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Japan - The National Theatre of Japan, this year celebrating its 50th anniversary, is state owned and operated by the Japan Arts Council. The theatre's main responsibilities are tied to traditional Japanese theatre and performance styles, with a remit to research, educate, and perform in disciplines such as Kabuki (17th century dance-based drama), Bunraku (18th century puppetry), and Noh & Kyogen (Stylised dance-drama and comedic plays normally performed in the same programme, originating in the 8th century).

The main building consists of the 1,610-capacity Large Hall and the 590-capacity Small Hall. Another building, the Engei Hall, stages smaller-scale performances of styles such as Rakugo and Manzai (traditional solo and duet spoken-word)

In this 50th anniversary year, th

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UK - Few bands are more immediately recognizable - visually and sonically - than The Cure, whose enduring career is now entering its fourth decade. London-based Britannia Row Productions has been with singer/guitarist Robert Smith and his mates for most of that time, since 1979, providing global touring support for the post-punk group, which is currently out on the road with an L-Acoustics K1/K2 system.

Aside from a few short jaunts and various one-offs at major festivals, The Cure Tour 2016 - which played 33 shows in North America this spring and is now journeying through 34 shows in 17 European countries - marks the first real outing for the band since the release of its 13th studio album, 4:13 Dream, and subsequent tour in 2008.

In anticipation of this year's worldwide tour, Britannia Row added a large quantity of new L-Acoustics products to its already bursting arsenal

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USA - Audio-Technica is now shipping its new ATM350a Microphone Systems. Offering crisp, clear, well-balanced response even in very high SPL applications, the ATM350a Cardioid Condenser Instrument Microphone comes in six specially designed systems that provide discreet, rock-solid mounting solutions for a host of instruments, including woodwinds, strings, brass, percussion, drums and piano.

Following in the footsteps of the popular ATM350, the ATM350a is capable of handling 159 dB max SPL, a 10 dB increase over its predecessor. This allows the mic to cope with an even greater range of extremely powerful, dynamic sound sources. Like the ATM350, the new mic features a cardioid polar pattern that reduces side and rear pickup and protects against feedback. The mic's in-line power module incorporates a switchable 80 Hz hi-pass filter to help control undesired ambient noise.

"Th

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Indochine X PixMob Fan Immersion

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's - 40 thousand LED pixels on a ceiling!!! Indochine's whirlwind tour transports fans to another level of the live experience - immersing them from floor to ceiling with PixMob's X4 wristbands, and an LED ceiling made entirely of its NOVA Minis! With the vision of Indochine's creative team, PixMob used its LED fan-technology to turn attendees and venues into an ocean of effects, and a starry sky of LED magic. Très très cool!

Read more about the Indochine tour in the latest issue of LSi

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Italy - Powersoft has announced that Italian speaker manufacturer, Eighteen Sound is the latest transducer specialist to recognise the company's patented IPAL technology.

Eighteen Sound has designed its new iD Series transducers to couple with Powersoft's Differential Pressure Control (DPC) technology. This is the core technology of the innovative and patented IPAL (Integrated Powered Adaptive Loudspeaker).

To implement this technology Eighteen Sound has adopted the Powersoft amplifier hardware module, IpalMod, which overcomes the limitations of traditional transducers to produce unparalleled output at low frequencies. It does so by featuring a zero latency pressure-sensor feedback, applying real-time correction to maximise Eighteen Sound high efficiency 18" and 21" transducers. This provides unparalleled output at low frequencies.

In taking the decision, Eighteen Soun

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UK - The Association of Sound Designers (ASD) has announced its Winter School 2017 - a week-long series of theatre sound related seminars being held Tuesday 24th January - Saturday 28th January 2017. The Winter School covers a range of topics, with a different theme each day.

Tuesday 24th focuses on making sound as sound designer John Leonard looks at recording sound effects; Tom Espiner demonstrates Foley Sound techniques and guests look at using QLab v4. A panel of award winning sound designers will finish the day by discussing how they create their designs.

