India - 7thSense Design and Medialon have appointed Image Engineering as a distributor for 7thSense’s range of products including Delta Media Server and Juggler, the pixel processor, as well as the suite of Medialon show control solutions.
Founded in Mumbai in 1989, Image Engineering provides a wide range of AV services and solutions for applications including cinemas, post-production and recording studio installations, theme parks, attractions and museums.
“We are excited to add 7thSense and Medialon to our portfolio of professional technology brands for India,” comments Nainesh Vora, founder and owner of Image Engineering. “Our network of global partners and manufacturers work with us to offer exceptional, premium technology solutions for attraction, digital c

UK - During the PLASA Show, L-Acoustics founder and president Dr Christian Heil was announced as the winner of the 2019 Gottelier Award, as voted for by his peers. Named in memory of Tony Gottelier, the renowned industry innovator and commentator, this annual award recognises product developers who have made significant long-term contributions to the advancement of entertainment, presentation or installation technology.
Heil founded L-Acoustics in 1984, and the introduction of the V-DOSC line array system in the mid-1990s led to a fundamental shift in the live sound market, and line array systems proliferated for the next decade and a half. Still, Heil and L-Acoustics continue to refine the line array concept: the KIVA ultra-compact system came to market in 2008; the K1 system - seen as the long-awaited successor to the ground-breaking V-DOSC - debuted in 2009; the KARA modu

USA - ADJ has announced the immediate availability of its new POW-R Bar Rack USB, a power management solution designed to eliminate messy wires and extension cords. Designed for controlling the power supply to lighting and audio equipment, the compact unit is suitable for use in installations as well as at front of house and monitor mixing positions, lighting desks and in mobile entertainers’ setups.
Building on the heritage of ADJ’s popular PC-100A, a power switching unit that has been on the market for over 25 years, the new POW-R Bar Rack USB retains the original tried and tested design but with the addition of dedicated Always On sockets as well as USB charging ports. The new unit expands the ADJ POW-R Bar range which also includes the touring grade POW-R BAR65 utility power block and POW-R BAR LINK linkable power block.
The new addition features eight three-pr

USA - A new training programme designed to teach stage technicians the safest way to operate telescopic and front-loading lifters has been introduced at WFX 2019 in Orlando by Spanish company Equipson, which manufactures WorkPro lifters.
Equipson has produced a series of 15 videos, voiced in English and Spanish, that demonstrate how safety issues can easily be avoided by following the correct procedures. These videos, which range in length from three to 10 minutes, cover topics such as setting up, elevating, mounting and descending telescopic and front loading lifters, how to safely move a telescopic lifter, how to mount a line array on a front loading lifer and how WireDrive works as well as how to rectify wire mistakes.
Juan Jose Vila, CSO of Equipson, says: "As manufacturers of these products we are committed to making them as safe and accessible as possible to all

UK - Les Miserables: The Staged Concert is playing packed houses at London's Gielgud Theatre, with Unusual Rigging supplying the rigging and automation for the shows' four month stint.
The concert version of the world's longest running musical opened at the end of July, following the closure of the Queen's Theatre. It will re-open after extensive refurbishment of both its backstage and auditorium as the renamed Sondheim Theatre. Unusual Rigging is also a part of this project, lowering the stage and installing a complex engineering system.
With the production team of this limited run show briefed to make the Gielgud feel like a miniature version of the 02 Arena which hosted the 25th anniversary concert, production manager Chris Boone brought Unusual on board to make it happen.
Chris explained: "Unusual Rigging is my go-to company for rigging jobs and this

