UK - Entec Sound & Light supplied lighting and sound equipment with technicians for leading hair brand Toni & Guy's Mainstage 2008 Awards show staged at London Olympia Grand Hall.

Entec was working for JLP Events headed by Guy Kersey who handled all the technical production for end client, ESA Live.

The show was divided into two sections. The first saw the presentation of a series of Toni & Guy Achievers Awards, and the second part was a highly theatrical catwalk show, designed to illustrate the trends in creative hair design. Special guest appearances by LA based band Iglu & Hartly and hip-hop dance troupe Frank2louise also upped the excitement of the evening.

Entec pulled-in fashion lighting design impresario Simon Tutchener as lighting director. The rig had to light a double tiered set at the stage end, flanked by two sweeping staircases, with a revolve entrance in

Awards News - Bandit Lites was named as 'Lighting Company of the Year' at the 2008 Parnelli Awards Ceremony. The annual awards event took place at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino on 24 October in conjunction with LDI. Rock & Roll legend, Alice Cooper hosted the event. Bandit president, Pete Heffernan, vice-presidents Richard Willis and Mike Golden and San Francisco general manager, Dizzy Gosnell were among Bandit employees to attend the awards ceremony and accepted the award on Bandit's behalf.

Comeback News - Led Zeppelin are planning to tour and record but without frontman Robert Plant. Bassist John Paul Jones told BBC Radio Devon that a new singer was being sought after Plant ruled himself out. The last time the band performed together was at the O2 arena in London in December 2007. Speculation has since been rife that the surviving members of the band, with Jason Bonham, son of

UK - PRG has announced that it has strengthened its specialist brand strategy in the UK by acquiring Essential Lighting Group from the Staging Connections Group.

PRG CEO Jere Harris said: "We are very excited about the acquisition of Essential Lighting which underscores our commitment to a specialist brand strategy in the UK. The EL business has been driven by an engaged and committed leadership team that will strengthen the management of our UK businesses"

Essential's managing director, Martin Locket commented: "We are looking forward to becoming a member of PRG's group of companies. The resources available to us from a global organisation will help us provide a wider range of products and services within our offer to our customers."

Essential Lighting will be keeping their name, logo and identity, continuing as an independent brand, focussed on the mark

USA - When the Theatre Arts department at American River College began making plans for its new performance space, an up-to-date rigging system was one of the department's top priorities.

"The old theatre had no fly loft," said Kathy Burleson, department chair and technical director at American River, a two-year community college with 30,000 students. "We're a teaching institution, and for most of our students, this is their first experience with lighting or rigging. We wanted a system that would enable our training process so the students could learn lighting, and experience both manual and automated rigging in a very safe manner."

The new 360-seat proscenium theatre has a 20 x 40ft proscenium and a rigging system with 42 line sets, Burleson said. "We have music events and lectures as well as full productions, so we have lots of fast changeovers. Our

USA - City Theatrical announced its first eight SHoW DMX technology partners at the Lighting Dimensions International (LDI) show in Las Vegas.

CTI's OEM partners have committed to using SHoW DMX technology inside their products and many examples of their work were seen around the show floor at LDI, including wireless dimmers, wireless distributed dimming, wireless DMX transmitters and receivers, wireless lighting controllers, and wireless remote circuit breaker panels.

The newly announced partners include: Applied Technology (USA), Easily LED (UK) , Electronics Diversified Inc. (EDI) (USA), Johnson Systems (Canada), Lex Products (USA) , LynTec (USA), LSC (Australia) and Zero 88 (UK).

(Jim Evans)

Australia - EAW recently provided Melbourne-based Crossway Baptist Church with EAW's flagship UMX.96 digital console for use as the church's Front-of-House mixing console. With regular cumulative Sunday attendance of upwards of 4,000 people and up to 1,100 at each service, Crossway is one of Australia's largest churches.

Crossway required a particularly powerful and versatile FOH mixing console, which is what the UMX.96 delivered. Graeme Stevenson and the rest of the team at Production Audio Services (Mitcham, Victoria) handled the sale and worked very closely with Crossway personnel in the choice and design of the system.

