UK - With just days remaining before the PLASA09 exhibition opens its doors (13-16 September, Earls Court, London), PLASA Media has published the Show Guide online in a digital format.

Readers of Lighting&Sound International's digital edition, which has been available worldwide for the past two years, will be familiar with the freely accessible online format.

This is the first time the PLASA Show Guide has been available prior to the show, and will allow those planning on visiting PLASA09 ample opportunity to browse the exhibitors' detailed information and plan their visit in detail. The PLASA09 Guide includes full listings for all exhibitors, with a quick reference A-Z listing and floorplans to make planning your visit as straightforward as possible.

In addition to this, the Guide also features advanced information

UK - Shoreditch-based Mexican bar and restaurant, Green & Red Bar & Cantina, has upgraded the sound system in its dedicated 220-capacity basement venue, Chamucos.

While continuing to offer its noted Jaliscan-style cooking upstairs, owners, Underdog Group, have turned to the heavily themed live venue downstairs, tasking the Sound Division Group with augmenting the sound and distributing it evenly throughout the graffiti-walled, cave-like interior.

Sound Division MD David Graham has sensitively added to the existing Martin Audio/QSC sound system to maintain continuity, servicing and reinstalling part of the equipment, to provide greater flexibility and preserve sonic integrity.

At the same time the installers have added new amps and processing as well as providing a highly-specified DJ system, a live mixing console, mics, DI Boxes and band lighting.

This is not only designed

The Netherlands - The CineMec complex in Holland is a Cineplex which doubles as a conference centre. Housed in a contemporary building with striking architecture, the award-winning enterprise, owned by Gerben Kuipers, is located in Ede, just 50 minutes from Amsterdam.

This summer the operation made its boldest statement yet with the opening of the new 3D CineMec XL - the largest 3D screen in Holland - with 20,000W (RMS) of purpose-designed QSC cinema surround sound helping to build the atmosphere.

The auditorium can host over 1,000 visitors and some seats can be lifted to the ceiling to convert the cinema into a multi-purpose hall for concerts, congresses or similar events.

Dutch-based specialists FTT Filmtronics (FTT) based their audio specification around a matched system from QSC Audio, using a total of 44 loudspeakers.

This includes a combination of their SR-46 4 x 6.5

UK - The current Tracy Chapman tour lightshow has been re-programmed on to the new grandMA2 platform for its European and US legs. The show - which has been out since last year and is reaching its final stages - is designed by UK-based Paul Normandale. It was originally programmed onto a grandMA full-size by Canadian lighting director/operator Graeme Nichol. Due to other commitments, he couldn't work the final sections, so the role of lighting director was assumed by Glen Johnson from the UK.

Johnson had just been using a grandMA2 light on the Maximo Park tour, and was happy running the version 2 software, while rental company Lite Alternative has also just invested in grandMA2 consoles. So he and Normandale made a joint decision to re-programme the Chapman tour onto grandMA 2.

Johnson did this using a grandMA2 full-size and a visualiser, which was particularly helpful, and it

Russia - One of the jewels in the crown of Russian performing arts, Moscow's Central Palace for the Culture of Railway Workers (CDKG) is enjoying its 80th season of performances after a major technical refit, which included the installation of a comprehensive ASL Intercom communications system.

Built by the country's then socialist regime to provide an active, literally 'social' focus for Moscow's army of railway employees, CDKG became the professional 'home' of popular composer Isaak Dunayevsky, as well as staging a wide range of plays and concert performances.

The venue's popularity continues to the present day, playing host to a diverse array of classical and modern performances, conferences, banquets and exhibitions in its seven spaces. In 2008, the Moscow office of major Russian supply and installation company LTM Music was contracted to give the entire complex a major te

Italy - Proel Group has launched a new Proel Group Professional Division based in Sant'Omero, Italy, focused on the complete portfolio of professional Audio, Lighting and Video products.

Turbosound and Proel Group Company has appointed this specialist team to focus on marketing the UK loudspeaker company's expanding portfolio of professional audio products to the Italian market.

Effective from 1 September 2009, a new distribution agreement means that the Italian live production and audio installation markets will see a noticeable increase in the profile, supply and technical support of Turbosound's innovative ranges of loudspeaker systems.

