Japan - Fuji Rock Festival was held an hour's train ride from Tokyo, from 26-28 July. Japan's most eagerly awaited summer event is the largest in the whole country.

Right from its first edition, in 1997, Fuji Rock was a truly star-studded event: artists included Weezer, Green Day, Foo Fighters, Massive Attack, Prodigy, Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Nowadays, Fuji Rock is a phenomenon able to attract over 100,000 fans. Born from an idea by Hidaka Masa, the festival aimed at changing the way Japanese fans "listened to music", offering them the possibility of hearing sounds for the very first time, in an atmosphere of "freedom", while camping surrounded by nature.

The event's 2013 edition featured performances by top names on the Japanese and international alternative rock and electronic scenes: Bjork, The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, Vampire

China - Pilot Records' Inter City Music Festival recently took place at the Golden Sands Beach in the Huangdao district of Qingdao, China. Many of the record label's acts performed including Reflector, Zheng Jun, CMCB, Twisted Machine and headliner Miserable Faith.

Real Music Acoustics & Lighting Technology Co. Ltd., Adamson System Engineering's distributor in China and Hong Kong, supplied an Energia E15 line array system for the two-day festival.

"The record labels artists represent many different genres of music," explains Richie Wang, GM for Real Music Acoustics & Lighting. "We provided a substantial Adamson E15 PA in order to accommodate their heavy metals bands as well as pop and folk music acts."

The E15 line arrays - 12 enclosures per array - were hung from scaffolding erected to the right and left of the stage. Under each array were a stack of six

UK - Broadcast audio specialists Red TX was at London's O2 Arena on 29 September, to capture the broadcast audio for Unity - A Concert For Stephen Lawrence.

Artists including Rita Ora, Beverley Knight and Jessie J were joined by Emeli Sande, Ellie Goulding and Ed Sheeran for the concert, which was held to mark the 20th anniversary of Stephen's death in southeast London.

Red TX was commissioned to handle the broadcast audio by Paul Dugdale, who was directing the project on behalf of ACME TV. Dugdale previously worked with Red TX during the summer when the company recorded The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park.

For the Unity concert, which was broadcast on BBC 2, Red TX used its main Red 1 outside broadcast vehicle, with engineers Tim Summerhayes and Ollie Nesham at the controls.

"We knew the event was going to be challenging due to a tight schedule and the shear amount of ar

UK - The first ever Technical Theatre Awards (TTA) - celebrating the best of 'behind the scenes' skill and talent - were presented at a well-attended ceremony at the PLASA Show at London's ExCel.

Fifteen awards were announced on the Theatres Trust stand in the midst of the PLASA hubbub.

Sponsored by AVW Controls, dbs Solutions, Load Cell Rental, Mayflower, Philips Entertainment, PLASA, Production Resource Group (PRG), StageBitz, Stage Jobs Pro, The Fifth Estate Ltd and Triple E, the TTAs are also very kindly supported by Lighting&Sound International and The Theatres Trust.

Host for the evening was prolific multi award-winning lighting designer Rick Fisher, perhaps best known for his work on Billy Elliot the Musical and An Inspector Calls. Recent credits include Great Expectations at Bristol's Old Vic, The Herd at The Bush Theatre, and Inside Wagner's Head at the Linbury Stud

UK - Robe lighting enjoyed a super busy 2013 PLASA exhibition at its new location of ExCeL London, where they showcased nine new products and won their third PLASA Innovation Award.

Robe's CEO Josef Valchar comments, "We are really happy. There was a constant stream of people to the booth, interest in all the latest products and of course, we are delighted to win another Innovation Award, which is a great recognition of all the hard work and foresight of our product design and R 'n' D teams."

The Robe stand was the largest of the exhibition in surface area and occupied a prominent position at the back of the hall. It was designed by Nathan Wan and also featured an eye-catching light-show - also designed and programmed by Wan, utilising all the new and latest products to a special soundtrack.

This ran every half an hour, and attracted even more people to the booth t

UK - All the endeavours that have gone into promoting SGM's G-Spot LED moving head paid dividends when the IP65 rated fixture was to pick up a top award at the prestigious PLASA Awards for Innovation in October.

A packed audience gathered to see SGM CEO Peter Johansen collect the coveted prize from PLASA chairman, Ed Pagett in a ceremony at the ExCeL's AudioLab Arena during this year's PLASA Show in London, as Association CEO Matthew Griffiths made the announcements.

