UK - Mojo Barriers was the barrier supplier of choice when George Michael played his recent concert at the new Wembley Stadium, supplying the touring barrier system from their Netherlands facility, supplemented by over 600m of barrier from the Mojo Barriers UK office.

The Mojo Barriers UK office supplied 617m additional barriers for the concert, installed by a team of nine staff on the Friday evening and removed immediately after the show. They also supplied promoter Marshall Arts a further 345m surrounding the mix position and delay towers.

Kevin Thorborn, Mojo Barriers UK manager said: "It was great to be involved with the first show at the new Wembley Stadium. There were a few areas we all learned from, but it is a great venue and we're looking forward to working at many more shows in the future."

(Jim Evans)

UK - Heralding a new era of live music at one of Scotland's most prestigious sports venues, new promoter Murrayfield Sport & Leisure recently launched a five-year programme of events in the Edinburgh stadium, with two spectacular concerts using a Star Events Group Group Vertech stage.

On 11 May, tribute bands the Bootleg Beatles, Bjorn Again, Killer Queen and Led Astray performed, while the following evening opera singers Katherine Jenkins and Russell Watson were backed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra - an evening which also included the two singers performing together for the very first time.

The Vertech VT2015FPVL stage unusually being placed on a 'long' side of the stadium, rather than the traditional position at one end.

As Murrayfield is the home of Scottish international rugby, great care had to be taken of both the playing surface and the perimeter running tr

UK - Carling Academy Oxford has confirmed the first four shows for the Autumn season, with the Happy Mondays, Madina Lake, The Bluetones and Nick Harper headlining.

The venue is set to open in September 2007 following a major £2,000,000 refurbishment which will see the former Zodiac venue transformed into three separate, flexible performance spaces for live music and club events.

(Jim Evans)

USA - Bill Johnson worked with some big names in live music - Dave Matthews Band, Concrete Blonde, Ice T, Widespread Panic - before hanging up his rock 'n' roll touring hat and taking his career in a slightly different direction. He is currently full-time technical director and chief audio engineer for Kenneth Copeland Ministries (KCM), founded by Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, in Ft. Worth, Texas and also owns and runs Johnson Audio Works.

Johnson's most recent audio acquisition for KCM is at its Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark, TX, where he specified one of the first DiGiCo CS-D5s in the world, purchased on the basis of its sound quality, ease of use, flexibility and consistency.

Eagle Mountain alone comprises an 1800-seat main sanctuary, 500-seat chapel, used primarily for children's services, and 500 seat hangar, used for youth services. However, the church als

USA - Six Flags recently approached Tomcat USA to provide a fixed grid system to be permanently installed at its Music Mill Amphitheatre in Six Flags over Texas. The project was completed just in time for the busy summer season and is now installed in its new home. This extra equipment will be utilised in the Coobrila show by Cirque Dreams which will run from 16 June through 19 August as part of the Late Nights Six Flags series at the famous theme parks.

Although the entire system is made of medium duty and heavy duty trusses (approximately 65' deep and 100' wide at its widest point) the equipment is not the typical standard product. To achieve the desired look, no guide cables were used to secure the system. In light of this design consideration, Tomcat came up with a solution utilising eight 34ft medium duty spigoted towers with diagonals on all four faces of the

UK - Reading-based BITS Ltd recently installed JBL Control 24CT speakers in Sony Ericsson's flagship Kensington store. "We installed 10 Control 24CTs within the shop area, and four in each of the two conference rooms in the basement," explains BITS's Paul Childerhouse. "The white models were a perfect fit for the shop's sound system requirements."

JBL's Control 24C and Control 24CT ceiling-mount speakers (the latter models featuring built-in transformers) are part of the company's Control Contractor range of loudspeakers for installed sound applications. The two-way speakers comprise a four-inch woofer and a three-quarter inch titanium tweeter, and are capable of dispersing sound uniformly over a 130° conical area.

(Jim Evans)

World - Pentecost Sunday saw millions of Christians from 176 nations around the world join in a 24-hour prayer watch for Global Day of Prayer. In London alone, an estimated 18,000 worshipers attended the event held at Upton Park, the home of West Ham United FC, where Star Events Group (SEGL) and SRC provided a 13m Alpha stage from which prayers were led and artists performed for the crowd.

