UK - Lighting Partners is now the exclusive distributor for Hazebase Products in the UK and Ireland. The distribution agreement, having been under discussion for a number of months, was finalised during ProLight&Sound in Frankfurt.

"The move to Hazebase was a logical decision for the company," commented Lighting Partners director, Iain Dennis. "Hazebase products share technology, components, and consumables with Smoke Factory so we already have huge experience in selling and supporting the range."

Uta Raabe, owner of Hazebase in Germany explained: "This collaboration with Lighting Partners in the UK marks a significant milestone in the development of the Hazebase brand worldwide. The UK Market is an important one for any manufacturer and finding a compan

UK - Presentation Services London Ltd (PSLL), the company which emerged from Presentation Services Ltd (PSL) following a pre-pack administration in December 2008, was itself entered into administration on 10 March by administrator MCR. PSLL had reportedly intended for a percentage of its turnover to be set aside to pay PSL creditors under the agreement made by administrators Tenon Recovery.

(Lee Baldock)

Czech Republic - Robe Lighting staged its third International Dealer Conference in Roznov, Czech Republic, attended by over 150 people representing Robe distributors from around the world.

The one day event was timed just ahead of the Prolight&Sound show in Frankfurt, allowing attendees to preview Robe's product launches for the show as well as energising them for the exhibition.

The day started with a tour of Robe's factory premises in Valasske Mezirici. This has been expanded considerably since the last Dealer Conference in 2007, with an additional 4000sq.m of space added, which is being utilised for new warehousing facilities and a logistics centre, plus plastic moulding workshop. Visitors also saw the new Robe Research Centre, the hub of the company's R&D department and another addition since 2007.

The agenda included a stop off at the new Anolis factory, a totally separ

UK - A.C. Special Projects has provided a new lighting rig for the auditorium at the Cass Business School in Moorgate, central London. Part of City University, Cass is one of the leading international business schools. The auditorium provides the central focus for both student learning and major public lectures and acts as an important forum for the City of London.

With the auditorium's existing lighting proving inadequate for filming key lectures and guest speaker talks, Cass approached A.C. Special Projects to specify a solution. The new rig needed to provide adequate light levels for filming without dazzling the audience or compromising the visibility of two large back-projected screens in the centre of the stage area.

A.C. Special Projects specified fixtures from the Spotlight Mini Series, which feature the latest theatrical lighting technologies in a compact yet powerful

UK - With less than one month to go until PLASA Focus: Leeds 2009 opens its doors, PLASA Events are delighted to announce two high profile seminars to open, and close the show.

The BBC will open the PLASA Focus seminar programme at 10.30am on Tuesday 28 April with a look at the UK's first Media City, opening in 2010 at Salford Quays.

The inspirational new Media City will cover two hundred acres and establish a new state-of-the-art media enterprise zone for the North. The new iconic building will hold a custom-built recording studio for the BBC Philharmonic, floating stages for theatre and concert venues, studio and technical facilities and a number of other offerings for media industries

During the seminar, Jim Brown (Portfolio Director, Production Studio and Technical Facilities in BBC Workplace) will explain what will be in Phase 1 of the project, what first attracted the

Germany - Klotz Digital has announced the appointment of Andreas Bartsch as worldwide sales director for its Public Address division. In this position, he will oversee Klotz Digital's Varizone sales channel. Besides driving sales in the public address (PA) segment, his main duties will be to expand the dealer network and to identify new markets for the Varizone digital PA system.

"It is a pleasure for me to work for the technology-driven Klotz Digital," observes the new sales director. "My main target is to strengthen the company's position in the PA market by attaining a new level of market penetration."

Prior to joining Klotz, Bartsch spent 13 years with Licht-Technik Vertriebs Hagenbach & Grill, a manufacturer of a wide range of accessories for lamp heads used in film, TV, opera- and theatre.

"We are very fortunate to have an individual with such

UK - Production:av, an audio-visual services provider based in Gloucestershire, has been recognised as an InfoComm International Sapphire Audio Visual Solutions Provider. Reaching AVSP status has been a target for the company for some time.

Managing director Peter McCrea comments: "We have been working to achieve this recognition to ensure our business is viewed as a qualified organisation, which provides audio visual installations and equipment rental services to the highest standards." Production:av currently has technical staff working towards CTS status (Certified Technology Specialist).

InfoComm provides an internationally recognised AV industry certification programme, which is contributing towards creating standards of excellence and practice in the AV industry.

McCrea adds: "Whether we are hiring a plasma screen to a business seminar, installing a proj

UK - Audio Light Systems has recently completed the performing arts technology installation at the Michael Croft Theatre in London. The new build theatre which is part of the famous Edward Alleyn's School, asked Audio Light Systems to install full audio, Lighting, AV & specialist systems at the venue.

