UK - Following on from their major installation of acoustic and blackout blinds at the Royal Horticultural Halls (the venue for the annual ABTT show) in Westminster this summer, Triple E has installed 15 permanent Chaintrack drape systems in the venue's Lawrence Hall, enabling the hall to quickly close off its side bay areas and create a simple box style space.

While installing the 56 acoustic roller blinds and three Venetian acoustic banners in the Lawrence Hall, Triple E had also provided a semi-permanent, manual pipe and drape partition system which allowed the staff to mask off the hall's 14 side bays. The drapes, manufactured by J&C Joel, were of reversible, double sided, bonded wool serge, providing the option of black or sand coloured drapes, the latter being dyed, like the acoustic blinds and banners, to colour match the walls.

David Edelstein, managing director of Tri

UK - Malaysia's annual Citrawarna festival is a month-long, nationwide celebration of multiculturalism and the broad regional and spiritual influences of the peoples of Malaysia. Citrawarna's festivities culminate with a live pageant, parade, and street festival featuring prominent national singers, and the highlight of the festival, the Citrawarna dance exhibition. The music powering the dance was heard in the stadium-sized area, through a system of Meyer Sound Milo high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers.

The exhibition features some 1,500 ornately costumed dancers, with each group performing a traditional routine reflecting the cultural heritage they are costumed to represent. The show presented a number of challenges to sound reinforcement. "This event is the cultural and dance event of the year in Malaysia, with a huge variety of different dances, and dancers perform

Qatar - The 15th Asian Games were officially opened on 1 December by HH Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani at Doha's Khalifa Stadium. In a breathtaking ceremony, a movie was cast on the world's largest LCD while a spectacular live show featuring hundreds of performers was taking place on the field.

Artistic director David Atkins, in charge of the creation of the opening and closing ceremonies at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, devised a show under the theme of Qatar reaching out to Asia, celebrating its history, its culture and the spirit of the games.

Several top stars performed during this opening ceremony such as Chinese pop star Jacky Cheung, Spanish tenor Jose Carreras, Bollywood singer Sunidhi Chauhan as well as Lebanese artist Magida El Roumi.

The show was broadcast live in 60 countries throughout the world, and the 50 000 spectators enjoyed the Kudo sound system des

The Faroe Islands - The musical Fame was recently shown on the Faroe Islands. In the Nordic House the audience could follow the actors on their ride through triumph, heartache and romance. Programmer and operator was Gardar Hall of LimeLite, who used one grandMA full-size and three MA Digital Dimmer racks for the show. Turpin N. Djurhus was the lighting designer. The Nordic House is a multi purpose venue where all sorts of events from classical to rock concerts take place.

Hall talks about his preference for the grandma, saying: "I believe that the grandMA range of consoles are the best you can get on this planet. Nothing else comes close." As a sidenote he mentioned that aproximately 48,000 people are living on the Faroes, but already three grandMA consoles were used on the islands - one by the Nordic House, one by Faroese Television and one by the newly starte

UK - For Stage Electrics this year it will be business as usual in-between Christmas and New Year, by centralising their national operation.

Although the doors will be shut in Stage Electrics' Birmingham, Cambridge, Exeter, Plymouth and Tyneside branches, their London and Bristol branches will be open as the companies 'Central Customer Service Team'. As customers call their local branch, calls will be diverted to the central team.

Stage Electrics have also arranged for customers to collect hire orders required over Christmas and New Year before Christmas with no extra charge on the rental.

Linda Moore, head of sales and marketing for Stage Electrics says: "Last year we scaled down and branches were open with a minimum number of staff. This approach worked well but this festive season to ensure our customers continue to receive the best possible service we have decided t

UK - PRG Europe, a supplier of lighting and projections solutions to the entertainment and events industries, has confirmed its purchase of one of the many units which make up the former MG Rover Motor Works at Longbridge in Birmingham.

David Keighley, managing director of PRG Europe, says: "We have been based in Birmingham for over 20 years, and the lease on our current warehouse expires at the end of 2007. The new unit is ideal, as it allows us to take the time to refurbish in exactly the way we want it. The site will also enable us to expand the range of services which we are able to offer clients."

PRG Europe is part of Production Resources Group Inc, an international company which in addition to lighting also provides services in the audio, video and scenery sectors. As well as its Birmingham head office facility, PRG Europe has warehouses in Greenford, Middlese

Malta - Large format projections specialists E//T//C UK returned to Malta to project onto the dramatic Fort St. Angelo in Valetta Harbour, for the opening ceremony of a Thomas Cook conference.

