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Manchester’s most comprehensive cultural festival, Keyfest, is being held this summer. Keyfest offers 103 hours of varied events in a range of Manchester venues spanning 17 days. Event Associates created the programme and co-ordinated the production of the whole festival for radio station Key 103.

The co-ordination of the artists, venues and production of Keyfest was managed by the Event Associates team, with director Colin Sinclair overseeing the project. Manchester’s ‘street cred’ as one of the UK’s main cultural cities was once again underlined with the launch of Keyfest on Thursday 21st June at Loaf. Tom Hunter, managing director of Manchester’s radio station Key 103 welcomed a gathering of media and celebrities to the opening party. The festival p

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Vari-Lite is lighting the way for rock-n-roll greats, Aerosmith, during the band's Just Push Play tour. Earlier this month, the band performed at the first of 50 US cities it will visit over a three-month period this summer before touring the rest of the world later this year and into 2002. The shows feature the use of the Virtuoso console. Lighting designer Jim Chapman is using 84 Vari*Lite luminaires combined with the control of the Virtuoso console, operated by lighting operator and programmer Benny Kirkham, to light the famous band. Chapman's rig includes 16 VL2416 wash luminaires, 14 VL2402 wash luminaires, 26 VL5Arc wash luminaires and 28 VL6C spot luminaires. "I like using a mixture of the old school type of lighting and the more current type of computer lighting," said Chapman. "Vari-Lite has always been the front-runner with computerized lights, and the VL2402 is

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Marquee Audio has sold a Soundcraft Series Five 48/32 monitor board to North London-based John Henry’s Ltd. Its first outing was on the most recent series of the BBC TV’s long running flagship music show, Later . . . With Jools Holland. JHL has a long association with the programme, supplying monitor systems and audience sound reinforcement for a diverse range of artists since the first series. Having evaluated the console in the warehouse and in a live situation, Robert Harding, JHL’s general manager (and project manager for the series), decided that the 48/32 configuration best suited the show’s technical requirements and further JHL projects. "The beauty of the board is that with 32 mixes, it gives us ultimate flexibility for the show," said Harding. "With the growing prevalence of IEMs, combined with traditional wedge mixes, sound engineers toda
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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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Hayden Laboratories has supplied West London-based installation and audio consultants Phoenix Technologies with a large number of Denon multi-play CD players for an innovative North London installation. Their client Richard Abbott has a large house and a colossal CD collection. He was looking for a flexible, cutting-edge audio system that would allow him quickly and easily to locate and replay any CD or track in his vast music archive – numbering over 2000 discs! Richard set Phoenix a demanding brief for a versatile and robust systemThe Phoenix Team set about designing a system, and selected the Denon Multiplay DCM-5000 machines at an early stage in the process.

Phoenix specified the Denon machines because they wanted the most reliable technology available. They have used the Denon brand in a variety of other installs over the years. It was also essential that this system was exp

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California-based pro audio manufacturer QSC Audio Products has appointed Duke Ducoff to the position of Audio Design Liaison. Based in Austin, Texas, Ducoff’s responsibilities include assisting consultants and contractors with specifying QSC’s expanding product line, including signal processing, signal transport, and audio network systems. Ducoff brings more than two decades of sales management and marketing experience to QSC, including over three years at White Instruments where he served as vice-president of sales and marketing, and 10 years at The Jones Sales Group in regional sales. Ducoff is also a long-time member of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) and the National Systems Contractor Association (NSCA), and has received a number of prestigious sales awards. Ducoff holds a bachelor’s degree in Radio/Television Production from the University of Houston.

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Allen & Heath, the Cornwall, England-based mixer manufacturer has announced a £9 million management buy-out. The Allen & Heath directors heading the buy-out are managing director Glenn Rogers, sales and marketing director Bob Goleniowski, finance director David Jones and operations director Tony Williams. Lead investment has come from 3i, Europe’s leading venture capital company, with additional investment from the Bank of Scotland. This announcement marks the end of Allen & Heath’s 10-year spell as a division of Harman International industries, Inc. Allen & Heath was acquired by Harman International in 1991; since then, the manufacturer’s turnover has increased tenfold. Allen & Heath’s new board will consist of the four current directors, plus two non-executive directors from its investment partners.

A jubilant Glenn Rogers said: "This is fantastic news,

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The latest Jongleurs comedy club has been developed on the site of the former Mash & Air in Manchester’s city centre - in a multi-level building, requiring multiple signal feeds. When Andy Chamley’s Telford-based AC Limited won the contract from Regent Inns plc for the sound and lighting package, they put together a specification based around a pair of BSS Audio’s 9088 DSP networking devices, with two local 9010 ‘Jellyfish’ remotes. Chamley says the success of the installation owed much to the close support offered by BSS Audio’s Dave McKinney. "This was a complex installation, since the venue exists on four floors, and required careful design," he explained.