Wednesday 25th focuses on music, with an introduction to synthesis from Sarah Angliss; a masterclass from Richard Brooker on working with musicians; a brief history of music and a panel of sound designers Donato Wharton, Adrienne Quartly, composer Paul Clark and a couple of other guests discussing how sound designers

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UAE - The IBS (International Building Services) Group celebrates 20 years at the top of the entertainment production industry in Dubai, having gained a solid reputation for building ambitious bespoke sets, providing detailed and elaborate décor as well as specialist draping and soft goods.

The company is headed by Alan Scoley and embraces all types of events from high profile corporate activations to live performances, cultural shows to conferences and exhibitions to lavish weddings.

There are three directors in addition to CEO Alan - Scott Davies, Nigel Smith and Terry Murtha. Alan is the only one involved in the daily operation, while Terry is busy heading up UK based drapes, soft goods, video and special FX S+H Technical Services together with other ventures.

Twenty years ago, they had a collective hunch that Dubai had all the ingredients to become a major pl

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USA - Headquartered on the western shore of Lake Michigan in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Acuity Insurance has been widely praised for being one of the best companies to work for in the United States. It ranked #2 on Fortune's top 100 list of best places to work last year, among many other similar awards! But Acuity isn't resting on its laurels.

A recent $150m, 320,000sq.ft addition to its headquarters includes a 43ft climbing wall, a 66ft indoor Ferris wheel, and a 2,000-seat theatre-in-the-round. Acoustics By Design, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, designed a sound reinforcement system centred on 10 of Danley Sound Lab's precision-pattern controlled SH-69 loudspeakers and an honest BC-415 subwoofer for Acuity's theatre, and Camera Corner Connecting Point, Green Bay, Wisconsin, installed it.

"Acuity will use the theatre for ongoing staff training and its quarterly, company-wide town

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Poland - Jordanki Cultural & Congress Centre, an architecturally renowned building in the city of Toru?, has selected Allen & Heath's ME system to cater for personal monitoring requirements in the venue's two performance halls.

The 22,000 m2 building is located within the UNESCO World Heritage site of the city's Old Town, and is a multipurpose venue equipped with two concert halls, a cinema hall, conference rooms, rehearsal rooms, a restaurant, press room and underground parking.

Supplied and installed by Konsbud Audio, the system consists of 16 ME-1 personal mini mixers and two ME-U hubs, divided between the Concert Hall and Chamber Hall.

"The ME system is primarily for on stage monitoring in the main performance halls but the ME-1s can also be moved to other rooms in the venue if required, as there are conveniently located connection points for the mixers in other ar

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South Africa - DWR Distribution supplied two identically designed and built schools with a basic lighting solution to accommodate school plays and general assemblies.

Soshanguve Secondary School, situated about 25 kilometres north of Pretoria, and the Chief Albert Luthuli Primary School in Daveyton, Benoni are government schools established to change the face of schools located in townships. Each school consists of 33 classrooms and sporting facilities. They are exact copies of each other.

"We were called by a company called IES Electrical to assist with the project," explains Johnny Scholtz from DWR. "They wanted a simple lighting system, fixtures that could change colour, and a small control system."

DWR installed three lighting bars, a FOH overhead and a back truss, with all the necessary rigging gear, to each school hall. Each school was also supplied with four Phi

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Europe - Peter Vandergoten of 4Ears and Frank Voet of Mono are more than just sound engineers. They are closely involved with their artists during production rehearsals and both deliver a full kit of microphones, wireless systems and mixing consoles to the bands they work with, which currently include Bazart, Adamo, Oscar and the Wolf, SX, Netsky, Absynthe Minded and Warhola.

With most of the acts they are involved with, they become an extra band member and the gear they choose is crucial for connecting with their audiences. This is why both companies recently invested in DiGiCo SD9 consoles, supplied by the manufacturer's Belgium distributor, Amptec.