Working for the DRP who were the main show producers, the Malta Tourist Authority and the Malta Fairs & Convention Centre (MFCC) the event was staged for two sets of Thomas Cook delegates. It marks E//T//C UK's return to the island after their highly acclaimed work for the Welcome Europe celebrations in 2004 that saw 10 new member states including Malta join the EU.

E//T//C UK projected 500 metres across Valletta Harbour onto the Fort from the projector position located at the Old Customs House.

They used eight 6kW PIGI projectors with double rotating scrollers, all overlaid to optimise the image brightness, complete with special Barco 125 cm lenses. The image was divided into t

UK - When a church in Dartford, Kent wanted to precisely light the background around two Christ figures, it seemed a very difficult problem to surmount.

When the newly-built St Edmund's Church in Temple Hill, Dartford was planned, a bold statement was wanted. So instead of the conventional crucifix, the church commissioned Japanese artist Tomoya Yamaguchi to paint two giant Christ figures - one in a crucifixion scene, the other depicting Christ as risen - on large scale white cross backgrounds.

Lighting for the feature was designed by Peter Moore of local company PM Lighting Services, in collaboration with lighting designer John Roffey. They planned to light the crosses at night, giving them a very different ambience to how they appear by day. However, the crosses were to be lit in blue, whereas the figures and their halos needed to be lit in white.

"We did experiment w

UK - The Institute of Sound and Communications Engineers will be holding its annual exhibition on Tuesday, 27 February 2007 at the Park Inn Hotel, Watford.

More than 20 specialist suppliers to the sound industry have already signed up including; Ampetronic, Duran Audio UK, ADS Worldwide, Allen & Heath, Audio-Technica, Baldwin Boxall Communications, BC Technology, Brähler ICS UK, Canford Audio, Clockaudio, Communication Technology, Fuzion plc, Ikon AVS, Institute of Acoustics, Peavey Electronics, Rackz, RK Sound Engineering, R W Salt, Sennheiser UK, Shuttlesound, SigNET (AC), TOA and Yamaha-Kemble.

Running alongside the exhibition is a full programme of expert speakers covering the following wide range of topics: Sound engineering in churches (Malcolm Cunnings - Cunnings Recording Associates); Training the next generation (Dr Philip Duncan of the University of Salford); Fittin

UK - Leicestershire based Hawthorns has announced that it has more than doubled its revenue from permanent installations to more than £1 million, over the last 12 months.

In addition to large church and theatre installations, Hawthorns have been successful in securing contracts for the Government initiative of City Academies. Having already done the installations of lighting, sound and other theatre equipment at Lambeth and Northampton Academies, it has just completed the Marlow Academy and is currently working at the Reading and Paddington Academies. They are due to start a further three Academies in the New Year. Tony Blair announced last week that the government is to double its initiative to 400 Academies by the end of the decade.

Tracey Hughes, a consultant to one of the key suppliers on the Academy build programme says: "We have worked with Hawthorns on two Ac

UK - The International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) has now confirmed its line-up of speakers for their conference, The IALD presents: Sustainable Lighting Design Education in association with RIBA, which takes place on February 12-13 at the Business Design Centre during The ARC Show.

Leading lighting designers from around the world will take part in the conference as well as architects from the Royal Institute of British Architects.

To book your place at any of these sessions please visit the website address below, and click on 'Register Now'. The conference is charged at £20 per session, plus VAT, allowing delegates to hand pick the sessions of interest. Refreshments courtesy of IALD can then be enjoyed at their coffee lounge area within the main exhibition.

The ARC show will open late on Monday 12 February with drinks served within the exhibition

Slovakia - Robe moving lights took centre stage for a special edition of Velky Hrac, (The Big Player) one of Slovakia's top rated TV programmers, with lighting supplied by Q-99. The programme saw six contestants including a Slovak celebrity taking part in the nail-biting general knowledge quiz.

Lighting designer was Martin Kubanka, one of the country's highest profile TV lighting designer and also LD for the last four series' of the popular programme for the independent TV channel JOJ.

Velky Hrac (known as PokerFace in the UK where it was created and presented by Ant & Dec) is based on the bluffing aspect of poker games and was recorded at Koliba Studios in Bratislava with a live audience. The series is licenced by UK-based Freemantle.