The state of the art 360-seat theatre in Dulwich, which will also be used by the National Youth Theatre was described by the London Standard as "more comfortable than the West End, more trendy that the Almeida, more aesthetically pleasing than the South Bank".

The audio installation features a Yamaha LS9-32 FOH desk and KV2 Audio's EX FOH speakers. The lighting includes Stand Light Pallet Classic 1500 console, ETC Sensor dimmers, ETC and Selecon lanterns and GDS Blues System lighting.

AV features include a Christie DW5K projector and Kramer Digital signal distr

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Germany - PR Lighting launched its StarBrite LED cloth at this year's ProLight&Sound exhibition in Frankfurt - forming a shimmering backcloth to the stand - and the XLED 590 wash light.

The latter uses 90 Osram Diamond Dragon 5W RGB LEDs in each head. This is one of the world's brightest single-chip SMT LEDs (offering up to 250 lumens). PR Lighting sales director Cui-Lin states that the light output closely resembles that of a conventional wash light containing a 1200W discharge lamp, with the advantage of excellent colour mixing and high uniformity of the white beam. The standard beam angle is 22° but 10° and 35° options are also provided.

"We are delighted with the response we have received to both this and the StarBrite, which proved so popular with customers that we received an instant order for the display backdrop."

The StarBrite LED cloth comes w

Austria - The Burgtheater in Vienna is one of the most prominent stages in Europe and after the Comédie-Française, the second oldest European language theatre. More than 100 invited theatre technicians from Austrian theatres and opera houses experienced a live presentation of the grandMA2 and were hugely impressed by the ambitious theatre dedication of the new series and its powerful features.

During the following hands-on sessions, everyone had the chance to take a closer look at the grandMA2 system, containing of grandMA2 full-size, grandMA2 light as well as grandMA ultra-light plus wings, a replay unit and MA's unique and integrated software tools grandMA2 remote and grandMA2 onPC as well as grandMA 3D and grandMA video.

"It was a great honour for us to be at the famous Burgtheater for our grandMA2 presentation for the Austrian theatre market," comments Fr

Royalty News - The money made by UK artists overseas increased by £20m last year, the organisation that collects and pays their royalties has said. UK talent earned £139.6m overseas in 2008 compared with £121.2m the year before, said PRS for Music - formerly known as the Performing Rights Society. It said international tours by big UK acts including The Police and Iron Maiden had boosted income. Improvements in working with foreign societies had helped, a spokesman said.

The US was the top-earning foreign territory for the British in 2008, providing an income of £21.7m, followed by Germany with £15.1m and France with £11.7m. "It's not just MTV any more - there are loads of music video channels and loads of commercial radio stations around the world," said Barney Hooper, PRS for Music, on the rise in earnings. Other major internationa

Denmark - Harman Pro has placed its Danish distribution with a new company, set up by its long-serving Norwegian reseller, LydRommet AS. The newly-formed operation (LydRommet A/S) commenced trading on 1 April, and will take up occupancy of a new 1200sq.m facility in Århus with effect from 1 May.

LydRommet Denmark is majority-owned by LydRommet (under the proprietorship of Joachim Wille) and Flemming Bjerke, the company's high-profile executive director.

The move follows the demise of Music Industri & Audio (MIA), the previous Harman Pro distributor in Denmark. Key sales staff from MIA have been incorporated into the new set up, including Mogens N°rgaard, who is in charge of pro sales, and Helle Scherfeldt, who will head installation sales.

Flemming Bjerke relocates from the company's Oslo base to take on overall responsibility for business and pro audio, that is key to

USA - President Barack Obama's alma mater, Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, recently installed a new Electro-Voice XLE super-compact line array sound system in the school's theatre with the help from Audissey, a Honolulu-based AV and control technologies provider. The new system fulfils the long-held dream of Punahou's technical director, Brian Gilhooly, to equip the theatre with a left-right system design to replace the building's centre cluster, which Audissey installed at Punahou nearly 15 years earlier.

John Gardner of Audissey comments: "Audissey has been involved with the campus for many, many years, and we came to the school about 15 years ago when the administration was remodelling the theatre, and we designed a decent centre cluster to act as the main PA for the space. But it became clear to the school and to us that the system needed an upgrade to meet the scho

USA - America's most popular Christian artist of the past few years, Chris Tomlin, is currently out on an ambitious Hello Love tour in support of his latest album of the same name. The tour, which kicked off in January and is playing arenas across the US into 2010, was one of the first U.S. tours to spec the MAC III Profile.

Jon Weir of production company Majestic Productions of Summitville, Indiana designed the lighting and handled programming for the tour with lighting supply by Majestic as well. The lighting rig is all Martin gear and includes 16 MAC III Profiles, 12 MAC 2000 Washes, 12 MAC 600 washlights and two MAC 2000 Profiles.

