UK - Theatre sound specialist Orbital has combined forces with the National Theatre's sound department to deliver their sixth four-day course for stage management and technical theatre students keen to pursue sound as a career.

Both Orbital and the NT are concerned that there is a skills shortfall - that young people entering the industry have little experience of the latest technology and techniques. The course is designed to enhance the "skills sets" of students in line with the growing expectations of directors, producers and audiences.

Building on the success of its previous years, the course was filled to capacity with over 20 students attending from drama colleges nationwide, including Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, Queen Margaret University College and GSA Conservatoire. Students also attended from The Danish National Theatr

USA - Shure endorsers took top honors at this year's 37th Annual GMA Music Awards on 5 April. Chris Tomlin was named Artist of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year, while his song "How Great Is Our God," won Song of the Year and Worship Song of the Year. The David Crowder Band walked away with honors for Rock/Contemporary Recorded Song of the Year and Rock/Contemporary Album of the Year. Both endorsers performed their hit songs on Shure's UHF-R Wireless Systems with KSM9 capsules.

"Every year it's a rewarding experience to watch all of the evening's performers win big and sound incredible," said Ryan Smith of Shure Artist Relations Nashville. "The genre of gospel music continues to diversify, and many of these artists are crossing over into mainstream radio. I think that speaks volumes for the appeal this music has on the industry today."

Also p

Dubai - Martin Professional reports that its MAC 700 Profile continues to be specified in an ever growing number of projects and installations around the world, from North America and Europe to the Far East and Australia, with the latest appearance in a Dubai television studio.

Tthe 700W profile spot is the feature light in Studio F for Dubai TV's Sports Channel. Sports Channel lighting designer Ziad Haddad comments: "We use about 40 Martin moving lights in this studio, divided between MAC 600 washlights and the latest MAC 700 Profile. The aim of getting the moving lights was to add a new and contemporary look to the sets. Moving lights give us the ability to change the mood and colour on each set and Martin's systems have helped us do this very well."

The MAC lights were supplied to Dubai TV through Martin's Middle East representative, Martin Professional Middle Eas

USA - Stationed at front-of-house, Fritz is one of the most important members of the production crew on the Pussycat Dolls' US tour. Fritz, otherwise known as the Neumann KU 100 dummy head, is helping Bryan Cross, live sound engineer and production manager for the Pussycat Dolls, monitor the sound from the audience perspective.

Cross mixes the girls' Sennheiser evolution wireless G2 microphone and wireless monitor systems from a mixing console at the side of the stage. "I'm doing monitors and front-of-house for the girls off the monitor desk," he explains, "I have the dummy head sitting out at front-of-house and it's returning two lines back to 'monitor world'. I'm sending all my monitor mixes pre-fader from the console, using the internal effects, and mixing left/right on the faders and sending it to the house."

The KU 100 model human head features microph

UK - Lightfactor Sales, the UK distributor for Wireless Solutions' W-DMX wireless DMX system - has supplied a system to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. The initial four transmitter/eight receiver purchase was specified by Paul Hornsby, lighting systems technician for the venue and supplied by Lightfactor's Peter Coles who says: "We're extremely pleased to be working with such a prestigious venue. It's a great endorsement of the product."

They tested the system thoroughly in and around the building before committing to W-DMX, he explains, using it on numerous smaller shows and events and a variety of moving lights. They wanted to ensure there would be no interference. Once they were certain that the system was completely robust, Hornsby and his team confirmed the purchase. They now have W-DMX running two universes of DMX on their main stage.

It is used primari

The Netherlands / Romania - The Synco Europe Network, Europe's leading pro audio rental network, has confirmed a new joint venture to extend the network into Romania with the formation of the Paradigma Group SRL, based in Bucharest. This is the Synco Europe Network's first venture into Eastern Europe.

Paradigma Group SRL is a Romanian-Dutch joint venture between Ampco Flashlight Holding BV and AEI Broadcast SRL, one of the leading facilities companies in Romania. Paradigma Group SRL has two divisions, covering both rental and sales. Paradigma Production provides rental services for professional audio, lighting and staging, and has made extensive investment in its rental equipment. The company operates a Synco by Martin Audio W8LC/W8LM Line Array system - the first line array system to be permanently based in Romania. It also has the facility to draw on the Synco Europe Network's

UK - BBC3 marked Easter with a major event broadcast live on Good Friday from the streets of Manchester, which saw Jesus singing Joy Division and Judas using the words of Morrissey. Manchester Passion was billed as a contemporary retelling of the last days of Jesus' life using popular music from the cream of Manchester bands, including Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths, Oasis and Stone Roses.

