International News

BEIJING — For a rain-soaked concert that didn’t deter performers, crew and a crowd of 15,000 in Beijing’s Chaoyang Park, composer Tan Dun, pianist Lang Lang and the China National Symphony Orchestra relied on a Phoenix Audio-supplied Turbosound Flashline large-scale line array system. The theme of the concert was linked to the music that Tan Dun had composed for martial arts films.

DORTMUND, Germany — Westfalenstadion, also known as Signal-Iduna-Park, is the 65,718-seat home of Germany’s top soccer team in 2011 and 2012, Borussia Dortmund. RCF worked with ATEIS Germany and Fulfil engineering GmbH on a sound system upgrade that includes 14 RCF TTL 33A custom line array units..

LONDON — The Wireless Festival, now in its ninth consecutive year, drew record crowds to London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with headliners Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, will.i.am, Snoop Dog, A Tribe Called Quest, and Rita Ora. Britannia Row Productions provided a Turbosound Flashline PA system for the Pepsi Max Stage, which also saw appearances by Calvin Harris and Tinie Tempah.

WEE WAA, Australia – To celebrate the release of their latest album, Random Access Memories, Daft Punk planned a performance at a venerable but somewhat obscure three-day farming event in this remote cotton-growing community situated some 350 miles from Sydney. To support the event, Norwest Productions provided the band with an Adamson Energia E15 system. Each of the four arrays consisted of eight Energia E15s with six T21 subwoofers.

JAKARTA, Indonesia – For Jakarta Praise Community Church (JPCC)’s newest location, on the third floor of the Kota Kasablanka Mall in downtown Jakarta, Soundworks Productions installed a VUE Audiotchnik al-8 compact line array system, chosen in part for its “really good high frequency definition,” according to Soundworks owner Pongky Prasetyo.

LONDON, UK – Tour manager Tim Boardman and sound engineer Bryony October have been providing smaller-scale tours for Moya and other artists in Europe with big-production sound with Soundcraft Si Performer 3 and Si Expression consoles. Along with ease of use, which helped Boardman learn and use the Performer 3 to rescue a show when October had to visit the hospital recently in Dortmund, Germany, the duo credited Soundcraft’s ViSi Remote app for iPad.

MOSCOW — The Central Academic Theatre of the Russian Army (CATRA)’s recent audio system upgrade included Alcons Audio gear, chosen in part for its ability to be heard but not seen. LTM Music Company provided and installed the gear for the 1,420-seat auditorium. The L-R 14m high mid/high columns each contain QR36, QM36, QR18 and QM18 units, with 12m high bass columns featuring QB363 subs. In total the system includes 28x 18” pro-ribbon drivers, 84x 6.5” M/F drivers and 26x 12” bass drivers.

LONDON — For the Coronation Festival at Buckingham Palace, which took place on the palatial grounds and gardens from July 11-14, the event’s main technical production company, Hawthorns, sub-contracted with RG Jones, which provided W8LC and W8LM systems from Martin Audio. RG Jones’ project manager Ben Milton relished the challenge of project managing the large-scale event.

OSLO, Norway — Karl Johans gate, a popular pedestrian thoroughfare, is the site of Sommerservering, or Summer Dining. The 2013 outdoor festivities, which kicked off on June 15, included jazz from The Real Thing. The band’s performance was heard via K-array’s KR402 with Python tops. First Audio AS, K-array’s distributor in Norway, worked with Dinbestefest.no AS to provide the gear.

PUNTA CANA, Dominican Republic – For Simon Mansion and Supper Club, part of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino here, Audio Diseño designed and installed a custom, high-SPL sound system that includes Symetrix’ Zone Mix 761 digital signal processor. The audio system is usuall used for background music, but on occasion, the system may be driven up to 96dB.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — Waves Audio is seeing a growing number of live engineers who are making the move to the next-generation workflow with Waves plugins and WavesLive SoundGrid. They include FOH engineer Vincent Casamatta (OK GO, They Might Be Giants), who is currently on the road with AWOLNation.

PARIS, France — Every year on the Summer Solstice, hundreds of thousands of revelers enjoy music at stages set around picturesque Paris locations at the free “Fete de la Musique” event. Amadeus — French manufacturer of high-end live sound systems — outfitted the EDM stage with live sound. The system featured the company’s DIVA XL arrays, with its PMX 15 coaxial speakers used as stage monitors/front-fills, as well as the new prototype Amadeus Maestro subwoofer.