South Africa - Lighting designer Denis Hutchinson joined creative forces with Robert Grobler from rental company Techrig to produce a masterpiece of imagination and style for the Gala Dinner event at food and beverage brand specialist Clover's annual conference. This was staged in the Royal Ballroom venue at the Sun City resort, in the Pilansberg Mountains, South Africa.

Robe moving lights - including 24 Robin 600 LEDWashes - were the key fixtures of the design, supplied by Johannesburg based Techrig, who provided lighting equipment and crew to the entire Clover event for the first time.

Set designer Michael Gill produced a large and innovative scenic design for the gala dinner. Grobler initially gave Hutch - as he's widely known - a basic show brief, which included several high profile live performances, plus an idea of the look they wanted to achieve, to which Hutchinson soo

UK - Newcastle's Theatre Royal reopened its doors to the public on Monday 12 September following an extensive £5m restoration project. The complex renovation drew on the theatrical expertise of UK theatre consultants, Charcoalblue.

Charcoalblue began work on the refurbishment project in September 2009. Managing director of the company Andy Hayles explains, "The scope of the restoration for this Grade I listed theatre was particularly ambitious, and included complete internal redecoration, new seating, new and refurbished pit lifts, new lighting positions and extensive rewiring. Charcoalblue was responsible for the design of all the technical systems and their integration within the historic fabric of the building, as well as advising on sightlines and seating layouts."

The works, which restored the original 1901 designs by theatre architect Frank Matcham in the

USA - "It is always disappointing when church technical teams have their expectations for a new system threatened by budgetary limitations," explains Michael Garrison, founder and owner of Michael Garrison Associates, a system design/consultation firm that has worked with churches all over the United States. "This was the exact situation we walked into at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church."

Located in Menlo Park, California, the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church originally commissioned plans for a comprehensive building renovation in 2007. The renovation included all new theatre seats, a major stage redesign as well as modern technical systems, including a concert-level line array and an electronic 'variable' acoustic system to support the diverse types of services and music performed in the room.

"Our mission was to come up with creative design solutions th

Kenya - This year's annual Safaricom Kenyan Classical Fusion series of classical concerts took place from 28 September to 2 October and were reinforced by Turbosound's Flex Array sound system.

The Classical Fusion series consists of three concerts spanning two cities - Nairobi and Mombasa - and all three events were technically managed by Xtreme Media Solutions Africa Ltd with Nairobi sound company EdTheMix providing sound and monitoring systems.

With audience sizes ranging from a small select VIP group of 800 in the Nairobi Arboretum to the huge public gathering of 12,500 people in the Impala grounds, a flexible audio set-up was required to deal with these extremes, and as a result Turbosound's Flex Array line array system was chosen for its fast set-up and easily scalable configuration.

Based in the heart of Nairobi, EdTheMix is an established sound and lighting company th

Denmark - Moto Rental has been supplying equipment for the annual Ledreborg Slotskoncerter (Ledreborg Castle Concert) for almost 20 years. Since 1999, Moto Rental has used L-Acoustics systems for the event, hosted by the Danish National Chamber Orchestra with various guest performers. This year, FOH engineer Henrik Bonné chose Moto's new Kara WST modular line source system with SB18 subs for the concert.

"Everyone was very excited about getting this large Kara/SB18 system," says Bonné who has mixed the concert since 1995. "Normally we work with V-DOSC in larger venues and Kara in smaller venues. But using Kara on this large outdoor concert, which attracted with 24,000 people over two days, really impressed us. We only received good, positive feedback about the sound."

The main system consisted of 20 Kara cabinets each for left and right hangs,

UK/USA - Calrec Audio reports that Cameron-Pace Group is the first customer to purchase Calrec's new Artemis Light audio console. The sale took place at IBC2011, on the same day as the official launch of the Artemis Light console.

The Artemis Light is the newest member of Calrec's Artemis family of Bluefin 2 Hydra2 audio consoles, introducing a compact processing rack dedicated to delivering digital signal processing (DSP) and routing capabilities in a 4U enclosure. Cameron-Pace Group chose the Artemis Light to upgrade Mobile Unit 1, a Fusion 3D mobile unit for on-location broadcast and post-production. When the upgrade is complete, Mobile Unit 1 will be capable of producing audio in surround sound via the advanced capabilities of the Artemis Light.

