International News

LONDON – Indie pop band, The Feeling, has completed a year of predominantly club dates and boutique festivals. The tour gave sound engineers Jon Sword and Andy Greenwood the chance to put Harman's Soundcraft Vi1 digital desk through its paces.

MOSCOW – The Bolshoi Theatre reopened after a six-year refurbishment Oct. 28. Salzbrenner Stagetec Mediagroup provided the audio networks, mixers, and stage management systems, including three large Stagetec Aurus audio consoles with full DSP capacity.

CASTROREALE, Italy – The Castroreale Jazz Festival, a series of four shows featuring an international variety of jazz artists staged at this historic Sicilian village last summer, was heard via a sound system that included Proel Axiom, Edge and Powersoft gear.

KIEV, Ukraine – Maidan Square, the main square of Ukraine's capital city, became the focal point for Maidan's, a concert and dance event produced by Inter, a Ukraine-based TV network, that extended over a 10-week time frame and involved about 3,000 dancers competing for a grand prize valued at $124,000.

SYDNEY – Dave Samwell, sound engineer for Liverpool-based indie band The Wombats, specified a Soundcraft Vi6 console for the band's recent Australia tour. Samwell credited the console for its compact size, ease of use, and user layers, which helped the supporting band's engineers get up to speed quickly. JPJ Audio provided the console and other audio gear for the tour.

MANGOCHI, Malawi – Held at varying locations along the shore of Lake Malawi on the borders of Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania since 2004, the Lake of the Stars Malawi Festival's flown-in and hand-ported audio system included a Midas PRO2C console.

LONDON – Frankie Knuckles, David Morales and CJ Mackintosh were among the long list of DJs helping London's Ministry of Sound celebrate its 20th birthday, and they all had good things to say about the Martin Audio system, which R&D Director Jason Baird had fine-tuned in anticipation of the club's three-day celebration.

BARCELONA – After Russ Tite, FOH engineer for The Kooks, mixed the band this past summer with Midas Heritage 3000 and XL4 consoles, he decided to stick with the Midas brand for the band's shows in Europe this fall. "We were almost going to take an XL4, but you can't really fit one on a tour like this, so I decided to try the PRO6, and it sounds incredible," Tite said.

TELEMARK, Norway – The Vatnar Leirsted youth camp purchased a Soundcraft Si Compact 24 digital console as part of an upgrade to meet the needs of its expanding worship services. Along with a permanent church with 110 seats, summer Bible camps have been taking place in tents seating 350-400. The new console will be used at FOH and monitors for a new tent that can seat 1,300. The camp's owners, Pentecostal churches of Telemark, host several major events for youth each year. Camp officials cited ease of use as a key factor in the purchase decision.

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – PRG expanded its rental inventory with 60 new RockNet devices made by Riedel Communications and quickly put it to use at the XVI Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, where PRG is provided technical support for the opening and closing ceremonies.

LAHTI, Finland – Jan Holm of Helsinki-based Teakon Theatre consultants worked with Studiotec to equip the 1,229-seat Main Hall at the Sibelius Hall Congress and Concert Centre with an upgraded sound system that includes Meyer Sound M'elodie line array loudspeakers.