Belgium - The word ‘individual’ comes up often when Martin Thomas talks about lighting his long-time client Alan Parsons. It isn’t necessarily Parsons himself that the Tucson, Arizona-based LD is referring to, but each of the musicians that make up the pioneering Grammy winner’s band.
“The music of The Alan Parsons Project has always been founded on a variety of musicians based on their individual strong suits - and the live show is no different,” said Thomas. “All members have specific harmony parts in the music; and lead vocals shift throughout the show. Because everyone sings, key light and backlight for all musicians is critical. So, layers and atmospheric architecture make up most of the production with several negative space moments in the performance.”
At the last stop of the band’s European tour at the iAncienne Belgique in downtown Brussels

Australia - After a first sold-out season at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Muriel’s Wedding has returned with a Melbourne run finished and Sydney currently packing in the audiences. Next stop is Brisbane for the production that has grown and changed a little since the 2017 premiere.
JPJ Audio are supplying the audio equipment with Michael Waters once again in charge of the sound design. Michael won the 2018 Helpmann Best Sound Design for the original production of Muriel’s Wedding.
“Conceptually it’s similar but in terms of delivering the audio, it’s quite different,” Michael clarified. “We have a Clair PA and I believe it is the first time in the world that a Clair Cohesion CO-8 system has been used for theatre.”
The CO-8's diminutive size allows for a high degree of flexibility when integrating into virtually any application. Sydney

UK - The Den is a new pop-up theatre that forms a key part of the Royal Exchange theatre’s local exchange programme. Funded by a generous £1m gift from the Oglesby Charitable Trust, this inventive performance space was designed by the award-winning architectural studio, Haworth Tompkins as an informal space-within-a-space for residents to make and share theatre and to see work from the Royal Exchange.
Pro audio specialists, Autograph Sales & Installations, provided key elements of the sound reinforcement equipment for the new space including seven EX10 compact, full range active loudspeaker systems from KV2 Audio, and an Allen & Heath Qu-16 rack-mountable digital mixer.
Sorcha Steele, head of sound at the Royal Exchange, was responsible for designing the audio system for The Den, a task she found slightly daunting given the scope of requirements for the spac
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Delivering ultimate brightness and unique looks, Zeo’s distinct face design is defined by a central LED monolith and four reflectors, backed by four RGBW engines. As a blinder or strobe, Zeo promises powerful impact with 30,000+ lumens. With its sheer brilliance and playful effects, Zeo is ready to amplify the energy on any stage.

UK - Elation Professional’s Artiste Monet LED Profile luminaire won a PLASA Award for Innovation at PLASA 2019. Recognised as exceptional innovation at a ceremony held 16 September in London, the judges singled out the Monet’s wireless continuous-rotation framing and SpectraColor colour mixing systems.
“We are both honoured and proud to have won our fifth PLASA Award for Innovation yesterday for the fabulous Artiste Monet,” enthused Elation sales & marketing director Eric Loader. “The Artiste series is breaking new ground with innovation that opens up for greater creative possibilities. Lighting professionals on both the production and installation side are discovering how exceptional the series is and the Monet is a great example. We are thrilled to again be recognised as an R&D leader and innovator in entertainment lighting.”
The 45,000-lumen Arti

Poland - Elation Professional has announced that specialty stage technology company Przedsiebiorstwo Specjalistyczne TEATR has been named the new distributor for Elation products in Poland. Based near Warsaw in the town of Piaseczno, TEATR is one of Poland’s oldest and most respected entertainment technology companies.
“We’re excited to be partnering with such an experienced company in one of Europe’s fast developing and important growth markets,” states Marc Librecht, head of sales and marketing for Elation in Europe. “The Polish market is distinct and offers unique opportunities. Our cooperation with TEATR will be a key step in expanding the Elation brand there and we look forward to working closely with their team.”
TEATR has been involved in the implementation of state-of-the-art stage technology solutions for many of Poland’s top theatres, concert