The PLASA Awards for Innovation recognise products that advance the industry by demonstrating a new style of thinking, improving technical practice or taking a key step forward in terms of safety. During the show's opening two days, 45 new products were judged 'live' by an independent panel of expert judges who toured the show floor to view each product presentation.

The G-Spot was accoladed for a number of reas

UK - LumenRadio has won a third PLASA Award for Innovation, presented at the PLASA Show in London last week.

This year's award was for the SuperNova 3 software, which enables system-wide control of RDM devices across an Art-Net network. SuperNova 3 offers the perfect tool for production electricians or system technicians to monitor, configure and display their rig status in real-time. Building on the SuperNova platform, this advancement enables users to control their whole rig - even the devices connected by cables.

LumenRadio's first Award for Innovation was given in 2009 for the CRMX Nova product line and it's contributions to wireless DMX and RDM data distribution including low latency, error correction, and cognitive coexistence that enable reliable operation in difficult and saturated radio environments. The second award was given to LumenRadio in 2010 for the CRMX Nova F

UK - The QSC CXD Amplifier platform introduced earlier this year at Infocomm in Orlando, FL was recognised with a PLASA Award for Innovation PLASA London 2013. Featuring user configurable, built-in DSP, this amplifier platform includes Flexible Amplifier Summing Technology (FAST), which allows the amp's total power allocation to be distributed across one, two three or all four of its outputs, enabling amp channels to be combined for maximum current or voltage output, depending on the requirements.

The judging panel, composed of industry experts in the field of lighting, sound and installation technology, commented: "This is an incredibly flexible amplifier that can be used in almost any situation. It can be sub-divided and reconfigured, and will work well in installations or as hire stock."

"CXD and PLD amplifiers are a reflection of our use of cutting-edge tech

UK - PLASA London 2013 proved a great success with exhibitors and visitors alike at its new home at ExCeL London. Over 11,000 visitors (subject to ABC audit) attended the show, of whom over 3,000 attended on multiple days. International interest was high, with more than 2,200 visitors from 84 countries. Stand rebookings for next year's show are also up on last year, and several major companies that did not make the move to ExCeL - including Philips Entertainment - have either already signed up for 2014 or are in serious talks to return.

Chris Toulmin, head of events, PLASA London 2013, said, "The response we've received to PLASA London 2013 has been overwhelmingly positive, both from visitors and exhibitors. They have embraced the new venue and also enjoyed the new features such as the AudioLab Arena, Theatre and Interactive. The PLASA team has worked very hard to get to th

UK - Rosco CEO Mark Engel presented Light Relief with its annual benefit cheque from the proceeds of Rosco's 313 Light Relief Yellow colour filter. The cheque was presented to Light Relief co-found Rick Fisher at Rosco's booth at PLASA. During the presentation, Engel had this to say about Rosco's continuing support of Light Relief, an organisation established to support entertainment technicians in times of hardship:

"When we introduced Rosco's Supergel 313 Light Relief Yellow in 2004, you [Rick Fisher] were quoted as saying "I wanted the Light Relief Yellow to be a warm, late afternoon, sunny colour...," which seems to me the perfect sentiment for this colour and this charity - a comforting ray of light when it's needed most. Thank you to every designer who uses Supergel 313 on stage for helping us help our community offstage. We donate the proceeds from this col

UK - Two intense days of evaluation at an event ambitiously billed the "Ultimate Network Shootout" resulted in success for Optocore over five other leading protocols.

The comparative sessions took place on the opening two days of this year's PLASA Show at ExCeL London, and were supervised by Roland Hemming (of RH Consulting) as part of the new AudioLab Interactive experimental concept, which he masterminded.

An impressive number of attendees on each day were given voting buttons in order to register their preference, as six of the most established industry audio protocols - Optocore, MADI, Dante, EtherSound, CobraNet and Analogue - were closely scrutinised. The Optocore solution was voted the best in terms of signal transmission quality by different independent audiences on both days.

The Optocore presentation was made by support engineer, Maciek Janiszewski, and s

UK - Powersoft joined forces with Pioneer Professional Audio at this year's PLASA Show in London, to showcase the potent new club system which has taken Ibiza by storm this summer.

At ExCel, Pioneer introduced its new GS-Wave and XY series club loudspeakers in the AudioLab Arena - controlled and optimised by Powersoft's advanced electronics

Developed in conjunction with Gary Stewart Audio (GSA), the winning combination of Pioneer's new dance floor stack and Powersoft's flagship K-series amplifiers, with built-in DSP and presets optimised by Pioneer, made an impressive debut in Ibiza - the heartland of serious clubbing - during the recent season in Balearic dance capital.

