UK - Friendly Fires are playing their biggest tour to date with a Midas PRO6 live audio system on monitors, supplied by SSE Audio.

It was the band's vocalist Ed Macfarlane who prompted the change to Midas. "We did a couple of shows with an XL3 and he loved the sound of it," explains monitor engineer Simon Lutkin. "We then encountered some PRO6s and XL8s at festivals, which sold it to us both. I had used Midas digital before on FOH and knew the sound quality was equal to, if not better than, most analogue desks. When I started using the PRO6 in rehearsals I knew it was going to work straight away. I now have the best of both worlds - a great familiar Midas analogue sound in a flexible digital package."

Working with between 32 and 40 inputs per show, Lutkins is dealing with four stereo IEM feeds, six wedge mixes, sidefills and a butt kicker. "I'm using A

UK - The refurbishment of School Hall at Eton College provided yet another opportunity for the simplicity and functionality of the Roland REAC system and M-300 mixer to shine. Specified by Andrew Hingley from HHB Communications, the M-300 was installed alongside S-1608 and S-0816 digital stage boxes to form a multi-function sound system.

The hall itself had undergone a major refurbishment taking almost a year to complete and due to its ornate structure, the sound system installation had to be as discrete as possible. The hall is a large building and with the mixing position being virtually the furthest point from the stage, Hingley had to find a way to cover the distance whilst avoiding unsightly cable runs.

The hall is generally used for assemblies where a simple mic and playback is sufficient but can, on occasions, need to cope with big band jazz concerts and multitrack reco

USA - Founded in 1973 by Marie Swajeski, the Delaware Children's Theatre has made a long-standing tradition of providing live family entertainment for people throughout the tri-state area, including seasonal holiday shows like the current production of Scrooge.

Supported solely through ticket sales and a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, the all-volunteer group makes its home in the historic 100-year-old New Century Club building in Wilmington.

The building's rich history includes stints as a hospital during World War I, an ice cream parlour and pharmacy, a college, and a dinner theatre, as well as many years as a nexus of the women's rights movement. Recognized on the list of U.S. National Historic Places, its stage has played host to speakers as varied as Margaret Sanger and Woodrow Wilson.

In support of the DCT's efforts, Community Professional Loudspea

USA - Contemporary Christian rockers Skillet toured the United States this fall with a Meyer Sound Milo line array loudspeaker system. The Awake and Alive tour brought the Memphis-born band to 16 venues in 12 states. Skillet will return to the road beginning 28 December in Sevierville, Tenn.

Nashville-based Blackhawk Audio provided the touring rig that helped Skillet reach audiences numbering from 2,000 to 8,000, in venues ranging from large churches to small arenas. The Meyer Sound system was comprised of 16 Milo and two Milo 120 line array loudspeakers, eight M'elodie line array loudspeakers, four MSL-4 loudspeakers, four UPA-1P loudspeakers, 14 700-HP subwoofers, and a Galileo loudspeaker management system.

"It's their small headlining rig," explains Blackhawk Audio's Jamie Nixon. "They work a lot: they do a lot of secular tours as a support act. When

UK - Projection artist Ross Ashton of London-based The Projection Studio was invited back to Caerphilly Castle in Wales - by popular demand - to recreate his Illuminata digital art son et Lumière.

The commission - for which Ashton also designed the large format projection system used to bring the work to life - was from Cadw - the Welsh Assembly Government division responsible for preserving and promoting the history and heritage of Wales.

The 2010 event was the first time that an entertainment spectacle of this genre had been commissioned for a Cadw historical monument, and proved such a massive success that they decided to repeat the experience for three evenings this year.

Ashton's 20-minute work depicted the history and stories of the castle, accompanied by a special audio track produced by sound artist Karen Monid.

Working at Caerphilly Castle again was a &quo

Norway - LumenRadio's CRMX is now a trusted member of the touring ensemble at Ostfold Teater in South-Eastern Norway.

This regional theatre organisation develops performances with specific appeal to children and youth and also co-produces many productions with talented independent theatre groups. Part of their mandate is to bring dramatic theatre out to the people and that is done in the form of touring productions that play in local schools and performing arts centres.

The challenge is that most of these venues are not equipped to accommodate the sometimes-elaborate productions. Many of the venues, in particular the schools, also have Wi-Fi networks that need to be functional at all times and interference from visiting wireless systems is not acceptable.

