This August saw a magnificent production of The Flying Dutchman, Richard Wagner’s fifth masterpiece, brought to Lithuanian opera fans for the very first time. Staged in a unique open-air setting by the Klaipėda State Musical Theatre and featuring leading Lithuanian soloists including Sandra Janušaitė, the event became one of the most celebrated musical productions of the year, selling out all of its socially distanced 1,000 seats to lucky spectators. Dual DiGiCo SD12 96-channel consoles with two SD-Racks and D2-Racks were selected by one of the largest audio rental companies in the Baltics, NGR Service, to bring the magic of this…
Author: James Robertson
Stagehand in partnership with Crowdfunder UK have launched #ILoveLive, a prize draw campaign organised to raise funds for the production staff and stage crew impacted by the loss of work caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Stagehand is the only UK charity specifically dedicated to providing hardship funding for live events industry workers and aims to raise at least £1m before Christmas. Workers within the live music industry are in urgent need of support. The industry was the first to close and will be the last to reopen, resulting in thousands of people facing immense hardship. The problem is intensified by…
Transformed into an online experience, the 2020 edition of Defqon.1 was still one to notice. Three days of madness with more than 80 artists and featuring every key element of Defqon.1 resulted in one of the most spectacular live streams so far. Together with the Q-Dance team, LD Robbert-Jan Vernooij was in charge of lighting. The design features a significant amount of CLF fixtures, supplied by Rent-All. The deviant, 360-degree perspective asked for a full waterproof lighting package. Since the design was based on a flat surface of 160x200m, rain covers and domes were not desired. Centrally located on this…
After the 2020 professional season was marked by numerous tournament cancellations, two unscheduled ATP tournaments did go ahead in Cologne’s LANXESS Arena. The bett1HULKS Indoors (12-18 October) was followed directly afterwards by another top tennis event: the bett1HULKS Championship (19-25 October), as part of the ATP Doppelpack (Double pack) Tour 2020. 80 high performance HIGHLANDER washes from GLP provided optimum lighting coverage on the hard court, as well as for TV cameras. POOLgroup GmbH was responsible for the lighting technology for both tournaments. Project manager Robert Sommer had overall responsibility for lighting design, conception, court lighting, effect lighting and ambient…
Each summer, The Montreux Jazz Festival (MJF) takes place for two weeks in Switzerland, on Lake Geneva’s shores. Shure has backed the festival each year since 1995 by providing onsite support and a large number of wired as well as wireless microphones. Sadly, of course, this year is different, and like so many events across the globe, MJF 2020 was unable to take place. Determined to ensure music lives on despite the current global crisis, the team at The Montreux Jazz Artists Foundation (MJAF)—a non-profit foundation helping to promote up-and-coming talent—has maintained its activities despite the cancellation of July’s annual…
Founded in 1943 and based just outside of Copenhagen (Denmark), Kinovox began as a rental staging distributor, before expanding over the years to include broadcast, retail, and digital visual recording products. Today, the company is a dominant supplier of high-quality pro-audio products and offers a vast support system for its clientele. “We have always been aware of Powersoft, as its phenomenal products have always been prominent in the market – for very good reason,” said Jesper Kirkegaard Jensen, co-owner of Kinovox Scandinavia. “When the opportunity came up to work with Powersoft, we knew we couldn’t pass it up and immediately…
Over 100 iconic prints of world-renowned music artists taken by globally celebrated photographers including Rankin, Tony McGee and Jill Furmanovsky, among others are now on sale. Available for £95 each, the sale represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a piece of music history, with many of the prints usually unavailable to buy. 100% of proceeds go to Stagehand – the only UK charity specifically dedicated to providing hardship funding for live music crews who have fallen on tough times. Available from today for a limited four-week period, expect a mix of established photography names, from Gerry Mankovitz and Pooneh Ghana…
SLX-D Digital Wireless is a brand new wireless system developed to deliver market-leading Shure wireless expertise at an affordable price. SLX-D offers top-tier technology calibrated for out-of-the-box ease of use while boasting extremely reliable RF performance, digital sound, and rechargeability. Discover how SLX-D can benefit your productions for live performance, install applications, theatre, broadcast, house of worship, presentation and training, plus much more. www.shure.com/en-GB
As we move into Autumn, event organisers and hospitality managers are continuing to think of new ways to make customers and staff as safe as possible during this uncertain time. With a number of years in the hotel industry, Colin Graham – like many – faced a trying time from March onwards as business ground to a halt. However, in the search for a solution for his hotel, Graham’s research brought him to HeiQ, and its Viroblock NPJ03 technology – a tested and proven COVID-19 barrier which, when applied to face coverings, significantly counteracts the airborne transmission of the virus.…
