UK - West London based lighting and visuals rental company Colour Sound Experiment supplied lighting equipment and crew for the latest Orbital UK tour - Wonky - which was designed by Jonny Gaskell from Pinnacle Productions.

Gaskell was delighted to be working with Colour Sound again, "Their kit and the attitude is great," he enthuses, "Nice people and I get premium service every time."

His design - which will also feature at festivals played by the band throughout the summer - featured an intricate video set up and so to contrast this, the lighting was relatively straightforward - bold, in-the-face and in true Orbital style.

Gaskell chose 13 GLP Impression Spot Ones as his main profile lights and 24 Impression Zooms as the wash fixtures. As a layer of specials, he added Clay Paky Sharpies, plus strobes and blinders.

The lighting rig comprised thr

UK - HSL supplied equipment and crew to the latest Enter Shikari UK tour, working with lighting designer Steve Bewley.

The A Flash Flood of Colour tour started in Europe where it played slightly smaller venues, so the lighting rig was designed to be flexible enough to expand and contract to cover these, plus both an A and a B configuration for the UK, again based on the size of venue, the largest of which was Hammersmith Apollo. Mike Oates project managed for HSL.

The European leg featured a floor package from HSL, all based around five LED edged triangles. The fixtures chosen to make these were Chroma-Q Color Forces - three Color Force 72s for the large central triangle in Europe and 4 sets of three Chroma-Q 48s for the four smaller ones. These were all fitted into custom flying frames fabricated by HSL from special pre-rigged trussing, and flown off the house trusses.

UK - West Midlands- based video and production specialist Central Presentations Ltd (CPL) supplied sound, lighting, AV, cameras and co-ordinated full technical production including set and staging - plus crew - to the Audi National Forum event staged at London's ExCel Centre.

CPL was working for production company, Twofour. The event covered eight different independent areas - Reception, Tunnel, The Hub, Leaders, People, Fans, Business and Car Showroom - in ExCel, and was one of CPL's largest projects to date in terms of total equipment supply.

Over 60 moving lights, 150 generic fixtures, 80 LED PARcans and one and a half artic's worth of trussing were deployed.

Smaller breakout rooms featured a quantity of 85" HD plasmas; Business and the Hub utilised HD Panasonic PT-DZ110X projection and over 60 d&b speakers; The Car Showroom had an NEC HD 4x4 46" flown plasma wa

Estonia - An impressive rig of 70 Robe moving lights designed by Rene Jõhve and Meelis Lusmägi of Cuu Club provided a stunning visual setting for the final round of Eesti Laul, Estonia's 2012 Eurovision national qualifying competition.

The event was staged in the Nokia Concert Hall in Tallinn. Presented by high profile comedians Tiit Sukk and Taavi Teplenkov, it was broadcast live nationwide on the Estonian public broadcasting channel ETV1 and also enjoyed by a live audience of 1800 who saw the 20 finalists battle it out.

It was Jõhve and Meelis's first time designing lighting and set for the event, winning the project after presenting imaginative and fresh ideas.

Using previous Eesti Laul competitions as their creative starting point, they took all the classic requirements of the TV show / competition, and combined these with a set of new and different visu

UK - MT Pro Ltd enjoyed their busiest ever PLASA Focus show in Leeds. The main part of both days saw a continuous stream of inquiries on the stand with some customers having to queue up to be seen.

People were particularly interested in the new MT Pro Acoustics products. New speakers on show included a three-way horn loaded cabinet and a 2x5" mid/high cabinet with a ribbon tweeter. Also featuring highly were the range of 1U mixers and the DNP26 processor.

These items were seen alongside the MA86 amplifier. This lightweight unit has eight channels, each rated at 260WRMS into 4Ohms.

Another product attracting great interest was the new Cyclorama Wash system. This consists of the powerful LED 'Batten2' c/w a specially designed barn door system. This gives a very even wash of light on cycloramas up to 4.5m high. The quadcolor LEDs allow for pastel colours as well as the usu

UK - White Light has added Selador Desire and Source Four LED to its hire stocks, complementing its extensive range of ETC Source Four incandescent luminaires.

White Light's hire & technical director Dave Isherwood bought in the extra-bright Selador D60 Lustr+ fixtures following a number of requests from lighting designers, and in response to a growing push for brighter, but more energy efficient, lighting.

The first 12 have already been installed at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester for Miss Julie, lit by Johanna Town, where they are being used in combination with more traditional types of lighting, in order to boost light levels without breaking the budget.