Kubanka explains that the terms of the licence contained certain lighting references which had to be followed. He took t

USA - Two grandMA consoles and two grandMA lights are used in the production Love, a co-production of Cirque du Soleil and Apple Corps Ltd. celebrating the musical legacy of The Beatles. Lighting designer Yves Aucoin, assisted by Karl Gaudreau and Robert Brassard, employed an extensive number of moving lights and LEDs to light the stage, with lifts going up and down, and foggers to camouflage the lifts.

Love features HD video projections with 100-foot digital, moving images and a panoramic surround sound system. The grandMA's control an array of equipment for the show, including 28 Green Hippo Hippotizer media servers which permit eight different layers of HD images on a curved, translucent screen, a lighting rig featuring more than 200 Vari*Lite spots and washes, 200 Color Kinetics LED fixtures and 22 MDG foggers.

During the production period, Aucoin assisted by

UK - When Peterborough Community Church was designing its multi-million pound, brand new purpose-built home in 2004, a key requirement was a large backdrop that would look impressive and help to bring the large congregation closer to senior pastor Dave Smith as he delivers his sermons.

The new church's main auditorium can accommodate 1800 worshippers and includes state of the art audio visual facilities. Hawthorn Theatrical was the contractor chosen to fulfil the staging and visual requirements, which included the task of sourcing a video screen that had to measure a vast 10m high by 16m wide.

"We needed to provide a backdrop to all that goes on during our services and other events," says the church's Pete Charlton. Having seen blended projection in other church venues - Charlton took the decision to take advantage of the latest projection technology and, together wi

The Netherlands - As the Midas XL8 live performance system rolls out across the globe, the emphasis is now on training sound engineers to become as familiar with this system as they are with their much-loved Midas analogue desks.

Midas Consoles Holland has just completed a training session for the country's engineers at its premises. "The majority of Holland's top engineers - more then 100 - attended this six hour training session, where they not only learned what the XL8 is all about but learned for themselves that digital has indeed gone Midas," says MCD MD Axel Nagtegaal, who issued certificates to all who completed the training.

(Chris Henry)

Europe - Lighting designer Leggy (Jonathan Armstrong) used a Kinesys motion control system to great effect for the recent Basement Jaxx tour. It was the first time he's used Kinesys and he enthused, "I love it," adding that he will use the system again at the first opportunity.

He designed four upstage/downstage 'claw' trusses as the key architectural elements of the lighting rig, and these moved constantly during the show into different positions, adding depth and dynamics to the overhead stage rig.

Each claw truss - two at 40ft long and two at 38ft - was suspended by five motors - two static Lodestar hoists downstage and three Kinesys vari-speed Liftkets on the upstage hinges, which moved them in and out via a Kinesys Vector control system.

Hung on the claws was the majority of Legg's lighting rig - including five High End Studio Command 1200 fixtures, four X-Spo

Austria - Vienna's newest musical production Rebecca recently opened to critical acclaim at the Raimund Theater, featuring the story of Daphne du Maurier's famous 1938 novel. Staged by Vereinigte Bühne Wien (VBW), the musical is directed by Francesca Zambellow. Sound design is by Hendrik Maassen, whose musical credits include a long-term association with Phantom of the Opera. The heart of the show's sound system is the VBW Raimund Theater's resident Cadac J-Type Live Production Console, in conjunction with two Cadac D16 Digital Mix Matrices.

Rebecca is a technically very sophisticated show, combining video projection, surround sound and a dramatic lighting design. Sound designer Hendrik Maassen says:"The show's design is extremely challenging, particularly in the way that it combines the video, sound and lighting elements - this makes it a lot of fun

Europe - The 89,600-ton MSC Musica is a new design of ship for MSC Cruises and can carry 2,550 passengers with a crew of 1,000. It was introduced in 2006, and will be followed by two sister ships in 2007. Musica is scheduled to sail on European cruises out of Venice.

MSC's Italian style is emphasised throughout the new ship's design, cuisine and service. Onboard highlights include a three-deck waterfall in the central foyer with a piano 'suspended' by means of a transparent crystal floor above a pool of water; a 13,000sq.ft spa/beauty facility offering aerobics, yoga, aromatherapy, thalassotherapy, chromotherapeutic hydro-massage and a purifying Turkish bath; a 7,000sq.ft casino; two restaurants, a Sushi Bar, an a la carte restaurant and a pizza/grill; a Cigar Room, Wine Tasting Bar and Coffee Bar, as well as a 46-foot-long bar in the casino and a Well-being and Fitness Centre B

UK - Entec Lighting is supplying all equipment and crew to Renegade Productions and LD Nick Gray for an installation at the Entice corporate event venue in Canary Wharf.

