Derek Power, the former general secretary of BADEM, died on Tuesday 22 October. As General Secretary of BADEM (the precursor to PLASA) at the end of the 1970s, he gave a collection of disco equipment manufacturers the self-belief to take their wares onto an international stage, and knock on the right government doors for funding and subsidy. He forged links with the British Overseas Trade Board, organized the first export missions, and as exhibition organizer, put the early BADEM Shows on a firm footing. Sartorially dressed in pinstriped suit and bowler hat, he had a fierce legal brain and wore the persona of the diplomat. This was hardly surprising. For 29 years, Power was a regular army officer, active in various parts of the world, including Korea in the 1950s. Gaining an army exhibitio

From 10-13 October, Moscow was home to Russia’s largest music trade fair. ‘Music Moscow 2002’ attracted visitors and exhibitors from all over the world. One of the highlights was provided by Ruton S - the Russian distributor for Electro-Voice, with its dynamic yet business-like presentation.

As well as introducing visitors to a whole series of products drawn from the current Electro-Voice range, such as the Eliminator Double, the Eliminator kW, the EVID speaker and the new Co-11 and Re510 condenser microphones, the team, led by Gregory Ronin, had laid on a rock band, ‘The Vinyl Steam Locomotive’, whose powerful sound quickly established them as one of the biggest draws at the show. The band - all dedicated EV users - were showcasing the EV Eliminator Double and Eliminator kW enclosures, as well as the new Fri-2082 monitors. This allowed music dealers as we

Beijing Bei Ao Grand Cultural & Sports Events Company of China cooperated with Martin Professional recently in providing a large number of intelligent lights for the ‘928’ Beijing Concert. The ‘928’ concert featured the foremost singers of the year from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Aside from the lighting system, Bei Ao was also responsible for the entire production for the concert, including sound and staging. The event was very successful and received a rapturous response from both the audience and the media.

With a 50,000-strong audience at the Beijing Worker's Stadium, Bei Ao used more than a hundred of Martin’s MAC series moving head fixtures, including MAC 2000, MAC 500 and MAC 600s, hung on the curved trussing system above stage and projecting innumerable changes of lighting and patterns onto the stage and set.

(Lee Baldock)

The acclaimed MH4 console now has an option for LED bargraph metering, Soundcraft has announced. The new meter bridge option has 16 LED meters that display all auxiliary/group outputs (particularly useful in a monitor situation to show all monitor send levels simultaneously) and can be switched to read matrix outputs. The mix left, right and centre outputs are shown on VU meters.

The MH4 has won many admirers for its easy-to-use multi-purpose functionality, which makes it simple to configure the console for use of FOH or monitor duties, or as a single desk fulfilling both tasks. Since its launch earlier this year, the Soundcraft MH4 has won many friends, including an appearance on two stages at the Montreux Jazz Festival, touring around Europe and on the recent series of Big Brother in the UK. The MH4 has also found favour in many large churches in the USA.

(Lee Baldock)

MC2 Audio’s distributor in India, Performance Audio India Pvt Ltd, has installed sound systems powered by MC2 Audio amplifiers in two of Mumbai's newest clubs - Mikanos and Velocity. Velocity is situated in the Tardeo district of Mumbai and comprises the main Velocity club area, a 'retro' lounge called RPM, the Bollywood restaurant and a private members lounge. The club caters for all preferences from a quiet dinner to a night of non-stop dancing on the 1,000sq.ft dance floor.

The brief for Rustom Pavri, director of Performance Audio India, was to equip the venue to handle the wide mix of music, from rock and pop to techno and country. This he achieved using Turbosound Floodlight speakers powered by MC1250, MC750 and MC450 amplifiers with T1000 amplifiers being used for the Turbosound TCS-35. Pavri says: "Since we installed the system, everyone has been very impressed with t

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ETC Halcyon Silent

High End Systems Halcyon Silent builds on ETC’s legacy of fanless automated fixtures by incorporating features from the highly sought-after Halcyon family. Halcyon Silent perfectly balances silent operation with brilliant output of 18,400 lumens and high-impact features. 

