South Africa - Nobody, least of all its set and lighting designer Denis Hutchinson, had an inkling that 20 years down the road, A Handful of Keys would be South Africa's most successful musical to date, clinching at least nine international awards along the way.

This year, the much loved performance, featuring two men behind two grand pianos and a mix of comedy and songs from Elton John to Norah Jones, and The Beatles to Alicia Keys, will celebrate its 20th anniversary and will run at the Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town from 9 July to 10 August, and then at Pieter Toerien's Montecasino Theatre in Fourways from 13 August to 5 October.

Hutch, was part of the production team right from the start in 1994. "Bryan Schimmel and Ian von Memerty initially put the show together at the Youth Theatre with Alan Swerdlow directing," he recalls. "We wondered if we could

Japan - Allen & Heath together with Japanese distributor, Comodo Mattina, recently held a training seminar for its growing digital mixing range in Tokyo. The event was attended by more than 90 industry engineers and technicians, and included operation overviews for Allen & Heath's iLive, GLD and Qu series digital systems.

There was also a session about digital audio networking and the various standards and their implementation and integration into Allen & Heath mixing systems. On display, Comodo Mattina showed a number of QU-16 and also QU-24 mixers as well as a number of GLD systems. An iLive-T112 system was used to mix the live performance and systems operation.

"Attendees were very enthusiastic about the gear on hand and the response was overwhelming," says Alex Schloesser of GMM, Allen & Heath sales engineer. "I have had personal interactions with quite a nu

UK - Unusual Rigging has become renowned in the West End for taking charge of marking out, setting out and preparing the grids for some of the most famous musicals of all time. So it was not too much of a surprise when, 25 years after an Unusual team worked on the original production of Miss Saigon, the company was brought on board for the latest run of the show at the Prince Edward Theatre.

Jeremy Featherstone, design engineer at Unusual Rigging, said, "I was exactly 15 years and one month old when the show opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in September 1989, but an older generation of Unusual riggers were heavily involved in all areas of the production, with the massive statue of 'Ho Chi Min' causing problems, as he weighed about five tonnes and had to be stored from a winch upstage centre. This time the key effects and scenic items are based on a touring ve

Russia - For Tiens Company's annual distributor conference at Moscow's Russia Hall, featuring a combination of official speeches and an original concert programme for 8,000 guests, Martin Professional provided lighting designer Roman Kasaev with a M6 console to control a design with over 100 Martin lighting fixtures.

To ensure the lighting design integrated seamlessly with the conference's theme, Kasaev teamed with Daniel Maneshin, technical director at the Knyazev Agency, who was brought in to design the conference's main concept. Maneshin also developed the conference's business section as well as conceptualized many decorative and informative elements, which featured several LED screens mounted on the main stage.

Kasaev chose 48 MAC 101 compact LED wash lights due to the brightness and colours that complimented the LED screens used at the event. The MAC 101s were mounted on

UK - Eclipse Presentations supplied full technical production, design and equipment - including lighting, sound, video and staging - for the 2014 Catey Awards, the high profile flagship event of The Caterer magazine which was staged in the Great Room of the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.

Eclipse's own winning creative concept for the presentation included an eye-catching set design based around an impressive edge-blended video projection, which included mapped images onto two large scenic replicas of the iconic Catey Award statue flanking both sides of the stage.

Started in 1984, the Cateys recognise individuals, teams and business within the hospitality sector, and are claimed to be the industry's only 'truly independent' benchmark of operational excellence.

It was the first time that Eclipse Presentations has won the contract to supply technical production for the

Portugal - PA company, ST Sonorizacoes Tuna, Lda, recently purchased Allen & Heath's new Qu-24 compact digital mixer to add to its hire stock.

"I invested in the Qu-24 for some of the smaller shows we manage where we do not need a lot of channels, Qu-24 is the perfect console as it is compact and has all the features we need to do a professional job. Out of all the consoles I tested, this one really impressed me with its great sound quality, quick setup, and easy operation. It's a good investment," comments CEO, Paulo Tuna.

The mixer was used for the first time at a Revolution Day celebration held in an auditorium in Mogadouro in the north of Portugal.

Sound engineer on the night, Pedro Oliveira, comments, "This console is perfect for smaller events. It has a great sound, and is very fast and intuitive to work with, including an easy set up procedure. In short

Taiwan - MSI Japan Taiwan has given Martin Audio's MLA system its debut in the Taiwan capital, at a recent show held at Taipei Arena.

