Victorian Public Servant - Public Events

Jade Bophela has been working in the live music industry for over ten years with her experience spanning multiple areas including: event, project and production management, operations, business development, sponsorship and marketing, contractual negotiations and publishing. She has worked with local promoters: Live Nation, TEG Dainty, Mushroom Group and Van Egmond Group as well as local councils and state government's to deliver key events. Some notable highlights include: The Australian Open Grand Slam, Formula 1 Grand Prix, MotoGP, Rising Festival, National tours from: Bon Jovi, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Foo Fighters, Guns n Roses, A Day On The Green National Tours, Download Festival, RNB Fridays, White Night and Vivid.

More broadly, Jade worked in South Africa as an independent artist manager from 2011-2014. Her artists won industry acclaimed awards, undertook national tours and were signed to internationally recognised publishing houses: Universal Music and Sony Music ATV.

In 2020, Jade decided to obtain a higher education to match her industry experience and completed a Master of Business in Arts and Cultural Management.

In 2021, Jade worked with CrewCare to co-create and deliver the successful AMBIT program which was funded by Creative Victoria and supported over 300 live music industry crew through upskilling initiatives. She was nominated for the The Music Network's 'Thirty under 30 awards' and took part in the Women in Music Mentorship program hosted by AIR.

Jade currently works as Victorian Public Servant within the Creative, Sport and Visitor Economy portfolios.

Stage Manager | Production Manager

Hailing from Adelaide, Nathan has been in the live music industry for 10 years and is now the Production Manager for Groovin’ The Moo nationally, and Spin Off festival in Adelaide, amongst other things.

He is also the Stage Manager for large touring festival main stages such as Spilt Milk, Fairgrounds, For The Love, and assisting the roll out of Laneway as a Local PM for multiple shows.

In his spare time, he manages to TM/PM for Australian act Vera Blue.

Nathan loves touring and being involved in this broad range of shows as he gets to see and befriend so many touring crew, and work with a lot of different vendors across multiple states.

His main objective in joining the CrewCare board is to assist in making younger industry personnel more aware of the work CrewCare does and, in-part, drive up the youth membership rate.

Lighting Designer

In 1998, Kait Hall co-founded a lighting and stage design business and has since gained a broad range of experience in live music, festivals, theatre, broadcast and corporate events throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe and North America. 

Recent touring clients include Missy Higgins, Kate Miller-Heidke, Courtney Barnett, Sharon Van Etten, James Reyne, The Waifs and San Cisco. For over two decades she has run the lighting department at the Palms at Crown Casino, Melbourne.

As a designer and project manager, Kait collaborates with clients, venues and production companies to deliver a distinctive and innovative design service meeting critical deadlines and budgets. As an administrator, business owner and manager, Kait has worked within large corporate organisations with sizeable capital expenditure budgets but also works with established and emerging artists where smaller budgets demand more challenging solutions. 

Lighting Designer

Mark is based in Tasmania and has been in the entertainment and events industry for 37 years as a lightning designer, operator, lightning systems crew.

His touring work has taken him numerous times around Australia many USA tours and shows through Asia. 

Mark has also taken many roles throughout his career in the industry including driver, stagehand, loader, runner, crew chief, production manager (towels and water), stage manager and catering officer.

Head of Production | Second Sunday Event Services

Brendan has over 20 years experience in both Domestic and International touring and has worked with some of the biggest Entertainment Brands in the world. He has worked in all size and scale of shows ranging from intimate showcases in 50 seat rooms to 34 truck International Tours.

As Global Head of Production for Nitro Circus Brendan developed the show from a local 5 stop Australian Capital City tour to a Global touring property spanning the globe and running concurrent tours. 

Domestically Brendan’s career spans a broad section of the Entertainment Industry including Music, Live Broadcast Events, Theatre and TV. This broad experience means that Brenda has seen some of the industry wide and more genre specific challenges that faces crew today.

Brendan is excited to be on the crew care board in 2023.

Tour and Production Services

Christian McBride has over 20 years experience in production and before that over five years in performance and teaching drums after attaining a certificate in Music from AIM 1993. In 1999 he began working at Billy Hyde Stage Systems in the hire department and continued in that role as assistant manger until 2004.

Since then he has worked in a wide variety of roles as a backline tech, stage manager, tour manager and promoter representative with a wide variety of local promoters and local/international artists including Paul Kelly, Icehouse, The Whitlams, Paul McCartney, Bryan Ferry, Frontier Touring, Secret Sounds, Feel Presents and numerous others. He has toured extensively overseas in the North America, , South America, UK, Europe and Asia as a tour manger (US artist Deerhunter 2009) and backline tech with a variety of artists including Kimbra, Boy and Bear, Cut Copy and Paul Kelly.