With access to the stadium at 5pm on the Saturday evening to start laying trackway, and soundchecks commencing at 8am, contractors were scheduled to work through the night. The stage drove onto site at 11pm and needed to be positioned and built by 3am. At the end of the event, the crews had just 12 hours before the pitch was in use again for football.

In charge of production for the event was project manager Andy Barr from London-based Pure Solutions. He explains the logistics of the day: &q

UK - Bandit Lites UK is again collaborating with lighting designer Tellson James and Production North, for G4's current sold outFarewell UK tour, production managed by Sarah Hollis.

Bandit chief executive, Lester Cobrin says: "Although it is the band's final tour, high production values were top of the agenda as they want it to be a memorable last tour - which is really credible."

James was offered the gig after his recent design work on the Shane Ward and Andy Abraham tours for Production North, both of which were also serviced by Bandit as the lighting contractor.

The clean looking, gently tiered set designed by Production North was also taken into account in James' design, which is based around a 40ft wide x 30ft deep box truss onstage, with a front truss. On the front are four ETC Source Fours and four 4-lite blinders, along with a motorised roll-down pr

UK - Projected Image Digital (PID) will deliver its second Digital Video Workshop (DVW) at Turnmills London EC1 on the 26 and 28 June.

Event highlights will include special Catalyst and PixelMAD professional tutorial sessions and hands-on training workshops presented and run by SAMSC developer Richard Bleasdale and the PID Team.

PID's David March says, "It's terrific to have Richard here in person to engage with serious users of this technology. We will have a whole raft of new hardware solutions on-hand to show how Catalyst can be configured to meet different applications and budgets, whilst allowing upgrades as users needs change."

There will be presentations from David March, MD of Projected Image Digital, Al Mooney, Apple UK's video business development manager and Mats Karlsson, Barco's creative light imaging product manager.

Topics covered will include the

USA - Spring 2007 has seen the second BBC BritBus Tour take to the turnpikes around the US, this year playing in 15 major cities across America, and climaxing in New York towards the end of June. Each bus stop is a two to four day event featuring the best in British music, television, entertainment and products, and Litestructures is out there with them.

A high-profile promotional tour like these BritBus events, needs to travel with an easy-to-assemble, lightweight, modular, transportable staging and decking system. Litestructures' LiteDeck was the choice. Having designed and supplied the ideal rig tour, Litestructures has also become a BritBus sponsor, joining the BBC, Virgin, Gibson Guitars and other world brands.

Litestructures' managing director, Adrian Brooks comments, "When it comes to combining engineering with entertainment, Britain in general, and LiteDeck in par

China - UK lighting designer Durham Marenghi gave a presentation about his lighting design for the 2006 Winter Olympics at the 5th China International Entertainment Technology Forum in Beijing.

The Forum attracted major interest and was attended by over 200 invited guests including lighting and sound designers, programmers, operators, technicians and consultants from all sectors of the Chinese lighting industry - from television to live entertainment - and organisers and managers from large performance teams.

"Obviously it was very exciting and a great honour to be invited to China to speak about this work," says Marenghi. "There is intense interest in the skills, knowledge and technology involved in producing monumental shows and events ahead of the Beijing Olympics in 2008."

Marenghi's interactive 35-minute presentation detailed the evolution and execut

UK - Even the inclement conditions of the Bank Holiday weekend couldn't dampen the spirits of the participants in Sue Ryder Care's Beat the Baton, a 5km run held on 28 May in London's Battersea Park.

Beat the Baton attracted over 800 participants, who ran the course around the Park to the accompaniment of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, to raise money for people suffering from multiple sclerosis, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, stroke and cancer.

Logistics for the event were taken care of by London-based Absolute Events, working closely with Wandsworth Council's events manager for Battersea Park, Alison Smith.

Formed in 1998 by Jonathan Price, Absolute Events' experience stood them in good stead to handle this occasion. "Not only was this the first Beat the Baton Sue Ryder Care has held, but it was the first time the Royal Philharmonic

UK - One of the UK's most stylish independent restaurant operators, The Individual Restaurant Co., is favouring Electro-Voice loudspeakers for its distinctive venues. From the swish Restaurant Bar & Grill in Leeds, to the Piccolino chain of upmarket modern Italian restaurants and bars, installation company Rio Systems has specified EV at the heart of the background music systems.