Staff from the Proel Group Professional Division - together with Italian rental companies Hollywood Service and Lovato - visited Turbosound's factory in August for product training, and also took in a product demo at London's Music Bank re

World - GE Lighting is supplying LED signage to Holiday Inn in a refit which is estimated will deliver savings of $4 million annually. As part of the hotel chain's $1 billion global relaunch, more than 3,200 hotels are being updated to improve quality at Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express hotels around the world.

A redesign of the iconic brand logo required new exterior signage for over 3,200 locations. The new signage incorporates energy-efficient, long-life GE Tetra LED lighting systems, which are GE ecomagination certified solutions from Lumination, GE Consumer & Industrial's LED business.

The signage will save Holiday Inn an estimated $4.4 million annually over previous neon and fluorescent lighting ($3 million annual maintenance savings and $1.4 million energy savings). This massive signage project involves more than 20 sign manufacturers creating 9,300 channel letter an

UK - The arts resources at Bedford Modern School are outstanding and include its v own 300 seat auditorium with modern lighting and sound facilities. It was up to Maltbury Staging to help teacher Nick Parker complement this impressive resource with a customised staging package.

Bedford Modern students regularly take part in an extensive programme of concerts, plays and exhibitions. Highlights this year were Romeo and Juliet and a choral concert of Mozart's Requiem. These ambitious productions demand complex and varied sets, which is why Nick Parker's original objectives for staging were flexibility and strength. After meeting with a representative from Maltbury Staging's sales team it was decided that the Ambideck system would be the answer.

A short time later Bedford Modern School accepted delivery of a package of Ambideck which met their strict deadline with a

UK - Singer songwriter Dan Black, is currently touring Europe and the festival circuit with an innovative audio set up from Allen & Heath's iLive digital range.

Black's FOH engineer, Steve Pattison, has selected a compact touring system comprising an iDR-32 MixRack and a laptop loaded with iLive Editor software, which he uses as a virtual control surface. The system not only mixes FOH audio but also wedge and IEM monitor requirements.

"I'm running the iDR rack and that's it... no desk, no surface, just the stagebox, which is mounted into our onstage loopstation," says Pattison.

Pattison runs looms out of the loopstation to the band's mics and DI's and a loom into the house system so that all the mics and DI's run straight into the stagebox and from there are output to a master L&R mix and 3 wedge mixes, which are fed into the house multicore. For monitors, two line

UK - AV Magazine, in association with Sysco and Studio Simple, will host a special presentation (free to all registered PLASA09 visitors) that looks behind the scenes of one of the year's highest-profile AV projects - the British Music Experience at London's 02 Arena.

Entitled Going Interactive At The British Music Experience - A Look Behind The Scenes With AV Magazine, the session will be held on Tuesday 15 September from 3.00pm - 4.00pm in the Whitehall Room, Earls Court Two.

The use of AV was pivotal in helping to achieve the objectives of one of the most challenging installations of this year, the British Music Experience at O2. Carried out by system integrator Sysco, working alongside Land Design and software designers Studio Simple, ISO and Clay, the installation packs in top-end kit at almost every turning to incorporate the audio and the visual into a sea

UK - The newest addition to the Audient console family, the Zen is the focus of a UK tour organised by distributor SCV London, where the next stop will be music technology retailer Digital Village in Clapham, SW London.

At the 23 September event at Digital Village, visitors will have chance to pick the brains of Audient's product specialist, Steve Flower.

Starting at 2pm and running through till early evening, Zen will be on show alongside other products from the Audient range. Flower says: "Zen is such a great console, it's important to get as many people in front of it as possible. We're looking forward to getting users excited about using Zen to lift their whole experience of recording up to a new level."

Launched at this year's Pro Light & Sound exhibition in Frankfurt, Zen is a compact, classic recording and mixing console, combining analogue mixing technology

UK - D.L. Electronics, Northern Ireland, has recently installed a Duran Audio AXYS Intellivox system in St Patrick's Church, Dungannon.

St Patrick's was designed by J.J.McCarthy, one of the most notable Irish architects in the 19th century, and the building was dedicated on Trinity Sunday, 11 June 1876. The church is 130ft long, 65ft wide and 60ft high and the new sound system, installed by D.L Electronics, was part of a £5 million refurbishment of the church which started in 2007. The project was not only about refurbishment and repair, but also a work of restoration and conservation.