He has worked on most of the major Australian festivals as a stage manger and/or backline manger at Bluesfest, Splendour in the Grass, RnB Fridays, Parklife and numerous other events.

Whilst continuing to work in these roles he has also participated in industry events and advocacy including Mental Heath First Aid training and in the Collarts Music Masters online panel event in 2021.

Venue Manager

Andrew has worked in the live performance industry for 30 years, and has performed a variety of roles in that time.

He started out working as a stagehand for Gig Power, working as a lighting technician and fulfilling various roles in stage, production and site management for major tours, concerts, festivals and suppliers.

Andrew has now specialised in the provision of temporary structures – mainly outdoor staging - for the past 14 years. Currently managing the staging division at Clifton Productions he is responsible for building and managing project teams to deliver outdoor stages for major concerts tours, events and festivals throughout Australia and abroad.

Sharyn began in the industry with The Paul Dainty Corporation as computer network supervisor and programmer, working in accounts and other areas on national concert tours, theatre productions at the Comedy Theatre, publicity, design, merchandising and music publishing. Some of the many national tours during this period were Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Santana, Phil Collins, Mick Jagger.

With Richard East Productions she worked with the Australian and UK offices in Artist Management, Concert Tour Promotions and Music Publishing.

At award winning Fender Katsalidis Architects, Sharyn worked in accounts and HR in the architecture/property development businesses. Major projects included Eureka Tower, Bendigo Art Gallery, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Republic Tower.

BrandMark Multimedia

Tony started his career as a photographer and graphic artist with advertising institution Omega Graphics, before running his own successful photography business.

Drawn by a love of music, he began work within the divisions of A&R and Publishing for companies including Richard East Productions, Bright Spark Music, Image Music and Fable Records. His work encompassed artist management, tours, music publishing, publicity and promotion. Tonys’ roles afforded him the opportunity to work with a number of major international and local artists.

His experience has gained him connections and close relationships across the music industry, keeping Tony very much invested and attentive to the physical and mental health issues that have arisen across the sector.

Academic | Business Owner | Music Industry Professional

Katy is a live music professional with over 25 years experience.

In 2010 when Katy became a single mum and could no longer tour, she became the founder and director of Ground Control Event Services which provides professional event staff in roles such as artist and crew ground transport, production runners and VIP teams on concerts and festivals around Australia.

Ground Control provide crew for many promoters including Live Nation, Frontier touring, Chugg, TEG Dainty and Adrian Bohm to name a few.

Katy is also a university lecturer in Music Business and Tour Management and empowers her students to be the change makers of the Live Music scene and hopes her influence and the work opportunities Ground Control provides will see a more diverse and inclusive music industry for futures to come.

Operations & Technical Manager
Palais Theatre

Having played a host of musical instruments as a youngster, CR was drawn to the bright lights of entertainment production.

Working as a loader, stage-hand, crew boss and dogsbody, CR was well known around the traps and lived by the motto “The more hats you can wear the less hungry you will be” 

After several years as a freelance Gig-slut, CR was appointed as Technical Supervisor at Crown Showroom where he remained for over 11 years before the lure of touring saw him out on the road again as TM for Vanessa Amorosi and then as a guitar & stage tech and hired gun for a who’s who list of local and international artists.

After nearly 10 years touring across the world with James Reyne, finally hung up his frequent flyer cards in 2017 and has taken up residence at the historic Palais Theatre in Melbourne where he is the Operations & Technical Manager. 

Having worked with and learned the ropes from many of the industry’s finest over years, CR’s priority is always looking out for the crew.

Pro Stage Victoria
Gig Power

Trogg started working on stage productions for local theatre companies in the early 70's before progressing to live music production, first as a lighting operator and then later as an audio operator.

He toured with bands throughout the 70's, 80’s, 90’s and into 2000, and gradually moved into production and site management and is still actively involved working on many of Victoria's and Australia's largest events.

Trogg owns Gig Power and Pro Stage Victoria and is heavily involved with the day to day management and operations of both companies .

A great believer in returning to your community and industry has seen Trogg involved with the CFA for 18 years and now sees him joining the CrewCare team to assist fellow crew, both young and old who find themselves in unexpected circumstances whilst in the pursuit of what we all love doing, in an industry we all love being in.