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Belgium - Lighting director and lighting op Jesse Blevins directed this summer's Lenny Kravitz light show at the TW Classic festival in Belgium from a Martin M1 lighting console with high res custom video content played back on a Martin Maxedia Broadcast.

"The M1's footprint has been very convenient for us," Blevins says of Martin's full-featured yet compact lighting desk. "It's a big console in a small frame and very easy to get in and out of small, cramped FOHs, at festivals and theatres especially. It's great to have something this size and still have the processing and surface space to produce what you need."

The M1 console for the Lenny Kravitz performance was supplied by Steve Cohen Productions with Martin support engineer Kris Van Hullebusch on site fo

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UK - Auto-Cue Pro and Auto-Cue Lite software packages are for any performer that performs on stage, but was primarily designed with musicians in mind.

It is essentially an autocue system or a stage prompt system. The software runs on any Windows platform.

From the gigging musicians point of view, Auto-Cue Pro has "every conceivable feature built in".

Auto-Cue Pro displays your music ( chords, guitar tabs, manuscript notation etc ) and the lyrics. The displayed content is easily synchronized to any backing track. There are various way your music and lyrics can be presented on screen.

The software can simply be run on your laptop or tablet, you can of course plug in a larger computer monitor.

Auto-Cue also builds Stage display units to order, from the audience point of view they look just like a fold back speaker, but in reality the enclosure contains the compute

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Switzerland - Gurten festival takes place annually on a clearing a top the Gurten foothills on the Swiss Alps by the capital city of Bern. The four-day festival originated in 1977. Access to the festival site up on the mountain is via one street, which can only be travelled in one direction at a time. The entire festival set-up takes about a month, and another two weeks for the teardown.

Artists travel in special shuttles with priority on the road, there's also a heli-pad set up for medical emergencies. The general population also arrives by 'Gurtenbahn' a local equivalent of a cable car. Some people choose to hike the 45 minute trek to the site. Practically all choose to stay and camp for the duration of the show. Due to the site's constraints and access, a limit of 18,000 people per day is set for the festival.

Notably, Gurten Festival has made some efforts to be 'green'. 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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Russia - Euroshow Moscow deployed its L-Acoustics K1 WST line source system at Rock on the Volga, a one-day festival in the city of Samara.

The June event, which drew a crowd of more than 270,000 people, has been confirmed as the biggest open-air festival in Europe and Asia. It featured eight of Russia's leading bands including Leningrad and Alisa, and was headlined by ZAZ, Garbage and Limp Bizkit.

Euroshow used 16 K1 and four Kara per side as the main system, supplemented with eight K1-SB subwoofers flown per side behind the main array. Out-fills were a further eight K1 with four K1-SB per side, front-fills were four stacks of two Kara cabinets with six stacks of four SB28 subs per side in cardioid mode. Stage monitors were provided by ZAZ alone in the form of 12 115XT HiQ, three ARCS and three SB218 subs per side performed as stage side-fills. The entire system was powered b

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UK - Shenzhen Lamp Technology will launch Seele 18.75mm at PLASA 2012. Seele is a modular system of LED video panels which is designed for the demanding rental and staging market & fixed installations. It allows you to create your own video imaging design to set your staging apart from the ordinary, says the company.

A true IP65 protection rating, wide operating temperature range and high brightness enable the curtain to be used in most indoor & outdoor applications.

Twomodels are available. One is rotatable structure, allowing a curved screen. With the other, you can switch between transparent and non transparent via the shutter.

(Jim Evans)

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South Africa - Le Grand Cirque de Adrenaline thrilled a South African audience with breathtaking performances at the Joburg Theatre. While the show pushed acrobatics to the limit, the technical was equally impressive. Much of the gear, including 12 new Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1500s, was supplied by MGG Productions.

"The Alphas were just amazing," commented Renaldo van den Berg from MGG. Renaldo and Kevin Rieck were part of the MGG team who helped set up for the show. Renaldo also assisted with the programming of a DVD shoot.

Three new Prolyte Circle trusses were purchased for the show and MGG's faithful Robe fixtures, 24 Robe 700 ColorSpots, 16 Robe 700 ColorWashes and 26 Robe 600 LED Washes, 19 Robe LEDForce 18 and five MMX Spots formed part of the equipment list, along with 12 MAC 700 Spots, one 8 Way Molfey, six Philips Selecon PL TR2 RGB Striplights, two Reel FX

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UK - Lighting and sound finance company specialists Azule Finance reports a string of high profile deals with some of the UK's leading hire companies, as they stocked up ahead of the busy festival and events season. Faced with increased demand for Clay Paky Sharpy, L'Acoustics and Martin lighting and audio kit at some of the UK's biggest festivals, hire companies NiteLites and Colour Sound Experiment enlisted the services of Azule Finance to stock up in time for a busy summer.