To mark the release of their eighth studio album, A Celebration Of Endings, Biffy Clyro performed a one-off, live show at The Barrowland Ballroom Glasgow on 15 August. The livestreamed performance saw the band play their new album in full for the first time across a range of spaces in the empty Glaswegian venue – creating a bespoke experience for live music fans in lockdown while simultaneously providing much-needed work for production crew at the height of UK’s festival-less summer. Biffy Clyro were on the verge of beginning a 24-month album cycle when the lockdown of live events came into…
At the start of the summer, it seemed that a number of events would take place, with professionals from across the sector offering innovative ways to socially distance crowds and keep people safe. Sadly, only a handful of these events made it out of the planning stage due to ever-tightening constraints as well as the feasibility of putting on an event during this trying time. As TPi rolled up on the Virgin Money Unity Arena, headed through the production entrance and looked up at the festival-sized stage setup, for a moment we were transported to a pre-COVID-19 world. The day…
One of the highlights of London’s summer events calendar, Notting Hill Carnival is a chance to showcase and celebrate the diversity of the country’s capital, attracting millions of people each year throughout the August bank holiday. Despite the inevitable cancelation of this year’s event, organisers still wanted to give loyal attendees a chance to enjoy the festivities with a streamed digital-only event. Key to the project was an elaborate xR video stage that was used throughout the weekend. Steve Jelley, MD of Dimension Studio – producers of this digital version of Carnival – approached Jack James of 80six to provide…
By this point, I’m sure most reading this will have already seen their fair share of streamed performances and perhaps even made it to a socially-distanced show during this uncertain time for the industry. However, since March, there has been talk of the dream scenario of a hybrid show where a band could play to both a live audience, and one at home. This solution represents the best of both worlds, in that there is the energy of a live show combined with the potential large audience that only streaming could obtain. And it was this school of thought that…
Taking place over the bank holiday weekend, on 29 to 31 August, Liverpool Digital Music Festival (LDMF) 2020 transformed empty city centre independent venues – Jacaranda Phase One, E.B.G.B.S and The SAE Institute – into livestreaming spaces, with a headline stage at the region’s largest indoor venue, M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool. The free online festival raised funds to support three local charities: Claire House Children’s Hospice, Mary Seacole House (Granby Community Mental Health Group) and Merseyside Youth Association, with donations for the organisations handled by Ticket Quarter. Following a successful inaugural ‘lockdown’ event in May with 10,000 online viewers, which…
Virtual events have quickly become the new norm as companies take their conferences, product launches, AGMs and all otherwise live experiences online. In a world gone virtual it can be hard to make an event stand out from the crowd. Some companies, however, have embraced the virtual world and are riding a new wave of digital creativity as they test the limits and boundaries of what is possible in the online sphere. Creative communications group DRPG have taken the opportunity to open up their annual thought leadership event DRPGBIGtalk to the wider public for the first time ever. Bringing the…
LED CHINA 2020, concurrently held with Entertainment Design Expo, Commercial Integrated Systems China, Digital Signage China and SIGN CHINA, has concluded at Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center, China, from 1 to 3 September, along with the debut of its B2B online webcast platform. LED CHINA 2020 featured 572 exhibitors, 5 exhibition topics which extended from LED displays – LED, digital signage, commercial integration, entertainment design, advertising signage, attracted 15,207 visitors, 167 of them came from 31 countries and regions outside of China during 3-day exhibition period. The concurrent events of LED CHINA 2020, the first edition of Entertainment Design Expo…
There are few artists in the UK that have taken to the world of streaming in the way that Frank Turner has in the past few months. Interestingly, he seems to have been on the periphery of many of the stories we have run in TPi during lockdown. From a charity stream in aid of the Union Chapel, to jumping aboard the ship for the #WeMakeEvents campaign in London,as well as performing at a government-endorsed socially distanced show in Clapham, London – he has certainly kept himself busy during this uncertain time for the music industry. Throughout lockdown, the singer-songwriter…
Wacken Open Air has been on my festival bucket list for a long time, and 2020 was going to be the year I finally ticked it off. However, like everything during this ill-fated year, the festival had to be put on pause on account of COVID-19. Like many music festivals across the globe, Wacken Open Air organisers were keen to ensure that revellers were still able to get a taste of a festival this summer, embarking on a path which resulted in one of the largest streamed festival events of the year. https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/tpisep20_digitallr/24 Photos: Danny Jungslund and Melinda Helena…
