Commissioned by the Qiddiya Investment Company (Q.I.C.) and with phase one planned to open in 2023, the highly ambitious Qiddiya project is destined to be the upcoming capital for arts, entertainment and sports in Saudi Arabia. The immense 334km2 site will be built from a focus on the tourism and recreation industries, as highlighted in the Saudi Vision 2030 expansion plan by Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, His Royal Highness Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud. The destination includes plans for expansive water and theme parks as well as a community of 5,000 residents, all within a 40-minute journey of the Riyadh capital. The destination, currently an expansive, vast land with hundreds of miles of potential, will be surrounded by immense 200 metre cliffs. Phase one of the project will feature “Six Flags Qiddiya” as a family attraction, providing visitors with endless entertainment and attractions to explore which take into consideration the cultural and natural aspects of the area, including the mountains.

Viticulturists and wine lovers gathered remotely and online for the 2020 Vinari Awards, an annual celebration of the best in Catalan wines. Hosted by Vadevi in Vilafranca del Penedes, Catalan’s wine capital, the 2020 event transitioned to a hybrid in-person and virtual format to comply with COVID-19 restrictions. With event capacity reduced by one-third to adhere to safety protocols, the celebration of 900 wines from more than 200 regional wineries aired on broadcast television and live streams to reach remote audiences and wine connoisseurs. Production company Deunido LCC oversaw the virtual event and managed simultaneous broadcasts on national public station Televisió de Catalunya and regional broadcaster Cadena Pirenaica, in addition to streams on Facebook Live and YouTube, using a range of AJA streaming, conversion and I/O solutions.

The „Vienna Volksoper“ (“Volksoper Wien”) is Vienna’s grand house for operetta, opera, musical and ballet, providing superior musical entertainment. Colourful, multifaceted and joyful, the Volksoper is the only concert house in Vienna attending to the genre “operetta”. The building from 1898 was up for the improvement of fire precautions also in those rooms accommodating the audio technology. This offered the opportunity to renovate and modernise the digitally equipped control rooms and re-fit them completely with new interior and state-of-of-the-art technology. For the recording control suite the Vienna Volksoper decided for a mc²56 mixing console from Lawo.

Back in 2016 Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera) with its chief sound engineer, Athanasios Rovakis, started investigating the possibility of moving its audio and video distribution to fiber. At first, the Opera House modernised its audio system, purchasing a network fiber solution based around Optocore X6R-FX analogue devices and M8 MADI switch to bring together additional signal sources from distant places in the house, and to share signals for broadcasting.

Recently the Victorian Opera presented a new production of “Cinderella”, a traditional pantomime for the whole family. Based on the fable, Cinderella’s adventures were given a special treatment by Victorian Opera Music Director Richard Gill, who has written both the story and songs. This production saw pantomime return to the surrounds of Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne. Cinderella featured a stellar lineup of artists from Victorian Opera and the world of music theatre.

The Viña del Mar International Song Festival (Spanish: Festival Internacional de la Canción de Viña del Mar) is a music festival held annually since 1960 in Viña del Mar, Chile, and considered one of the most important musical events in the Americas. Staged at the Quinta Vergara Amphitheatre, the festival features a song competition with two categories (pop music and folk songs), interspersed with performances by international music stars from around the world, encompassing a diverse mix of genres like rock, multi-lingual pop, merengue, salsa, reggaetón, bachata and many others.

The 58th International Art Exhibition, titled May You Live In Interesting Times, took place from 11th May to 24th November 2019. The title is a phrase of English invention that has long been mistakenly cited as an ancient Chinese curse that invokes periods of uncertainty, crisis and turmoil; "interesting times", exactly as the ones we live in today.

Moscow’s Vakhtangov Theater marked its upcoming 100th anniversary with a stunning special 10-minute music and light show featuring more than one hundred Claypaky Axcor Profile 900 LN high-wattage moving head LED spotlights and HY B-EYE K25 moving head LED wash. The theater’s Lighting Designers Ruslan Mayorov and Alexander Matveev created the lighting spectacular with Sergei Dobrikov, Software Engineer from equipment supplier and installer Doka Center, choreographing the intricate play of beams to music by Faustas Latenas.  An invited audience was in attendance for the show, which featured forests of parallel beams, dancing beams, textured curtains of light and giant beams that broke the boundaries of the proscenium to sweep the audience.  The theater’s heads and the Russian government’s Minister of Culture were on hand to offer congratulations.

After many years Ute Lemper, one of the few German world stars, returned to the Ruhrfestspiele in Recklinghausen with an interpretation of Paulo Coelho's "Manuscript found in Accra" while the great German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff has delivered the idea of the projection of a landscape of ruins on a cyclorama: Stars shine. It dawns. The sun rises over the horizon, a day takes its course. The projection shows us in fast motion the play of clouds and cloud shadows on the ground. We see landscapes in wide-screen panorama, and only the crumbling walls let us suggest that here once humans have seemed.

Street art fans from around the world will be virtually welcomed to the streets of Bristol as UPFEST announces Virtually Upfest an online version of the world-famous street art festival 25^th-27^th September. Working in collaboration with virtual reality studio, ZubrVR and with the help of Arts Council England’s emergency response funding, the team at UPFEST has reconstructed Bedminster’s North Street with a TRON style feel, and designed an alternative way for users to experience the festival after the Covid-19 pandemic forced 2020’s edition to be cancelled.

Pristine live streams and 4K/UltraHD recordings of concerts and performances highlight creative talent at the University of North Texas (UNT) College of Music and help student musicians and choral performers stand out from the competition. Broadcasting classical symphonies, jazz arrangements and orchestral performances via live streams to connect with alumni, prospective students, colleagues, parents and music fans has proven especially critical in 2020 amidst COVID-19 restrictions, though UNT was well equipped to meet the demand, having recorded and broadcast high-fidelity live video content to global audiences for more than a decade. In the past year, operations have grown from 60 broadcasts in the main concert hall to 1,100 live streams across six campus facilities, with a range of AJA production solutions central to the university’s live video workflow. 

Entering its sixth performance season, the $64 million DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at the University of Notre Dame campus has recently upgraded its former audio system in the Leighton Concert Hall and now hosts a Soundcraft Vi4 digital console with BSS Soundweb London digital signal processing.

In Japan, the fleeting beauty of the springtime cherry blossom is rich in cultural significance and highly anticipated every year. Detailed forecasts from the Japanese Meteorological Agency track the northward progress of the cherry blossom front, or sakura zensen, as it spreads a blanket of delicate pink flowers over the country.

The Claire Trevor School of the Arts (CTSA), known on campus as the creative lab, encompasses the University of California Irvine’s drama, dance, art and music programs. The School’s mission—to present the arts as the essence of human experience and expression—was challenged by the shelter-in-place restrictions that halted their ability to safely showcase live performances. Luckily, after a  meeting with Clear-Com® at the (virtual) Stage Manager’s Symposium in May 2020, CTSA decided to add Clear-Com’s LQ® IP Interfaces and Agent-IC® Mobile App, which both complemented their existing system and provided a new learning opportunity for students.

Vaudeville Post is a small company that offers a flexible, creative, post-production sound design service to TV production companies. Specialising in bespoke online, grading and sound dubbing setups, they have worked on many award winning and nominated productions, one of them being the widely-acclaimed ‘The Choir’ for Twenty Twenty Television, part of the Shed Media Group. Their set-up at Twenty Twenty Television – featuring Genelec active monitors - allows them to carry out technically excellent work at a cost-effective price.