The Summer months see the live events production industry go into overdrive to meet the demands of touring artists as they hit the festival circuit. Colour Sound Experiment and Nitelites needed quick, competitive finance options to invest in kit on the riders of some of the most popular touring artists and Azule were on hand to deliver.

Specialist lighting and sound designers, Colour Sound Experiment, in

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UK - Staged annually at Turnpost Farm, the Glastonbudget Festival is Europe's largest and best-known festival for tribute acts. Every year, around 9,000 fans make the pilgrimage to the farm in the East Midlands between Leicester and Nottingham for the three-day event. There they are regaled by talented and often authentic-sounding clones of Bryan Adams, Queen, David Bowie, Michael Jackson and other top acts. Since its inception in 2005, the festival has also established itself as an attractive platform for up-and-coming acts in other genres.

As in previous years, the 2012 organisers commissioned OneBigStar of Nottingham to implement the sound, video and lighting solutions for the event. "With 160 bands over the three days, we had our hands full," says Simon Taylor, OneBigStar's commercial director, "so we needed a sound system that would sound great, was utterly r

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USA - As a dancer, actress, music artist, producer, and fashion designer, Jennifer Lopez has sold over 55m records worldwide. With a celebrated career spanning over 17 years, she has taken on many challenges in many different industries, except for one. With the launch of her 2012 world tour, Lopez is embarking on her first headlining live tour and behind the scenes lighting designer and programmer Sean Burke has created an energetic and dramatic lighting design using Vari-Lite VL3500 Wash FX and VL3000 Spot luminaires provided by Upstaging.

"This is the first live tour for Jennifer so director Jaime King brought everyone into the process very early," began Burke. "It was very interesting to watch as he took the production from a normal touring show to quite an extravaganza in terms of the dancers, choreography and all the things that he brings to the table. His t

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UK - Manchester based lighting and rigging specialists dbn have installed a subtle trussing infrastructure and produced a creative rigging solution at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester to showcase the work of Pascale Martine Tayou.

Tayou is one of 33 artists and a host of musicians from 11 West African countries featured in We Face Forward, a season of contemporary art and music from the region taking place across three galleries, two museums, four music venues, libraries, community spaces and one art bus in the city.

The World Falls Apart, Tayou's new work specially for this exhibition, is an interior forest that spills out into a neighbouring park, inspired by the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achibe.

It is displayed on a series of 25 six-metre high wooden poles in the Whitworth's South Gallery, and blurs the distinction between trade goods a

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UK - Alfie Boe is the English tenor who has achieved popular success bringing opera to new audiences as well as giving Tony-winning performances in musical theatre. From Les Miserables to La Boheme, from London's Royal Opera House to a full UK tour, Alfie Boe is that rare creature - a true crossover artist from classical to pop music.

For his current British tour, playing festival and outdoor dates as well as theatres, Boe is carrying a Nexo 45°N-12 stage monitor system for his own use. Whether he's performing in front of his 32-piece orchestra, choir or a small band, Boe is happy with a cluster of the distinctive N-12 wedges, arrayed four wide.

The Nexo N-12s were suggested by Boe's monitor engineer Paul Hatt, whose company CS Audio is the sound rental provider for the tour. Hatt was tipped off about the radical line monitors by Tristran Mallett and Chris Wi

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UK - Star Events Group, the first UK purchaser of the new CyberMotion stage automation system from XLNT's UK sales partner Lift Turn Move, has given the system a début on three weeks of BT London Live shows in Hyde Park which ended Sunday 13 August.

The systems were bought by Star Events Group which had been tasked to supply their services for the BT London Live events in a sun-drenched Hyde Park.

Fifty-one metres of CyberMotion C-Track, along with four active and two passive C-Trolleys, were used to safely lift and split a giant 144m² screen weighing 5200 kg, at Hyde Park between 28 July and 11 August 2012.

The versatile C-Track and C-Trolley wide beam track systems are part of XLNT's new CyberMotion integrated motion control system.

The screens offered thousands of spectators who visited London's Hyde Park this summer a sublime mix of live sports an

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UK - Robe celebrates its tenth birthday and 10years of 'Working With Winners' at PLASA 2012, referring to its international distribution team, most of whom have been with the company since its first PLASA in 2002.

The company was established in 1994, starting with humble beginnings in a small garage, and was launched as the 'Robe' brand in 2002. The company is still independently owned and run by the original partners who take active roles in its day-to-day running.

Now with one of the most high profile booths of the show, and fresh from the Czech House Olympic Pavilion at the Business Design Centre - lit with Robe fixtures - awarded 'gold medal' status as one of the best social hubs of the Summer Games, Robe launches seven new products on Booth 1 F47

On debut are: The Robin DLS Profile, Robin MMX WashBeam , Robin 800 LEDWash, Robin Actor 3, Robin Actor 6, Robin Actor 12, Ro

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UK - At PLASA2012 Out Board (Stand 1-H9) will debut the powerful new TiMax2 SoundHub PanSpace graphical sound-effects pan programming map which works in conjunction with the TimeLine editor. Users can create multiple fully editable pan trajectories in any Cue, which can operate on internal or external sources and be triggered by the Timeline or a variety of external showcontrol interfaces.

