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USA - Special Event Services (SES) and On Stage Audio (OSA) have announced that they will partner on the 17 May 2011 live production of the Oprah Winfrey Show finale, Surprise Oprah! A Farewell Spectacular, at Chicago's United Centre.

As part of the growing Martin Audio MLA network, SES and OSA will deploy the largest MLA system ever flown to ensure uniform coverage throughout the arena for this high-profile production.

"Knowing the high level of audio quality we need to provide for an event of this magnitude, MLA was the obvious choice," said Jim Brammer, SES president. "As the launch customer for MLA in North America, we're pleased to have a high-calibre company like OSA join the growing MLA network, and we look forward to partnering with them on t

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Paraguay - Italian live sound specialist dBTechnologies has reached an agreement with WorldMusic to distribute its range of products in Paraguay with immediate effect.

WorldMusic general manager, Mr Nabil explains, "dBTechnologies is a great brand with a strong image on the global stage. We pride ourselves on offering many top products and premium brands in the Paraguay market, and taking on dBTechnologies helps us broaden our product range significantly.

"We have had very good references as to the quality and reliability of the dBTechnologies products from existing users and see great potential - especially with the DVA series.".

WorldMusic, specialises in professional audio, with exclusive distribution with various brands such as AKG, BSS, Focusrite, Roland and Sennheiser. Also offering MI products and DJ equipment, the company has a retail store based in Ci

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UK - Cornwall's largest professional theatre, Hall for Cornwall, has dramatically improved its energy efficiency following an investment in the new Philips Selecon range of SPX luminaires. The Truro venue welcomes more than 180,000 theatre goers per year and is the first arts organisation in the UK to complete a year of carbon emissions cuts, as part of its commitment to the 10:10 climate campaign.

The venue says that it has reduced electricity consumption in the auditorium by as much as 60 per cent since it replaced it's Cantata profile units with the Philips Selecon SPX range of luminaires.

The move came after the venue hosted a fixture 'shoot out' in September last year where the Philips Selecon SPX range was pitted against a number of competitor brands.

"The decision was unanimous," says Simon Crick, Hall for Cornwall's head of operations. "The efficiency

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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 - Following the success of last year's PLASA International Rigging Conference, PLASA Events announces the return of this pioneering two-day event to be held once again alongside PLASA 2011, at Earls Court, London on Monday 12 and Tuesday 13 September.

The first PLASA Rigging Conference took place amidst universal acclaim from the global entertainment rigging community. Over 200 delegates attended from 22 countries and gave an overwhelming endorsement to the return of the conference this year.

Robin Elias, technical director, Unusual Rigging states, "The first PLASA Rigging Conference, last September, was opened in style by our managing director and mentor Alan Jacobi LVO. Under the guidance of Chris Higgs the conference proved to be a huge success, bringing together a wealth of knowledge and experience from across the globe. Raising for discussion some very interesting

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Australia| - The lighting team at Sydney Theatre Company have been using ETC Ion consoles in the Wharf 2 studio venue for quite a while. When the time came to purchase new consoles for the Wharf 1 venue there was no argument.

"We were very pleased with the way the ETC Ions were performing in Wharf 2 so we decided to purchase two 2000 channel ETC Ions for Wharf 1" said Graham Henstock, head of lighting at Sydney Theatre Company. "We decided that the ETC Ions were the best fit for our venues on the Wharf in that they're a very flexible console but compact enough to fit into all of our bio boxes.

"We are extremely happy with our choice to move to the ETC Ion. It is a very powerful theatrical lighting console, which my operators are finding intuitive to use and a pleasure to program."

One of the new ETC Ion consoles acts as the primary console, whilst th

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UK - West Yorkshire-based rehearsal studio, staging, and set construction company LS-Live has announced a merger with Acorn Event Solutions.

The deal boosts LS-Live's stock of staging and trussing equipment so that it has become one of the largest staging rental companies in the marketplace. The company, which offers complete staging solutions for festivals, concerts, theatre productions and corporate events, now stocks ranges of Space Roof, Dome Roof, Mini and Midi stages, and staging equipment that comprises 17,500sq.m of Layher Event Deck alone.

Andy Nutter joins LS-Live as operations director, having headed up Acorn Event Solutions since 2006, during which time it has provided staging solutions for Swansea's BBC Proms in the Park, Leeds' Opera in the Park, the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Frieze Art Fair, the Silverstone Grand Prix, Mini's 50th Birthday at Excel in London a

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Sweden - Täby Church outside Stockholm originates from the 13th century when it was one of the primary houses of worship in Sweden. Much of the interior including the altar is from the 1470s and has been carefully preserved over the centuries and is still in use today. The church is most famous internationally for its 15th century ceiling paintings depicting Death playing chess with a knight, which inspired Ingmar Bergman's famous film scene in the Seventh Seal.

