Green Hippo Ensemble Shines at Inaugural Eurovision Choir of the Year Contest

The first Eurovision Choir of the Year contest took place in Riga, Latvia. Organized by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the Interkultur Foundation, the inaugural event hosted nine professional choirs, each one representing a different European country. The venue was the Arena Riga, a 14,500-capacity stadium, and Green Hippo technology was on hand to help deliver a live spectacular, in keeping of the EBU's best known production, the Eurovision Song Contest.

Company NA and Latvian Green Hippo distributor, PRO 1 Stage, worked with Kristaps Skulte (stage design) and Maris Kalve (video content) to deliver stunning visuals. Two Hippotizer Boreals, and a trio of Hippotizer Karsts, the team had an impressive array of technology to work with. Andrejs Mefodovskis headed the Hippotizer set-up and configuration, with Ivars Vacers handling programming and control -- using a grandMA2 console via Art-Net -- during the show.

The event's lighting & video program required content playback on several planes with a high pixel count -- Mefodovskis comments: "Hippotizer's VideoMapper component saved a lot of time on set up and adjustment. It also gives you the option to have many mixes with different resolutions and layer quantity." Mefodovskis was also impressed with Hippotizer's STRATA drive functionality and the speed that Media Manager synchronizing and retrieving media.

Commenting on the show, and the part Hippotizer played in the event, Normunds Blasans, lighting designer, says, "Hippotizer Media Servers are serious instruments that allow the use of multiple LED panels and projectors as one complete system. An additional challenge, from a technical side, is that media creation works within limited budgets and time, ones that later need to be solved by lighting designers. I, as lighting designer can use video as a precise tool that is an impressive part of a show."

The inaugural Eurovision Choir of the Year was broadcast live in ten countries across Europe and across the world online, delivering impressive TV viewing figures for a debut show. Slovenia's Carmen Manet beat off competition from the eight other choirs from across Europe, with Wales finished runners-up and host nation of Latvia finishing in third place.