David Dalzell, owner of D.L.Electronics reports: "We have been installing Intellivox products in highly reverberant spaces now since 2002, in my opinion it's the only choice when you're faced with a difficult acoustic. Their ability to steer the beam onto the audience and reduce the r

The Netherlands - Madonna's Sticky and Sweet tour was a dazzling show even by the usual technically pace-setting standards of Madonna's live productions. A large XLNT CyberHoist intelligent motor system was responsible both for animating the opening seconds of the show and a multitude of complex screen and lighting movements throughout the evening.

Showcasing mostly the same material as the 2008 tour, Madonna added some new numbers, a standout moment being a tribute to Michael Jackson, with one of her dancers performing the Moonwalk in full Jacko regalia.

The largest screens were controlled by XLNT's InMotion3D software running on a CyberHoist FPS Full Production System with dual Apple MacPros, in the hands of senior programmer and project manager Martin Hoop or his deputy Erik Gielen. The action began with a giant video cube that opened the show displaying a replica of

Europe - Lighting Designer Paul Normandale has upped the lighting fixture quantities for a series of European stadium shows for Coldplay's ongoing Viva La Vida tour, including a conversion of eight MAC 250 Washes into new MAC 250 Beams.

Martin Professional's new MAC 250 Beam upgrade kit converts any standard Martin MAC 250 Wash into a punchy beam fixture that projects powerful variably sized pencil beams.

Normandale, who serves as production designer handling lights, set and video on the tour, chose to use the MAC 250 Beam because of the outdoor set's 180ft wide span, which allows the 250 Beams to do aerial work as well as cross light.

Located on the stage floor on side wings, the 250 Beams provide an intense light output and tight beam for a powerful mid air effect. The upgrade kit includes a micro Fresnel lens and set of six beam effect gobos/apertures and only tak

Czech Republic - Robe Lighting has just completed the latest phase of a substantial ongoing expansion project. This includes the acquisition of PCB production company Dioflex, its long term electronic parts supplier, based in Roznov near to Robe's factory facility in Valasske Mezirici.

Robe's has also invested 3.5m Euros in building a completely new logistics centre and in doubling its warehouse space to nearly 4000sq.m.

The latest factory expansion project houses a purpose-built plastics moulding centre which covers about 1000sq.m, equipped with all necessary machinery involved in this process.

This has all been achieved by reinvesting the company's profits, supported by a strong operating cashflow, says the company.

Dioflex comes complete with 30 skilled employees, approximately 2000sq.m of premises and all the modern technology and fully automated machining processes ne

China - Located in Jiangbei City, the Chongqing Grand Theatre is home to a 1850-capacity (Grand) and a 930-capacity (Medium) theatre. L-Acoustics loudspeaker systems have been installed as part of an upgrade, supplied by Chinese distributor Rightway Audio.

The larger of the two spaces has been designed as a leading world-class venue capable of hosting opera, dance drama, ballet, symphony and other large-scale variety shows, while the smaller theatre focuses on small and medium-size performances, such as dance, drama, modern drama, vocal performances, orchestral music, chamber music, folk music and so on.

In the Grand Theatre, left and right arrays each encompassing 14 Kiva ultra compact line source array cabinets with four Kilo low frequency extensions have been flown on either side of the proscenium arch. An additional two L-Acoustics full-frequency 115XHiQ cabinets have also

UK - Sennheiser's charity golf days have become an annual highlight with the company, its customers and suppliers alike. As well as providing an excellent way to informally discuss both business and pleasure, they also have the very serious purpose of raising significant amounts of money for good causes.

10 July this year saw around 100 Sennheiser customers and staff take part in the 14th charity golf day held at Mill Ride Golf Course, Ascot, with a remarkable £17,000 being raised for the Caron Keating Foundation.

Set up in memory of late television presenter Caron Keating, the Foundation raises money to offer financial support to carers, complementary healing practitioners and support groups dealing with cancer patients, as well as individuals and families who are affected by the disease and to cancer charities in the ongoing quest for early diagnosis and effective trea

South Africa - The third grandMA2 introduction training session within the past two months was hosted at DWR Distribution in Strijdom Park, Johannesburg.

The companies Congo Blue, Black Coffee, Selbys and the AV Alliance were represented at the most recent course and experienced first-hand the functionalities of the grandMA2 console, which had recently landed in South Africa.

"Some guys who attended commented how it opened their eyes," said Nick Britz from DWR who ran the sessions. "They were initially scared thinking it was too involved. Soon they saw just how easy it was once they knew their way around it."