This proved a big success for MSI Japan Taiwan - part of the MSI Japan HD Group, who set up their office in Taipei several months ago. Their first gig with the system was supporting the Taiwanese leg of the famous Japanese artist, Masaharu Fukuyama, for his Fukuyama Masaharu We're Bros Tour 2014.

Since the artist had used the MLA system for the Japanese leg, he wanted to retain continuity with the award winning loudspeaker technology that is a combination of multi-cellular control and progressive optimisation software.

MLA has already enjoyed great success in Japan and its reputation is quickly spreading through all the Asian countries. Without the need for delay towers, it can effortlessly provide consistent sound pressure level and fr

USA - This year's Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) in Las Vegas easily earned its reputation as the world's largest electronic music festival with seven stages, carnival rides, art installations, fireworks displays and over 400,000 in attendance.

The landmark multimedia three-day event took place at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and focused on providing a total entertainment experience for electronic dance music fans, with over 70 DJs performing each day.

3G Productions of Las Vegas/Los Angeles, who once again provided audio for the event, set up a fully loaded Martin Audio MLA loudspeaker system on Stage Two (Cosmic Meadow) to deliver the power and huge amount of low end required for the shows. DJs featured on the stage included Diplo, Justin Martin, A-Trak, Chromeo, Bassnectar, Dillon Francis and Destructo, just to name a few.

The system for Cosmic Meadow stage consisted of 16

UK - Arcstream AV, specialist provider of interactive technologies and special effects for events and permanent installations, has supplied a video and sound distribution system for the John Lewis and Sony live World Cup screenings at John Lewis' Oxford Street branch roof garden.

Five large displays - including Sony's 84" 4K Ultra HD model - have been screening all the goals. Complimentary pizza, beer and wine have also been available for this limited tickets event.

Neil Dickinson, managing director of Arcstream comments, "There are all sorts of places where people have been enjoying this World Cup, but this has to be one of the most ingenious. It was a pleasure to be involved in the process."

(Jim Evans)

Germany - Creating quite a stir at the moment is an exhibition at Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau: The life and work of David Bowie can be explored in this multimedia exhibition taking place at the historic building near the former border strip until 10 August 2014.

"David Bowie is a pioneer in many artistic fields, making him the ideal subject for an exhibition," says Victoria Broackes who, as co-curator along with her colleague Geoffrey Marsh, has had a key role in realising the exhibition and tirelessly brought together exhibits from different provenances. "The sound is presented as never before at an exhibition," explains the Bowie expert, highlighting Sennheiser's involvement - the technology of the audio specialist is an integral part of the multimedia experience and allows visitors to immerse themselves in soundscapes by this exceptional artist.

D

Indonesia - Jakarta is Southeast Asia's largest city, and a thriving metropolis with a lively nightlife. It is also home to Colosseum Club and many other venues that strive for the attention of a population of over 10m. Against this background, the ambitious team of 1001 knew that the club had to stand out. The goal was to introduce a sound and lighting design that matches the club's unique and truly colossal scale.

LEDsCONTROL would take on the task to transform the club and propel it to the forefront of lighting design to find its very own spot among other well-known venues around the world. Under the lead of Rebeca Sánchez Pastor and Miquel Clot, a spacious arena that spans over 1,000 m2 with an astonishingly high ceiling of 16 m had to be lit up in completely new ways.

After shipping the majority of equipment, the team worked three weeks to get it all set up. The team inv

UK - Robe will be supplying in excess of 500 lighting fixtures for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Robe is working with lighting designer Tim Routledge on this project, who was the lead lighting programmer for the London 2012 Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

The Robe fixtures shining bright in Glasgow will include Pointes, CycFX, LEDWash 600s, LEDBeam 100s and the recently released LEDBeam 1000, together with Robe's latest LightWare battery up-lighters.

The Opening Ceremony takes place at Celtic Park Stadium on 23 July 2014 and will feature a cast of 2000 performers as well as 4,500 athletes from 71 nations, with a live audience of over 40,000 and a potential global live TV audience of over one billion.

The Closing Ceremony takes place at Hampden Park Stadium on 3 August.

The ceremonies are being created by global brand

UK - Multi award-winning lighting designer Tim Routledge is using the Clay Paky B-EYE K20 to add extreme definition to his show-stopping stage design for Gary Barlow's latest arena tour Since I Saw You Last.

