UK - Harman Professional UK and Ireland distributor Sound Technology has further strengthened its position over the Irish Sea by announcing a major sale of a JBL VTX system to McCusker Pro-Audio in Northern Ireland. The sale was facilitated by Sound Technology's Irish sub-distributor, Reynolds of Raphoe.

The family run sales, hire and installation house, based in Co. Armagh, upgraded its front line fleet with JBL's new VTX V20 system - maintaining a relationship with the Northridge-based manufacturer extending back a number of years.

Director Barry McCusker, who fronts the business with his brother Colin and father Enda, confirmed the purchase of a rig comprising 24 x VTX V20 dual 10" line array elements; eight VTX G28 ground-stacked dual 18" subwoofers and four VTX S25 dual 15" arrayable sub-woofers.

The VTX Series is a result of JBL's continued effort to del

Europe - AC/DC have embarked on their Rock or Bust stadium tour. A raw, industrial production design by Ray Winkler of Stufish is complimented by an equally inspired and dramatic rock lightshow created by Patrick Woodroffe of Woodroffe Bassett Design (WBD) - with a little help from 39 x Robe BMFLs.

The BMFL Spots are in three key locations on the stage. The first batch of fixtures are rigged on an upstage arch of trussing - the arch and ten trussing 'fingers' are an integral set element - where they are equally spaced apart and utilised for massive beams and powerful breakup / gobo looks.

The next position is far upstage on the floor behind the 'chicken run' which is an up-and-over riser on which the band whizz about. These BMFLs are the primary fixtures in the reveal of the famous AC/DC cannons that emerge ominously at the start of For Those about to Rock (We Salute You)

UK - With Phase 3 of its seminar sessions finalised, PLASA Show reveals content that is both informative and a little out of the ordinary. From audio as art and colour changing lights, to safety - both electrical and aural - and the importance of apprenticeships, PLASA continues to cover key issues for the entertainment technology industry.

"It's art, not plant hire." These words from Tony Andrews, founder of loudspeaker manufacturer Funktion One, will ring true with sound designers and engineers around the world. Having spent his life exploring the higher possibilities in audio, Tony is well placed to discuss his statement further in the 'audio moment', the chosen subject for his Audio and Consciousness session at this year's PLASA Show, where he will doubtless take an audio path less travelled while considering the difference between hearing and listening.

T

USA - Building 24, a live entertainment and club venue located inside The Works, a large indoor entertainment facility in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, has enjoyed the benefits of an Elation lighting system since being installed in 2010. Five years on, the venue was looking to upgrade and add to their lighting system and again chose the Elation brand.

Elation dealer Aurora Sound & Light Design which has sold Elation lighting rigs to such prestigious venues in Philadelphia as SoundGarden Hall and Rumor nightclub, was called in to design the new lighting system, which would marry new Elation lighting fixtures with the venue's existing Elation lights.

"We supplied the new lighting equipment, did the design and programming, and educated the venue staff on how to install the equipment," says Ian Hoffer, president of Aurora, who also explains that the venue wasn't getting the

UK - West Midlands lighting and sound reinforcement company Pacific Sound & Light has been increasing its inventory of Shure equipment in recent months to supply a number of live music tours in the UK.

For the past few years, they have been using PSM900 in-ear monitoring on the live tours for the Drifters, and began working with the Ultimate Eagles tribute band two years ago (currently, the band are on a successful European tour). Now the company has also been asked to handle the forthcoming UK 2015 dates for the official Blues Brothers touring band. For this project, Pacific are turning to ULX-D wireless mics, and have expanded their existing complement of eight channels of ULX-D to 12.

"We've always used Shure mics, even before I set up Pacific," explains the company's managing director Paul Duffy. "With the arrival of in-ears, we began advocating their use to

UK - Britannia Row Productions Training has announced the launch of a brand new website detailing the range of courses it now offers from its base in Twickenham.

The new site offers a more visual and informative view of the activities of the Training operation, complete with testimonials from students of its intensive 12-week Live Sound Technology Course. To offer more flexibility in its training opportunities, Britannia Row has now developed some new courses for 2015 based on the core elements of its 12 week course.

Live Sound Basic PA Course: A 2-day course on the basics of setting up small PA systems. Taught over two consecutive weekends, the course covers a simple PA system from A-Z in the first day and a half, with the final afternoon spent hands-on, including mixing using multi-track playback machines. Live Sound Fundamentals: A 15 x 1-day modular course t

UK - Adlib's working relationship with the touring version of multi award-winning mega-successful sitcom Mrs Brown's Boys hits the 15 year mark this year, with the Liverpool based company providing full technical production - sound, lighting and video - for the various legs of the 2015 arena tour, scheduled to conclude in December, plus a live DVD shoot in September.