"The Artemis Light is the perfect choice for the complex audio requirements of our newly upgraded Mobile Unit 1, and we are

UK - When Edward Mason of Mason & Taylor opened his first London pub site - the award-winning Duke of Wellington in Dalston - the emphasis was as much on its cinema club activities as its real ales.

But Mason wanted a unit which was free of tie, and when the Underdog Group put the landmark Green & Red Mexican-themed bar/club in Shoreditch on the market, it fitted the operators' requirement.

In its previous guise, The Sound Division Group had carried out an advanced sound and lighting system installation in the 220-capacity basement venue two years ago.

The new operator wanted to reconfigure the basement and add a large projection screen system. Having inherited the previous owners' preferred vendor list, Edward Mason was soon discussing his options with Sound Division Group MD David Graham. "It made perfect sense to go on personal recommendation - and I'm pleased that I

UK - West London based lighting and sound rental company Entec Sound & Light specified and supplied a full lighting and sound rig for comedian Micky Flanagan's current sold out West End run at the Garrick Theatre.

The lighting rig was relatively straightforward and hung on the theatre's house bars. For moving lights, Entec supplied Martin Professional MAC 300 Washes - which fit perfectly into the space and the spec. These were joined by 16 ETC Source Four profiles with 19 degree lenses, 27 x Source Four PARs and three 20-lamp MR16 Birdie Battens.

The vast majority of the lighting was static throughout the performance, and most of the fixtures were used for general stage coverage. For the delivery of Flanagan's gags, it was essential that his facial expressions could be seen clearly from all around the room, and therefore good, clean shadow-free lighting was absolutely crucial.

USA - Acey Decy Lighting, a sales and rental company in San Fernando, California that has been servicing the feature film and television industries since 1963, has added Robert Juliat 1159 Victor and 1459 Flo 1800W followspots to its rental inventory.

"We bought four Victors," says Carlos Sandoval, vice president of operations at Acey Decy. "Victor's light output is very even from the centre of the spot towards the edges; you get a much more even light across the fill with the optics. And the fact that they have a douser at hand level, where you operate the light for panning and tilting, is definitely perfect for us. The variable focus range is excellent, and its size factor is also a plus."

Acey Decy acquired a pair of Flo followspots to replace 2K Xenon fixtures. "We chose them for the same reasons as the Victors," Sandoval reports. "Riggin

UK - Hertfordshire-based staging company, Brilliant Stages, was responsible for creating a set featuring the signature pronged 'pylons' in homage to Muse's 2001 album Origin of Symmetry for the band's appearances at the 2011 Reading and Leeds Festivals.

The music events take place simultaneously over the August bank holiday weekend and share the same bill, so Brilliant Stages needed to design the giant, top heavy pieces to withstand the outdoor venues and be quick to set up and take down.

The design brief from lighting and stage designer, Oli Metcalfe, was realised by Brilliant Stages' CAD designer, David Harrison, who also acted as Brilliant's project manager and worked closely with Muse Production Manager, Steve Iredale, in delivering the various elements.

The set comprised of five forked 'pylons' ranging from 9.5m in height with a 2.5m wide span, to the smallest at

USA - Pulse Stage Lighting reports that it is among the first in its service area to own the new Impression Spot One 400 Watt RGB LED Moving Spotlights from manufacturer German Light Products (GLP).

"From its sharp focus, outstanding optics, and unique color mixing and color correction capabilities to its smooth dimming system and highly-efficient, flicker-free design, we found GLP's Impression Spot One to be an incredibly impressive fixture," says Pulse Stage Lighting president Scott de Villers.

"As a company dedicated to providing customers with the highest level of service and the most innovative technology available in the industry, we're delighted to have equipment of this caliber in-house for the first time and are excited about all of the opportunities it presents to us and our customers."

According to Rick Fallon, eastern regional sales manager fo

Show Business - AES Convention chair Jim Anderson has announced another major coup in attracting artists to participate in the upcoming 131st Convention in NYC. On Friday 21 October Judy Collins will participate in a rare one-on-one interview with music journalist Jason King. The discussion will focus on Bohemian, Collins' upcoming CD release.

In making the announcement, Jim Anderson remarked, "The AES has always drawn major artists including Peter Gabriel, Stevie Wonder, Jackson Browne and Mick Fleetwood. But they are generally focused on visiting the Exhibits or working with specific manufacturers. This year's show has attracted a trio of superstar participants, Tony Bennett, Ben Folds and now Judy Collins. We are extremely fortunate to provide their insights to our attendees."

