Colours of Ostrava is usually the largest multi-genre live music and performance festival in the Czech Republic and one of the most popular events on the European festival calendar, offering 22 stages of diverse and vibrant entertainment across four days in mid-July. It is staged in the stunning raw industrial environment of the former Dolní Vitkovice (DOV) steelworks – now tastefully reimagined as an important cultural and heritage centre – near Ostrava in the north-east of the country. This year, like all European festivals, it was cancelled due to the Coronavirus pandemic and rescheduled for 2021.

Cube Entertainment in Rostock, Germany selected Claypaky Mini-B fixtures for the Forest Showcase with psytrance DJ Morten Heuer at the Housersten electronic dance music club tour in northeast Germany.  Due to COVID-19, this year’s Houserasten events consisted of videos and livestreams targeted to fans instead of in-person shows at clubs in various German cities.

Video rental specialist, Universal Pixels (UP), has supplied a 162sqm Leyard CLM10 screen for The Prince of Egypt at London’s Dominion Theatre. Configured as a single 18m x 9m screen, it provides a stunning backdrop to the dynamic scenic design.
 

DAER Nightclub in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has won a 2020 Mondo (Americas) Award in the nightclub category for its stylish and innovative lighting design by Stephen Lieberman of SJ Lighting. The venue includes a massive 44,000 square foot indoor / outdoor space located at the famous Guitar Hotel at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino complex and was opened in the final quarter of 2019. DAER’s lighting rig includes over 100 x Robe LEDBeam 150 moving lights. Robe North America sales director Craig Burross was delighted, commenting “Steve’s friendship and his ongoing confidence with using Robe products in such an iconic location makes us extremely proud!  Another amazing SJ nightclub design in DAER!”

Like many individuals passionate about the live events and performance industry, Philip French of Aldershot, UK-based rental and technical production company Peachy Productions was badly missing shows, gigs, and the camaraderie of delivering live events. He decided to proactively do something about it, and with the support of the Surrey Event Professionals headed by Hannah Sheppard – which includes some of Surrey’s finest live event experts – the Peachy Playhouse was born.

Since its inception in 2011, the Woodstock der Blasmusik festival has been attracting crowds of up to 60,000 brass music fans each June to Ort im Innkreis in Austria. With brass aficionados obliged to stay at home by Covid 19, this year the organisers treated them to an evening of livestreamed performances from the festival site, featuring eight bands and mixed from an Allen & Heath dLive system.
 

Hastings-based rock heavyweights, Kid Kapichi, stamped their name firmly onto the hide of the UK rock scene last year, and just before lockdown their local venue, The Printworks, bore testament to their mixture of explosive, bone-crushing riffs and ear worming melodies of the dual-lead vocals and guitar.

The German town of Bendorf, on the outskirts of Koblenz, has been staging its Summer In The City festival for many years.

And even the COVID-19 pandemic was not going to stop proceedings this year.

Singer/songwriter Danny Vera has been bringing his distinctive blend of Americana to enthusiastic Dutch audiences since the early 2000s. Following the success of hit single Roller Coaster, Vera and his band played a sold-out tour in late 2019 with a Yamaha RIVAGE PM7 digital mixing system.
 

The wonderful world of entertainment technology is renowned for those who can think out-of-the-box … and this pandemic is seeing no end of creative and imaginative ways in which people and companies are trying to boost morale and support the soul of live performance! Seattle, USA-based Joe Cole, owner of lighting rental company R90, was savoring some good conversation and a whisky-on-the-rocks over Zoom with his friend, attorney Neil Juneja of Gleam Law one Wednesday evening, and like most of us, missing shows, music and the incredible buzz and camaraderie of live events that has temporarily evaporated under lockdowns worldwide.

Each year, WinShape Camps attracts over 30,000 students to its Christian-led summer camps across the U.S. but like most outdoor camps were forced to cancel in-person events this year due to the Covid pandemic. In order to relieve the disappointment and give kids a fun and engaging experience anyway, WinShape has been working with Stacked Hearts Productions to create an engaging virtual experience that brings the fun of summer camp directly into homes. Through a combination of engaging video content and home-delivered packages, the virtual experience ON offers kids K-12 something new to explore every week.

Despite current lockdown restrictions still in place in many countries, disguise xR technology has enabled partner XR Studios to create a limitless performance environment for Grammy award winning hip-hop band Black Eyed Peas to promote their new album on primetime TV shows across the world. Black Eyed Peas recorded performances of four new songs with XR Studios, which have since been distributed in ‘promotion packages’ to seven primetime shows across the world, including Good Morning America and The Late Late Show with James Corden in the US, Peter Crouch: Save Our Summer in the UK and even more across Europe. These packages are combined with a band interview with the host of the show, and the recorded performances are played out, dazzling millions of viewers.

Bandit Lites returned to the picturesque countryside of Blackberry Farm for Boards and Boats, where guests of the world-renowned resort could spend a weekend partaking of wakeboard, wakesurfing and boating. In addition to tips and demonstrations from MasterCraft, the weekend concluded with a delectable dinner and a concert featuring Americana artists Chatham Rabbits

Described in 2003 by Time magazine as the ‘New King of Asian Pop’, Jay Chou has turned his signature sound - which fuses traditional instruments and styles with R&B or rock - into a global phenomenon. In late 2019, Chou’s record label JVR Music promoted the spectacular Carnival world tour to celebrate the artist’s 20th year in the entertainment industry. A Yamaha RIVAGE PM10 digital mixing system was chosen to mix the performers’ monitors.  
 

The Afterlife series of worldwide electronic music festivals arrived in Dubai, UAE for the first time in February at the Hangar 4 industrial warehouse event space. Lighting Designer Pascal Bach of VEM Visionemotion GmbH utilized 100 Claypaky Sharpy fixtures to deliver the evening’s signature Afterlife look within the monumental space.