On the ground floor is Bar Risa - a daytime operation and night-time feeder bar, with a hard disk music system. This is linked by a Soundweb device and Jellyfish, offering satellite a

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The Leicester-based National Space Centre has opened. The £52million project, part-funded by the Millennium Commission, has a host of visitor attractions, in addition to a research facility for scientists and various space exploration artifacts. Central to the new attraction is the Space Theatre, the latest technology is being used to project virtual reality images onto its dome-shaped roof screen.

You can read a full report on the Centre in the August issue of Lighting&Sound International.

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Creative Technology hosted a major launch for the new Barco iLite 6 high resolution indoor product at Tiger Tiger in London’s West End, in a showcase that saw many leading production companies and agencies throughout the UK having a chance to see the system for the first time.

Called ‘the video plate’ it is Barco’s response to the growing market demand for indoor high-resolution daylight displays. The iLite 6 takes the achievements of SMD technology (three colours in one) and builds on them, offering a 6mm resolution with an extremely high light output, colour uniformity, contrast, flexibility - and seamless pictures. Each panel weighs 28lbs, and with a depth of just 5in, the iLite 6 is rated at a light output of over 2000 NIT. Creative Technology has already debuted the modular system on both sides of the Atlantic - at ITN’s purpose-built election studio

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A panel of crowd safety experts, appointed on March 11 2001 by the ILMC (The International Live Music Conference), has now agreed its agenda. The panel (CSP) has been created in order to increase the focus on health and safety in connection with music festivals and similar larger outdoor concerts. Its main purpose is to assist the government, licensing authorities and legislators with ensuring crowd safety at ongoing or future events.

The panel’s work is highly topical through recent developments in the music and festival culture, and its creation was spurred by a number of accidents and deaths at high profile events including Roskilde Festival 2000 in Denmark and other recent crowd tragedies in Australia and South America. An awareness campaign aimed at educating festival audiences across Europe about the seemingly innocent (but proven dangerous) practice of ‘crowd surfing

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Due to be launched at PLASA 2001, the innovative ChromaRange is a new state-of-the-art family of LED technology lighting fixtures designed and manufactured by Pulsar Light of Cambridge. Each fixture houses 80 powerful, high efficiency LEDs. These comprise of a mixture of Red, Green and Blue types to allow endless RGB colour mixing - making 16.7 million colours possible. The LEDs have a rated life of 25,000 hours at full power white, but this is greatly increased if the fixture is dimmed or producing coloured light as in normal use. The units can crossfade slowly from any colour to another or strobe if required, as they feature fast-response electronics. Alternative clip-in diffusers will be available for different beam angles and shapes allowing various effects to be achieved. The LED units boast a high light output, and the infinite colour palette ranging from pastels to deep intense hu

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An elaborate TOA networked system forms the core of the new tone and voice signalling system at the head office and distribution centre of RS Components (UK) Ltd at Corby. Retrofitted by Provoice, the audio division of Burnley-based fire protection and voice evacuation specialists, Protec, the system is based around a centrally-sited, 32-zone SX-1000 audio management digital matrix, powered by a combination of TOA VP240, VP120 and VP60 amplifiers, housed within a suite of five ‘Access Series’ drive racks, manufactured by Wilshire & Quick.

There are 48 amplifiers in total, and since the system is plugging into a pre-existing PA set-up, using branched circuits, Provoice opted to use an impedance monitoring system, specially designed by TOA Germany, and featured for the first time in the UK. Prosound’s Jan Hawrot explained that the system contained four automatic message

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The MTFX Party Cannon is a single-shot cannon which fires both confetti and streamers in to the air together using a built-in compressed air cylinder. Each cannon is pre-loaded with a mixture of both tissue confetti and metallic streamers in a wide variety of colours. The confetti shapes include stars, circles, bubbles and flowers as well as regular Flying Fetti!

The Party Cannon is available in four sizes to suit all venues and operators: the 200mm cannons are particularly suitable for smaller indoor venues as they fire the confetti and streamers to a distance of up to 4 metres. The 300mm cannons are ideal for larger parties and venues as they will fire the contents up to a distance of l0 metres. The 500mm cannons are aimed at very large venues and outdoor parties as they can shoot confetti and streamers to a distance of up to 20 metres. The 800mm cannons need to be reserved for footb

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TeleStage Associates held an official opening of their new office and workshops in Bury St Edmunds on the 13 June. The new premises comprise 350sq.m of office space and 520sq.m of fabrication and warehousing space.

The expansion allows for future growth and provides room for the development of a fully-equipped electrical and electronic workshop which will facilitate the wiring of equipment racks for MCC’s audio-visual equipment racks and custom panels. The workshop will be used for the prototyping and testing of control systems used in stage rigging, AV and show control. A dedicated QA area will ensure that equipment meets all necessary standards before dispatch.