Adlib also made a major investment in new Absen high definition LED screen, Sony broadcast cameras and Prolyte pre-rigged trussing in time for the first leg of the tour in the spring.

LED video screen has replaced the projection systems of previous tours this year taking everything up a level, complete with 252 panels of the new 3mm Absen A3 screen.

The lighting, sound and video production were all based around the new 2015 set designed by Frankie & Brian.

The entire production is tailor-made to suit ea

USA - The one million motorists who traverse the Miami Dade Expressway (MDX) every year share one common concern: they want to get to where they're going quickly and safely. To help them do this, the MDX authority is constantly enhancing its network of roads by doing things like installing open road tolling gantries that read vehicle license plates and passes, thereby avoiding the stop-and-go issues created at traditional toll plazas. At one such gantry, MDX went beyond its usual practical traffic control and safety mission to offer motorists an additional aesthetic benefit with help from a collection of Iluminarc fixtures installed by Barbizon Lighting Company.

Resembling an aircraft wing, the impressive gantry and pylon toll structure spans 10 lanes of one of the busiest sections of the MDX system, the 15.4-mile State Route 836, referred to by locals as the 'Dolphin Expressway

UK - Named in memory of Tony Gottelier, the renowned industry innovator and commentator who passed away in 2006, the annual Gottelier Award aims to recognise those product developers who have made significant long-term contributions to the advancement of entertainment, presentation or installation technology - whether in audio, lighting, rigging, staging, or any other related field.

Sadly, the 2014 Award was presented posthumously, by the unanimous agreement of his fellow nominees, to Pasquale Quadri, the founder of Clay Paky and an admired innovator for 40 years, who passed away shortly before the 2014 show. This year, his fellow nominees will again stand in the shortlist. The nominees for 2015 are:

Richard Belliveau

As one of the co-founders of Texas-based lighting manufacturer High End Systems, and still leading the company's product developments today, Belliveau h

Germany - Thomas Gerdon, lighting designer for one of Germany's most popular television shows, Verstehen sie Spass, used a substantial rig of Ayrton lighting fixtures to light the live broadcast from Munich's Bavaria Studios no 9 in April.

Verstehen sie Spass, a 'hidden camera' television series of two live and two recorded shows, features three musical acts within its format. The line-up for this particular evening included vintage German rockers, The Scorpions, Germany's 2015 Eurovision representative, Ann Sophie, and baritone crooner, Marc Marshall.

Gerdon chose 24 Ayrton IntelliPix-R panels, 24 Ayrton MagicPanel-R fixtures, 16 Ayrton NandoBeam-S3 moving heads and 6 giant Ayrton MagicRing-R9 units to light the performances which were watched by some five million viewers.

For The Scorpions set, Gerdon mounted the MagicPanel-R fixtures on truss towers behind t

UK / Poland - Cadac has announced the appointment of Tommex, among the oldest most established audio companies in Poland, as its exclusive distributor for that territory.

The distributor agreement was signed immediately following Cadac's launch of its new CDC six console; a product for which Tommex envisages significant demand on its installation projects and amongst its customer base.

Tommex can trace its origins back to the difficult, pioneering Communist era of the 1970s, when founder Jan Tomasz Zebrowski founded a workshop to distribute and service Dynacord equipment in Poland. By the time Poland became a democracy, the company was servicing many state theatres and concert venues, and had become a gateway for professional audio equipment into several Soviet bloc republics. With democratisation came the opportunity to expand and take on the distribution of many western audi

Italy - Vasco Rossi completed his Live Kom 15 stadium tour in a blaze of glory with a production designed by the combined talents of set company Gioforma and long term lighting designer Giovanni Pinna, which also incorporated substantial video elements with screen content managed and controlled via grandMA2 light.

The edgy industrial stage aesthetic featured scenic video made up from Pixled's F-37 product, plus an epic IMAG video presence ensuring that everyone, even those at the back and to the sides of the stadiums, received a great view as well as those closer to the action.

The tour completely sold out, so nearly a million fans experienced the full glory of Rossi - one of the industry's classic showmen - and his legendary live performance.

All the scenic video control was run via two media servers being triggered by a grandMA2 light console in a custom control system spe

UK - Richard Martin Lighting (RML) is currently working on a broad range of TV shows.