For more information visit us at www.etcconnect.com

Jands Electronics’ Event 4 range of lighting control consoles is now shipping with the latest version of its V5 operating system pre-installed. The Event 408 and 416 models, which comprise the Event 4 range, are compact, competitively priced hybrid consoles designed to control both conventional and automated lighting fixtures. Currently favoured for live event and conference applications, the Event 4 can now be used in professional theatrical and multi-purpose applications where the new V5 feature set now excels.

As part of Jands' continued development and improvement, the latest release contains many operational enhancements as well as bug fixes for the Event Operating System. New enhancements of particular merit include: an increased palette size of fixtures, positions, beams, and groups, from 20 to 60; a live palette function, offering 'real time' use over a present time perio

Coe-tech/Robe UK, exclusive UK distributors for the fast growing Czech moving light brand Robe, has supplied Dublin-based distribution company Aquarius with a large quantity of Robe intelligent lighting fixtures for Lacey’s, a 1500 capacity club at the Carrickdale Hotel, Dundalk, Republic of Ireland.

This is the first Robe installation in Ireland since Northampton-based Coe-tech took on the UK and Irish distribution in July this year. The lighting rig for the newly revamped club was designed by Wayne Winstanley and installed by the Carrickdale’s own technical team led by Brian O’Keeffe. The space consists of a large, single multi-purpose room that’s also utilized as a Sunday carvery and occasional restaurant. It is also used as a venue for a miscellany of events including business conferences and weddings - and the lighting scheme was required to be as versatile

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Create new traditions – Cameo P6 - High Output Full-Spectrum Ellipsoidal

Cameo's P6 is a future-proof LED profiler with a powerful 600 W RGBACL engine and 16,000 lumens. It’s an energy-efficient replacement for 2.5 kW halogen profile lights in theatres and venues. With excellent light quality and natural colour rendering, it fits perfectly in theatres, musicals, TV studios, congresses, and live events.

With an LED life of 50,000 hours and low power use, the P6 cuts energy costs and supports the EU’s ‘Green Deal’ goals for climate neutrality by 2050. It also meets updated eco-design rules for lighting.

www.cameolight.com/p6profile

A significant new provision has recently been inserted by the Government into the Employment Bill on flexible working.

There will be a new statutory right for employees with at least 26 weeks’ service who have parental responsibility for a child up to six years (18 if disabled) to request flexible working (e.g. changes to working hours, time or place of work etc) and for the employer to have to consider it.

This is only a right to request flexible working, not to be given it, but a strict timetable will apply for a meeting to discuss it, a reply to be made and a right of appeal. Acceptable ‘business reasons’ have been set out for the request to be rejected, namely . . .

- additional burden of costs

- detrimental effect on employer’s ability to meet customer demands

- inability to organise work in employee’s absence

- detrimental effect on qualit

Lighting companies trading on the Internet are being warned to keep a watchful eye after a number of businesses in the industry have seen their Internet traffic unlawfully directed to a rival’s website.

The warning comes from commercial law firm, Taylors, who successfully helped a leading Lancashire-based lighting manufacturer win a legal battle against their competitor who had unlawfully placed meta tags on their website so that customers searching for their rival’s products would be directed instead to their own. Further investigations by intellectual property lawyers at Taylors also revealed that the website contained 15 meta tags for other rivals’ sites.

Elaine Hurn, managing partner at Taylors said: "Some unscrupulous companies have been including meta tags giving the names of their competitors, so that when the competitor’s name is searched for, the

ESTA (the Entertainment Services and Technology Association) presented its 2002 Eva Swan Award to Bill Groener, north-east regional vice-president of PRG, for his remarkable service to the Association over many years. The award was presented at ESTA’s Annual Dinner on Thursday, 17 October in Las Vegas, Nevada, during the LDI show.