To mark the opening, the company demonstrated a number of items of stage equipment, including two scissor lifts (one using Serapid link chains and the other a single spiral drive from GALA), two of the new super-silent

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The Moving Light Company has added Vari*Lites to its extensive hire stock. The latest additions are the VL2202 spot luminaire and VL2402 wash luminaire. Both based around the same case design, familiar from Vari*Lite's popular VL6B luminaire, the VL2202 and VL2402 both use a 700W short arc lamp to provide high light output. The VL2202 spotlight offers a wide zoom range, fixed and indexing/rotating gobos wheels and an interchangeable colour wheel, while the VL2402 washlight, one of the most talked about products at last year's LDI trade show, offers CMY colour mixing coupled with a highly controllable variable beam.

Both units have already been specified for the forthcoming UK tour of Miss Saigon by lighting designer David Hersey, where they will replace the VL2C spot luminaire and VL4 wash luminaire used on the original London production. The Moving Light Company will be supplying Miss

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This week Show Technology’s managing director Emmanuel Ziino made a major commitment to the rapidly growing area of architectural lighting by appointing Jonathan Ciddor as architectural products manager. Ciddor has been involved in the lighting business for over 30 years, the last 15 specializing in taking entertainment lighting to architectural and theming applications to create interesting lighting solutions. This wealth of knowledge will now be used to develop Show Technology’s position as one of the leaders in innovative architectural lighting in Australia.

Jonathan’s own experience on large scale architectural and theming projects is vast and he has worked on a wide range of projects. He is currently working on the permanent location of the Olympic Cauldron at Homebush Bay involving over 20 Clay Paky Goldenscans. The installation of this project is by Beyond Audi

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Focus Show Equipment, one of Holland's leadingr rental companies, particularly in the theatre market, has recently taken delivery of an XL4 and a Heritage 2000 supplied by Dutch distributor TM Audio. The two consoles were bought specifically for the show Saturday Night Fever which has just opened at the Queen Beatrix theatre in Utrecht. The show, which is anticipated to run for at least two years at the venue, specified both consoles for FoH duties, but even then some of the monitor channels on the XL4 have been replaced with stereo channels.

Focus SE's Piet Meekel commented: "Like me, the sound designer, Jeroen Ten Brinke, is a great fan of Midas consoles, so even with the modifications, it wasn't a difficult choice to go with Midas for this show. In fact, the very first console I bought when I started Focus Show Equipment 30 years ago was a Midas console, and it's still going st

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Thommy Hall who has joined California-based Mobolazer to manage the sales department. Hall is well known throughout the lighting industry and was previously in New York City as northeast region sales manager for High End Systems. He also spent two years in Hawaii as sales manager for Hawaii Stage and Lighting and was also lighting director of the highly acclaimed production of Ulalena at the Maui Myth and Magic Theater.

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PCM, UK and European distributors for Columbus McKinnon Lodestar hoists, will show a selection of the many types of Lodestar motors available, including standard rigging range, VGB 70/BGV C1 type and the FX range - now available for theatrical use. The company will also highlight its renowned and highly successful hands-on Motor School and Rigging School training courses.

A new version of the compact CM Prostar motor is also being launched at the show, with increased capacities and speeds. This new higher speed version will climb at six metres a minute and 10m/min (increased from the industry standard four metres a minute). A new 500 lb SWL @ 4m per minute version is also to be launched - an increase of 200 lbs over the pervious 300 lb SWL.

PCM - Stand F18

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Tomcat’s first annual Las Vegas Hoist and Truss Workshop swept through the Western Region in mid June with Arizona, California and Nevada being represented. The sold-out event consisted of a full day of motor instruction taught by Don Dimitroff of Columbus McKinnon and a half-day of truss design, use and theory led by Keith Bohn from Tomcat USA. The Vegas Motor School comes hot on the heels of the grand opening of Tomcat’s new office in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas location serves as a distribution centre for the Western Region of the United States and stocks over 200 sections of standard truss products, 50 Columbus McKinnon lodestar motors and various rigging accessories. The next Tomcat Las Vegas Motor School will be held on September 17-18, 2001, whilst the annual Tomcat Hoist and Rigging Workshop will be hosted by Tomcat USA in Midland, Texas, January 30 - February 3, 2002.

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The details have been confirmed of the third Hayden Laboratories Annual Cricket Cup Challenge. The date for this enjoyable and competitive event is Thursday 23rd August. The Audio and Lighting industry are invited to pull on their cricketing whites and challenge the current champions - Clarion Events Ltd (boo hiss) - in a triangular competition which culminates with a prize-giving and BBQ in the evening.

And if you don’t play, you are very welcome to come and enjoy the atmosphere and cheer on your industry colleagues as they demonstrate their complete lack of sporting prowess in the idyllic setting of Littlewick Green Cricket Club, Berkshire. This year’s three teams will consist of Clarion Events captained by James Brooks-Ward, the PLASA Lighting side captained by Paul De Ville of Lightfactor Sales, and the PLASA Audio side captained by Simon Curtis of Hayden Laboratories.<

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