In It To Win It, the BBC National Lottery game show is back for another series. The show is now filmed in Pacific Quay, Glasgow. RML continues to supply the lights, in association with Tony Kennedy and TSL. Martin Kempton designs the lighting rig. This includes MAC 500's, VL1000TS, Chroma Banks, Chroma Panels, Sharpys, Pixel Par 90's, Alpha Wash 1200's and Pixel Brick kits.

Dermot Murnaghan is back to host another season of the teatime quiz show Eggheads. Lighting designer Martin Kempton continues to originate the show, lights provided by Richard Martin Lighting and supported by TSL Glasgow. The design specification includes one of RML's most recent purchases, the VL4000 Spot. Alongside these are MAC Auras and Chroma Banks.

Question of Sport, Britain's longest continuo

On The Fringe - The Edinburgh International and the Fringe festivals started together for the first time in 18 years. The festivals had been out of sync by one week since the fringe decided to begin a week earlier in 1998. Venues are reporting an increase in advance sales, with international festival sales up by 25%.

Number Crunching - The Edinburgh Festival Fringe in numbers: There will be 50,459 performances of 3,314 shows between 7 and 31 August; the number of shows is a 3.8% increase on last year's programme; acts from 49 countries are taking part in the festival, including Japan, South Korea, Russia, New Zealand and Finland; the majority of shows are billed as comedy - 34% - while theatre makes up 27%, music 14%, children's shows 5% and cabaret 4%; here are 807 free shows for audiences to try and 1,778 premieres. A total of 313 venues are being used, including 14 new

USA - After the success of its spring regional training events, Audinate has announced a fall schedule of Dante AV Networking World conferences throughout U.S., Europe, Middle East and Asia. These free all-day events are designed for anyone interested in audio networking, and will feature presentations, training workshops and interactive panel discussions led by industry experts.

The events are co-sponsored with 20 leading audio manufacturers, including Ashly, AtteroTech, Audinate, Audio Technica, Bose, ClearOne, Extron, Focusrite RedNet, Lectrosonics, NTP, RDL, Roland, Shure, SSL, Stewart Audio, Symetrix, Vue Audiotechnik, Williams Sound, Xilica and Yamaha Commercial Audio. Each event will feature Dante-enabled product demonstrations from the sponsors and will give attendees the opportunity learn about and see Dante-enabled products in action.

Agenda topics will include: an i

South Africa - South Africa-based In Living Colour, established in the mid '90s by Gavin Buckle, recently invested in an Avolites Tiger Touch II and 12 x Robe Robin 300 LED Wash fixtures.

"Due to In Living Colour's position within the market where an equal amount of events and sub-rentals to other related companies are responsible for our sustained growth, we concentrate on investing in leading brands that are consistently sought after by international touring companies as well as local suppliers," commented Gavin Buckle. "Our lighting desks and fixtures are required to keep pace with the rigorous demands we place on them, whether being used in the controlled environment of a theatre or the unpredictable exposure of outdoor festivals. The glaringly obvious solution was the Avolites and Robe brands. Since making the wise investment they have thankfully seen little

UK - A state of the art welding machine is set to help Doughty Engineering keep up with increasing customer demand for its Modular Rigging System. Since the launch of the product range at the end of 2014, welders on the shop floor have been pushed to capacity to ensure orders are manufactured and shipped to schedule.

Mark Chorley said, "Little did we know when we launched the Modular Rigging System last autumn, just how popular it was going to be. We thought orders may decrease as time went by but on the contrary our workers have never been busier as word spreads and lighting designers realise just how innovative these drop arms and h frames allow them to be."

The TIG welding lathe is used to TIG Weld 'round components' made from aluminium. At Doughty specifically, the machine welds all items within the Modular Rigging range as well as the company's boom arms. Elimin

UK - Festival attraction the Tree Top Troubadour, otherwise known as Ben Trevor, has begun using a Shure QLX-D wireless microphone system for his guitar and vocals on his summer dates, most recently at July's Larmer Tree festival.

As his nickname suggests, Trevor - an arborist in his day job - is well-known for playing his concerts from the branches of trees, which somewhat limits his options for amplification to wireless-based systems. The QLX-D's extended battery life and efficient spectrum usage have proved a boon at his festival gigs, given the heavy usage of the RF spectrum at modern festivals, and the fact that replacement batteries and charging facilities are not readily available when you're performing high up in an oak with only a Chesterfield sofa and a glitterball for company, as Trevor was at Larmer.

