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UK - White Light is the chosen lighting supplier for a flurry of new theatre productions opening on tour and in the West End this year. On tour, White Light has supplied equipment to Highland Fling, the new ballet directed by Matthew Bourne, designed by Lez Brotherston and with lighting by Paule Constable - who on Sunday became the winner of this year's Olivier Award for Best Lighting for her work on His Dark Materials at the National Theatre; to Dracula, lit by Rick Fisher, to Insignificance, lit by Neil Austin, to The King and I, lit by Peter Mumford, to Sleeping Beauty on Ice, lit by Gavan Swift, and to The Witches, lit by Mark Jonathan. Tours returning for the New Year using White Light equipment include The Play What I Wrote

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UK - The latest addition to the Cardiff Bay skyline, the Wales Millennium Centre, has received plaudits from around the world, and not just for its striking appearance. At the heart of the WMC lies the Donald Gordon theatre, the new permanent home for the Welsh National Opera Company. A 1,900 capacity auditorium or 'Lyric Theatre' as the management would have it, the theatre embraces all that its new tenants could possibly desire; an aesthetically tailored interior that matches and enhances the striking exterior, a superb natural acoustic; and it boasts all the very latest in stage presentation technology.

Stage Electrics were awarded the technology installation contract, Jonathan Porter-Goff project managing the complete installation from the company's HQ in Bristol. "We installed the lighting infrastructure," he said. "But when it came to selecting the specific

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USA - A High End Systems (HES) Catalyst Pro media server is kickstarting the heart of Motley Crue's Red, White & Crue: Better Live Than Dead 2005 world tour. The two-hour show, featuring classics and new numbers, reunites after six years all four original members of the band Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee.

The lighting team includes LD Justin Collie of Artfag, lighting director Kevin Cauley and programmer Nathan Wilson, with extra pre-tour assistance from HES programmers Brad Schiller and Nicholas Militello. XL Touring Video is supplying the Catalyst system, while the lighting contractor is Ed & Ted's Excellent Lighting.

The tour started in February in North American arenas, then heads to Latin America, Europe and UK, and returns to US amphitheatres in August and September. November and December will see the group in Southeast Asia.

(Lee Baldock)

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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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UK - Every year leading US entertainment industry magazine Entertainment Design invites a distinguished panel of judges to select the Sound Products of the Year. This selection process has remained consistently rigorous for over nine years whereby a group of designers and technicians from around the country, and occasionally the world, are invited by ED to communicate via email or in person to debate the pros and cons of equipment launched during the course of the year. After which the panel decides the winners.

This year's judging panel included sound designers, board ops, an academic, and an acoustician whose choice of top sound products represents a unique cross section of incremental improvements to existing technology, and include everything from a protocol to a cable. The winners are Aviom's A-Net Pro64 ASIC protocol, d&b audiotechnik's D12 amplifier, DiGiCo's D5T console,

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UK - Corporate Audio Visual Plc - one of the UK's largest audiovisual companies - has announced the acquisition of the Aztec Communications Group Ltd, a specialist hire, events and exhibitions company, in a move which further strengthens the Company's portfolio of services.

The completion of this acquisition, together with the relocation of the Manchester head office to purpose-built premises and the expansion of the company's Birmingham operation "underpins the Company's commitment to technical excellence" says the company. Aztec Communications will relocate from its existing Waterloo offices to Corporate AV's expanded Vauxhall site in central London.

Over the past 15 years, Aztec Communications has built a reputation for technical competence and quality of service within the event and exhibitions market. Corporate AV says its national presence will provide a platf

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UK - MCL Birmingham has been appointed as the preferred AV supplier to the ICC Birmingham. The company has supplied to the venue for a number of years, but will now take main responsibility for the provision any additional AV requirements. MCL Birmingham secured the appointment against intense competition: one of the reasons for MCL's success has been the excellent working relationship that exists between hire desk manager Chris Cheatle and the ICC Birmingham's technical manager, Paul Dipple, say the company.

Chris commented: "We have always worked very hard to ensure we provide what our clients want, when they want it. However we took this a step further for the ICC Birmingham. We met with the ICC Birmingham team and noted the areas in which they saw the greatest need for additional support in the coming years. For example there was an increasing requirement for moving lig

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Czech Republic - Summit Steel has finished an ambitious rigging project in Prague, working for production company Jigzaw, which involved design and build of a substantial rigging infrastructure and supply of equipment and crew, for the European Sales Meeting of Stryker Corporation - one of world's largest multinational medical device companies.

The event took place over three days and across five venues in the city, with Summit working in two locations - the Industrial Trade Fair Palace - a beautiful art nouveau exhibition centre dating from 1891, and the more contemporary Hilton Congress Centre. It was Summit's first event for Jigzaw; production manager Chris Venn asked them onboard after working with Summit on the 'Music on Fire' classical spectacular event at Sandhurst Military Academy in summer 2004.

