UK - Since September, Yamaha Commercial Audio Europe has been offering the chance to win an LS9-32 digital mixing console in its 25th Anniversary Facebook photo competition. But time is now running out, as the competition closes for entries at midnight on 1 January.

2012marks the 25th Anniversary of Yamaha bringing the first digital mixer to the market and Yamaha Commercial Audio Europe is running the photo competition in celebration. To qualify for entry, photos must be of Yamaha digital consoles in interesting or entertaining settings in use over the past 25 years and posted to http://www.facebook.com/YamahaCommercialAudioEurope,where an entry form and complete terms and conditions are available.

The company has also revealed the celebrity judge who will choose the winning photographs in January. Radiohead bass guitarist Colin Greenwood is an accomplished photographer, whose

All of us at PLASA Media would like to wish our regular readers a happy & relaxing holiday season and a very successful new year.

We're taking a break now too, and our daily news service will resume on 3 January 2012.

Best wishes,
The PLASA Media UK team.

UK - Lighting rental company HSL supplied all lighting equipment to the 2011 British Military Tournament at Earls Court in London - for LD Steve Sinclair's dynamic design which helped showcase the action presented by a cast of 700 troops, 100 horses, massed bands and featuring the famous 'field gun run'.

HSL tendered and won the contract for lighting contractor, which was project managed for them by Thor-Andre 'Spantax' Saether. "It was a great honour to be involved in a project with such long traditions and we are proud to have picked up the ball on this contemporary version," he says referring to its origins as The Royal Tournament, a spectacle that ran from 1880 to 1999 returning to the live event calendar last year in this new format.

Spantax adds that it was also good to be working with Sinclair again following HSL's recent supply of lights to Top Gear Live

Turkey - This summer saw Istanbul's Cemil Topuzlu Harbiye Open Air Theatre stage its annual July Summer Concert Series, a three-week festival of music which culminated in a performance by disco diva and Grammy award winner Gloria Gaynor, accompanied by the ENBE Orchestra. Ensuring that the climax to the festival would live long in the memory of Turkish music fans was a DiGiCo SD9 console.

Organised by Pera Events and conducted by founder Behzat Gerçeker, the Istanbul-based ENBE Orchestra played a selection of its own material in the first half and accompanied Gaynor throughout the second.

The SD9 was supplied by DiGiCo's Turkish distributor Elit Light/Sound Technologies, who have found it to be a very popular choice at many events.

"DiGiCo is the first choice of many sound engineers, and the SD9 fits the bill for many events due to it's being both affordable and easy t

Angola - Situated in the southern suburbs of this prosperous West African sea port, midway between the city's main railway station and its home team football stadium, the Cathedral of Benguela , Angola, Sé Catedral de Nossa Senhora de Fátima to give its proper name, is an imposing piece of modernist architecture. Unadorned, the massive concrete structure has a pleasing symmetry, the walls sloping inward to form a towering triangular building; as well as a focus for Christianity it is also a cool haven from the oppressive heat for its burgeoning congregation.

Benguela Cathedral has a booming reverberant interior, "When I first made a detailed EASE model of the cathedral the calculated reverb' time was five seconds at 100 Hz," said Burton Reid from Event Technology (ET). "The reality was no different." Reid's company had been charged with finding an app

Malaysia - When Indonesian singer Ruth Sahanaya celebrated her 25th anniversary, lighting designer Bernard Chew from Jakarta, was challenged with creating a lighting design for the landmark event, which he faced with a grandMA2 full-size control console on his side.

Staging a night to remember in the Plenary Hall of the famous Kuala Lumpur Convention Center, Malasia, right underneath the Petronas Twin Towers, Sahanaya was easily able to convince her audience that there are many more years to come. Best known for her ballads, Sahanaya has won several national awards and is well recognised internationally, frequently touring and playing music festivals as far afield as Finland and the Netherlands, in the process winning many fans across the globe.

Working together with Jeffry Waworuntu, Ruth Sahanaya's husband and manager, Chew came up with a lighting design fitting for the occa

South Korea - The Gaya Theatre in Seoul, South Korea, recently hosted a spectacular hologram performance called VR BreakOut.

Zenex Wave, a Korean design and production company, used Medialon Manager Show and Media Control Software with an iPad to give a chance for the audience to enjoy and experience a 3D world of virtual reality on stage.