The show was made by the BBC's Classical Music TV department which has been responsible for Proms in the Park, and follows the success of Flashmob: The Opera - a live opera event staged among commuters in London. Albert Square in Manchester city centre provided the main focus of the hour-long performance where a 16-strong orchestra accompanied the songs, and a giant screen relayed scenes from across the city.

A crowd carrying a giant cross walked in a procession fro

Australia - Christian City Church, in Oxford Falls, NSW, Australia has permanently installed Adamson SpekTrix line arrays following a system shootout in Sydney. The Church, founded in 1980 had grown out of its sound system which was installed nearly 10 years ago, and desperately needed an upgrade. With a seating capacity of 2,000 and a membership of over 6,000, it is one of the largest operating churches in Australia.

Christian City Church hired Auditoria Pty Ltd's consultant Scott Willsallen, sound designer for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, to design the room. Willsallen had visited Adamson's HQ in the fall of 2005 to familiarize himself with the products, and arranged a shootout with the aid of Frank Hinton of ATT Audio Controls based in Melbourne. Adamson's managing director, Jesse Adamson, flew to the shootout in Sydney where Christopher D. Ling engineer of the Church's Tec

Europe - InnovaSon has appointed two new members to the technical services team. Matthieu Le Failler and Hans-Jürgen Heitzer have both been taken on in the role of technical field manager on a freelance basis. Their principal responsibilities are in training, with technical support as a secondary role.

Failler has been working with InnovaSon since 2003 helping out with a variety of technical roles including beta-testing, demos, after-sales and technical support. He is also the sound engineer for a French band named Plantec. According to InnovaSon sales and marketing director, Xavier Pion, although Matthieu remains freelance, his appointment formalises what he has been doing with InnovaSon for a long time, with particular emphasis on training, but importantly, his formal appointment gives InnovaSon customers a further point of contact for technical support in France.

The same

UK - Creative sound designers CP Sound continue their work in top quality gastronomic and social environments, having just completed the design and specification of a new JBL sound installation at The Great Eastern Dining Rooms in east London. CP Sound's Colin Pattenden was initially called in by acoustic consultants EMTEC to help advise on the solution to a noise pollution problem, whereby sound from the basement and ground floor restaurant and club was leaking up to the flats above. The treatment for this adopted two routes - building work and active sound design.

EMTEC recommended a considerable amount of structural work to be undertaken to dampen the sound, whist CP Sound worked on improving and controlling the venue's internal audio and simultaneously eliminating areas of spillage. "There are always several lateral approaches to solving noise pollution," explains

UK - Glasgow noise guitar band Mogwai are back on tour promoting their new album 'Mr Beast'. Nick Jevons (of ElectricFly Productions), an established lighting designer of many years - has comprised a rig that although compact in design, it has maximum visual impact to complement the soft to loud dynamics of the band. The rig features 12 James Thomas Engineering's PixelLine 1044s, six moving lights and six strobes.

Across the back of the stage, stood vertically, there are four Y-shaped minibeam constructions, each with three PixelLines hung at angles to the truss. The battens are being used as an effect to give an extra dimension to the show. The majority of this tour is in clubs or small theatres, so the rig has to be able to provide a big punch or subtlety when required within its limited size.

The 1044s are programmed using PixelDrive which is then driven by a Maxxyz PC from

UK / USA - Il Divo are four young men from different countries who combine model-level fashion with lyrical, operatically-influenced music. Since their 2005 breakout appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Il Divo has entered the mainstream on a global level. Their eponymous 2004 debut of classic tracks has sold over five million copies to date, the first artists to achieve a number one album without a single release since Led Zeppelin did it a quarter-century ago.

With Ancora, Il Divo have turned their classical talents toward their own original music, as well as interpreting popular tracks like Unchained Melody and a duet with Celine Dion on I Believe in You. The group is currently in the midst of a tour in which they are covering nearly 100 cities on five continents over the course of eight months.

London's Capital Sound has been providing the front-of-house control an

UK - Fresh from Preston's Celebrity Big Brother incarceration, the Ordinary Boys are now back to full strength and well into their five-month UK and European tour. Most dates have sold out well in advance and appearances will include both T in the Park and V Festivals.