Olympic Countdown - The National Youth Theatre is to welcome athletes to t

Romania - SGM lighting fixtures and control feature exclusively in the Grand Ballroom of the new Hotel Ramada Pite?ti in Romania.

All the overhead intelligent lighting for the stage and auditorium floor has been supplied by SGM, and comprises six fully-featured Idea Spot 575 (with 575W discharge lamp), four Idea Wash 575, 575W moving head zoom wash lights and two IDEA Colorchanger 575's, with 7-segment colour and effects wheels. These are all run off a sophisticated SGM Pilot 3000, capable of controlling up to 1024 DMX channels via two independent DMX outputs.

The contract for all the architectural and production lighting was won by Professional Sound Impact (PSi), working through Briliant Technologies Group, and the design was conceived by PSi founder, Sorin Stanescu.

Having spent nine years as sales manager with Stage Expert, SGM's Bucharest-based distributors, during whic

Guatemala - PR Lighting's new PR-5000 advanced moving head spot and powerful XLED590 LED wash light made their Central American debut at a high profile concert in Guatemala recently.

Popular Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Tito el Bambino, headlined a concert at the Feria de Xela in Quetzaltenango in a show of great success.

Local company The Best Music, who have also been PR Lighting's distributor for the past six years, fielded a vast array of the Chinese manufacturer's products as part of a complete sound, light and video package which dazzled the audience of 2,500.

Working for the production company, Audio Illusion, they fielded four of the new PR-5000 spots alongside eight XL 1200 spots, and eight each of the XL Beam 300 and XL 700 while a further eight each of the new XLED 590 and XLED 390 provided dazzling LED washes from 90 x 5W LEDs and 90 x 3W LED's respectively. Th

Asia - American indie rock band, We Are Scientists (WAS), recently completed a string of dates throughout Indonesia and Singapore, specifying an iLive digital mixing system to manage FOH audio.

The tour started in Bali at the newly opened Temple of Enthusiasm venue, where local rental company, Sumber Ria, supplied the system, which comprised an iDR-48 MixRack with iLive-T112 Control Surface.

FOH engineer, Tim Walter, mixed both the support act and WAS. "It was the first time in that area that iLive had been used and the results were incredible, especially as it was amid total chaos, including a domestic dispute that climaxed in a full bottle of beer exploding on the T112," reports Walter. "The surface and I were both covered in beer and glass but the local techs cleaned up the desk whilst I ran to the stage to mix from my laptop for a few songs."

WAS also

UK - A JoeCo BlackBox Recorder was used to add electronic tracks to a recent live performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in London. The Video Game Heroes concert was part of the Vision Sound Music Festival - the UK's first festival of music for visuals.

The tracks were prepared for the live performance by project programmer Chris White, who was also responsible for making sure that they were triggered on cue during the actual performance. The BlackBox was situated by the monitor console, with feeds from the recorder going into the console.

From there, click tracks were sent to the conductor Andrew Skeet and other relevant performers, while backing track stems went to the FOH desk to be mixed with the orchestral channels.

"We discussed various options and settled on using a hard disk machine, as the idea of running on a laptop was too

Germany - An L-Acoustics KARAi modular WST line source system for permanent installation has been installed into the 881-seat Celebrity Theatre of the Mein Schiff 2 cruise ship.

The system consists of six KARAi cabinets and four SB28 subs in cardioid mode per side, with three 8XT coaxials as front-fill.

"There were a few reasons why we chose an L-Acoustics system," says Ingo Rippe from German systems integrator Protones, which also owns a Kara system for rental. "The first reason was the performance of the KARAi and SB28.

"In addition, an advantage of L-Acoustics' amplified controllers is the possibility of remote monitoring, as well as AES/EBU and analogue signal connection. These options are always an advantage, but especially on board a ship where they are installed in a room quite distant from the stage and FOH position. As well as the cruise ship sta

Belarus - Sound and lighting production company, MediaContract, rigged an advanced EAW system to help inaugurate the new amphitheatre in the Belarus city of Molodechno recently, when the Dozhinki Festival - an annual celebration for the year's harvest - took place.

The amphitheatre was built specially for the festival, and EAW's territorial distributors were brought in to reinforce the traditional festival of folk music, which was attended by nearly 3,000 people.