"When I started designing this tour, details on the MAC III were few and far between," says Weir. "But after talking to our Martin rep we arranged a demo and as soon as I fired it up and saw the huge beam coming out of it, I

USA - For the 12th consecutive year, a broad range of Audio-Technica microphones was selected to outfit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. A-T supplied over 50 mics to capture the audio for this widely celebrated musical event, which took place at Cleveland's Public Hall.

The 24th annual induction ceremony of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was held on 4 April, 2009, with inductees including guitarist Jeff Beck, R&B vocal group Little Anthony & the Imperials, heavy metal legends Metallica, hip-hop pioneers Run-D.M.C., soul/gospel singer-songwriter-guitarist Bobby Womack, Wanda Jackson, and instrumentalists/sidemen Bill Black, DJ Fontana and Spooner Oldham. The show was broadcast live on Fuse and www.fuse.tv.

Audio-Technica's Artist Elite 5000 Series UHF Wireless System was used with the AEW-T5400 handheld microphone/transmitter for frontline vocals on performanc

India - The Filmfare Awards are the oldest and most prestigious Indian film industry event, and undoubtedly the Oscars of Bollywood. Leading Indian live sound production specialists, Sound.com, were asked for the second year running to provide a complete audio solution for the event, which this year included broadcast sound as well.

Sound.com chose to upgrade their entire sound system from last year. From a Lab.gruppen point of view, this meant that instead of last year's choice of FP+ Series, the entire system was run with the new flagship PLM 10000Q Powered Loudspeaker Management systems with onboard Lake processing.

Like last year, the show was hosted at Yash Raj Studios in the heart of Mumbai, which, according to Sound.com's Warren D'Souza, is not acoustically the best venue- it is designed as a film stage. Nevertheless, as the most coveted awards night in India, with a st

UK - The next generation of LED lighting effect, the new Fusion 672, will be on show around the country in the forthcoming months as it sets out on a UK Roadshow in conjunction with the hit Take That musical Never Forget.

The possibilities of Fusion are best appreciated by seeing it in action, says the company, which is why White Light, as its UK distributors, is taking it on a whirlwind tour of the UK alongside Never Forget, giving anyone interested the opportunity to see what it can do.

Never Forget's lighting designer James Whiteside is putting Fusion to spectacular use as a dramatic backdrop to the show. "We use Fusion in the show's big numbers, hung vertically and controlled as a pixelmap from our grandMA console. They are light and easy to hang in this or any configuration. More importantly, they provide a really big impact - the 'bang for buck'

Europe - Following the successful launch of the Sanctuary Series into the US market in 2006, Peavey obtained all of the necessary CE approvals in order to make its European debut at ProLight&Sound 2009.

Sanctuary Series is a range of products aimed specifically at the worship market, although would be suited to a wide variety of fixed installations with a live sound element, says the company. Designed to maximise performance and value, the range pays keen attention to aesthetics and includes amplifiers, mixers with automatic mixing and feedback elimination, microphones for all applications and loudspeakers available in white and black and finish to blend into any décor.

Sanctuary Series mixers are available in a number of formats and are dedicated to making pro audio easy and cost-effective for non-professional operators. For example, Peavey's patented Automix technolog

UK - White Light reports that it is now approved supplier at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London.

"We are very excited to have included White Light as one of our new approved suppliers, and look forward to seeing their teams within the museum very soon," notes Nigel Mullins, operations manager at the museum.

"White Light has been investing heavily with its lighting inventory, to raise the bar within the corporate events industry. Bringing new and exciting visual LED products that are also sustainable in their technologies, these will complement the fantastic environment within the museum." comments Richard Wilson, White Light director.

(Jim Evans)

UK -The Association of British Theatre Technician's ABTT Theatre Show reports that its new on-line pre-registration system has revealed that figures are up by 15% compared to the same time last year.

Opting to offer an exclusively on-line registration service for the first time, the organisers are highlighting their commitment to the show's on-going investment, despite these 'credit crunch' times.

Providing quick and streamlined registration on the day, pre-registered visitors will simply be able to scan their bar-coded email confirmation at designated 'badge stations' to receive their pass, cutting down on queuing time.

The QRS system being used will also reduce the show's carbon footprint. Without the need to print flyers and visitor promotional literature, the show will save a number of trees by switching to on-line registration.

The ABTT Theatre Show is looking forward

UK - Litestructures, who are manufacturers of lightweight demountable structures for use in the racing pit lane and garages have been appointed technical partners of Aston Martin Racing during their bid to win the Le Mans 24 hour race in June of this year.

Litestructures sales director Lee Brooks stated, "it is a real privilege for our company to be associated with Aston Martin Racing in this way. The Aston Martin marque is synonymous with tradition, heritage quality and performance through design, all attributes which Litestructures have engendered in what we do.

As part of our partnership we intend to promote our company and products through this powerful association, and have offered the prize of a beautiful Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster to our overseas distributor who puts in the best performance over the coming months. At the same time, we very much look forward t

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