Many musicians turn to charitable endeavours if they're lucky eno

UK - A UK hydraulics firm pulled off a stellar performance to arrange manufacture and delivery of a range of hydraulic cylinder components in a short space of time, for the opening night of a new performance at The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC).

MGR Fluid Power ensured that the RSC's performance of Othello went off without any last minute glitches after it sourced 14 custom-designed hydraulic cylinders for the main stage, in a matter of days before opening night. The company was called in at the last minute to ensure that the stage hydraulics were capable of moving the stage in the way that the performance dictated.

Far from being a simple task, the brief for MGR Fluid Power was to source and supply cylinder components to exact specifications, and to ensure the hydraulics operated smoothly. The rams for the cylinders were flanged with stainless rods, operating under v

Australia - This year's Splendour in the Grass festival in Byron Bay, close to the famous Gold Coast, hosted a significant quantity of SGM's outdoor lighting fixtures. With damp experiences from the past haunting festival organisers and production managers, the requirement for lighting that could withstand torrential winter rainfall was the highest of priorities And Mother Nature did not disappoint!

The four day event saw SGM lighting fixtures such as the P-5 RGBW wash and the Q-7 RGBW flood take part in several installs and stage packages across the festival. A most notable display being that of Melbourne artist Sam Songailo. His 20sq.m maze comprising 100 large pillars was a big attraction of the festival, gathering thousands of attendees at any given time. Entertainment Technology Australia's Taylor Chadwick was recruited as lighting designer for the install, in charge of bri

USA - Multi-Grammy Award winner Keith Urban has carved out a niche in the country music genre since he arrived on the scene in the 1990s by combing raw musical power with sweet uplifting lyrics. Urban was his usual open, carefree and engaging self when he appeared on The Today Show Summer Concert Series recently, showing an uncanny ability to connect with his audience and even surprising an ecstatic young fan from Chicago by giving her his guitar.

Urban's generosity and upbeat music weren't the only things engaging fans during his performance. Also captivating the audience at Rockefeller Centre and watching at home on television was a sparkling, bright and colourful lightshow created by designer Peter Greenbaum that featured a collection of Chauvet Professional Nexus 4x4 LED panels and Next NXT-1 moving LED fixtures supplied by WorldStage of New York.

Greenbaum gave the

Germany - For the 25th Anniversary of Audi's Summer Concert series inside its factory in Ingolstadt, Germany, Meyer Sound Leopard linear sound reinforcement and Constellation active acoustic systems formed the foundation of an extraordinary audio experience for both the audience and musicians. The combination transformed a cavernous space that normally stamps out steel side panels for the Audi A3 into a temporary concert hall worthy of hosting the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Kent Nagano.

The concert was the first show where Constellation worked hand-in-glove with the new Meyer Sound Leopard line arrays. While Constellation provided a virtual orchestra shell to envelop musicians with the sonic environment of a concert hall, twin arrays of eight-each Leopard loudspeakers projected the performance to about 1,000 audience members.

"It was truly breathtaking the wa

Saudi Arabia - Masjid al-Haram, the holiest shrine in Islam, is now visited by over 3m Hajj pilgrims annually. In order to provide the best facilities to the legions of devout Muslims, The Custodian of Two Holy Mosques (the former King) Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz undertook the expansion of the Holy Mosque and associated elements. A part of this project has been the complete upgrade of the Mecca Mokabariah facility's microphones to the latest digital models from Sennheiser. These microphones are being used at all prayer locations around the Kaaba, and in the Mokabariah studios from where all audio content and prayers originating from Mecca are broadcast across the world.

The major advantage of the upgrade has been that though on-going construction relating to the expansion has required shifting of the microphones to locations that are large distances away from the studios, the qualit

Singapore - The island state marked its 50th anniversary - SG50 - with pride, as flamboyant celebrations erupted all across the island, culminating in a special National Day Parade (NDP) in the Padang, right in the heart of the city. The NDP show was attended by the Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and President Tony Tan, several international heads of state, politicians, dignitaries, a host of VIPs plus 60,000 members of the public. It was also broadcast live on national TV, beamed across Asia and streamed locally to giant LED screens in several key locations around Singapore.

Spectacular lighting for the energetic multi-media SG50 NDP show directed by Dick Lee was designed by Javier Tan, and the equipment - including the 350 x Robe BMFL Blades - delivered by Showtec Communications Pte Ltd., which recently purchased over 700 BMFL fixtures.

The BMFL Blades were positioned on all

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