Amongst the many plaudits and awards garnered by the play War Horse, based on Michael Morpurgo’s book, is an underlying recognition that this is no ordinary production. Collaborative in the extreme, the performance is successful... 
According to Mr. Berkant Kuru, owner of Spectrum Show Technologies and Production Services, Lütfi Kirdar is the foremost conference centre in Istanbul, “in fact in all of Turkey”, he said. For those who imagine the cultural...
Small by name, but massively ambitious in the breadth of its productions, the Piccolo Theatre in Milan has recently completed what is the first stage in a major audio upgrade. When Giorgio Strehler and Paolo Grassi founded the...
Just over one hundred and fifty years ago Brampton was first recognised as a village with a population of five hundred souls. Today it is home to around five hundred thousand people making it one of Canada’s largest cities....
Replacing old systems and improving capability through employment of new technology is all very well, but when the venue in question is a victim of its own success other considerations take precedence. “I’ve been doing this job...
In amongst the finer things in life, those that are hardest to value are often the most sought after. For the world of the classical concert hall an exceptional acoustic can prove almost as important as the orchestra and...
Together with Arup’s Senior Theatre Consultant, Philip Heselton (Project Manger), Wise has recently completed the technical design and installation of Dublin’s newest addition to the Dockland Project: the asymmetrically urbanite...
Some might call it careless to let your prime venue burn down after some twenty odd years, but for the Empire Theatre, Australia, 1933 was just the start of what’s become a glorious, if protracted rebirth. “Within nine months the...
Just past its tenth birthday and The Lowry at Salford Quays in Salford has something to celebrate by having the first installation anywhere in the UK of d&b audiotechnik’s latest E6 loudspeaker. Not at first glance the most...
Ogres and microphones make for awkward bedfellows; large prosthetic rubber heads have a unique acoustic all their own. But these are lessons well learned during a fourteen month run on Broadway; what's challenging now is to...
Where would you find the biggest casino complex in the USA? It has to be Las Vegas, right? Well, actually no. Go east about two thousand, three hundred miles and you will find yourself in the right neighborhood. The Foxwoods...
The Temple for Performing Arts (TPA) in Des Moines, Iowa is one of those solidly imposing structures built to underpin the growing confidence of mid-western cities as they entered the twentieth century.
It's hard to imagine such a thing occurring today; could Robbie Williams, Harry Connick Jr, and Chris Brown, conceivably share a stage, and become symbols of style? Of its time the Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, and...
The Catalans have always extolled the benefits of arts and culture. Who can forget the sense of theatre Barcelona brought to the Olympic opening ceremony in 1992? Like no other opening it inserted a capital T for theatre into...
At over nine hundred years old the city of Ryazan, which is 180 km south east of Moscow, has much to be proud of. Two years ago, during its self proclaimed Year of Culture, the city embarked on a series of major arts venue...
The 2009 Flamenco Festival that took place at the Sadler's Wells theatre, London earlier this year featured six companies in a non-stop two week programme. The system included the new d&b audiotechnik T-Series loudspeakers...
For three years now, long before the sudden demise of Michael Jackson, there was already a production in the UK that venerated the King of Pop. If anyone ever doubted this man's ascendancy to the throne you only have to look at...
As the new UK tour of Chicago kicked off in March, presented by David Ian Productions, the enduringly successful musical keeps proving why it is regarded as the sharpest, slickest show on the block. Since the first performance...
Lying at the Western end of China's Great Wall, Jia Yu Guan has been a strategic transport nexus since the days of the Silk Road. This historic city, placed at one of the major crossroads of civilisation has added a grand new...
Located in the New Territories district of Hong Kong, Kwai Tsing Theatre is a government owned auditorium that was designed for drama, dance and opera. The theatre stage is equipped with computerised control power fly sets,...
'Arte-tainment', not an easy word; one of those compound nouns invented by overpaid marketers, yet even it can fail to convey the full message, but not in the instance of the Esplanade in Ratchdapisek Road, Bangkok. Developed...
The Color Purple opened in Chicago April 2007 and has since received great reviews at every city visited, not least for its sound design conceived and implemented by Jon Weston. Weston is a man with a passion for musical...
An hour's drive from Amsterdam, the city of Zwolle mixes classic Dutch architecture, narrow cobbled streets and tall handsome townhouses, with a burgeoning presence of the modern and the brash surrounding it. This is a city...
Originally built to host the badminton competition at the 2004 Olympics, the Badminton Theatre has been metamorphosed into the most state of the art theatre in Greece. Situated in a park in the centre of Athens, the...
Following the successful installations of d&b audiotechnik Q-Series PA systems at the Teatre Auditori in Granollers, Spain, and Auditorium de Palma in Palma de Mallorca, another local auditorium has chosen to install a d&b...
Royston Maldoom does not fit the stereotype of the sensitive choreographer. After a problematic adolescence, he decided that he wanted to be a dancer, until he realized that his physique did not predestine him to a brilliant...
The Abbey Theatre in Dublin has an impeccable heritage of which it is rightly proud. Founded in 1903 by a group of literary giants, among them W B Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory who was the theatre's Director/Manager until...
A modern construction of concrete and glass, the Granollers Theatre Auditorium just north of Barcelona, Spain, has that special touch the Catalans can bring to such potentially lifeless materials. Drama, light and beauty from...
The CAPITOL Musical Theatre in Wroclaw is at present the most dynamic and thriving musical theatre stage in Poland. Both in artistic terms and in its rich history, it is an extraordinary institution. It also is a facility that...
From one island nation to another, an easy gap to bridge? Well maybe, but then one nation is five times the size of the other and is home to a whopping thirty five times the population. But truth is it's not just the cultural...
"I am not a salesman," he spat the words with some venom. "I just make a demonstration and they place the orders, someone else deals with the money." After fifty years in the business Zoli Schwartz of audio dealers Diversity...
In Florida, a State already filled with some of the finest examples of Deco Architecture anywhere in the world, there resides a pearl of the theatre. From the school of Frank Lloyd Wright the Ruth Eckerd Hall - besides being a...
As the performance by the Bert Kaempfert Orchestra came to an end, Carlos Queiroz, Technical Manager at the Wycombe Swan Theatre, saw some of the regular theatregoers heading straight for the desk. "I imagined they were going...
Visiting a new musical when it's still deep in the middle of production rehearsals is much like choosing a puppy from the midst of the litter - all the clues are there, the parents' form and fitness, the outward signs of a wet...