The opening ceremony was attended by well-known Belarusian bands and artistes, such as Anatoly Yarmolenko, (the Belarus representative at the 2011 Eurovision International Song Contest), Alena Lanskaya, (winner of the Grand Prix of the International Slavonic Bazaar Festival of Arts in Vitebsk) and Tatiana Lozovskaya, (soloist of folk music ensemble, Byaseda). The event was also attended by the President of Belarus, Al

UK - Martin Audio's award-winning sound system at the Ministry of Sound London was put to the ultimate test by some of the world's legendary house exponents last month, as the club celebrated its 20th anniversary.

With clubbers immersed inside 'The Box's' six-stack soundfield, the custom five-way hybrid system at the Ministry has already won prestigious IDMA (International Dance Music) awards for Best Club Sound System Design in both 2010 and 2011 - and its signature low-bass rumble created by two 21in ASX subs per stack, was re-optimised for the occasion.

The nightclub celebrated with a three-day party throughout an unforgettable weekend. Three generations of house music were represented - with an all star line up that included Frankie Knuckles, David Morales, Eddie Halliwell, Nic Fanciulli, Matthias Tanzmann, Sean Tyas, Dennis Ferrer and CJ Mackintosh. Clubbers were taken on

UK - David Atkinson Lighting Design (DALD) has recently completed the lighting design for the Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990s exhibition at the V&A, London.

This is the first in-depth exhibition of art, design and architecture of the 1970s and 1980s, examining one of the most contentious phenomena in recent art and design history: Postmodernism. It shows how postmodernism evolved from a provocative architectural movement in the early 1970s and rapidly went on to influence all areas of popular culture including art, film, music, graphics and fashion.

The exhibition, designed by architects Carmody Groarke & APFEL (A Practice for Everyday Life), briefed DALD that the lighting design should be bold and dynamic, with good tonal contrast.

The installation is set out in three of the main temporary gallery spaces. The first gallery opening section also introduc

Austria - When customers in loudspeaker retailers want to try out a range of different models, it can be a difficult task re-patching cables to make straightforward comparisons.

With the existing Vienna headquarters of sound, lighting and musical instrument dealer Klangfarbe literally bursting at the seams, the company's owners knew that a radical solution was required. They found it in a former, brick built gasometer, which provides 3500m2 of office and retail space.

The extra space in the circular, four-storey building has allowed many more products to be displayed and be available for demonstration. Taking advantage of this, project engineer Martin Plötzeneder was determined to find a high quality solution to the old problem of helping prospective buyers to A/B test different loudspeakers.

The answer came in the form of a Yamaha DME24N digital mixing engine, with MY16-CI

Ireland - On Tuesday 15 November, d&b's sales partner in Ireland, MOSCO will host a T-Series demonstration at TheButton Factory, Curved Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.MOSCO's Kevin McGing and Oran Burnsfrom the d&b audiotechnik Education and Application Support team, will mix a little theory and lots of practical listening sessions. With an introduction to the positioning of the T-Series within the d&b audiotechnik product range, technical overview and the thinking behind the integrated systems approach the day will round up with the all important listening session.www.dbaudio.com(Jim Evans)

UK - Three of the entertainment industry's leading service providers will be joining forces to co-exhibit at the Showmans Show next week.

LS-Live, HSL and Adlib will be collaborating to produce one of the biggest stands at the outdoor event services show, which takes place between 19th-20th October at the Newbury Showground in Berkshire. The joint exhibit will feature a full live rig based around LS-Live's Space Roof stage system.

The three northern-based rental companies will be demonstrating how their varying products and skills, which span the entire spectrum of live event production, can add value to live events, both independently as suppliers and together as a full production package.

Studio, staging and set construction specialist LS-Live will erect a 30m wide version of its Space Roof, with a thrust, B stage, stage set and other rental and automation products, which

Belgium - Having worked for Studio 100 theme parks since 2000 - right up to this summer's latest indoor themed extension (Mayaland) at Plospaland De Panne - FACE has consistently chosen Martin Audio as its preferred loudspeaker brand.

Says FACE MD, Karel De Piere, "Our credo to offer the best hardware, knowledge and service combination led to us recommending Martin Audio. It is about earning the customer's trust and confidence with a proven sound solution."

Founded by Gert Verhulst and Hans Bourlon Studio 100's theme parks receive more than two million visitors each year and this number is continually growing. Active in media, TV, musicals and theme parks, Studio 100's headquarters are based in Belgium, with branches in France, The Netherlands, Germany and Australia.

Since the first theme park, Plopsaland De Panne, opened in 2000, FACE has been involved in the desi

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