Desire's Lustr+ array uses the premise of the x7 Color System to create lush white and subtly tinted light that can be adjusted to naturally illuminate on stage talent or scenery.

White Light was also on

USA - Having continued successful permanent productions in Chicago and New York, the Broadway musical Million Dollar Quartet (MDQ) has hit the road with a North American tour. To accommodate venues seating from 1,400 to over 3,000, sound designer Kai Harada specified a Meyer Sound system based around MICA and M'elodie line array loudspeakers.

"My goal was to give the touring crew a system with a lot of flexibility, so they could adjust coverage angles for theatres of all shapes and sizes," explains Harada. "With the M'elodie centre cluster and MICA side arrays, they have all the power they need for bigger houses, along with reliable consistency of sound-a quality at which Meyer systems always excel."

Inspired by a 1956 recording studio jam session by Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, Million Dollar Quartet captures

USA - Founded nearly half a century ago in Northampton Township, Saint Bede the Venerable has grown to more than 10,000 parishioners. The church recently underwent a $5m renovation and expansion, incorporating a classic Italian marble altar, magnificent stained glass, and a new sound system based around Community Professional Loudspeakers VERIS 8 two-way full-range systems.

As Audiobahn's Tony Hersch explains, the new sound system design called for versatility. "Unlike some of the more traditional Catholic churches, St. Bede offers a mix of traditional and semi-contemporary services, with a choral and live musical accompaniment, as well as traditional organ and choir," he says. "So ultimately we had to design a system that offered more than simply spoken word intelligibility - it had to offer good musicality as well."

The distributed audio system includes 1

UK - Ariel Company Theatre's production of Musicality4 made its debut on the stage of the Chequer Mead Theatre in East Grinstead, Sussex, using eight Q-Spot 560-LED moving heads and a Hurricane Haze 2D haze machine.

Chequer Mead Theatre, a 320-seat performance venue, frequently hosts Ariel Company Theatre's productions. Joshua Attwood, lighting designer for Musicality4, placed two Q-Spot 560-LED fixtures at the front of the house, two on the balcony bars and four on the upstage bar to highlight performers, provide backlighting and project effects during the production. The addition of Hurricane Haze 2D enhanced the lighting effects by highlighting beams.

Musicality4 is a musical review of the latest West End and Broadway musicals performed by a cast of 28 adult and 28 junior actors. Neil Hopson, artistic and drama academy director at Ariel Company Theatre,

Germany - A Midas PRO2 live audio system at FOH and PRO6 on monitors, provided by rental and production company SoundHead Company, commissioned by production companies EBS-Lights and Showplan and sourced from German Midas distributor Mega Audio, took centre stage at this year's Echo Awards, Germany's premier music awards show. The Berlin event's star-studded line-up included performances by Katy Perry, Lana Del Rey, Sean Paul, Taio Cruz, Rammstein and Marilyn Manson.

Soundhead Company MD and FOH engineer Tim Ehrenfried, who only recently added the PRO2 to his inventory, explains, "In the past I have had excellent experiences working with XL8 and PRO6 consoles, and I knew I wanted that great warm Midas sound for the event in recognition of the calibre of international acts performing. But the PRO2 at FOH gave me the added advantage of all the features of the big consoles in

UK - Fruit Pie Music has produced its first ever open air live music event and broadcast to be almost entirely self-powered (without using the national grid for the duration of the event) for Imogen Heap, which was broadcast live online on Earth Day 22 April 2012.

Grammy award winning artist Imogen Heap performed a new Heapsong that she wrote during the course of the event. The song titled Me the Machine was written and then performed live using just her hands through musical gloves. The gloves are a prototype musical interface that Imogen has been developing over the last two years with her team of engineers. With them, Imogen can directly interact and control a virtual orchestra by "utilising tens of thousands of unique motions".

Working with Julies Bicycle, Firefly Solar, Bluman Associates, Gaianova Geodesic Domes, Silent Gig and Sennheiser, Fruit Pi

Czech Republic - The next Showlight may still be a year away, but companies are already signing up to participate at the 2013 event, taking place 18-21 May 2013 in ?eský Krumlov. The latest exhibitors to sign up include ADB, Anolis, ARRI Lighting Solutions, ETC, Lee Filters, MA Lighting, Rainbow Colour Changers, Robert Juliat, White Light and the event's main sponsor, Robe.