"The UMX.96 is very intuitive and easy to operate, which is important for us, as most of our operators are volunteers," stated Peter MacLean, Crossway Baptist Church media pastor. "Adding to that, it has comprehensive features and lots of outp

Russia - During this year's Music Moscow the Dean Day took place at forum hall on the 10th of October. Rock musicians Michael Angelo Batio with his band Hands Without Shadows, Sergey Mavrin and the band Black Obelisk were the main acts of this event.

The Russian K.M.E. sales partner MixArt Distribution organised the exclusive festival and used as main PA the K.M.E. line array system PANO consisting of eight line array subs QLB 118, plus four line source units QL 906 and two QL 1215 as down-fill per side. The monitoring was made by CLP 320. The CA 7 served as side-fill.

(Jim Evans)

UK - After a 13-year run in the West End, the show Buddy continues to play to full houses throughout its current UK tour. This musical is a biography of Buddy Holly, from his struggling teenage days in Texas, his climb to national success, and to his tragic death in a plane crash. Over 20 of Buddy Holly's signature songs feature throughout the show.

And ensuring Peggy Sue gets married every night without a hitch are 16 channels of Trantec S5.5 wireless. The system was recently purchased by one of London theatre hire company, Thames Audio, who have had over 17 years experience of providing a custom sound system for this show.

Sound designer and director of Thames Audio, Peter Cox says: "I am very happy Buddy has had another thriving year on tour. The combination of a good crew and first class equipment has proven itself, we get very positive comments about th

USA - NSCA members who have shown exceptional achievements can share their expertise with peers and customers through NSCA's Excellence in Business Awards. The awards will be presented at the 2009 NSCA Business and Leadership Conference, sponsored by InfoComm International, 26-28 February in Phoenix, AZ.

Systems integrators are encouraged to nominate themselves or their industry peers who have demonstrated outstanding success in the past year in various categories.

Submissions are due 31 December 2008. The NSCA Business and Leadership Conference Committee will announce the winners on 15 January 2009.

"Creativity, vision, flexibility, economic security - these are key to the success of today's integrators," said Chuck Wilson, NSCA executive director. "NSCA is pleased to promote and recognise integrators who excel in their day-to-day activities."

Four com

UK - Bandit Lites is currently supplying full lighting production for the Queen & Paul Rodgers tour, which features a lighting design by Baz Halpin.

The rig features over 100 moving lights from Coemar, Martin, Clay Paky, Syncrolite and Vari*Lite, a 49-way Kinesys automation system and some specially fabricated custom trussing commissioned by Bandit. Baz Halpin and lighting director, Trent O'Connor used Bandit's MSD pre-programming suite for one week prior to rehearsals. There were two weeks of production rehearsals at Elstree Studios prior to the first show.

Seven variable length raked 'finger' trusses run upstage/downstage forming an architectural 'roof' over the main performance area. All of the truss moves on Kinesys motors and the centre three have hinge-down sections at the front. Bandit purchased the Lo Pro trussing & custom hinges from Total Solutions with some modifica

UK - Stage Electrics has announced the addition of Safex-Flamejett to its portfolio of hire and sales products.

This device produces large flame effects without on stage propane bottles. It produces safe, effective and impressive bright tongues of flame and fireballs up to 4m and is practically smokeless, says the company. Unlike the majority of fire-effect devices the Safex-Flamejett works with an aerosol containing the propellant / fuel mixture.

The 380g aerosol contains enough propellant to produce large numbers of flames and fireballs, ensuring that only a small amount of flammable substance is on stage. For professional use the device is equipped with DMX 512 connections. To operate, three channels are necessary: an arming channel, a firing channel and a flame duration channel. It is equipped with pre-selectable effect programmes and can produce rhythmic tongues of flames

UK - The Mighty Boosh are currently on the first leg of their four-month tour of the UK. And a vital part of British comedy's brightest stars' armoury, in addition to a multitude of costume changes, on-stage effects and ridiculous jokes, are the Sennheiser in-ear monitors that allow the musical sections of the show to flow seamlessly.

For the two-hour show's many musical numbers all five members of the comedy team - Julian Barratt (Howard Moon), Noel Fielding (Vince Noir), Michael Fielding (Naboo The Enigma), Dave Brown (Bollo) and Rich Fulcher (Bob Fossil) - are fitted with Sennheiser ew 300 IEM G2 monitors, as are the two-man backing band.