The band is using a full complement of Sennheiser's evolution range of microphones on vocals and back line. Front-of-house sound engineer Rob Webster Reed commented: "After trying various manufacturers we found the e840 absolutely superb on lead vocals. In a major tour environment you look for consistency in a mic, and the e840 goes out every night virtually without any EQ. It's meaty sound and impressive feedback rejection also made it the obvious choice for backing vocals." Webster Reed also added that the e840 coped extremely well with Preston's very high vocal input levels.

For miking Simon'

UK / Germany - At the recent Frankfurt ProLight&Sound exhibition, UK pro audio and MI distributor John Hornby Skewes & Co Ltd received HK Audio's top award, 'Best Distributor, Concert Sound', for 2005.

HK Audio's exclusive UK and Eire distributor, JHS, achieved an impressive 40% sales increase with HK Audio's range of pro audio systems last year. This result was undoubtedly spearheaded by the profile achieved following the introduction of the compact and innovative HK Audio Cohedra Compact ('CoCo') line array concert system, a high-performance system well suited to the majority of UK mid-size tour venues, and to the budgets of most pro audio touring and rental companies, say JHS.

"The UK and Eire pro audio market has demonstrated great interest in the potential offered by the Cohedra Compact system," says JHS MD, Dennis Drumm. "Sales of this system in particular

Canada - Club Animation in Quebec City has joined the growing legion of Adamson line source array partners. Jean Doyon, owner and head of the technical department at Club Animation, purchased an Adamson SpekTrix rig to complete the versatility offered by the product in his shop. Doyon's usual venue sizes vary between 500 and 5,000 people. "In a small city like Quebec, we have to offer 'multi-purpose' services, because our main market consists mainly of big corporate events, bands in small to medium venues, DJs, some outdoor festivals, and galas."

He has been looking for the best tools in the market to complement their other sound gear, and just last year they updated their old amps with Lab Gruppen amplifiers in order to reduce weight and to increase headroom. Doyon adds: "I am very impressed with the amount of positive comments our customers have expressed about

Mexico - More than 42,000 enthusiastic motocross fans came together at Mexico City's biggest bullfighting arena Plaza de Toros to watch performances of freestyle motocross cyclists at the Red Bull X-Fighters event. Plaza de Toros turned into a spectacular race-course and for the lighting design, mo2's Manfred 'Ollie' Olma made good use of grandMA multimedia consoles.

Olma created a massive lighting system with more than 100 moving lights - including a total of 40 Clay Paky Stage Zoom 1200 - and 320 conventional Fixtures, as well as complex architectural lighting with LED RGB colour changers, 4 kW Xenon and 2.5 kW HTI fixtures. To control the whole lighting system he used a grandMA full-size and a grandMA light as a back up.

Olma and his programmer Manuel Da Costa gained access to the full lighting system only one day before the show went Live 'on air', so they had little time

uk - An Avolites Diamond 4 console and 13 dimmer racks were used to control nearly 1000 fixtures for the Heidelberg Print stand at the IPEX 2006 exhibition at the NEC, Birmingham.

The quadrennial show is one of the largest print media exhibitions in the world, and Heidelberg - among the world's major printing machine manufacturers - featured the biggest single stand, occupying all of hall eight and half of hall seven in their entireties.

All lighting fixtures for the Heidelberg Print areas, the 1.8 kilometres of trussing and 220 points on which it is hung was supplied by Siegen-based Trendco, and designed by Michael Diederichs. Trendco also supplied all the stand's audio systems. The stand consisted of numerous different product areas showing: types of printing, dye-cutting, folding, packaging and other associated machines, plus four presentation areas and several hospi

Australia / The Netherlands - ARX Systems, the Australian manufacturer of pro audio equipment, has appointed Match Audio & Vision as its new distributor for the Netherlands. ARX's managing director Colin Park said: "Match's MD Robert Pigeaud and I finalised the distribution agreement at the recent Frankfurt ProLight&Sound, and we both agreed ARX's range of signal processing products was a very complementary fit with the other lines Match currently represents."

"The Netherlands' audio industry has always been important to ARX and we're looking forward to working with Robert Pigeaud and his energetic team at Match Audio & Vision."

Alongside ARX, Match Audio & Vision also represents manufacturers including Celestion, Logic System, MC2 Audio and Quested.