When LjusDesign and lighting designer Peter Lindbom of AIX Arkitekter were tasked with creating a new lighting for the famous church, working with the historical and fragile interior proved a challenge. Electrical wiring was in place, but putting DMX cables in the church was simple not an option. The solution they used was building CRMX OEM cards directly into the fixtures themselves, making the lighting controls

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UK - Edinburgh's Pleasance Theatre, owned and run by the Edinburgh University Students' Association (EUSA) has installed a Yamaha LS9 digital console.

The 300-capacity Pleasance Theatre stages drama, live music, dance and comedy throughout the year, as well as hosting lectures, conferences and film screenings. Both professional and amateur companies use it and, with the venue also rented out for performances during the Fringe, it's rare to step inside and not find something going on.

"The theatre had previously had been an empty space with some tabs, a few hemp bars and a 125a socket," says Tom Lawes of EUSA. "It was used by a variety of student societies to put on various shows and occasionally some in-house events. We bought the LS9-32 in preparation for redeveloping the theatre, which was mainly the installation of a technical infrastructure which would allow

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UK - Star Events Group has confirmed that it has bought the assets of SRC and Stages UK Ltd, in the process creating probably the largest rental fleet of mobile stages in Europe.

The company now offers a range of 12 competitively priced mobile stages. Sizes now available are from 8m x 6m up to the 15m x 12m SAM stage. Included in the acquisition were cable ramps & front of stage barrier all of which can travel inside the stages along with motors and risers offering a saving in transport costs and 'one stop shop" to event organisers.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - inspHire reports that they have won the Hire Awards of Excellence - Supplier of the Year 2011.

The award was presented to inspHire on Saturday 7 May at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London by award sponsors HSS and host Paul Ross.

The Hire Awards of Excellence are designed to y recognise excellence throughout the hire industry. The award acknowledges the success of inspHire as a supplier to the hire industry and is one of the industry's most sought after accolades.

Chris Branson, CEO of inspHire commented, "This particular award means so much to us as it is voted on by our existing customers and reflects how well thought of we are in the industry. We take great pride in our customer service and to have this recognised is a fantastic pat on the back for all of the team at inspHire who work so hard."

(Jim Evans)

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UK - West London based Entec Sound & Light supplied the lighting design, equipment and crew for Punjabi pop/singer/songwriter superstar Gurdas Maan's recent sold out shows at London's Royal Albert and the LG Arena at Birmingham NEC.

The lighting design was created by Entec's Ryan Brown. With no production rehearsals, scant on-site programming time and some seriously high profile shows ahead of him, he took full advantage of Entec's newly updated WYSIWYG system to visualise and pre-plot the show in their Northolt HQ. This proved "Absolutely invaluable" he comments.

It's the third time that Entec has worked with Maan's management, UK Box Office, who approached them to create a "fabulously elegant" lightshow after being inspired by seeing archival images and hearing about previous projects that the company has undertaken.

Gurdas Maan's spectacular career has

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UK - Entertainment lighting specialist White Light has announced the latest addition to the White Light Family of products the company distributes in the UK - Leader Light, the Slovakia-based manufacturer of LED lighting fixtures.

Founded in 1994 by a team who had worked together since 1991, the company first concentrated on manufacturing custom fixtures for architectural projects or to solve specialist requirements for customers. In 2002 Leader Light used their experience in the field to create a range of standard fixtures - a range which has continued to grow ever since.

Today, Leader Light offers products including LED battens, floodlights, panels and washlights for both indoor and outdoor use. Many of their products are available in a choice of white LED, for maximum light output, or RGB or RGBA sources where colour versatility is required.

"We first met Peter Threa

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Belgium - Flashlight/APR and DEE Sound & Light will as of now closely cooperate in the field of renting out professional sound, lighting, backline and rigging equipment.

Both parties are no strangers to each other and have regularly worked together as colleagues and neighbours over the last years, also as Synco Network partners.

Due to this cooperation, the companies have even decided to change the name Flashlight/APR into Ampco Flashlight Rental. DEE's managing director Andre Schneider will be responsible for the general management of Ampco Flashlight Rental in Belgium as well as DEE Sound & Light within the scope of this new cooperation.

Andre Schneider comments, "Ampco Flashlight is a market leader in the Netherlands and an important player in Europe. DEE is known as a small, but extremely high-quality company in Belgium and abroad. Both companies are reputable renta

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UK - A historic 18th century Grade II-listed congregational church in Merthyr Tydfil has been lovingly restored following a six year bid to secure development grants.

Following a spend of £1.4m the building, which had fallen into disrepair, has been converted into a multi-cultural arts, community, educational and Welsh Language Centre, incorporating a new 250-seat amphitheatre; this has been equipped with an end-to-end Harman Pro sound system, supplied Sound Technology and installed by Adlib.

The project is the brainchild of the Soar Project's chief officer, Lis McLean, who secured a total of 13 grants - including £527K from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £300,000 from Heads of the Valleys funding programme - with contributions coming from their own Welsh language bookshop, based in the adjacent vestry opposite. But she says the dream for a Welsh community cen

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Italy - Following the launch of its new range of LED luminaires in Frankfurt last month, Italian manufacturer SGM reports that the reaction to its unique X-5 white strobe - billed as "the world's first professional LED strobe" - has been so strong that the company has increased its scheduled production in order to meet the demand.