Taking place every four years, each time at a different location, Showlight is organised by lighting professionals for lighting professionals. In 2009, with some 40 exhibitors, over 365 delegates from the world of entertainment lighting passed through Showlight's doors.

Showlight places emphasis on debate stimulated by papers from respected industry experts and provides a gathering ground for like-minded people. Both exhibitors and visitors fully participate in the conference programme.

Showlight 2013 is

UK - On the evening of Saturday 7 April, entertainment lighting specialist White Light helped launch the iconic Titanic Belfast building, the world's largest Titanic visitor experience which has been built on the site of the docks where the famous ship itself was constructed and launched 100 years ago.

The show consisted of a 40 minute audio-visual performance, featuring a challenging series of projections mapped to the building's surface synchronised to pyrotechnics and a bespoke sound design. The show was a collaboration between seeper.com, who created the projections, and specialist pyrotechnics company The World Famous, with the project produced by Culture Creative and the technical aspects production managed by White Light.

Evan Grant, founder of seeper.com, explains, "The show was the first time that intense 3D motion graphics have been combined with synchronised py

UK - HPSS, the Hull-based sound, lighting and staging equipment hire company, has recently completed a nationwide tour with The South - formed of members of The Beautiful South. LMC Audio visited the HPSS team at the O2 Academy in Birmingham during the tour.

Hugh Jones, managing director at HPSS, said, "The PRO2 is intuitive and accessible and in the smaller venues where the support has to be mixed on our boards it takes just 10 to 15 minutes to get the house engineer working comfortably with it. In acoustic scenarios in particular the set-up is so simple...you only need to do about six things with it and you're ready.

"Feedback has been very good", he continues. "We recently held a demo day at the HPSS warehouse and invited some engineers to come and try out the console. One of the engineers turned up with a show file that he had previously engineered on a

UAE - The Prolyte Group has announced that Unusual Rigging & Engineering is appointed the company's sales and service partner for the UAE with effect from 1 May 2012.

The new partnership was announced at PALME Middle East 2012, and Alan Thomson, managing partner for Unusual Rigging & Engineering, said, "I am delighted to add Prolyte products to our inventory. The high quality trussing systems will ensure that we continue to provide first class equipment alongside first class service."

Set up in 2008 under the management of Alan Thomson, Unusual Rigging & Engineering LLC is highly regarded in the region. With a long history of supplying both equipment and services to the Royal families of the UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the governments of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Oman, Unusual Rigging & Engineering will be pivotal in developing sales for Prolyte in the Middle East regio

Olympic Countdown - Duran Duran are to play a concert in London's Hyde Park to mark the start of the Olympic Games. The gig will feature headline acts from all four nations of the UK, with Duran Duran representing England and Snow Patrol appearing for Northern Ireland. Stereophonics will represent Wales and Paolo Nutini will play for Scotland. The concert on 27 July will coincide with the Olympics opening ceremony, which will be broadcast on big screens in the park between performances. Another concert marking the end of the Olympics will be held in Hyde Park on 12 August, headlined by Blur.

Royal Rock - Robbie Williams has been added to the line-up for The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert at Buckingham Palace on 4 June. "If this doesn't get me a knighthood, nothing will," the star joked on his website. "I can't wait for the show." His Take That bandmat

UK - Join 11,000 people who have already signed up to visit PLASA 2012 at Earls Court Exhibition Centre on 9 - 12 September 2012. Visitors that pre-register now can gain entry to the entire four-day event for only £10 - a saving of 50% on the full price of £20.

It's Olympic year at last and PLASA is taking the opportunity to celebrate the enormous contribution made by our industry to the extraordinary events in the city this year, including educational sessions exploring some of the most impressive technical aspects.

In addition, a brand new audio professional development programme is being launched this year, with master-classes from the biggest international names in system design, production, recording, mixing and broadcasting.

With over 100 free to attend training sessions, seminars and specialist conferences, there's only one place to be this September!

PL

USA - FocusTrack congratulates this year's Tony Award nominees for Best Lighting Design in New York.

For Best Lighting Design of a Play, the nominated designers this year are Jeff Croiter (for Peter and the Starcatcher), Peter Kaczorowski (The Road to Mecca), Brian MacDevitt (Death of a Salesman) and Kenneth Posner (Other Desert Cities). For Best Lighting Design of a Musical, the nominees are Christopher Akerlind (for Porgy and Bess), Natasha Katz (nominated twice, for Follies and Once) and Hugh Vanstone (for Ghost the Musical).