Routledge combines huge onstage elements such as a 25m wide chandelier made from LED tubing and a 100ft wide video screen for Barlow's high-spec and extremely glamorous show.

"The creative concept behind the show was based around the super wide video screen," explains Routledge. "It's almost twice as wide as normal arena shows. As soon as it was rigged it created a really epic feel with a nice clean line. I wanted the show to be sleek and contemporary, punctuated with innovative effects."

As part of his sleek lighting design Routledge specified 46 of the new Clay Paky A.Leda B-EYE K20 fixtures along with 20 x Sharpy Wash luminaires, all supplie

Denmark - Roskilde Festival 2014 hired in a Funktion-One sound system for its Apollo stage, as it looked to improve audio performance.

Funktion-One partner, Moto Rental, has supplied a large system for Roskilde's Apollo stage - its platform for electronic music. After experiencing issues while using a different system in 2013, the festival's organisers were keen to raise the audio quality for the audience, while minimising the impact on the surrounding environment - including nearby residents.

Apollo hosts a range of musical styles that fall beneath its broad electronic music banner and sees a mixture of playback, live and varying combinations of both. Naturally, bass frequencies have a prominent role to play, which presents both a challenge and an opportunity when it comes to sound reinforcement.

"Apollo is all about being progressive - the music, the light show and th

UK - Britannia Row Productions Training (BRPT) are offering a new programme of 1-day live sound training sessions at their London training centre from July through to 18 September. The scheme offers people in the live sound industry the opportunity to attend training in selected, specific topics, for example in system optimisation, RF, rigging and monitor mixing.

Training sessions are also available for Yamaha, Avid, DiGiCo and Midas digital consoles. Following the success of the first wave of one-day sessions taken up by a number of people from the UK and abroad, BRPT has expanded its offering to include packages such as System Analysis and Optimisation comprising of two tuition days plus a practical workshop, and a three-day package on Sound for Corporate Events, Theatre and Classical Music.

The range of topics also includes fundamental topics from the earlier stages of BRPT

UK - Four Ai Media S8 Infinity servers provided the cutting edge video mapping technology and 16 HD DVI outputs that powered the ethereal visuals behind Coldplay's much anticipated Royal Albert Hall (RAH) gig in London.

The RAH shows closed what was a short, six date, low key tour that supported their album Ghost Stories. Video director Ben Miles of Mixed Emotions, London, who has been with the band throughout, projected an evocative mix of live and pre-recorded content across the hall's 86 iconic ceiling mounted acoustic diffusion discs - known more fondly as the 'mushrooms'.

"I pushed for the Royal Albert Hall show to be particularly 'special', a stand-out performance from the rest of the tour," states Miles. "For this performance we wanted to combine the intimate setting we had created for the rest of the tour with something very visual and exciting.&q

Maldova - 20 DTS Raptors highlighted the Orange Music White Night event, held on 17 May at the Manej Sport Arena, in Chisinau City, Moldova.

Orange Music White Night - now in its fifth year and still growing - is one of Moldova's biggest music events; a unique show that gathers electronic music fans from across the whole country to dance the night away.

The event headliner was the world-renowned Andrew Rayel, who ranked #28 in 2013's 'DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs' poll. The Orange Music White Night light rig was installed by IvasArt, whilst Ivasco Stefan was lighting designer and operator.

(Claire Beeson)

Germany - The city of Bielefeld has been marking its 800th anniversary throughout 2014, with a highlight of the celebrations a 'time travelling' production which featured 800 performers. A Yamaha CL5 digital mixing system helped ensure that the complex show was a fitting tribute to the city's history.

Titled 800 Jahre Bielefeld - Bi Motion, the production took place in the city's Stadthalle on 19 and 21 June, with two performances on each day. David Heuer of DH ProSound was asked to design and mix the show's sound. He chose a Yamaha CL5 digital console, with two Rio3224-D i/o units and an additional Ro8.

David is familiar with both complex events and Yamaha consoles, having been heavily involved with Dusseldorf's 2011 Eurovision Song Contest spectacular, amongst many other high profile live and broadcast projects.

"The show brought 800 musicians, dancers, actors

Belgium - The 14-18 Spektakel Musical in Mechelen's Nekkerhal unites a world class production team including Luc Peumans and Painting With Light to commemorate the death and destruction of the First World War which started a century ago in 1914.