Brandon Bunyan from Black Coffee was accompanied by colleagues Michael Swart and Grant Leonard. "The course was great and very inspirational," said Bunyan. "My guys are psyched, but as we've not taken ownership of our newly purchased g

UK - When the owners of London's Regent Street, The Crown Estate, decided to open a pedestrianised food quarter in adjoining Heddon Street, a quality background music system was high on the list of items needed to create an ambient atmosphere, and first stop was the Bose store on Regent Street for advice.

Bose store manager, Alex Richardson, referred The Crown Estate and its partner the Regent Street Association on to his colleagues in the professional systems division and it wasn't long before a full design and specification was drawn up to meet the very specific requirements for the area. Not only did the system have to meet the creative and operational requirements of the members of the Regent Street Association in Heddon Street, but Westminster City Council's stringent planning guidelines and the aesthetic requirements of the Regent Street brand, also needed to be accommodat

Lebanon - The Baalbeck International Festival is one of the oldest and most prestigious festival in the Middle East. It has been taking place annually during July and August since 1956 within the Roman Acropolis in the ruins of the Baalbek Temples in Lebanon. The temples in Baalbek are not only the largest Roman temples ever built, but also among the best preserved and considered as one of the wonders of the ancient world.

Dramatic lighting and the historic setting provide the background for the variety of performances at the festival, entertaining over 40,000 visitors each summer. The 2009 festival highlight was a performance by Deep Purple on the steps of the ancient Courtyard of the Two Temples to an audience of 7000. Roger Bakhos of Lumen Art in Beirut designed the lighting for the 'stage' using an arsenal of Clay Paky fixtures.

32 Alpha Beam 300, 16 Alpha Beam 700,

UK - BEIRG, the British Entertainment Industry Radio Group, which is busy campaigning for the performance and event industry's continued access to the radio spectrum following the digital switchover, has made an appeal to all users of wireless equipment to give their input to the campaign. BEIRG's statement reads as follows:

On 30 June 2009, Ofcom published a statement setting out its decision to clear the entire 800MHz band. This means that if you have wireless equipment such as radio microphones and/or in-ear monitors which operate in channels 61-69, they will be rendered obsolete by 2012/2013. Enforced eviction from the 800MHz band will mean major cost implications for everyone who owns affected equipment.

Ofcom and the Government agreed to the principle of putting a funding mechanism to replace affected equipment. Last week, Ofcom published a consultation - Clearing the 80

UK - System integrator Sysco saw its extensive audio-visual interactive work in the new Darwin Centre at London's Natural History Museum unveiled to the world's press this week, ahead of the public opening on 15 September 2009.

The £78 million Darwin Centre, a new extension to the museum, occupies a spectacular eight-storey-high concrete Cocoon suspended within a glass outer box. It allows museum visitors and scientists to share for the first time the excitement of exploring, studying and preserving the natural world.

Sysco is lead AV contractor on the project, on behalf of project managers Cultural Innovations. Cocoon features an array of exhibits in a curved walkway that spirals through several of its floors. The exhibits make full use of state of the art technology to enhance the visitor experience and provide easy access to multiple layers of information.

Sysco's w

UK - This year's CIBSE Annual Lecture, presented by the SLL at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, will consist of two talks that explore lighting as a combination of art and science, beginning with the historical perspective and then looking towards the future.

The Scientists Dr. Bryson Gore and Dr. Frank James will begin the lecture with a talk on the work of the Royal Institution from the times of Faraday, painting a picture of the scientific fervour that led up to the formation of SLL's original incarnation as the Illuminating Engineering Society in 1909. In addition to anecdotes about the pioneers of the past, the talk will include artefacts and demonstrations from the Royal Institution's marvellous collection.

Multiple award-winning designer Jonathan Speirs will postulate in the second talk that architectural lighting design is primarily about creativity, inspiration

UK - Glasgow's exquisite and historic King's Theatre is enjoying a phased refurbishment that is intended to return the theatre to its former grandeur. Completed in 1904, it represents one of the most inspired designs by Frank Matcham, and considered one of Scotland's most significant theatres.

Restoration planning started just two years ago, and the first phase - the replacement of audience seating - was successfully completed on time at the end of August. Working with local architects Simpson and Brown as well as with Tim Foster Architects and John Muir, Theatreplan's Clive Odom explained that the first phase of the work has focused on the auditorium and orchestra pit: "The seating in the stalls, and the Grand Tier, has been replaced with a design that is authentic to the period of the auditorium and most importantly, is comfortable. The theatre has been running a scheme f

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