One of the new flagships in the IRC portfolio is the Restaurant Bar & Grill in the centre of Leeds. Converted from an old post office, this elegant brasserie features a double-height restaurant, which takes advantage of the original Victorian architectural features. Oldham-based installation company Rio Systems chose the newest high-output small-format loudspeakers from Electro-Voice for the main restaurant; 12x EV ZX1s are wall-mounted about 15 feet above floor level, either side of the room.

With ve

International - The July-August issue of Lighting&Sound International magazine will include the first instalment of Preview information for this year's PLASA Show.

The Show is close to being sold out, promising one of the busiest shows in the event's history, and paving the way for possible further expansion of this year's event. One of the most radical changes this year will be the show's new layout, which will transform PLASA07 into a two-hall, single-level exhibition thanks to expansion from Earls Court 1 into the adjacent Earls Court 2. PLASA has invested heavily in the new-look event, creating new meeting and presentation areas, a wireless internet zone, VIP hospitality suite and a separate fast-track entrance on Brompton Road. With pre-registrations growing daily, record numbers of visitors are expected at this year's

UK - ChamSys reports that its MagicQ MQ200 Console was the choice for the sell-out Modest Mouse show at the Royal Albert Hall.

The American indie rock band is currently undertaking a six-week tour of the UK and Europe, including an appearance at Glastonbury Festival later this month.

The MagicQ MQ200 controlled the generic house lights along with a touring package from GLS Light & Sound Production. Lighting designer Ian Cameron Lyles, who had never used a MagicQ console before, programmed the show on the day, highlighting just how easy it is to use the software, which is interchangeable from one MagicQ product to another.

Floor-mounted scaffold bars were arranged on stage to look like twisted signposts, and small lanterns hung on them to give an industrial feel to the set. Pixeltrack LED battens uplit from the back, White cyc washed with Thomas cyc floods and both four and e

UK - London PA company Systems Etc has followed Electro-Voice's newly-available upgrade path for its XLC compact line array system, adding the new EV DVX3121 12" low-frequency/mid-bass woofers to all of its XLC127 cabinets. The first major outing for the new boosted system was the Orange Freevolution music festival in Newcastle on May Bank Holiday, the largest free festival in the UK.

Freevolution takes place across two stages in Baltic Square and quayside at Spillers Wharf. The larger of the stages is the 'Innovation' stage at Spillers Wharf, where headliners included Maxïmo Park, Echo and the Bunnymen and Joe Jackson. Systems Etc put up two hangs of 12 XLC127DVX, powered by EV's Precision Series P3000RL amplifiers, with 14 X-Subs for subbass and Xi1152s for front-fills.

Surprisingly for Newcastle-upon-Tyne in spring, the weather was shocking; rainy with winds gusting u

Europe - LCD Soundsystem, the New York-based dance-punk outfit fronted by James Murphy, are following up their sold-out spring tour and acclaimed album Sound of Silver with a string of summer festivals in Europe. And they've insisted on using the Synco stage monitor system - the same system that's now been chosen for the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury this year - for all the festival dates as well.

The live setup comprises Murphy himself on vocals and various instruments, Nancy Whang on keyboards and vocals, Pat Mahoney (drums), Tyler Pope (bass) and Phil Mossman (guitar, percussion, keys and bass). They play at levels that are constantly on the edge of feedback yet Mary Alafetich, LCD's monitor engineer, says Murphy demands much more than sheer power.

"What James really wants is effectively an enlarged studio on stage built to his specification," she says. Band

UK - As part of RCF's expansion into the theatre and large concert events markets, it is now in the process of appointing a number of key professional resellers - 'Audio Partners' - to handle its TT+ speaker range. Initially there will be up to eight companies throughout the UK.

This network of partners will have to have the facilities to demonstrate TT+, says the company. They will of course benefit from a full back up service from RCF.

RCF UK's Greg Oliver comments, "We are very much behind this scheme of Audio Partners, as it gives us a chance to offer a complete back up support service to our key distributors."

The first appointment - Stage Electrics - will be confirmed at the ABTT show in London this week.

(Jim Evans)

UK - The Canvix Matrix Server from Visual Productions is now available for download from the Canvix website.