Painting With Light has worked on many previous projects with show producers Studio 100, and the first conversations with Peumans took place about the then very embryonic work around three years ago.

With the venue already earmarked, the idea of using mobile scenery trucks evolved, so Luc suggested simple lighting trickery to conceal these massive pieces when offstage ... by creating virtual wing space with light curtains.

The same concept is utilised to mask off different depths along the 'field of play' / performance space as the seating tribune and the location of the action shifts up and down the hall.

The light curtains

USA - Nearly 250 consultants, integrators, sound engineers and IT managers from all over the world came together in Las Vegas on 17 June, 2014 for the AV Networking World Conference to learn about Dante, the market leading audio networking solution. This year's event was sponsored by Atlas Sound, Attero Tech, Audinate, BSS Audio by Harman, Bosch, Bose Professional Systems, Focusrite Rednet, Innovative Electronic Designs, TC Group, Lectrosonics, Peavey Commercial Audio, Powersoft, Presonus, Shure, Stewart Audio, Studio Technologies and Yamaha Commercial Audio.

"Attending AVNW from a broadcasting and live sound perspective, it was amazing to see the different ways companies and people are using Dante" remarked John Ball, systems engineer from Microsoft Product Studios. "For us at Microsoft Production Studios (MPS), the IP platform is giving us new ways to transport

USA - It's an all too familiar story: a beloved historic theatre slowly falls into disrepair, and where music and dancing used to reverberate off its rafters, cobwebs now hang in silence. And while it may be the end for some theatres across the nation, The Civic Theatre in New Orleans was given a second chance and revitalization, thanks to the Solomon Group and Bandit Lites, in an effort that was recognized with the Seventh Annual Excellence in Live Design Awards for Venue - Theatre.

In what is being hailed as "the first modern historic theatre", The Civic Theatre received an entire overhaul, while still maintaining the historic characteristics that make it so special. The Solomon Group took painstaking care to ensure that no detail, down to the plaster on the balcony, kept the architectural integrity remained intact.

The execution of the design for every aspect of t

Germany - Attracting around 70,000 visitors, Hurricane is one of the most successful music festivals in Germany. Held in Scheeßel, this year's headliners included Arcade Fire, Volbeat, Seeed, Kraftklub, and Fettes Brot among others. TVN Mobile Production was in attendance with its Ü3 OB truck (equipped with a Lawo mc²66) and a mobile control room (with a Lawo mc²56) to mix the live broadcast sound from the two main stages and make multitrack recordings for later broadcast. "The festival was perfect! We got the releases from all the bands for TV broadcasts," says Stephan Thyssen, audio manager at TVN.

TVN first mixed festivals for live broadcast and recording in 2005. Since 2006, the company has also handled the Wacken Open Air event (the largest heavy metal festival in the world), and in 2008 took on the Hurricane festival. While his senior position puts Thyssen in

Nicaragua - Having survived the earthquake of 1972 that devastated much of Nicaragua's capital city Managua, there has been little that has shaken Teatro Nacional since; until that is, time came to re-equip the venue in the modern vernacular.

"Function is core to our art at the Teatro," said Licenciado Ramon Rodriguez, director of the theatre (Licenciado is a term of respect, one Señor Rodriguez has earned during his time at the theatre), "and technology forms a big part of that." Teatro Nacional had been surviving on a bequeathed audio system for many years, "But now we needed a system that can manage all forms of performance; musical theatre; classical concert, rock and folk concerts; these were not even considered when the venue was first built."

Teatro Nacional, named Teatro Rubén Dario after a national poet, was built as a concert hal

UK - Chaos Visual Productions provided the essential backdrop to Kasabian's homecoming gig at Leicester's Victoria Park last month. In a specially constructed festival arena that accommodated approximately a 50,000 strong audience, Kasabian opted for a massive white 9mm WinVision screen of 235sq.m from Chaos as the central vehicle for their show.

With the rest of the stage dressed in soft white - along with the crew in their white boiler suits - the screen provided the focal point for the dynamic and energetic creative content that reflected the artistic concept of their 48:13 album.

As all the previous artists had performed on a plain black stage throughout the afternoon, the unfurling of the white drapery and the start of the numerical countdown in vibrant pink was a perfect example of how to deliver colour juxtaposition to maximum effect.

Project director, Alex Leinster h

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