Taking place each May in Vienna since 1993, Life Ball is Europe's largest AIDS charity event and this year once again featured a star-studded cast of artistes and VIPs, with the theme dedicated to the element of air under the slogan, “Spread the Wings of Tolerance.”

Introduced for the first time at the NAB last month, EVS’ integrated production package Xedio Flash has been selected by KM productions to cover the prestigious film festival on its dedicated channel TV Festival de Cannes, from May 11th to May 22nd.

 AJA Video Systems’ Ki Pro tapeless recorder played a key role at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, handling digital playback of trailers and pre-show content for all 400 screenings in the festival’s 18 theatres. Host to 430,000 attendees, the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) was held April 20 through May 1 in New York City.

It may not be your grandmother’s symphony orchestra but, nevertheless, grandMA2 was out in force when the New World Symphony opened its new Frank Gehry-designed home in Miami Beach. The New World Center is the first American concert space built from the ground up to integrate sophisticated video, theatrical lighting and flexible stage space, and a grandMA2 full-size and a grandMA2 ultra-light play a key role in lighting control on the campus.

Also known as the 100 Gypsy Violins, the Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra from Hungary recently delivered an astonishing performance in Slovenian capitol of Ljubljana. The Arena Stozice was filled to the last seat and musically caressed by songs from Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Mozart, amongst other all-time-classics. One of the highlights was the famous Radecky March, during which the conductor invited the audience to perform with the symphonics. The count of performers on stage was astonishing - almost 60 violins and ten double basses, violas, cellos, clarinets and, of course, cybaloms - a traditional Hungarian instrument.

UK-based live recording specialists and CD label Chorum Records, run by recording engineer and producer Steve Swinden, used the SoundField DSF-1 digital microphone system to record a recent choral concert at Hereford Cathedral in the West of England for release on CD.

Buenos Aires had the absolute pleasure to enjoy the Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo singing under the stars in the most delightful autumn night. Plácido performed at 9 de Julio Avenue in front of the Obelisk along with musicians of the Colón Theatre's Resident Orchestra and the Philharmonic Orchestra’s.

Arqiva has enabled Digital Cinema partner Arts Alliance Media to include a live Question & Answer session with special screenings of the acclaimed documentary film ‘Ride, Rise, Roar’. This is a David Byrne concert film that blends riveting onstage performances with intimate details of the creative collaborations that make the music and performance happen. The live Q&A was filmed and distributed to cinemas via Arqiva’s Digital Cinema satellite platform, enabling audiences around the country to enjoy the unique event as it happened.

The Royal Shakespeare Company - among the UK's most prestigious theatre producing houses - has invested in six new grandMA2 light control consoles, together with 2 x MA NPU (Network Processing Unit) and 10 x MA 2Port Nodes as part of a complete update of their lighting control systems at the newly refurbished Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) and Swan Theatres, both in Stratford-on-Avon.

The 3rd Season Of Light event in Helsinki recently wrapped up to huge critical acclaim, with W-DMX playing an integral part of one of the major installations. The event, organized by the City of Helsinki, was held from December 31 to January 9 and showcased lighting designers Martin Kuhn of Germany, Per Sundin of Sweden, and Tulay Schakir and Mikki Kunttu of Finland, who each created lighting installations for some of the main buildings around the city, which included the Esplandi Park Senate Square, Union Street, Kaisaniemi Park, Sanoma House, and Parliament House.

In an outstanding teamwork the lighting designers Martin Kuhn (GER), Per Sundin (SWE), Tülay Schakir (FIN) and Mikki Kunttu (FIN) created lighting installations for the 3rd Season of Light event in Helsinki between New Year and January 9th. In comparison to 2010 the event expanded this year and installations were created on new sites.

For the Tirolean State Theatre sound department in Innsbruck (Austria) flexibility matters. The multidisciplinary venue offers not only opera, musicals, dance and plays under one roof, but produces CDs and the popular radio show "Apropos Oper” in its own 24-track surround Studio. A control room that can cope with this diversity has to adapt to the theatre - not vice versa. Since autumn 2010, a new sound control room with a TRIAGON and a NEXUS Matrix 5 audio network integrates flawlessly with an existing NEXUS Matrix 4 audio and communications network.

French sound designer and foley artist Nicolas Becker has used a quantity of DPA microphones for the Philippe Parreno exhibition at London’s Serpentine Gallery. Parreno, an Algerian artist and film maker, has created a space in which a series of filmed events are projected in different galleries. Sound, which plays a major part in the exhibition, can be heard inside the gallery, as though the outside environment of Kensington Gardens and the surrounding streets is leaking in.

The Grosses Festspielhaus (Great Festival Hall), home to the famed Salzburg Festival--one of the most famous performance spectaculars in the world--has revamped its main audio system for the first time in two decades. The upgraded system includes a completely redesigned control room, featuring a Studer Vista 5 digital console. Celebrating the hall’s 50th and the festival’s 90th anniversaries, the Vista 5 was chosen for its optimum recording capabilities, with performance recordings in demand throughout the year.

The „Schauspielhaus Bochum“ (Playhouse Bochum) is one of Germany’s biggest and best known theatres. Build in 1908 as a Variety theatre, it became the town theatre in 1915 and was the biggest stage in the “Ruhrgebiet”. During an air raid in 1944 it was nearly completely destroyed, and then rebuilt based on the design of architect Gerhard Moritz Graubner in an operation lasting until 1953.