UK - Inspired by the launch of its new PLASA Innovation Award-winning Esprite moving light with fully replaceable LED engine and a host of other features and the Back to The Future movie franchise, Robe presented the first in a new trilogy of expo live performance concepts at the PLASA 2019 expo in London.
The show #ReturnToTheFuture was created to highlight Robe’s newest technologies in the context for which they were designed.
With an original DeLorean MMC12 as the set centrepiece, six dancers – and around 200 Robe lights - including Esprites, Tetras, T1s, SilverScans, MegaPointes, Spiiders, Tarrantulas and LEDBeam 150s – rigged in the roof and all around the sides of the booth, plus stunning special effects and a pool of water containing Robe IP rated iPointes - the eight-minute 428-cue (that’s one every 1.12 seconds) show was performed to a sp

UK - The PLASA Awards for Innovation, organised in collaboration with LSi magazine, took place at the end of a vibrant Monday at the PLASA Show 2019. The Awards recognise and reward pioneering product designs and the people behind them and are widely respected as they are independently judged by a team of industry experts with a variety of specialist backgrounds.
This year saw 36 entries for the Awards, with the judges selecting seven winners and one Gold Award winner.

The winners, along with the judges comments, are:
Nexo for the P12 Point-source loudspeaker
“This is the ‘loudspeaker version of a source 4’ having interchangeable horns with tool-less interchangeability.”
Robe for Esprite
“This advances technical practice by increasing the potential lifespan of LED fixtures, hopefully

USA - Bandit Lites once again provided the lighting package for the fourth annual 2019 Black Music Honorus, where Xscape, Freddie Jackson, Arrested Development, Tamia and Yolanda Adams were honoured for their contributions to African American culture and American music.
Held on 5 September at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre and produced by Central City Productions, the television special was hosted by Rickey Smiley and LeToya Luckett and featured performances by Jagged Edge, Jekalyn Carr, Tevin Campbell, Kelly Price, Naughty By Nature, Le'Andria Johnson, Tony Terry, Travis Greene, 702, Smokie Norful, Jade Novah, Dee1, June's Diary, Mali Music, Mumu Fresh, Major, Keke Wyatt, Jessie Woo, Leon Timbo and Avery Wilson.
Veteran lighting designer Mark Carver illuminated the two-hour affair and utilised the gear to provide a stylised, contemporary look.
Bandit

USA - The St Malachy church outside Detroit recently installed a modern colour-rendering LED lighting system that features Chauvet Professional fixtures.
“Colour and lighting have always been critical elements to the Catholic mass even before lighting fixtures were invented,” said St. Malachy LD Dave Corbat. “This parish takes a proactive role in reaching out to worshippers. This led to the idea of introducing colourful lighting to create an immersive environment in the sanctuary.”
St. Malachy engaged system designer Nathan Cole of Sound Planning Communications to create and install a new lighting system that augmented the 800-seat church’s existing rig with LED fixtures. His design adds four Rogue R2 Wash fixtures to the main lighting pipe, and called for two more units to be arranged on the ground near the altar. A collection of COLORdash Batten-Quad 12 lin

UAE - The new Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai was packed out last month as thousands of Westlife fans relived their youth at the band's Twenty Tour. Taking a walk down memory lane, the boy band performed hits from the past 20 years to the 17,000-capacity venue, with Unusual Rigging and Engineering LLC providing the house rigging points for the production.
Unusual Rigging are sole house rigging service supplier for the installation of all rigging points at the Coca-Cola Arena. One of the main talking points of the venue is its rigging system and unique roof structure. All rigging is done from a raised catwalk – it has shallow braids and is easy to access. With a distance of 24m from the catwalk to the floor and 26m to the I-beam, this covers most height requirements of touring shows. The arena also boasts 90 tonnes over the stage, 60 tonnes for the middle and 40 at the far end –

