ROMANIA: Showline SL NITRO 510C strobes made their debut on the third edition of Electric Castle, Romania’s biggest music festival, becoming the first LED strobes to be used on the event in its short history. The award-winning dance festival once again took place in Bánffy Castle, a 14th century monument in the Romanian village of Bonțida. Twenty-two of the powerful Showline strobes, supplied by ASC SYSTEMS, were an integral part of the main stage rig, where such big name acts as The Prodigy, Rudimental and Fat Boy Slim performed. “We’ve been suppliers to the festival since its first year,” said…
Author: Festival Insights
SWEDEN: For the 2015 Sweden Rock Festival, production manager Pelle Åberg selected a Meyer Sound LEO linear large-scale sound reinforcement system for the main stage to support headliners such as Judas Priest, Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, Slash, and Toto. With its exceptional headroom, the system provided the crew with excellent coverage control, while eliminating the need for delay towers. “I talked to many sound engineers that I trust about our options, and I decided to go all the way on our biggest stage with LEO,” said Åberg. “We have very strict limits on sound outside the festival grounds, with fines…
GERMANY: Approximately 90,000 people descended on Rock am Ring in Mendig last month for the festival’s 30th anniversary in a brand new location. Attendances hit record levels over the festival’s three days, which comprised performances from over 150 acts. Southside Festival, which took place in Tuttlingen, attracted around 60,000 revellers for its three-day celebrations. DirectOut was on hand for the duration of both festivals to ensure seamless audio transmission from the stage to OB van for regional public broadcaster SWR. DirectOut Product Manager Christian Müller was onsite to assist SWR engineer Björn Lautenschlager throughout the two festivals to ensure that…
UK: Star Events is continuing its campaign to make stage construction safer with the introduction of a tool-free handrail for the downstage edge of festival / event performance platforms. Developed with an industry specialist and trialled during 2014, Star Events’ handrail has had an immediate impact at sites this summer, clipping in and out of adapted sockets on performance stages simply and quickly. Rookie Manning, Health & Safety advisor to SJM Concerts at Summer in the City, commented: “Star Events’ system provides an excellent solution during build and strike phases of a production and I cannot see any reason why…
UK: RG Jones Sound Engineering deployed Martin Audio’s Multi-Cellular Loudspeaker Array (MLA) system for the second year running on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage this year, proving a palpable hit with FOH engineers. MLA’s unique ability to control noise escape beyond the site perimeter while maintaining pristine fidelity and high sound pressure levels for the audience meant that FOH engineers could simply focus and enjoy mixing their artists to entertain crowds of up to 120,000 people. System tech, Andy Davies, explained: “We drove each acoustic cell in each MLA to direct sound at the audience, and then cut it off sharply just…
SLOVENIA: Flow Festival, production house Veli Creative, and beer label Lapin Kulta have announced the arrival of Flow TV, a new reporting concept that will provide a behind the scenes look at festival life. The documentary series will gather experiences from in, around, and behind the scenes of Flow Festival. The people seen on camera are those responsible for making Flow what it is today, including curators, production team members, Flow visitors old and new, as well as volunteer workers. The episodes dive into the Flow process to show just how the massive concert areas are built, what the volunteers…
UK: The Big Feastival has announced further details of its brand new Healthy Living Zone, dedicated to the art of healthy eating and wellbeing. The area will feature talks and tutorials from trailblazers in the healthy living field, family-friendly activities and a hand-picked selection of the finest fresh festival fare. The Oatly Kitchen Counter will host a series of intimate talks, lively debates and Q&A sessions with leading health food and active lifestyle advocates across the weekend. Visitors can join sessions with nutritionist Madeline Shaw, cook and food writer Anna Jones, Food Tube stars The Happy Pear, as well as…
UK: Bowers & Wilkins, the British audio innovator, will return to WOMAD 2015 with its genre-defining ‘Sound System’ that reportedly delivers Hi-Fi quality sound in a festival environment. After a successful debut last year, Bowers & Wilkins, in association with Real World, will again be programming its own stage at the festival, named Bowers & Wilkins Sound System, creating a line-up tailor-made for its 135,000 Watt speaker stack that will bring absolute clarity to an audience of audiophiles. Bowers & Wilkins Sound System – which will have an increased tent capacity this year – again promises to offer the audience…
UK: The Metropolitan Police have condemned the activities of groups of non-ticket holders who caused disturbances outside Finsbury Park and made a number of attempts to force their way into the venue on each of the festival’s three days. Showsec, the crowd management and event security specialists, worked closely with the Metropolitan Police and event organisers Live Nation in dealing with the incidents to ensure that the festival continued without any disruption for Wireless fans. The following video illustrates the incident from the outside-in. In the interest of preserving sanity it’s probably best to avoid the plethora of racist troglodytes…
ITALY: RCF will provide the audio system for the 10-day Umbria Jazz festival, which will celebrate its 42nd birthday from July 10 – 19. Angelo Tordini – CTO of Umbria Jazz’ outdoor stages and CEO of Reference Laboratory – this year decided to turn to national companies for the choice of the audio system. Informed by his longstanding professional experience at Umbria Jazz, he chose RCF to develop a tailor-made audio system installation for Piazza 4 Novembre, the beating heart of Perugia and host to festival’s main location, the Arena Santa Giuliana. RCF has been developing and manufacturing audio systems…