The solution came in the form of a portable LumenRadio CRMX Nova system. Performing in a variety of venues without adequa

New Zealand - Lighting designer Ben Cooper utilised 24 Robe Robin 600 LEDWash moving light fixtures - amongst others - for the 2011 Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards (VNZMAs), which honoured the very best of established and emerging talent spanning a diversity of genres.

The high profile event - produced by J and A Productions for the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) - was staged in the Vector Arena in Auckland. It is the largest and highest profile Awards show in the country.

This 46th edition of the VNZMAs featured live performances from a host of stars including Brooke Fraser, The Naked and Famous, Ladi6, Six60, Tiki Taane and Avalanche City and legendary Kiwi band Supergroove. It was telecast live on national Channel FOUR.

Cooper was lighting it for the second year, bringing a fresh and innovative style to the visuality, with all the lighting equi

Canada - The Canadian Football League championship, the Grey Cup, is Canada's biggest annual sports and television event. Held at Vancouver's BC Place Stadium on 27 November, halftime of this year's game featured a performance by Nickelback using a Martin lighting and video package of 98 MAC 101, 30 MAC 2000 Beam XB, 20 MAC 2000 Wash XB and six MAC III Profile moving heads with supporting graphics on two large Martin LC Series LED screens.

The moving light package was supplied by Christie Lites Vancouver with the LC panels with P3 upgrade coming from Epic Production Technologies. Production and lighting design for the event was by Robert Sondergaard who incorporated a large amount of Martin's compact MAC 101 wash lights into his design.

"Since the 101s have come out they have become integral to the shows we do," he says. "Because they are inexpensive to rent, we

Russia - Established in 1885, Moscow's historic Theatre of Nations reopened in September following a four-year reconstruction period. The theatre offers a rich variety of experimental drama, international theatre tours and festivals.

Clay Paky distributor DOKA Center was actively involved in the renovation of the theatre. "We have never performed such a large and varied amount of work in supplying for a theatre before", said DOKA's director Alexander Fokichev. "We were involved in all aspects from designing the scenic technology to supplying, installing and implementing the stage lighting equipment."

DOKA Center supplied 10 Clay Paky Alpha Spot HPE 575s and 14 Alpha Wash 575s for the main stage. The fixtures give the theatre's lighting designers free rein to create limitless graphic lighting effects. The prestigious nature of the project required extremely

The Netherlands - A Dutch language version of Wicked premièred recently at the Circustheater in Scheveningen, representing the third foreign language production that sound designer Tony Meola and associate sound designer Kai Harada have embarked on - tackling a tricky venue in the round. This production of Wicked saw Orbital Sound adding the show to its sound credentials for the first time.

Associated sound designer Kai Harada commented: "This is a really exciting production, with a very strong international cast that includes the original 'green witch' from the German show - Willemijn Verkaik. Although a fluent German speaker, Willemijn is Dutch and so the perfect choice to reprise her brilliant role as Elpheba - she is effectively coming home!

"The Circustheater is a challenge - with a circular seating area, it presents a number of acoustic difficult

UK - Since September, Yamaha Commercial Audio Europe has been offering the chance to win an LS9-32 digital mixing console in its 25th Anniversary Facebook photo competition. But time is now running out, as the competition closes for entries at midnight on 1 January.

2012marks the 25th Anniversary of Yamaha bringing the first digital mixer to the market and Yamaha Commercial Audio Europe is running the photo competition in celebration. To qualify for entry, photos must be of Yamaha digital consoles in interesting or entertaining settings in use over the past 25 years and posted to http://www.facebook.com/YamahaCommercialAudioEurope,where an entry form and complete terms and conditions are available.

The company has also revealed the celebrity judge who will choose the winning photographs in January. Radiohead bass guitarist Colin Greenwood is an accomplished photographer, whose

All of us at PLASA Media would like to wish our regular readers a happy & relaxing holiday season and a very successful new year.

We're taking a break now too, and our daily news service will resume on 3 January 2012.

Best wishes,
The PLASA Media UK team.

UK - Lighting rental company HSL supplied all lighting equipment to the 2011 British Military Tournament at Earls Court in London - for LD Steve Sinclair's dynamic design which helped showcase the action presented by a cast of 700 troops, 100 horses, massed bands and featuring the famous 'field gun run'.