The landmark installation of four GS-Wave stacks in Booom! Ibiza, powered by Powersoft, has been joined on the island by installations of Pioneer's XY systems at the Ushuaia Ibiza Beach Hotel five-star party

UK - Pearce Hire is exhibiting at the Showman's Show on 23-24 October. With over 25 years' experience providing power, lighting, audio, staging, project consultancy and production services to the outdoor and indoor event, festival, entertainment and corporate event industries, Pearce Hire are a regular exhibitor at this exhibition, dedicated to outdoor and special events.

Pearce Hire has made a significant number of investments in equipment over recent months, with purchases ranging from Robe 1200 LED Wash Fixtures and an L'Acoustics Kara Line Array alongside a major investment in generators and power distribution.

The investment in power distribution and supply equipment includes Stephill 25 kVA silenced diesel generators ideal for small outdoor events and FG Wilson XD fuel-efficient diesel generator sets - 60 kVA and 100 kVA generators, all with full synchronisation and know

UK - As the newly-located PLASA show opened its doors last week at London's ExCel Centre, Robert Juliat was happy to report superlative results. "The show provided an excellent forum to meet our many international partners from Robert Juliat's Family of distributors," says Robert Juliat sales director, Claus Spreyer. "We were very impressed with the range of visitors to our stand who came from almost every part of the globe including Eastern, Northern and Southern European countries, South Africa, Asia, South America, USA, Canada and the Middle East."

Exhibiting for the first time with Ambersphere Solutions, its new UK exclusive distributor, Robert Juliat revealed a bright, new-look stand design, complete with a range of startling pink TIBO fixtures. "The pink TIBOs succeeded in drawing a lot of visitors to the stand and generated much excited chat on th

UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) Ltd received a great reception to cutting-edge new technologies showcased on their stand at PLASA London 2013 from the many brands the company distributes exclusively in the UK and certain international territories. "This year's show was the biggest and best yet for AC-ET," says the company. Key lighting, video, rigging and audio product innovations were represented from AC-ET's portfolio of over 200 premium brands and four specialist sales divisions.

There was a great reception to the worldwide launch of the new Vision LED family, which features a 16° Par, a 1 metre batten and a zoomable moving wash each using 10W RGBW Multichip LEDs and delivering powerful and consistent performance. The LED range offers real value for money without compromising on performance, build quality or reliability, and provided dynamic illumin

UK - ETC's PLASA stand visitors queued up for demonstrations of the new ETC Source Four LED CYC last week. With the help of a desert scene cyclorama lent by the Design Realisation students on the Technical Theatre Arts programme at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, ETC's fixtures product manager Jim Uphoff and colleagues showed how one scene can be dramatically changed to match different times of day.

Five Source Four LED fixtures with attached CYC adapters at the bottom, and another five at the top, were controlled through an ETC Paradigm touchscreen to produce different colour mixes, each affecting how the scene was perceived.

At London's National Theatre, lighting director Neil Austin used a similar setup on Liolá, using Source Four CYC fixtures to create a very slow fade from cool blue daytime to warm orange evening lighting over the course of up to half an hour.

Els

UK - New regulations set to come into play could mean more training and investment is needed for those involved in the building of event structures, a leading safety body has said.

The advice comes from the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health's (IOSH) Sports Grounds and Events Group, in the light of new Construction Design Management Regulations (CDM), which are set to take effect in October 2014.

Carl Hagemann, chair of the IOSH Sports Grounds and Events Group, said: "Event organisers and those working in safety at events really do need to realise the impact the new CDM regulations could potentially have on their day-to-day jobs.

"Although the regulations coming into play may seem like a lifetime away, there's no time like the present to start preparing."

When applied to the events industry, the new CDM rules could mean change for organisers and a

UK - PLASA secured a significant lobbying success last month when the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee published its report into 'Supporting the Creative Economy'. The Committee roundly endorsed PLASA's position regarding the Olympics 'No Marketing Rights Protocol'.

The report was the culmination of an inquiry which was launched just over a year ago with a call for evidence from the Committee, which is made up of MPs from across all political parties. PLASA made a detailed written submission as to how the creative industries can be better supported, with a particular emphasis on the value and importance of the Entertainment Technology sector. PLASA's evidence focussed on issues around allowing companies to promote their involvement in the Olympics, tax relief for apprenticeships, improving protection for intellectual property and helping SMEs in the sec

UK - Flightcase manufacturer 5 Star Cases used the 2013 PLASA exhibition at ExCeL London to re-launch its popular Speed Challenge motor racing simulation game ... crowning Carl Sheehan, deputy manager of event technology specialist PSAV as the 2013 5 Star Speed Challenge Champion.