"There are two full-time musicians in the band on drums and bass," explains FOH engineer Ashley Jones, part of the team from sound and lighting specialists Sonalyst. "And at the climax of the show Noel sings, Julian plays gu

Italy - Aethra has announced that it has signed a new agreement with CVS Hightech for the distribution of its video communications product range throughout Central America.

Based in Guatemala and serving the Central American region, CVS Hightech, develops video and audio projects using state-of-the-art technology to create new opportunities in underserved markets.

CVS Hightech has significant experience in the Central American market and covers the surrounding states of El Salvador, Panama, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, as well as Guatemala itself.

Juan Ramón Echeverría, of CVS Hightech comments: "The Aethra products were selected over other brands for distribution in Central America because of the built-in-streaming capabilities that allow remote areas to participate in distance learning projects, broad compatibility with any other endpoints devices and th

UK - OHM has introduced the DSP-A3 amplifier, which the company says offers an output of 1800W per channel at 4 ohms, and combines the reliability of a class H output with the lightness of a switchmode power supply and a fully featured DSPEthernet controller.

The amplifier features a 48-bit 96kHz AD/DA converter and a DSP that features system filtering, up to 2 seconds of delay, EQ and limiting functions. Configuring, monitoring and controlling can be done locally or by use of the full Ethernet communications capability. The performance can be monitored and settings changed via a Windows-based computer over a local area network or from the internet, enabling installed amplifiers to be monitored from remote location. The user interface shows the DSP functionality just like an analogue unit with one-to-one portraits of every control.

To complement the DSP amplifier a 2U high 19&

UK - UK Skills Secretary John Denham announced that small businesses will be the focus of £350 million worth of Government funds to help them train their staff. The Government's approach will be reshaped and money will be available to deliver a new package of support to help small businesses get through the tougher economic climate by building the skills and expertise of their workers.

It will deliver funding for training, with the minimum level of bureaucracy or delay. This will be for subjects such as business improvement techniques or leadership and management, which are proven to provide skills to increase the productivity of individuals and firms. John Denham said:"Small businesses are an important engine of our economy and we must make sure that we support them during tough economic times.

"We are overhauling the training system to make sure that they can

Switzerland - With the SUV Q5 the German car manufacturer Audi has launched its second model in the "Q" range. To give this new car suitable impact, high-profile shows were staged, including one that was recently held in Zurich. Lighting designer Christian Crego and Dirk Stirnimann, responsible for lighting, video, design and realisation, used a grandMA system for the AMAG Q5 Preview Event.

"I've been familiar with MA products for a long time and have always relied on them for any show. The reliability and operation are second to none. You simply have to love your 'Granny'," says Stirnimann. For this reason he built up a system consisting of a grandMA full-size, a laptop with the grandMA onPC software as backup and two MA 2Port Nodes for local DMX-distribution.

"It was my intention to have an open stage. Therefore I chose triangular trusses which were

UK - Stagecraft Ltd, the Salisbury-based lighting, sound and AV hire and sales company, went into liquidation on 17 October 2008, LSI Online has learned. Lisa Tapper, the former accounts manager of Stagecraft Ltd, reports that she and other key staff members have bought the assets of the company and are reforming as Stagecraft Technical Services Ltd as of today, 30 October 2008.

The new company directors are Lisa Tapper, Mike Naish (formerly Stagecraft Ltd production manager), Kevin Hughes (former projects manager) and Simon Sketchley, who has joined the company from AJS Theatre Lighting and Stage Supplies, where he was general manager.

Tapper reports that eight key members of staff have been retained as part of the new operation, while a further eight have lost their jobs.

Tapper was also confirmed that all forward orders on Stagecraft Ltd's books will be honoured by the ne

UAE - In Dubai, Protec has just increased its inventory of Camco amplifiers for use with JBL Vertec and Nexo Geo line array systems. Already the biggest user of Camco Vortex in the Middle East, Protec has ordered another 24 Vortex 6 units for use on Kylie Minogue's massive outdoor show in November.