HSL tendered and won the contract for lighting contractor, which was project managed for them by Thor-Andre 'Spantax' Saether. "It was a great honour to be involved in a project with such long traditions and we are proud to have picked up the ball on this contemporary version," he says referring to its origins as The Royal Tournament, a spectacle that ran from 1880 to 1999 returning to the live event calendar last year in this new format.

Spantax adds that it was also good to be working with Sinclair again following HSL's recent supply of lights to Top Gear Live

Turkey - This summer saw Istanbul's Cemil Topuzlu Harbiye Open Air Theatre stage its annual July Summer Concert Series, a three-week festival of music which culminated in a performance by disco diva and Grammy award winner Gloria Gaynor, accompanied by the ENBE Orchestra. Ensuring that the climax to the festival would live long in the memory of Turkish music fans was a DiGiCo SD9 console.

Organised by Pera Events and conducted by founder Behzat Gerçeker, the Istanbul-based ENBE Orchestra played a selection of its own material in the first half and accompanied Gaynor throughout the second.

The SD9 was supplied by DiGiCo's Turkish distributor Elit Light/Sound Technologies, who have found it to be a very popular choice at many events.

"DiGiCo is the first choice of many sound engineers, and the SD9 fits the bill for many events due to it's being both affordable and easy t

Angola - Situated in the southern suburbs of this prosperous West African sea port, midway between the city's main railway station and its home team football stadium, the Cathedral of Benguela , Angola, Sé Catedral de Nossa Senhora de Fátima to give its proper name, is an imposing piece of modernist architecture. Unadorned, the massive concrete structure has a pleasing symmetry, the walls sloping inward to form a towering triangular building; as well as a focus for Christianity it is also a cool haven from the oppressive heat for its burgeoning congregation.

Benguela Cathedral has a booming reverberant interior, "When I first made a detailed EASE model of the cathedral the calculated reverb' time was five seconds at 100 Hz," said Burton Reid from Event Technology (ET). "The reality was no different." Reid's company had been charged with finding an app

Malaysia - When Indonesian singer Ruth Sahanaya celebrated her 25th anniversary, lighting designer Bernard Chew from Jakarta, was challenged with creating a lighting design for the landmark event, which he faced with a grandMA2 full-size control console on his side.

Staging a night to remember in the Plenary Hall of the famous Kuala Lumpur Convention Center, Malasia, right underneath the Petronas Twin Towers, Sahanaya was easily able to convince her audience that there are many more years to come. Best known for her ballads, Sahanaya has won several national awards and is well recognised internationally, frequently touring and playing music festivals as far afield as Finland and the Netherlands, in the process winning many fans across the globe.

Working together with Jeffry Waworuntu, Ruth Sahanaya's husband and manager, Chew came up with a lighting design fitting for the occa

South Korea - The Gaya Theatre in Seoul, South Korea, recently hosted a spectacular hologram performance called VR BreakOut.

Zenex Wave, a Korean design and production company, used Medialon Manager Show and Media Control Software with an iPad to give a chance for the audience to enjoy and experience a 3D world of virtual reality on stage.

The performance is a musical and dance story about prisoners who lead a routine life, isolated from the outside world, and dream of freedom through a mysterious Bi-guep (a book with supernatural power), which happens to fall from the sky.

In VR BreakOut - selected for the 2010 Virtual Reality Content Support Project of Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), Zenex Wave applies holograms to a commercial stage for the first time in Korea, realizing virtual reality on the stage by combining technologies like 3D projection mapping

USA - Three Jands Vista T2 consoles, each running the next generation Vista v2 software, are controlling lighting and media at White's Chapel United Methodist Church (UMC) in Dallas, Texas, USA.

In the run up to Christmas a spectacular show, Celebrate The Light, is being projected onto the front of the impressive 250 ft wide by 150 ft high façade of the church building. Drawing crowds of up to 5,000, and running six times a night, a Vista T2 is in control of this popular show.

Tim Georgeff, the Church's Creative Director, had been dreaming about producing a Christmas projection presentation on the building for some time. With the help of Steve Alford of leading technical production company Alford Media - who supplied three Barco 20K FLM projectors and a pair of Green Hippo Grasshopper media servers - as well as local graphic designer David Koss this became a reality.

