEXTour is designed specifically…
EM Acoustics recently revealed the HALO Arena large format line array system to the North American market at InfoComm 2018 in Las Vegas. The larger HALO-A follows the same core design as the more compact HALO-C providing the signature EM Acoustics “maximum headroom” design approach that ensures consistency of performance regardless of SPL level. The compact enclosure (14.3/362 x 40.2/1020 x 24.4/619 in/mm) and low weight (145.2/66 lbs/kg) translates into less truck space used and smaller motors required. The HALO-A utilizes a proprietary patent-pending emulation manifold, which combines the energy of four 3.4-inch diaphragm, 1.4-inch exit compressions drivers into a plane-wave…
disguise has announced the introduction of its newest server, solo, designed for the next generation of content creation. solo brings the power of the disguise solution to smaller productions and experiences within the theatre, fixed installs, studio setups and smaller venues. It offers the support of our full disguise production suite with the power and performance to meet modern demands. disguise Sales Director EMEA, Sarah Cox, explained: “The solo has been created to enable artists and creatives to join our community, ensuring any project or budget can access the disguise software and hardware, without having to sacrifice on power and…
Festival International de Louisiane in Lafayette, Louisiana attracted over 300,000 festival goers with a worldwide audience listening to an FM and streaming broadcast from the festival’s Main Stage mixed on an Allen & Heath dLive C Class C3500 digital mixing system with DM0 MixRack. Paul McCasland of Show And Tell Productions mixed the live broadcast from a temporary studio in the nearby Lafayette Science Museum. “I’ve been doing this particular event for over 15 years,” he said. “And, this year, we had a 48-channel Dante split from the Main Stage fed directly to us over a fiber network.” McCasland mixed…
German fiber network specialist BroaMan, who offer scalableSD/HD/3G video, data and intercom transport solutions down a single fiber, have appointed Clear-Com, the provider of real-time communications solution and services, as its new distributor in the USA. BroaMan has rapidly found favour not only in the Broadcast market but also with production companies, sports facilities, professional AV integrators and many more applications with its bespoke solutions and range of off-the-shelf converters. As the provider of intercom systems, Clear-Com will now expand its infrastructure expertise to include video signal distribution and routing networks. The BroaMan portfolio includes the MUX-22 and Repeat8-NANO Series interfaces,…
Keyboardist and Musical Director Wix Wickens and ace keyboard tech Howard “DJ” Howes recently shared why they rely on the QSC TouchMix-30 Pro professional digital mixer and K.2 Series loudspeakers to ensure that the myriad of musical parts that need to be covered on Sir Paul McCartney’s many tours are heard loud and clear. “I’ve worked for Paul McCartney for more than 16 years,” Howes begins. “When Paul started touring again, we designed, built, and programmed the current keyboard rig before the start of the first tour.” The first of many reasons Howes chose QSC was consistency: “Wix requires his…
CPL supplied its new Roe Visual 3.4mm LED screens and all associated processing and vision control for 2 major stages at the 2018 Hay Festival of Literature & Arts – an acclaimed and high profile annual 10-day literature event staged in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales. It was the first time the West-Midlands based visual and technical production specialist had worked on the event, for which they were approached directly by the event organisers and asked to be a video supplier after several recommendations. It was also the first time that the event had gone to LED for video display, having worked with…