Protec is the largest supplier of sound, lighting, audio-visual, hydraulic and motor control equipment in the region, with an investment of over 50 Million Dirhams in the latest equipment. The company has used Camco for many years now, and Edward Ross, Protec's head of audio, continues to be a fan. "These are fantastic amps, very smooth and the quality of the audio is second to none. The Vortex 6 is really reliable, handling the challenging conditions of the UAE climate, which has extreme temperatures and high humidity."

The new Vortex 6 amplifiers were acquired from loca

China - The sixth edition of Prolight+Sound Shanghai drew a record crowd of visitors from 82 countries and regions when held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, 9-12 October 2008.

Visitors to the show found a variety of sound, entertainment and lighting technology spread over two halls as well as exclusive live concerts hosted by Sennheiser microphones and Pioneer.

Prolight+Sound Shanghai attracted 14,152 visitors, an increase of nearly 4% compared to last year. Of these 13,008 were domestic visitors, a rise of 6% and 1,144 were international visitors. The exhibition saw 308 exhibitors from 10 countries and regions showcasing their products in 23,000sq.m, the organisers say.

(Jim Evans)

Australia - ARX Systems has announced the appointment of EAS (Excellent Audio Support) as its new distributor for Germany.

ARX Managing Director Colin Park commented: "EAS's Hubert Overesch and I have been discussing the possibilities of working together in Germany for some time, the EAS sales team felt our range of signal processing products was a very complementary fit with the other lines they currently represent, especially our newer USB and analogue interface and dynamics products.

"Germany has always been important for ARX, along with the UK, it's one of Europe's trend setting markets. We're looking forward to working with Hubert Overesch and his energetic team at EAS to consolidate ARX's position in the German market and to reinforce to their customers the state of the art performance that ARX products can offer them."

Along side ARX, EAS also represent

Australia - When the city fathers of Adelaide wanted to enliven their city precinct by night, they conducted a design competition to see what might be offered. Local design firm Fusion came up with a proposal to permanently wrap an eight-story car park building with a moving, illuminated canvas.

Fusion's concept was not for yet another giant video screen suitable for watching football, motor racing or music videos. According to designer Damien Mair: "The vision for the Lantern was to create an experience that would capture the imagination of the city and add beauty to people's lives."

Wrapping more than a thousand square metres of display around a car park building that relies entirely on natural ventilation to clear away the exhaust fumes from its occupants, calls for an unusual screen format. Mair's solution was to construct the display from 754 individual anodized

Germany - Klotz Digital has confirtmed Chinese company Wincomn Technology as its number one Varizone distributor in Asia for 2008.

"The influx of orders from Wincomn over the last couple of weeks saw the Chinese technology provider reach its sales targets months before the end of the year and before the other dealers in Asia," says Patrick Salloch, managing director of Klotz Digital Asia Pacific. "This is a development that we are very pleased about - to say the least. It proves that the partnership between our companies is working and we have chosen the right partner."

Wincomn received the award during their recent visit to the new Klotz Digital headquarters in Feldkirchen, Munich.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Sarner's most recent installation at Southend's Adventure Island is the new ghost train ride, Over the Hill which was officially opened last week in time for Halloween and is being heralded as a ghost train for a new generation.

The new attraction replaces Adventure Island's successful Beelzee Bob's Trail which, after eight years, was closed to make way for a new and advanced scary ride of the future.

The ride, which is made up of 12 two-seater carriages, delivers a 3D experience using animatronics, pneumatics, video projection, holographic images, surround sound, lighting, mirrors and air blasts to create a multitude of special effects. Set in a cemetery, the ghost train features apparitions and a main character, the Undertaker, who guides thrill seekers through the ride after waving them off and warning them not to go 'over the hill'. It also incorporates

UK - The Creative Blueprint has been launched in Northern Ireland and will ensure the long term success of the nation's creative and cultural industries. The Creative Blueprint has been informed by extensive research from employers, education providers and the industry in Northern Ireland. It gives a snapshot of where the industry is currently at and what needs to be addressed in the future to ensure workforce skills development.

Tom Bewick, chief executive of Creative & Cultural Skills said: "This action plan is employer-driven and therefore entirely employer focused. The creative and cultural industries in Northern Ireland have grown considerably, but there still isn't a clear progression route for those entering the industries and skills gaps exist within the workforce. In Northern Ireland, we are delighted to have received funding from the Department for Employment and

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