UK Adlib finished an outstandingly good year in the comedy - amongst other - sectors, supplying lighting , sound equipment and crew to the final leg of Russell Howard's successful Right Here Right Now UK arena tour.

Adlib first worked with the high profile funny man in 2008, and have followed his spectacular career trajectory encompassing a steadily increasing amount of live work in larger in larger venues.

The tour's lighting was designed by Adlib's award winning Ian Tomlinson, and was operated on the road by Andy Rowe, working with technicians Chris Neary, Shaun Moore and Mike Summerfield. FOH sound was engineered by James Neale, with Marc Peers on monitors, who was also crew chief, working alongside Adlib's systems tech Kenny Perrin and George Puttock.

Once again, Neale specified a Coda Audio Airline LA12 system, after achieving great results on the earlier leg of

France - The Django d'Or International Jazz Awards festival is now in its 20th year. A Europe-wide organization, Django d'Or was founded to honour the jazz greats of our times as well as promote new talent in the spirit of one of jazz's all-time greats, Django Reinhardt. The festival's future was threatened earlier this year when a massive warehouse fire destroyed nineteen years worth of archives. The organization decided to stage a massive benefit concert to ensure the continuation of the festival, and turned to rental specialists Alpha Audio to supply the sound system, which was APG throughout.

The concert took place at the legendary Pavillon Balthard in Paris with international jazz artists of renown including Didier Lockwood, Rhoda Scott and David and Noé Reinhardt amongst many others. Alpha Audio supplied a significant Uniline system as the main PA comprised of six U

USA - Two New York City public schools have dramatically reduced the energy consumption of their stage lighting systems by more than 80% after replacing their existing conventional lighting rigs with LEDs from Elation Professional.

This plunge in energy usage occurred at Walton High School and PS 86X, an elementary school. The two schools installed the new lighting systems as part of an experiment conducted by the Division of School Facilities, Board of Education, City of New York to gauge the cost-saving potential of LEDs.

The experiment began about four years ago, said Michael A. Fink of Magical Designs (Brooklyn, NY), who works as a design consultant to Prince Electric, which is under contract with the Division of School Facilities. "At that time, one of the division's inspectors approached me and asked if we could put in an LED (stage lighting) system at one of the sc

UK - London- based drape, soft goods and dressing specialists Cover It Up finished one of their busiest years to date continuing to supply solutions to a diversity of projects including high profile sporting events like the AEGON Masters Tennis tournament at the Royal Albert Hall and the Red Bull F1 Racing End of Season Party at Silverstone's The Wing.

Cover It Up has supplied various draping elements to the annual AEGON Masters Tennis event for the last eight years, working for IMG Events.

The brief this year included helping to transform the RAH's famous 'Gods' upper circle gallery area into a series of functional spaces and VIP bays. For the VIP areas, the requirement was to create luxurious and comfortable spaces for the enjoyment of key guests accessing the hospitality facilities.

This was achieved this year by blacking out half of the gallery area and dividing the othe

Olympic Countdown - The Olympics will cause "a bloodbath of a summer" for London theatres in 2012, Andrew Lloyd Webber has predicted. "Nobody's going to go to the theatre at all," the composer told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, predicting that "most of the theatres in London will shut".

"It's going to be very tough," he said, revealing advance bookings were "about 10%" of their normal level. Three major musicals, he added, "are not going to play over the Olympics" - but he would not name them. Lord Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group owns seven London theatres which are currently hosting shows including War Horse, Matilda and The Wizard of Oz.

The impresario said "big, big, big hits" like his own The Phantom of the Opera would continue during The Olympics. But he said some of his

UK - Co-founded in 1863 by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and Lord Leighton, and with Rodin, Churchill and Whistler amongst its former patrons, the Arts Club in Mayfair's Dover Street boasts a glamorous heritage.

Completely refurbished under the new management of Restaurateurs Arjun and Jai Waney, and property entrepreneur Gary Landesberg, they have sought to retain the heritage and charm of this authentic landmark whilst introducing the club as the hub of contemporary cultural life in London.

Designed by David D'Almada of Sagrada, the space consists of a series of individually furnished rooms, including a sophisticated Member's Library, and the Brasserie and Oyster Bar. kitchens are under the stewardship of chef director Raphael Duntoye of La Petite Maison.

With Mark Ronson at the helm as director of music, members are kept in tune with "cutting edge and stimulatin

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