The performance is a musical and dance story about prisoners who lead a routine life, isolated from the outside world, and dream of freedom through a mysterious Bi-guep (a book with supernatural power), which happens to fall from the sky.

In VR BreakOut - selected for the 2010 Virtual Reality Content Support Project of Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), Zenex Wave applies holograms to a commercial stage for the first time in Korea, realizing virtual reality on the stage by combining technologies like 3D projection mapping

USA - Three Jands Vista T2 consoles, each running the next generation Vista v2 software, are controlling lighting and media at White's Chapel United Methodist Church (UMC) in Dallas, Texas, USA.

In the run up to Christmas a spectacular show, Celebrate The Light, is being projected onto the front of the impressive 250 ft wide by 150 ft high façade of the church building. Drawing crowds of up to 5,000, and running six times a night, a Vista T2 is in control of this popular show.

Tim Georgeff, the Church's Creative Director, had been dreaming about producing a Christmas projection presentation on the building for some time. With the help of Steve Alford of leading technical production company Alford Media - who supplied three Barco 20K FLM projectors and a pair of Green Hippo Grasshopper media servers - as well as local graphic designer David Koss this became a reality.

UK Adlib finished an outstandingly good year in the comedy - amongst other - sectors, supplying lighting , sound equipment and crew to the final leg of Russell Howard's successful Right Here Right Now UK arena tour.

Adlib first worked with the high profile funny man in 2008, and have followed his spectacular career trajectory encompassing a steadily increasing amount of live work in larger in larger venues.

The tour's lighting was designed by Adlib's award winning Ian Tomlinson, and was operated on the road by Andy Rowe, working with technicians Chris Neary, Shaun Moore and Mike Summerfield. FOH sound was engineered by James Neale, with Marc Peers on monitors, who was also crew chief, working alongside Adlib's systems tech Kenny Perrin and George Puttock.

Once again, Neale specified a Coda Audio Airline LA12 system, after achieving great results on the earlier leg of

France - The Django d'Or International Jazz Awards festival is now in its 20th year. A Europe-wide organization, Django d'Or was founded to honour the jazz greats of our times as well as promote new talent in the spirit of one of jazz's all-time greats, Django Reinhardt. The festival's future was threatened earlier this year when a massive warehouse fire destroyed nineteen years worth of archives. The organization decided to stage a massive benefit concert to ensure the continuation of the festival, and turned to rental specialists Alpha Audio to supply the sound system, which was APG throughout.

The concert took place at the legendary Pavillon Balthard in Paris with international jazz artists of renown including Didier Lockwood, Rhoda Scott and David and Noé Reinhardt amongst many others. Alpha Audio supplied a significant Uniline system as the main PA comprised of six U

USA - Two New York City public schools have dramatically reduced the energy consumption of their stage lighting systems by more than 80% after replacing their existing conventional lighting rigs with LEDs from Elation Professional.

This plunge in energy usage occurred at Walton High School and PS 86X, an elementary school. The two schools installed the new lighting systems as part of an experiment conducted by the Division of School Facilities, Board of Education, City of New York to gauge the cost-saving potential of LEDs.

The experiment began about four years ago, said Michael A. Fink of Magical Designs (Brooklyn, NY), who works as a design consultant to Prince Electric, which is under contract with the Division of School Facilities. "At that time, one of the division's inspectors approached me and asked if we could put in an LED (stage lighting) system at one of the sc

UK - London- based drape, soft goods and dressing specialists Cover It Up finished one of their busiest years to date continuing to supply solutions to a diversity of projects including high profile sporting events like the AEGON Masters Tennis tournament at the Royal Albert Hall and the Red Bull F1 Racing End of Season Party at Silverstone's The Wing.

Cover It Up has supplied various draping elements to the annual AEGON Masters Tennis event for the last eight years, working for IMG Events.

The brief this year included helping to transform the RAH's famous 'Gods' upper circle gallery area into a series of functional spaces and VIP bays. For the VIP areas, the requirement was to create luxurious and comfortable spaces for the enjoyment of key guests accessing the hospitality facilities.

This was achieved this year by blacking out half of the gallery area and dividing the othe

Olympic Countdown - The Olympics will cause "a bloodbath of a summer" for London theatres in 2012, Andrew Lloyd Webber has predicted. "Nobody's going to go to the theatre at all," the composer told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, predicting that "most of the theatres in London will shut".