(Lee Baldock)

UK - Arena Seating staff travelled all 26.2 miles of the Flora London Marathon Course - twice. Working with sister company Arena Scaffolding, the company supplied the branded mile markers around the world famous marathon course, successfully undertaking a logistically challenging operation to ensure minimal disruption to London's public.

Martin Clark acted as project manager for a team of 40, who completed their first circuit of the course on the Saturday, installing the structures across the course in potentially hazardous conditions before the road closures came into force. Martin's experience working on the race over the past 12 years was a great advantage in liaising with organiser and the police to prepare the structures and co-ordinate the operation across 36 hours on site.

Lucy McCrickard, director of LGM Consultancy, has organised 11 London Marathons and explained the

Japan - One amusement concept unique to Japan is 'Pachinko', a fast-paced arcade game popular throughout the country. Sharing elements with both pinball and slot machines, Pachinko is played by some 22 million people, and has spawned a market worth 240 billion yen. Amidst the clattering coins found in the 17,000 active arcades, a clear need exists for high-quality, intelligible audio. While sound sources generally are restricted to CD and broadcast feeds, a venue called LadyBird in Ritto Town has added a different twist.

Since the owner is a former musician, he also wanted the facility to build high-octane live music and DJ sessions into the entertainment programme, and tasked his technical representative Hidenori Kawamoto with sourcing a professional, fully-optimised system that could be distributed throughout the whole facility. LadyBird presented the challenge to Kiyoaki Fuku

USA - After four Grammies, four Brit Awards and 17 million album sales, Coldplay is currently in the US attracting packed audiences for its "Twisted Logic" tour. A busy itinerary sees them returning to play the Isle of Wight Festival before heading off in summer to Australia and Japan. Handling live sound for this tour is Special Events Services (SES) who are exclusively using Lab.gruppen fP Series amplification for the front-of-house arrays and on-stage wedges.

Lab.gruppen, the Swedish manufacturer distributed exclusively in the UK by Sennheiser, is one of the leading amplifier brands within the pro audio industry. According to Jim Stevens, SES's general manager who oversees the Coldplay account: "We have been changing over to Lab.gruppen amplifiers for the last three years. We had an amp 'shoot-out' in 2003 and Lab.gruppen won hands down, so we decided to start

UK - Emerging artist Imogen Heap made highly effective use of a combination of conventional and new projection technology at her recent showcase at London's Shepherds Bush Empire. For the largest gig on the singer/songwriter's UK tour, production company Fruit Pie Music asked PSL to provide a Barco G8 projector to deliver stunning images, specially composed for Imogen Heap by superstar VJ Mox.

In addition to the main screen projection, lighting company Neg Earth provided High End Systems' new DL2 digital lights, which repeated details from the main screen in a number of circular projections dotted around the stage.

PSL also provided an electric screen, 14ft wide by 10ft deep, which dropped down for a few numbers in the show. "The production took the best of both worlds," commented PSL Music's Pod Bluman, "cutting-edge technology like the DL2s integrated elegantl

Switzerland - The Sinus Systems Integration Awards were presented on the first day of this year's international ProLight&Sound trade fair in the categories Information, Business and Venue and were awarded for outstanding multi-media projects. The award honours technical and design achievements in media technology and system integration. Two out of three of the projects that won awards were installations made with equipment manufactured by the German loudspeaker company d&b audiotechnik.

The Sinus for the Information category was awarded to Erwin Schenk, the technical manager of The Zentrum Paul Klee centre in Bern, Switzerland, and to Christian Simmen the project manager of John Lay Electronics. The Zentrum Paul Klee was designed by the famous architect Renzo Piano and is one of his most striking buildings. It distinguishes itself from traditional museums in being not just the h

Australia - 10 of Australia's leading DJs have joined the exclusive worldwide network of Allen & Heath Xone endorsed artists. The arrangement means that local talent is being fully recognised on an international basis and joining an elite group that includes the likes of Sander Kleinenberg, Richie Hawtin and John Digweed. The Xone Ten (in alphabetical order are): Ajax, Mark Dynamix, Nik Fish, Carl Kennedy, Kid Kenobi, Kenny L, Amber Savage, Sneaky Sound System, Dirty South and The Stafford Brothers.

A key part of the sponsorship will include a series of Allen & Heath master classes where the Xone Ten will be on hand to demonstrate the full capacity of Allen & Heath mixers and outline the key features of their performances to the next generation of DJs. Allen & Heath says that with their high quality filters, construction and audio signal path, Xone has quickly become the mixer o

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