At the Hilton Congress Centre, Summit's task was relatively straightforw

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UK - Lighting design and installation specialist i-Vision has completed an architectural lighting scheme at the new Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council Civic Centre, located in central Neath. The contemporary building, designed by the Council's in-house architects, features a large central entrance atrium and two impressive glass staircase atriums at either end of its two wings, all clearly visible from the exterior. Other elements include distinctive clad pillars, exposed brickwork and intricate lattices of steel structural detail - all of which lend themselves naturally to lighting.

The project was managed for i-Vision by Dave Mackay, who worked closely with Geoff Jones to design the scheme. Given an imaginative free reign and a relatively open brief, they certainly weren't short of ideas! It was decided to illuminate the central atrium's front metalwork - which unites t

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The Netherlands - Midas Consoles Holland has made Klark Teknik's DN370 analogue graphic equalizer available to a wide client base by offering an EQ Amnesty across the country for a limited period. Under the terms of the offer, one previously-owned EQ unit could be traded against a brand new DN370 on a part-exchange basis, ensuring that a substantial discount was received on each new unit.

The deal was the brainchild of managing director Axel Nagtegaal, who explains: "I wanted to find a way of giving rental companies who recognized the quality of the Klark Teknik DN370 the opportunity to purchase them by generating money from the sale of their other brand EQs. In most cases, it would have been extremely difficult to offload these units second-hand in any other way."

When the offer ended, Nagtegaal was staggered to find that 110 rental companies and theatres had take

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UK - Production hire company Hawthorn Theatrical has taken delivery of a 32-channel Aztec console to complement its ever increasing stock of Audient equipment, including a sizeable number of Audient's graphic equalizer, the ASP231. Specializing in event design and production, Hawthorn has a wealth of experience in corporate, AV, install and live production, providing the "one-stop-shop" production and hire service. With a hire inventory of over 2615 lines of stock, 62 members of full time staff as well as a warehouse the size of 5 football pitches, Hawthorn's commitment to providing a professional service at the very highest level is clearly evident.

Audient's UK sales manager, Nick Pemberton says: "When I visited Hawthorn for the first time, I was taken back by the company's scale. It's a truly amazing place. Since then I have been back on a number of occasions

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UK - The Impression Series of loudspeakers from Phonic combine stylish design with power and efficiency specs virtually unchallenged by any other speaker series on the market, the company claims. The extensive range includes 12" and 15" two-way FOH/floor monitor speakers, a dual 15" two-way FOH model plus 15" and 18" subwoofers. All of the speakers have been designed to feature high power handling abilities and frequency response ranges.

The speakers are fitted with professional speakon-type connectors, as well as quarter-inch phone jacks, are covered with hard-wearing black carpet and feature durable die-cast handles, plus most models can be pole-mounted. The subwoofers feature built-in crossovers, as well as a phase inverting switch, ensuring high quality bass reproduction, says the manufacturer.

(Lee Baldock)

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Germany - Agilent has announced a breakthrough colour management system for backlighting LCD flat-panel TVs, which the company claims delivers 25% more brilliant colours than current fluorescent backlighting. The colour management controller IC and colour sensor module combine to produce a complete hue (colour) and intensity (brightness) control system, say the company. The system works with high-power Luxeon red, green and blue LEDs from Lumileds Lighting - a joint venture between Agilent and Philips Electronics.

The Agilent solution solves past problems LCD television display manufacturers have had with RGB LEDs by providing a closed-loop optical feedback system. The system enables plug and play for OEMs and maintains a set color point over the life of the TV display. Initially, the primary application for this technology is to control RGB LED backlighting for LCD flat-panel

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UK - The Lighting Technology Projects sales team has expanded with the addition of Tilly Howarth, who joins the existing team in the company's new Birmingham office. Howarth's sales skills and experience comes from the new build and construction industries, and she was hand-picked for the LTP job because she has no specific background in lighting, and therefore "No baggage" says LTP's Terry Reeves. "I specifically wanted new blood and a fresh perspective," he explains.

Howarth will be part office-based and part road-based, and will develop LTP's direct sales operation initially around the Midlands, concentrating on the short lead-time projects in the retail, leisure, entertainment and public arts sectors. The expansion of the sales team is part of LTP's new long-term business strategy that kicked off with the move to Birmingham last autumn, say the company.

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UK - XL Video supplied two Barco R12 projectors to Red Priest's Red Hot Baroque Show which launched at Hackney Empire last week, before embarking on an international tour scheduled to last most of the year. The show's visuals - lighting and projection - have been designed and produced by Ben Rogers, who started work on the project last autumn. He was approached early by the music act, who was already engaged in constant touring worldwide. They wanted to 'up' the production values of their show and develop it into a creative collage of Baroque recital and modern performance.

Projection was on the cards from an early stage. Rogers wanted something that would give a unique look and was easily travelled. He approached XL Video's arts and theatre specialist Malcolm Mellows and together they explored the different options. They came up with the two projectors which can be front

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UK - Wembley Arena Pavilion opened it doors in February with shows by X Factor and Westlife in the first week. Wembley Ltd contracted The Arena Group to design and build the semi-permanent venue, which has already hosted, and will continue to host some of the world's biggest music stars, until the £32m refurbishment of Wembley Stadium is completed.