"It's going to be very tough," he said, revealing advance bookings were "about 10%" of their normal level. Three major musicals, he added, "are not going to play over the Olympics" - but he would not name them. Lord Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group owns seven London theatres which are currently hosting shows including War Horse, Matilda and The Wizard of Oz.

The impresario said "big, big, big hits" like his own The Phantom of the Opera would continue during The Olympics. But he said some of his

UK - Co-founded in 1863 by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and Lord Leighton, and with Rodin, Churchill and Whistler amongst its former patrons, the Arts Club in Mayfair's Dover Street boasts a glamorous heritage.

Completely refurbished under the new management of Restaurateurs Arjun and Jai Waney, and property entrepreneur Gary Landesberg, they have sought to retain the heritage and charm of this authentic landmark whilst introducing the club as the hub of contemporary cultural life in London.

Designed by David D'Almada of Sagrada, the space consists of a series of individually furnished rooms, including a sophisticated Member's Library, and the Brasserie and Oyster Bar. kitchens are under the stewardship of chef director Raphael Duntoye of La Petite Maison.

With Mark Ronson at the helm as director of music, members are kept in tune with "cutting edge and stimulatin

Belgium - Over 100 Robe Robin 600E Spot and LEDWash moving lights were used to illuminate the Blue Room, one of five arenas at the 2011 I Love Techno (ILT) event - one of the biggest and most successful rave experiences in Europe - staged at the Flanders Expo, Ghent, and attended by a sold out audience of 35,000 enthusiastic ravers.

The Robes were specified by the event's lighting video and production designer Thomas Boets of LD Productions, and supplied by rental company L&L Stage Services from Herentals, Belgium.

Boets designed visuals for all areas across the whole event - in which he has been involved for over seven years.

Seventy-six Robe Robin 600 Spots and 26 Robin 600 LEDWashes were used in the Blue Room, rigged onto to a series of trusses over the stage/DJ booth and on two box trusses - one inside the other - with curved edges that were flown above the audience. The

USA - The Pig 'n' Whistle in midtown Manhattan is typical of many of the area's taverns. What the narrow storefront space lacks in width, it more than makes up for in depth and height, spanning two floors and extending far to the back of the building it occupies.

"It's only about 25ft wide, but it's more than 75ft deep, and there's an open veranda and dining area upstairs, with a high open ceiling," says Rich Trombitas of Cornwall-based Cardone Solomon & Associates Inc.

"It's a beautiful place," says Trombitas. "The architecture is just stunning, the finish and detail looks wonderful. But sonically it's very challenging. The stage is located on the second level, and particularly on Friday and Saturday nights when they have Irish bands and DJs in there, the noise level can be a real challenge."

The main floor is served by three wall-mounted TRX82

The Netherlands - Owned by Sander Krouwel, Road Productions is based in central Holland and operates in the corporate event, theatre, one-off events, and concert touring markets. The company is a loyal DiGiCo user, being the first rental company in Holland to purchase a dual D1 Live setup back in 2004. It is now adding to its console inventory with the purchase of a DiGiCo SD8 and SD11.

Road Productions is a key player in the Dutch rental market, working with singers such as Frans Bauer and his live band, and Trijntje.

As a satisfied DiGiCo user, Krouwel invested in a DiGiCo SD9 in 2010, but with the market expanding in the smaller and larger jobs, and seeing the range of consoles now available at TM Audio's seminars this year, he decided to make an additional investment in a DiGiCo SD8 and, for the smaller productions, an SD11.

"Our acts are very satisfied with this gu

Malaysia - The Vienna Boys Choir performed in the Plenary Hall of the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre in November, miked with DPA 2011C mics provided by Orange Events, a KL-based rental company.

Blurr Wong, owner of Orange Events, Blurr used two matched-pairs of DPA 2011C twin diaphragm compact cardioids from DPA's new Reference Standard series to mic the 30-piece choir. "These mics are special," says Blurr. "The twin diaphragm capsule design, combined with meticulous engineering, has resulted in the product being a good all-rounder mic. It sounds luscious."