This lighting control software can be used to control any type of lights arranged in a matrix layout. Canvix lends itself perfectly to the growing demand for control of LED products, says the company.

With a touch screen compatible intuitive user interface, Canvix software emulates the control elements commonly seen in traditional lighting control boards, making for a product that is quick and easy to learn. With the use of DMX Input, Canvix can connect to third party control boards to work as a fully functional Matrix plug-in.

(Jim Evans)

UK - BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend free festival in Moor Park, Preston, was reinforced through Turbosound Aspect loudspeakers.

Britannia Row was the main audio provider for the event, with Turbosound's head of R&D Dominic Harter managing the set-up of the Aspect system which comprised six TA-890H mid-highs, nine TA-890L lows and four TSW-218 subs per side, all ground-stacked. QLight TQ-425 subs along with Turbosound monitor wedges were deployed as monitors for the DJs. Amplification was via eight T-25 and 12 T-45 amplifiers, with control by two XTA DP448s and an XTA D2 for any added dynamic equalisation required.

"The decision to have an outdoor arena - and to use Aspect - was quickly proven right, as it was a stunning success, with a huge crowd enjoying the superstar DJ sets on each day. I have never known such an immediate and enthusiastic response to any system from everyo

UK - One of Chelsea's best-known private members club - and a landmark on the King's Road for more than 40 years - Raffles has entered its latest manifestation with a complete makeover from the ground up.

The team of leisure consultants behind the new venture include Piers Adam, who has joined forces with Patrice Gouty, one of the co-founders of Chinawhite, Jeanette Calliva, party planner for Woodhead Calliva, and interior designer Tara Bernerd, of Target Living. It was Bernerd who masterminded the interior conversion, working in conjunction with main contractors, Du Boulay Contracts and The Sound Division Group.

Under the stewardship of the experienced Jon Carey (JLC Contracts) and SDG installations manager Elliot Patterson, the installers deployed the same highly-qualified team of programming and project professionals that had delivered the complex Tamarai in Covent Garden a

Europe - OMD's Architecture and Morality European tour in May saw founder members Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys perform together for the first time since 1988. The duo was joined by the band's original line-up, together with FOH engineer Stuart M°rch-Kerrison who first mixed them back in 1984.

M°rch-Kerrison became the first engineer to specify a Midas XL8 live performance system for an international tour. The system has been provided by SSE Hire, a member of the M7 Group set up to facilitate XL8 hire in the UK.

"I made it very clear that I had certain parameters, and one of those was the Midas XL8," says M°rch-Kerrison. "I never thought about being the first; I just knew this was the tool I wanted to use. The great things about Midas are reliability, commitment to redundancy, and the fact it has to work every day - it should be able to fa

Poland - Over 10,000 people attended the recent Juwenalia Slaskie 2007 Festival in Katowice. The numbers were far more than was originally expected, but proved no problems to the production team, CMA (A major rental company) who worked closely with Arcade Audio, RCF's distributor in Poland.

"The solution was simple," says Renata Klimek, managing director of Arcade Audio, "We used the new TT+ line array which easily coped with the conditions at the Katowice's sport airport." Headlining on the day were Hev and Dzem, two of Poland's most popular bands.

The sound system installed for the concert comprised eight TTL33-A for each side of the stage and a series of TTS28-A subwoofers. Klimek adds, "The TT+ system supplied a powerful and clean sound to all of the large audience at the concert, 7,000 people were expected but in the end more than 10,000 young stu

Ireland - A Robe moving light rig has been installed at Dublin's new night venue, the Tripod. Located in the same building as the legendary Pod Club, the new 1300 capacity purpose-built Tripod is a multifunctional club and live music space also created within the charismatic original shell of the old Harcourt Station.

Owner John Reynolds contracted Paul and Ian Smith of Dublin-based Just Lite Productions to specify and supply an appropriate lighting system.

Just Lites supplied six Robe ColorSpot 575 ATs, six ColorWash 250 ATs and two MS Zoom 250 XTs. These are being supplied by Just Lites to Tripod on a long term lease basis. "They are absolutely perfect for the job" says Just Lites' Paul Smith, who also supplied the Avolites Pearl house console.

Just Lites has had a Robe rig installed at The Ambassadors Theatre in Dublin for the last three years, lighting acts suc

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