FocusTrack also congratulates the nominees in two other recently announced New York theatre awards - Kevin Adams (for Carrie), Neil Austin (Evita), David Lander (One Arm), Brian MacDevitt (Salesman), Kenneth Posner (Death Takes A Holiday) and Paul Pyant (Richa

UK - Dry Hire Lighting has announced a significant purchase of Clay Paky products from exclusive Clay Paky UK distributor Ambersphere Solutions.

In anticipation of a busy summer for events across the UK and with event planning for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and Olympics gathering pace, Dry Hire Lighting is making sure it is well positioned to serve the expected increase in demand for rental equipment.

States Rob Merrilees, director of Dry Hire Lighting, "At last the industry can boast a dedicated UK based 'dry hire' company. We do what it says on the tin.... offering hire exclusively to rental companies .... but with the added value of exceptional service and top of the range equipment. It goes without saying that Clay Paky needs to feature heavily in our available stock."

Comments Glyn O'Donoghue, MD of Ambersphere, "The premise upon which Dry Hire Lighting

USA - Located in Jupiter, Florida, Guanabanas is an outdoor bar and restaurant which strives to offer "a unique experience". An integral part of that is its live music, so the owners have employed a combination of Apex Hera and Argos noise limiting.

The waterfront venue aims to provide what it describes as "a true Florida experience", with exotic/local plants and trees, Key West styled structures, hand-built chickee huts and fresh Florida seafood. With the live stage - along with everything else - being in the open air, it is important that Guanabanas not only keeps sound levels down to permitted levels, but can prove it has done so.

"Residents will complain to the police if levels are too loud," says the venue's Matt Cahur. "We chose the Hera/Argos combination because the Argos limiter does a great job of limiting the sound levels to the thr

UK - Bristol-based event production company SXS have just finished production for another high profile project - the royal launch of the Cutty Sark, attended by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. The launch took place at the Cutty Sark Gardens in Greenwich and SXS provided sound reinforcement and technical production for the event using their Allen & Heath iLive system, supplied by LMC Audio Systems.

The event included a 90-strong symphony orchestra and a 400-strong choir. Reinforcement was also provided for the Queen's speech and further live feeds from inside the Cutty Sark. Over 50 input channels were used as a well as several groups and matrixes to feed to the four zones around the site. The iLive T112 was used for the main mix and zone matrixes and the iLive T80 was used for a separate live recording mix for later publication.

Johnny Palmer, production manager at SXS co

UK - Orbital Sound's annual Easter Sound Fundamentals for Theatre training course was fully subscribed, with over 20 students taking part in the four-day programme. Now in its 11th year, Orbital reports that to date it has helped prepare more than 250 theatre sound and technical theatre students for careers in live entertainment, with the latest contingent principally drawn from the UK's leading drama schools, as well as freelancers and the corporate sector.

The course took place at Orbital's purpose-built Brixton training facility, with the students guided through the essentials of theatre sound by course leader Richard Carter, supported by Orbital's technical director, Bill Addison.

Richard Carter explains the course's rationale: "This course is very much about combining a solid grounding in theory with practical skills, aiming to cater for a varied mix of skill

UAE - Exactly five years after setting up a base in Dubai, Christie has relocated its Middle East offices and showroom to the prestigious Dubai Silicon Oasis integrated technology park.

The new purpose built facility at GulfView provides a showcase for the company's products and incorporates training, state of the art demonstration rooms and warehousing on an enlarged footprint.

Formally opening with a press day on 30 April as a precursor to an Open House week, customers will be afforded an opportunity to see the latest product offerings and experience Christie's wide ranging capabilities in different market segments, which have brought them much success in the Middle East.

Features will include: Warped and blended Mirage 3D projection onto curved screen (with content delivered from a Vista Spyder), as well as simulated control room environments, MicroTiles applications and

UAE - His Highness Sheikh Majid bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum performed the official unveiling of this year's PALME Middle East Show at the Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Centre in Dubai on 1 May, cutting the ceremonial ribbon to declare the tenth anniversary event open.

He then engaged in animated discussion with a number of exhibitors as he and his entourage undertook their official walkabout.

It was clear that he was familiar with many of the brands on display, confirmed PALME exhibition director, Richard Brook. "When you have someone that takes a real interest, and is as clued up as he is, it really helps from an exhibitor's perspective and adds more value to the show. Brand wise he certainly knew a lot."

And those whose stands he stopped by certainly agreed. At Thomsun Trading, he was already familiar with the Adamson and Optocore brands that

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