Blurr also used a sensitivity-selected pair of DPA 4099P instrument clip mics for miking the grand piano, with one mic positioned at each end of the strings and the lid half open. "The 4099's small but packs lot of punches, allowing you to achieve studio-like quality in a live environment," con

Sweden - Reality TV talent competition Idol has aired on Sweden's TV4 since August 2004, and became one of the most popular shows on Swedish television. This year's edition was the final one and lighting designer Per Ax voted for a grandMA2 control system.

This comprised one grandMA2 full-size and one grandMA2 light console, four MA NPU (Network Processing Units) and three touchscreen computers, with grandMA2 on PC software running as backup. It all performed faultlessly while controlling 450 LED fixtures and moving lights from Philips Vari*Lite, Color Kinetics, Clay Paky and Martin Professional as well as a whole bunch of conventionals.

Lighting designer's assistant and head electrician Tobias Winerdal commented, "I have worked on Swedish Idol for seven years. We started out with another console and used it for a few years. We moved on to the grandMA full-s

Sweden - Lund's City Theatre recently invested in a wireless DMX/RDM distribution system comprising LumenRadio's CRMX Nova products.

Lund, located in the southern most part of Sweden, is home to Lund's University that was established in 1666 and is now one of Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research. Lund's City Theatre is the centre of the local performing arts life. Productions range from visiting avant-garde dramatic theatre to locally produced crowd-pleasers like the recently featured musical Sweeny Todd.

When it was time to redo the signal distribution system for their main venue, major considerations were ease and cost of installation, as well as the need to accommodate future expansions and new technologies such as Ethernet and RDM. The theatre is located downtown and co-existence with other neighbouring radio systems was an absolute requirem

Germany - High End Systems new Technospot automated luminaire and DL.3 Digital Light took centrestage on the recent sold-out tour of Germany with two artists, Nik P. and Andreas Gabalier. The show also featured other High End Systems lighting and control products supplied by Getec-Eventtechnik.

The tour required a lighting and set design rig flexible enough to fit a variety of venues, said Preworks' Andreas Reinbacher. Lighting operator Michael Mayler jumped in to help in the design - "to make the messages of the songs visible to the audience," Reinbacher said. Both artists are Austrian. Nik P. and his band perform what's known as Schlager, or easy listening pop music. Andreas Gabalier is a folksinger. Mayler used 10 Technospots, two DL.3 digital lights, two Showpix and two StudioPix LED graphic display fixtures and 10 Studio Beam automated luminaires. All were control

The Netherlands - projectiondesign will use Integrated Systems Europe to highlight how their innovations are integrated in today's visual solutions for collaborative working.

"Recognising the increased adoption of AV into IT systems, projectiondesign's stand this year focuses on demonstrating several live and real-world demonstrations of product compatibility with leading 3D visualization and collaborative working examples that are already widely in use all over the world. We understand that today's businesses see the value in faster, better, and more well informed decision making and these examples will allow visitors to see, feel and touch enhance their effectiveness" says Anders L°kke, marketing director at projectiondesign.

"Our projection display products meet the ever increasing and challenging needs of a highly detailed and clear image. The wide range

UK - Black Light has used its rigging and working at heights expertise to help a high-profile leisure centre refurbishment meet its completion deadline. The company used innovative thinking and a bespoke access system to reach a malfunctioning high-level LED lighting feature at the Carnegie Leisure Centre in Dunfermline. This tricky repair challenge was jeopardising the scheduled hand-over of the newly renovated centre.

"The client and main contractors on this job were Fife Council, Balfour Beatty and Barr Construction," said Phil Haldane, Black Light's head of company development. "They were very impressed with the system we devised and our professional approach to the work. Most importantly, they were delighted with the result and the hassle-free outcome to what would otherwise have been a significant sticking point for their project."

The main challenge

Denmark - To mark Martin Professional's quarter of a century in the entertainment lighting industry, Martin will be celebrating with a variety of special activities in 2012, including anniversary events at trade shows throughout the year.

Incorporated in 1987 as a producer of disco lights and fog machines, the Danish-based company has grown over the past 25 years into one of the leading manufacturers of dynamic lighting and video displays. Martin's MAC line of moving heads alone has sold over 350,000 units and the company's growing line of LED products is among the fastest selling on the market.

The anniversary is also being marked on the Martin website, as well as Martin Professional's Facebook page, where industry professionals will find special opportunities to interact and share in Martin's look back at 25 years in the lighting industry.

"2012 marks our 25th anniver

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