The Eva Swan Award is presented to a member who has contributed exceptional efforts in time, expertise and personal resources on behalf of ESTA and who has been instrumental in shaping and promoting the direction of the Association. The 2002 Award was presented by Paul Vincent of Vincent Lighting Systems (a former Swan Award winner) who commented: "Bill became involved with the development of the Technical Standards Programme in its early days. Through his work on the Budget Committee and the Long Range Planning Committee, Bill helped raise funds t

On 19 October at a press conference held during the LDI show in Las Vegas, Martin Professional’s US subsidiary, Martin Professional Inc, presented its second annual Intelligent Lighting Technology Grant.

The company’s CEO, Troels Volver, presented the 2002 Grant to the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) Department of Theatre. On hand to accept the award on behalf of the university was Brackley Frayer, lighting designer and head of design/technology at UNLV. "The Grant will allow UNLV to teach students with state-of-the-art equipment and help to establish an Entertainment Engineering programme," he stated after the presentation. "Las Vegas is the centre for entertainment technology, thus we need our students involved in all aspects of lighting."

Former UNLV theatre students include Cirque de Soleil lighting director Jeanette Farmer and Emmy award-wi

Millbank Electronics has launched a new range of CM8 ceiling loudspeakers. The 8W 100V ceiling loudspeaker has a full power output of 103dB at one metre and a wide frequency response, which makes it ideal for PA/VA installations in shopping centres, offices and airports. Both standard and BS5839 pt.8 versions are fitted with three different mounting modes.

(Ruth Rossington)

Tomcat’s second annual Las Vegas Motor School, held immediately after LDI 2002, was a major success for the company. Building on the popularity of the first class offered in Las Vegas in June 2001, the company enrolled over 40 participants for the two-day course. These received instruction on chain hoist motors by Don Dimitroff of Columbus McKinnon, fall protection lead by Morgan Neff of Mine Safety Appliances and truss theory taught by Keith Bohn from Tomcat USA. In other Tomcat training news, the annual four-day Tomcat Hoist and Rigging Workshop will be hosted by Tomcat USA in Midland, Texas on February 5-8, 2003.

(Ruth Rossington)

Employers invariably have fluctuating levels of demand for work or may, on occasion, have a rush job or a deadline to meet which can only be achieved if workers are prepared to put in some overtime. Can the employer insist upon this?

As the result of a case heard earlier this year by the European Court of Justice, the answer is ‘no’ unless there is a provision in the employment contract giving the employer the right to insist that overtime is worked. The employee had been dismissed for refusing to work overtime and the Court held that he was quite entitled to refuse as his contract said nothing on this issue. Accordingly, contracts should contain an appropriate requirement and always be checked before any attempt to insist upon overtime being worked is made.

Eric Hanson has joined PRG as the director of business development, based in Chicago. Jere Harris, chairman and CEO of the Group, has welcomed the appointment: "Eric brings to PRG a wealth of experience serving trade show and corporate event clients. PRG currently serves a lot of trade show clients in that market, but we believe we have many additional opportunities for growth there. Eric will be leading our growth efforts." Hanson was formerly with Vari-Lite Production Services where he was a national sales manager responsible for trade show and corporate event clients.

(Ruth Rossington)

Lighting companies trading on the Internet are being warned to keep a watchful eye after a number of businesses in the industry have seen their Internet traffic unlawfully directed to a rival’s website.

The warning comes from commercial law firm, Taylors, who successfully helped a leading Lancashire-based lighting manufacturer win a legal battle against their competitor who had unlawfully placed meta tags on their website so that customers searching for their rival’s products would be directed instead to their own. Further investigations by intellectual property lawyers at Taylors also revealed that the website contained 15 meta tags for other rivals’ sites.