"I was new to the DiGiCo family, but was immediately convinced it was the right way to go when the Stealth Core 2 update was announced for SD9," says Frank. "Stealth Core 2 dramatically increases processing power from the exi

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UK - Adlib is supplying lighting and sound to the current The Specials tour which sees the 2 Tone and Ska revival band take their energy, politics and rocksteady beats around the country to their wide and loyal fanbase.

Mike Darling is again the charismatic and friendly production manager for the tour.

Adlib's Simon Pettitt designed the lighting. It's his second tour with The Specials in the LD role following a successful autumn 2014 campaign, at which point Simon was freelance before joining the award-winning Liverpool company full time in 2015.

Simon's concept for the 2014 run was formulated after meeting with the band, where references ranged from David Byrne to Pina Bausch. The design was repackaged and refreshed for the 2016 tour, largely remaining unchanged but taking the opportunity to clean up the floor package design into cleaner lines of fixtures.

The sho

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France - The Diocese responsible for the French city of Tours has been organising events to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the birth of its patron saint, St. Martin of Tours. Alongside special masses in the city's Cathedral, the Saint's anniversary was also celebrated with a large, open-air mass in Marmoutiers where he founded a small hermitage in the fourth century - now the site of a ruined Abbey.

Sound engineer Julien Prouti

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USA - "For a long time now, we've been trying to figure out the ideal cable solution for the professional recording environment," said Brad Lunde, founder and president of TransAudio Group, upon announcing that his company will distribute the zero-compromise (yet fairly-priced) Accusound professional audio cable products.

He continued, "With a high-resolution monitoring system, such as ATCs, and a minimal-cabling setup, the differences between different cable manufacturers are obvious. But even if you can hear the differences, which cable is 'correct?'"

The team at TransAudio Group argued about it for years... until they met Steve Seropian, the happily obsessive inventor of the Accusound cabling concept. "Through extensive product development and beta arrangements with the best ears in the business, Steve has ensured that there is no weak link in an Accusound cable," Lunde

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USA - School spirit runs high at Linden High School. The comprehensive public school has won New Jersey state championships in several sports in recent years and has even seen some of its alumni go on to achieve glory in the NFL and Major League Baseball. Still, at the auditorium, a common gathering spot for school-wide celebrations, the old incandescent lighting system was not making the grade.

Clearly, it was time for an upgrade, but like many schools across the country, Linden, which is located about 13 miles southwest of Manhattan, faced the challenge of upgrading to a new LED lighting system, while still staying within tight budget restrictions.

Enter Nelson Enterprises. A theatrical systems integration services company, Nelson had recently helped a nearby high school make a successful - and affordable - transition to an LED system. Consulting with the school's electr

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UK - Celebrated lighting director Chris Bushell chose a powerfully compact Quartz console from British manufacturer Avolites to busk the emotively impactful lighting for James Blake's gig at Brixton's 02 Academy, London. The show was part of the minimalist electronica star's world tour to promote his third album, The Colour in Anything, the follow-up to his Mercury-Prize-winning second album, Overgrown.

Having previously worked with Amy Winehouse, Florence and the Machine and Arcade Fire, Bushell has been Blake's lighting director for over six years - accompanying him on his rise from unknown music graduate to Best New Artist nominee at the 2014 US Grammys.

Although an electronic artist, Blake insists that he and his band play all their instruments and gadgets live on stage. Similarly, he stipulates that the lighting and visuals are manipulated live too - to

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USA - Shaping Sound, the contemporary dance company founded by Emmy-nominated choreographers Travis Wall, Nick Lazzarini, Teddy Forance, and dance visionary Kyle Robinson, wrapped up its six week fall tour with a lighting package designed by Seth Jackson and provided by Bandit Lites, and while Robinson was the only one of the four to hit the road with the production titled Dance Reimagined, the show itself continued to wow audiences with its visionary prowess.

