International News

LONDON – Eighteen thousand fans packed London’s O2 Arena for the most anticipated concert in recent history.  John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, Jason Bonham (son of original band member, John Bonham) and Jimmy Page played a two-hour, 16-song set through a Meyer Sound MILO system provided by UK-based sound rental company, Major Tom Ltd. At front of house, Big Mick mixed the band, while Roy Williams handled Plant’s vocal.

GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND ­– With a multigenerational talent line up on three stages that included Amy Winehouse, The Who, Paul Weller, The Killers, Paolo Nutini, Arcade Fire, Bloc Party and a host of others, last Summer’s Glastonbury Festival was a success despite occasional heavy rain.

BOURNEMOUTH, U.K. – Marking the middle of a world tour in support of his third album, Call Me Irresponsible, Canadian crooner Michael Bublé played eight U.K. arena shows. Accompanying Monitor Engineer Craig Brittain was the latest member of the touring entourage – a DiGiCo D5 Live console.

AMSTERDAM ­– For many years, the legendary rock club, born out of the 1960s flower power era, featured one of Martin Audio’s pioneering Wavefront 8 systems. But after a stringent multisystem evaluation earlier this year, the club opted to upgrade to a 3-way Martin Audio W8LM Line Array solution in their main “MAX Room.”

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL — Held at São Paulo’s Morumbi Stadium, the 2010 World Cup qualifying game between South American soccer heavyweights Brazil and Uruguay used an Electro-Voice sound reinforcement system deployed by the Tukasom Company.

LONDON – Nineteen years after their last appearance, the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin, together with John Bonham’s son Jason, took to the stage at the 02 Arena to perform a tribute concert for their late record label boss Ahmet Ertegun, who signed them to Atlantic Records in 1968.

LONDON – Thirty years after the debut album, eight years after the last tour, Squeeze have been playing their first live shows of this century in the UK. Supported by NEXO GEO tangent-array PA systems supplied by SSE Audio Group, the band has sold out mid-sized venues throughout the UK before stepping up to 5,000-seat, high-profile clubs for the final dates.

MEXICO CITY – One of the biggest entertainment industry events on the Mexico City media calendar, the annual Lunas del Auditorio Awards held in the city’s Auditorio Nacional, celebrates the best live talent, productions and performances from across Latin America. Along with top stars appearing onstage, the new Midas XL8 digital mixing system made its debut at FOH.

PARIS — The Opéra Bastille Paris was inaugurated in 1989 as part of the French Revo-lution Bicentenary celebrations. Always a visionary in audio technology, the Opéra Bas-tille was the first to work with an analog console featuring remote total digital recall. During a recent technical overhaul, the opera integrated Optocore and Yamaha as the basis of the system.

PRAGUE — Jazz piano player Chick Corea arrived in Prague to give a concert at the prestigious Smetanova Hall. RentalPro provided a NEXO GEO S8, CD12 front-of-house PA and a PS Series stage monitoring system. Although undemanding in terms of inputs — just 12 —  sound reinforcement was controlled by an EtherSound network.

OXFORD, ENGLAND — To promote their second album Our Earthly Pleasures, Tyneside-based indie rockers Maximo Park have been touring throughout 2007, with dates in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Japan. For the U.K. and European dates, Britannia Row supplied a Turbosound Aspect rig, with the band’s FOH engineer Trevor Gilligan mixing on a 56-channel DiGiCo D5 console.