Lebanon - JoeCo has expanded its reach in the Middle East by signing a new distribution agreement with Boujikian Bros. The Beirut-based company will now represent the manufacturer in Lebanon, targeting TV production houses and live event clients.
“We have been searching for JoeCo partners in the Middle East for some time and Boujikian Bros’ name came up a number of times,” explained Graham Murray, business development at JoeCo. “Their experience and technical expertise make them a complimentary fit with JoeCo’s philosophy of providing high quality solutions for audio professionals.”
“We already distribute a number of top pro audio brands in Lebanon, but we had a gap in our range for reliable multitrack players/recorders and audio interfaces,” added Gary Boujikian, general manager at Boujikian Bros. “We knew how JoeCo systems were being used in TV, con

USA - Evergreen Ministries had put its faith in acoustical orthodoxy when the Hudsonville, Michigan church had its previous sound system installed. However, with the worship space residing in a mid-sized square building with largely metal construction that created reverberation problems, speech intelligibility and musical articulation were a frequent challenge.
“They had a pretty typical flown PA, but it wasn’t really the kind of system they needed for a space like this,” recalls Todd Billin, design/sales engineer at Parkway Electric & Communications, a Holland, Michigan-based AV systems integrator with a long history of working on sound and video designs with houses of worship.
The solution came in the form of the slim L-Acoustics Syva colinear system that is suited to medium-throw applications like Evergreen Ministries’ 550-seat sanctuary. The Syva system

USA - Fulcrum Acoustic has appointed Chaz Goodman as marketing manager. Goodman will focus on expanding the online presence for Fulcrum Acoustic and will serve as the media contact.
He joins Fulcrum from the non-profit world, most recently as the Communications Manager for Volunteers of America Upstate New York, where he designed and implemented a comprehensive communications plan to increase brand visibility and help the organization adapt to fit a changing digital landscape. Prior to that, Goodman worked in development at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago where he learned the value of targeted marketing to achieve fundraising goals.
"We are excited to bring Chaz on board," says Stephen Siegel, president and co-founder of Fulcrum Acoustic. "It's important that we focus resources into content creation for electronic media. Chaz's experience as a musician and c

UK - Spotrack is at this year’s PLASA Show at London’s Olympia. Spotrack enables an operator to remotely control from any location, up to 50 moving lights as follow spots. It works with any moving light and any lighting console, in any performance space and can be used in all entertainment sectors for live production from anywhere in the venue.
The Spotrack team will be on hand to explain and discuss all aspects of the hardware and software that comprise a system which is revolutionising the lighting industry’s approach to spotlight control. Spotrack systems are to be found in action all around the globe at high profile events, as more and more lighting designers and production managers acquaint themselves with the clear advantages the system delivers.
Spotrack CEO Liam Feeney comments, “We’re excited to be bringing TracMe to PLASA. We’ve witnessed an amaz

Europe - Wärtsilä Entertainment Systems has solved the challenge of delivering a premium nightclub experience at sea with the first ever installation of Martin Audio’s recently launched WPS optimised line array. The latest member of the Wavefront Precision family was specified long before its official launch to cater to the entertainment needs of Scarlet Lady, the very first ship in the Virgin Voyages fleet.
“We started audio specification for the ship back in 2016 but thanks to the strength of relationship with Martin Audio we were able to glimpse into the future product roadmap and as a consequence believed that the product that would become WPS was a perfect fit for the nightclub,” explained Rob Shuard, vice president, design & engineering of Wärtsilä Entertainment Systems. “We felt WPS would offer the perfect marriage of high performance, control, consist

Poland - AV Stumpfl, the Austrian AV technology manufacturer, has announced LTT as its new distributor for both projection screens and PIXERA media server systems in Poland.
LTT is a Warsaw-based company, distributing and servicing high-end lighting and stage equipment, in addition to offering stage technology design and implementation services. The company also regularly hosts popular training sessions and workshops aimed at industry professionals.
AV Stumpfl global business development manager Harry Gladow comments: "LTT has a great reputation when it comes to distributing world-class technology and are known for their ability to offer customer support as well as equipment servicing and maintenance services at the highest level. What makes this partnership really exciting for us as a manufacturer is the fact that, while LTT initially focused on theatrical lighting, t

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