5 Star created a completely new bespoke simulator for this year's Speed Challenge, built using 5 Star's Super Tour specification product, complete with several special features and running Sony's PlayStation 3 Codemaster F1 2012 racing game in full HD.

The 5 Star Speed Challenge was first seen at PLASA 2006. This year it had an additional resonance as 5 Star has been one of the most enthusiastic of a number of industry supporters of British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) racing's rising star, Jack Goff, throughout the 2013 season.

The 5 Star Speed Challenge ran on all four days of the exhibition .

France - Urban Peace 3, Europe's largest hip-hop and urban music event, was an all-Nexo affair. 60,000 fans packed into the Stade de France in Paris for five non-stop hours of live performance, headlined by IAM and Sexion D'Assaut. Sound rental provider Melpomen brought Nexo's new STM Series line array systems into the national stadium for the first time, tying into the permanently-installed Nexo Geo S12 PA for extra coverage of the uppermost seating areas.

Urban Peace 3, which comes five years after Urban Peace 2, presented the cream of French rap music on the city's largest and most prestigious stage. The line-up included Stromae, Orelsan, Chris Brown, Youssoupha and La Fouine, and the mix tent hosted some of the best sound engineers in France.

Sound design for the event was done by Thierry Tranchant of Melpomen, with measurement and tuning by Vladimir Coulibre, using 78 'se

Germany - Besides extraordinary talent and the fact they have all made the history of music, another thing legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse all have in common is that they belong to the 27 Club. The members of this fictitious club all died prematurely at the age of 27 in tragic (and obscure) circumstances.

The play of the same name, The 27 Club, directed by British director Toby Gough and performed at the St. Pauli Theatre in Hamburg, pays tribute to these and other music legends. It is a musical journey through time in which first-class musicians from Britain and the United States bow down to their idols and play songs such as Hey Joe, Light my Fire and Smells like Teen Spirit.

Patrick Woodroffe and associated designer Roland Greil dealt with the lighting design. Fifteen Clay Paky

The Netherlands - Hoevenaars LGV BV, a top live event production company located in the Netherlands, recently added Adamson Systems Energia E15 enclosures to their production inventory.

"We were looking for a new stadium size line array system to take our sound department to the next level," explains Patrick Hoevenaars, CEO of Hoevenaars. "The transparency, range, headroom and sheer SPL of this system is just amazing. As soon as we heard it we were sold."

The new line arrays were immediately put into service for the We Love The 90's concert held in Goffertpark Nijmegen in the Netherlands. More than 23,000 people were in attendance for the eight-hour celebration of the music of that decade.

The audience was treated to live performances by many popular artists from the 90's including Scooter, Paul Elstak, Captain Jack, Flamman & Abraxas, 2 Brothers o

UK - A global musical phenomenon, Wicked has taken to the road for its first UK and Ireland tour and the Production Resource Group (PRG) is providing a custom-built automation solution and the full lighting system.

The show opened at the Manchester's Palace Theatre to five star reviews and plays until 16 November when it will move on to Dublin. PRG is no stranger to the show, having supported the US tour since 2004.

PRG supplied a bespoke designed automation package for the production. For expediency the system used was set-up in its entirety in PRG's testing facility in New Windsor, New York prior to shipping to the UK. This enabled Wicked's creative team to pre-approve scenic moves, which saved valuable time in the theatre.

To support its UK installation John Galante, systems manager for PRG, joined the PRG and Wicked's technical team at the Manchester Palace Theatr

USA - Following their hugely successful PLASA London presence, Avolites and Avolites Media are heading to LDI at the Las Vegas Convention Center, from 22-24 November, to launch an array of new servers, fader wings, and consoles, Stateside.

Avolites Media will continue this year's launch of benchmark products by unveiling the S Series media servers, and Ai V7. The Ai S2, S4 and S6 are Avolites Media's latest server systems that offer 2, 4 and 6 Display Port / DVI outputs. They also feature the latest third generation PCIexpress motherboards, new series AMD graphics cards and PCIexpress SSD drives. In addition, the Salvation Engine can be easily configured to provide up to 64 layers of PIPs with a single server.

Plus the Avolites team will join the team from US distributor Group One to show off the eagerly anticipated Tiger Touch II. The much loved, intuitive console now offers

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