The three-roomed tented venue - with a capacity up to 3000 - is being run by catering and hospitality specialists Dish. It's hosting a series of parties and events throughout the run up to the festive season, aimed at attracting locally based Canary Wharf companies keen on capitalising on the convenience of having corporate festivities on their doorstep.

Renegade is supplying the creative lighting design by Gray, plus co-ordinating supply of all the technical infrastructure and hardware including lighting, sound, video, staging, set and power. Sculptivate are looking after all the set, scenic and dressing elements, with a design by Andy Cobb.

When it came to sourcing the lighting gear, Renegade came to Entec

USA - Two standout, low budget videos, one produced in a backyard for just ten dollars and the other choreographed with eight treadmills and performed in a single take, have brought Chicago-based band OK Go a lot of attention over the last year. Capitalising on their new-found public recognition, the band is currently touring the US with a stage full of Sennheiser Evolution Series wired and RF microphones, as well as wireless personal monitor systems.

Mike Kent has been touring for the last two years as front-of-house engineer with the band, and reports that backline amplification, drum and vocal microphones are all Sennheiser Evolution Series."On the kick drum I'm using the e901, which is absolutely my favourite kick drum mic in the whole world right now. It just sounds phenomenal," says Kent. "On snare, I'm using an e905, the toms e604s, and e914s on the overhea

Germany/Ireland - Loudspeaker manufacturer Klein + Hummel has relocated its manufacturing arm to the Sennheiser factory in Ireland.

In parallel to the Ireland relocation, the after sales service has also been relocated within Germany. Spare parts, service information and equipment is now handled by: Sennheiser Vertrieb und Service GmbH & Co.KG, Niederlassung Magdeburg, Ebendorfer Chaussee 1, Germany - 39179 Barleben. Tel: +49 39203 / 72 680.

A company statement says, "The service relocation to Sennheiser in Germany is seen as the next step in creating full-line service centres around the world to support their commitment to the growing needs of their global customers."

(Jim Evans)

USA - Color Kinetics has announced the signing of a global licensing agreement with Neo-Neon International Ltd. Neo-Neon will be granted access to Color Kinetics' complete patent portfolio, allowing the continuing development and sale of its LED lighting products worldwide.

Neo-Neon is a China-based, 25-year established manufacturer of decorative and entertainment lighting products that include a growing number of LED-based offerings. Through the agreement, Neo-Neon will be able to offer its customers the capabilities of digital intelligence as protected by Color Kinetics' patents. The license will apply to sales of numerous Neo-Neon products in all markets covered by Color Kinetics' patent portfolio.

"We believe that demand for LED-based lighting products will continue to increase as the technology progresses and becomes even more competitive with traditional light sourc

Spain - Sound rental and installation company Oscar Molowny Sonido e lluminación, S.L. was responsible for the sound installation in the luxury hotel Mencey in Santa Cruz, Tenerife. Oscar Molowny resolved the sound requirements using D.A.S. flush mount Ceiling series and specially equipped Factor series where wall mounting was appropriate.

The nine conference rooms are outfitted with the most modern audio-visual equipment. A total of 96 D.A.S. CL-8T and 12 CL-6T ceiling mounted speakers provide background music and voice reproduction when needed.

"The Ceiling Series speakers optimise the dispersion," comments Molowny. "They provide better intelligibility which is fundamental in the conference rooms of the hotel. Besides being easy to install, the CL-8T speakers offer extended bass response additional bass providing a hi-fi sound for background music or A/V pres

USA - Nemetschek North America reports that Spaeth Design used VectorWorks in designing the elaborate holiday displays that animate the windows of many department stores in New York City, as well as Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, and Vancouver.

For more than 60 years, Spaeth Design has been creating the festive displays that populate the windows of Lord & Taylor, Macy's, and Saks Fifth Avenue between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year, the New York City-based firm expanded their use of VectorWorks' 2D drafting and 3D modelling capabilities to design and construct Lord & Taylor's gazebo window, Macy's O Christmas Tree scenes, and Saks' snow crystals story.

"We're trying to tell a big story within a very small space, between five and seven feet deep, and ten and twelve feet wide, and it's a constant challenge to make sure our concepts translate accurately, the p

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