The £4m temporary arena has the look and feel of a permanent building. It is insulated for heat and sound, is over 165m long, 70m wide and 17m high, with a seating capacity of 10,000, offers a VIP corporate hospitality area and full backstage production facilities for organizers.

All four divisions of the Arena Group contributed skills and resources to create this unique venue.Arena Structures supplied their TFS structure and supplementary structures to create the venue;Arena Seating supplied and installed the 10,000 seats; Aren

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UK - Yamaha has introduced its first portable PA with the introduction of the Stagepas 300, designed to meet the increasing ' multi -use' demands of a variety of venues and institutions. Stagepas brings Yamaha's technology into a convenient, portable system that can be set-up and operated by anyone with little or no technical knowledge, say the company. Stagepas offer ultra-compact, 2-way designs with an easy-to-use eight-channel stereo mixing console. The system is also ideal for multimedia corporate presentations.

Each speaker contains an 8" woofer and 1" compression driver, driven by a 2x150W professional Yamaha power amplifier. The mixing console features balanced XLR connectors, microphone/line switches and balanced quarter-inch jacks. Two-band EQ provides flexible tone control and a 24-bit digital reverb further enhances sound fidelity. Connectors for tape recor

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Germany - With effect from today, Sennheiser GmbH & Co KG, located in Wedemark, Germany, has taken over the marketing and development divisions of Klein & Hummel GmbH, located in Ostfildern, Germany, including all product rights and brand use. This move will be represented by a newly founded company, K&H Vertriebs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH.

During its 60-year history, Klein & Hummel has developed a strong reputation for its studio monitors and other products including installed sound systems. In the past, Sennheiser has been Klein & Hummel's key distribution partner. With its existing core competencies, a worldwide distribution network and the newly gained K&H products, Sennheiser is now strengthening strengthens its position as a full-line supplier of electro-acoustic systems. Together with K&H's sister company Georg Neumann GmbH, Berlin, Sennheiser "represents th

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Germany - A working party from the VPLT (Germany's trade association for professional lighting and sound equipment) and the trade association with liability for industrial safety and insurance in Germany, has just produced the new SR 2.0 safety guidelines for electric chain hoists. ChainMaster, the Eilenburg-based developer and producer of professional chain hoists and chain hoist controllers, is already in a position to meet in full the requirements of this standard: BGV D8+.

BGV D8+ is positioned between the BGV D8 and BGV C1 standards. With respect to load runs, its stipulations are the same as those of BGV D8, except that no work limit switch is required. For BGV D8+ chain hoists with rated load-bearing capacities of 1,000kg upwards, an overload shutdown function is required, whilst for BGV D8, a friction clutch can be used for overload monitoring. For BGV C1 chain hoists, t

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Hong Kong - Lighthouse Technologies broke new ground with the introduction of the P12-Enhanced Resolution (ER) indoor/outdoor light emitting diode (LED) panels, which use advanced digital processing to enhance resolution to include more detailed information on a smaller screen. With a 12.5mm dot pitch resolution, the P12-ER allows more images, graphics and text to be displayed on 25mm panels.

The P12-ER is the first LED panels to combine the benefits of Lighthouse's M4 colour uniformity, 14-bit grayscale and resolution-enhancing technology. The P12-ER is best suited for advertising and stadium applications that require mid-size screens with high-resolution for longer viewing distances. Recognizing the demand for a wider variety of LED signage, P12-ER is the first in a line of enhanced resolution products Lighthouse plans to introduce in 2005. The internal architecture of the onb

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USA - On 19 January, 2005, guests began using the 53,000sq.ft first floor of the all-new Black Oak Casino in Tuolumne, California. What the Black Oak Casino was looking for to complement the new casino was an automated lighting package to deliver the right look and perhaps, a few reminders to guests. "When specifying this job, the customer was looking for automated lights that ran silently, delivered a wide range of looks and colours, and allow the casino to project messages and logos. The Vari-Lite VL1000TD fixtures were perfect for the application," explains Gary Guberman, lighting manager for Quantum Audio and Video, the supplier and installer of the project.

The Black Oak Casino uses eight Vari-Lite VL1000TD luminaires (tungsten lamp source with integral IGBT dimmers) in their main lounge, the Willow Creek Lounge. The Willow Creek Lounge has a dance floor, and on

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Ireland - Eurolites Productions, one of Ireland's largest lighting and production rental companies, is currently negotiating the purchase of a brand new 1200sq.m unit close to Dublin Airport. The building, near Blanchardstown just off the M50 motorway, is due for completion in late June and is a major move for the company which has rapidly outgrown its facilities in Portlaoise, Co. Laois.The past 12 months has seen a huge increase in the workload undertaken by Eurolites and 2005 looks to be a year of continued expansion, the company reports. The company says the move to Dublin will better serve its clients in the touring, concert, television and corporate presentation industries, and the new building will boast increased storage space and efficient loading and unloading facilities. The sales division of the company will also greatly increase in size and service, further expanding
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