The white light X-5 was previewed as part of SGM's streamlined new range. "We believed the concept of an LED strobe would revolutionise the market - but even we had not anticipated this level of response from lighting designers and the global rental community, or the large number of orders we would receive," says SGM's commercial director, Giorgio Radice.

Head of R&D Peter Johansen added that prospective customers had noted the compactness of the fixture, the fact that it would deliver the same output as conventional high wattage

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Destination: Music - UK Music has published Destination: Music - the first study of its kind to scope the economic contribution of music festivals and major concerts to tourism throughout the UK.

Drawing on unprecedented access to more than 2.5m anonymised ticketing transactions, the report's main findings are as follows:

Large-scale live music across all regions of the UK attracts at least 7.7m attendances by domestic and overseas music tourists

Collectively they spend £1.4bn during the course of their trip

This is a positive contribution of £864m (GVA) to the national economy and equivalent to 19,700 full-time jobs

Although 5% of all music tourists come from overseas, they contribute 18% of total music tourist spending

From these findings UK Music has issued a list of recommendations to Government - including the implementation of a national live m

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Czech Republic - Five days dedicated to lighting and sound design will literally light up and resonate the programme of this year's Prague Quadrennial (PQ) of Performance Design and Space, the world's largest event dedicated to performance design, held in Prague every fourth year since 1967. This year, the PQ will occupy the city centre and public spaces around town from 16-26 June, with Light and Sound - one of PQ's seven sub-projects, bringing Prague's National Theatre to life from 19-23 June.

Light and Sound is being organised by PQ's general commissioner, scenographer Boris Kudli?ka, and by UK-based sound designer Steve Brown. The section will feature an exhibition, interactive presentations of the latest approaches to sound and lighting, and panel discussions, with the personal participation of famous artists such as Scanner, Tod Machover, Olaf Winter and Feli

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Czech Republic - Set to take place during this year's Prague Quadrennial, Scenofest is an educational project of the Prague Quadrennial and OISTAT which looks at more than just sound and lighting design - it also presents workshops focused on the entire range of performative and theatre arts. As with the PQ's other projects, inter-disciplinarity plays an important role in the educational programme, meaning that audiences can look forwards to novel approaches such as the combination of sound and costume design in a workshop led by a team from Purdue University (USA), headed by professor Richard K. Thomas. Another workshop, Pop Up Your Ears (led by the réaltympanica arts group and Tania El Khoury) will aim to uncover the subjective perception of reality through sound. Sound compositions and their relationship to the visual aspects of performance will be explored

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USA - Bill Groener has joined A.C.T Lighting as vice-president of business development.

"We're delighted to welcome Bill to A.C.T Lighting after a distinguished career in design, teaching, and management at well-known lighting companies," says Bob Gordon, president and CEO of A.C.T Lighting. "Bill is a seasoned industry professional and throughout his career, he has used his exceptional people skills and unique management techniques to achieve significant success in design, systems integration, sales/marketing, business development and general management. In his new role at A.C.T Lighting he will focus on the specifier market by introducing our product lines to theater consultants and architectural lighting designers and supporting their efforts to use them on projects."

Groener, who will be based in the NY Metropolitan Area, says "Bob Gordon and A.C.T

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Turkey - The first TRT Music Awards, celebrating the best of Turkey's musicians, singers and music productions, took place recently at the Lütfi K?rdar Convention and Exhibition Centre, Istanbul. The inaugural event included performances from the ?stanbul Music and Jazz Orchestra and the ?stanbul Chamber Orchestra, on a stage illuminated by Robert Juliat 714SX 2.5kW profile spots which turned the TRT Music Awards Ceremony into a spectacular light show.

The RJ 700 Series zoom profiles were provided by local Robert Juliat distributor, Elit Light & Sound Technologies. "The lighting designers and technicians who worked at the award ceremony agreed that it is always problem-free working with Robert Juliat equipment," says Elit's Elif Defne Alp. "As one of the oldest manufacturers of theatre lighting equipment, Robert Juliat has adopted a policy of customer satisfactio

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Turkey - Leading Turkish football team, Galatasaray recently moved to its new Türk Telekom Arena - and immediately established a world record as officially having the loudest fans in the world.

Passionate and partisan, when they played local Istanbul rivals Fenerbache on 18 March, an impressive 131.76dB was registered in the 52,695 capacity, all-seater stadium, qualifying it for entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

It was left to Asimetrik (QSC and EAW's Turkish distributors) who were awarded the AV installation contract, to design a networked QSC system, based around DataPort-equipped ISA and CX amplifiers, and BASIS signal transport operating under QSControl.net, to overcome the mighty roar on match days.

Using the HD15 DataPort facilities on the CX amplifiers, Asimetrik set up a QSControl.net network to control the main system, creating two IP-rated rack spaces

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