Elaine Hurn, managing partner at Taylors said: "Some unscrupulous companies have been including meta tags giving the names of their competitors so that when the competitor's name is searched for, their own

Soundcraft’s successful new multipurpose MH4 mixing desk is continuing to make an impact with the UK’s sound rental companies. Liverpool-based Adlib Audio is the latest rental company to purchase both 40- and 48-channel frame versions of the new console.

Fitted with four stereo mic/line inputs, the MH4 serves as either a dedicated front-of-house or monitor desk - or a combination of both - attributes which Adlib managing director Andy Dockerty had been seeking. The 48-channel desk went straight out with up-and-coming Liverpool band, The Coral, where colleague and sound engineer Dave Kay, was mixing at front-of-house. Andy Dockerty explained: "We are finding that in our marketplace - typically the 1,000-2,000 capacity venues - we need a reasonably high-spec desk in a relatively small footprint, which the engineers will be happy with. I liked Soundcraft’s Series 4,

The Flightcase Warehouse and Q-Flightcases of Lisburn have formed a partnership to distribute their standard range of flightcases in Ireland. The new company will be called Flightcase Warehouse Ireland and will be based in Lisburn. Flightcase Warehouse managing director Steve Austin comments: "We know that the potential in Ireland is massive, but due to logistics and shipping costs, we are limited to what we can sell direct from the UK. According to our website statistics, we receive on average of 5000 hits per month from Ireland, indicating a need for an outlet in this region. Q-Flightcases are the perfect solution to this problem, and are well situated to cover the whole of Ireland."

Q-Flightcases co-director Joan Beggs adds: "At present those companies that take advantage of our local facilities, have mostly been interested in our specialized cases. Generally, for lar

Sound Advice, the Music Industry Education Roadshow, kicked off its tour of the UK on Monday 21 October to a packed auditorium of eager young music students at The Brit School, the venue for the launch event.

The day, which began at 11am, was split into three seminars Can't Get You Out Of My Head - from the Song to the Recording; Help I Need Somebody - from the Concept to the Concert; Paid in Full - from Rights to Royalties. Panellists for the London seminars were Horace Trubridge, Andy East, Sharon Rose, Radio 1 star Steve Lamacq, and Blue Weaver for the creative panel; Howard Ricklow, Nick Kanaar, Martin Talbot, Peter Horrey, Jane Dyball and ex Dire Straits manager Ed Bicknell for the business seminar and Frances Lowe, Peter Horrey, Mark Jones, Jo Laverty, Malcolm Buckland and Jill Drew on the rights and royalties panel. Over 200 students joined industry professionals for the day of

Dave Rice has been appointed president of Cerwin Vega and KRK Systems. The appointment follows the Stanton Group’s successful bid for Cerwin Vega last month, and Mr. Rice will report directly to Gerard Cohen, president and CEO of the Stanton Group.

Immediate priorities will be to review the current business operations, establish the overall direction of the organizations and implement business programs and procedures to obtain maximum profits. Rice commented: "Cerwin Vega has been a household name for many years, synonymous with value and bass. It has broad brand recognition in just about every speaker category - mobile/car, hi-fi, multi-media and pro - but has limited market share. This is because during the last few years the company has not reverse engineered products that consumers were asking for, nor at the prices they were willing to pay."

He is confident that

After many years with Trantec, Tim Riley has left to form his own company - Richmond Unicorn Ltd - with the aim of marketing and selling what he describes as "the value for money option in many market areas".

Riley has his venture with Smartwireless. "After so many years in the radio mic business, it's clear that there is a large chunk of the market that is never likely to be as brand aware as the large radio mic companies would have us believe." he says. "Certainly there are end users the world over that will settle for nothing less than the market leader but I'm hoping to exploit the vast section of pro audio consumers, schools and colleges, churches, pubs, clubs, karaoke, DJ, aerobics and countless others that will rarely if ever be influenced by the hundreds of thousands of pounds of marketing money spent on them." He continues: "These people neit

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