The part rock concert and part pop show with breath-taking dance numbers followed the story of a girl (performed by So You Think You Can Dance season 12 winner, Gaby Diaz) as she struggles being in a loveless relationship. The most recent iteration of the story featured a few new additions as Travis Wall went deeper into the abusive boyfriend character, with the lighting giving the audience members immediat

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Germany - The Musikalischen Komödie (Musical Comedy), a division of the Leipzig Opera and one of the highest occupied stages in Germany, has opted for a solution from the Dutch sound system manufacturer Alcons Audio.

The focus of the house, which is known far beyond the city limits as MuKo, is on operettas and musicals, and increasingly also on ballet performances. As the sound system of the auditorium got old, a modern solution was being sought that would satisfy the needs of the 520-seating, acoustically demanding room and would match the stage program as well.

The company HFE professional studio technology from Leipzig was responsible as an advisory and executing service provider for the installation. Hans Hermann Hönsch from HFE explains, "I've known Alcons Audio for a long time and recommended the Alcons LR7, because the system is in my opinion particularly well sui

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China - The highly prestigious Beijing Film Academy has put their trust in Merging Technologies once again. Beijing Film Academy's School of Sound has constructed a new film music mixing studio.

Integral to this studio is the Pyramix audio workstation with a MassCore engine to provide ultra-low latencies and allowing users to have enough power to mix very high track counts simultaneously. This studio is also equipped with Merging's Horus which provides excellent AD/DA conversion quality and supports up to DSD256 and DXD (352.8 kHz PCM).

The high number of I/O channels necessary are easily accommodated via the RAVENNA/AES67 protocol which uses one Cat 5e/Cat 6 cable to connect to Pyramix. Channel routing can be done remotely using the same connection, providing the ultimate in convenience with superb sound quality.

The Dean of the Sound School, Professor Tong Lei summar

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UK - Holy Trinity Church in Frome was built by the architect H.E. Goodridge in the middle part of the nineteenth century. This Grade II* listed building is noteworthy for a few reasons, not least that where traditionally a church would be expected to face east, Holy Trinity faces northwest. Its collection of Victorian windows designed by pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones and made by William Morris, add to the interest at this very active and vibrant community church.

In 2008, Architects Benjamin and Beauchamp won a competition to design an extensive re-ordering of the interior of this large 'Hall' church. Their scheme involved the creation of some new spaces within a more flexible interior that would better suit the changing needs of a contemporary church. Any scheme in a historic, listed building requires painstaking attention to heritage and conservation details. In m

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UK - More than 130 years have passed since St Katherine's College opened its doors in Tottenham. It was the first of eight colleges that eventually came together as Middlesex Polytechnic in 1973. Two further decades passed before the Polytechnic was granted university status by royal assent.

In the intervening years, Middlesex University has become a world-class institution with campuses in Dubai, Malta and Mauritius adding to its extensively re-developed Hendon site. The remodelling of an underused quadrangle situated around previously isolated wings of the College Building has completely changed the face of the Hendon Campus and has transformed the space by means of a strikingly modern and innovative glass roof. Part of a phased £14m masterplan, this newly created area is used throughout the year for a number of special events and presentations.

The Sir Raymond Ric

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Europe - Cruise ship operator Fred Olsen and EW Production Services have been working hard on projects and have recently completed another installation on MS Braemar, part of the award-winning Fred Olsen Cruise Lines fleet.

Braemar is the youngest of the four Fred Olsen ships. Whist in keeping with the other ships in the fleet, Balmoral, Boudicca and Black Watch - its smaller size means that it can access ports that the larger vessels cannot, thereby enabling more interesting itineraries. Capable of accommodating up to 929 guests, Braemar has a stylish, intimate feel, with friendly staff, offering an exceptional level of personal service.

When it comes to on board entertainment, the Neptune Lounge on deck 5, at the front of the ship, is the place to be! With cabaret-style shows and performances from live singers, dancers and comedians, there is something to suit every gues

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