Also, new iPad and iPhone apps for the TiMax2 SoundHub system matrix, playback server and audio showcontroller will be featured. Simple factory-default setups are user-configurable, and a bespoke service provides GUI's tailored to individual systems integration and sound-effects projects.

Also introduced with Data Strategy are the CAB-5 Cable Tester and RCD-T modules which work with the PAT-4 Test Processors to provide automated cable test, RCD test with detailed logging and reporting at an

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Germany - Wireless LED system manufacturer Astera has forecast significant medium-term growth of the market that it helped to create, predicting that the demand for wireless LED products could double by 2014.

The company - which pioneered wireless LED technology in 2005 with the development of remotely-controlled LED tubes - has observed a sharp increase in the sales of its products in recent months. This, combined with a steady rise in the number of competitor firms launching development of their own wireless LED products, has led the brand to make its projections amid preparations for the forthcoming PLASA show in London next month.

Sebastian Bückle, head of international sales and marketing at Astera, commented, "We've seen something of a spike in the demand for wireless LED products of late. It's hard to talk numbers, but let's just say that the market has grown expo

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UK - Orbital Sound has appointed Richard Knott to its growing sales team with immediate effect. Joining Orbital from TMC in Bradford, Knott is responsible for general pro-audio sales at Orbital, working alongside the company's other sales staff, under sales director Tom Byrne.

"Richard is an important addition to our company, and it's great to have him on the team," says Byrne. "He has a broad mix of skills - exactly what we look for in our staff - that combine highly relevant product knowledge with practical project work, ranging from broadcast to live sound. We will be using his sales skills to the maximum, extending his enthusiasm for d&b audiotechnik loudspeakers across our other brands, while assisting him to integrate with the wider Orbital team. We are sure that he will make a valuable contribution to the company - helping to drive our sales forward and ens

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UK - Pharos will be showcasing a range of bespoke mobile web apps that have been produced to meet the specific needs of clients. Custom web interfaces have always been part of the standard Pharos feature set - all Pharos controllers can host them - but creating rich web applications for touch screen mobile devices presents additional challenges.

In response to projects requiring control from mobile devices, Pharos now offers a web app authoring service. Each app can be tailored to suit the corporate and technical requirements of clients, from the icon on the Home screen to the layout of the pages. Visit stand 1-G43 to try them out.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - Automation specialists Stage Technologies are planning a more extensive presence at PLASA 2012 than in recent years. The company will be presenting a seminar at the PLASA Professional Development Programme, taking part in two panels at the concurrent PLASA Rigging Conference, and returning to the show's Hall 1 after several years in Hall 2, to exhibit its products and meet up with customers.

As usual, visitors to the Stage Technologies stand will have the chance to speak to reps from the group's UK and overseas offices, with staff from Las Vegas planning to be on site for the duration of the show. This year the company will be located at stand 1-G31, close to the central PLASA bar.

Business development manager Matthew Tonks said, "We look forward to being able to meet our customers and specifiers. PLASA is always a great opportunity to discuss potential projects and

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USA - Chicago-based Reed Rigging provided production rigging support and hardware for the series shooting and promotional campaign for season two of the award-winning Starz drama series Boss starring Kelsey Grammer.

Season two of Boss wrapped at Cinespace Chicago Film Studios last month and premiered last night on the Starz channel. "There's no better city in the world than Chicago," said Michael Reed, Reed Rigging's founder and owner, "to portray the ruthlessness and drama of the political machine."

Boss stars Kelsey Grammer as Chicago's fictional mayor Thomas Kane. Grammer won a Golden Globe for his portrayal. The city of Chicago provides the backdrop for this dark political drama.

"Reed Rigging is pleased and honored to be able to support the production of this show as well as to provide the rigging hardware for the menacing a

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UK - HK Audio's Elements Plus and Elements Install, the latest additions to the Elements system will be showcased at PLASA 2012.

The Elements Plus E 835 mid/high unit provides even greater flexibility and power than its older brother (the E 435) when you want to set up bigger systems, says the company. Loaded with eight speakers, it can handle 300 watts at 8 ohms' impedance, and it comes highly recommended if you want to minimise the number of mechanical connections in your rig. The E 835 and E 435 mid/high units' design and tuning are identical, so combining them is easy.

The new E 210 Sub AS system subwoofer comes with two 1,200-watt amps in its engine room. Power amp number one drives the two internal 10" woofers, with plenty of juice left over to run an external passive type L Sub 1200. The second power amp delivers 900 watts at 2.6 ohms to drive up to three E 835s (o

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UK - Swisson will debut the XMT-350 RDM Controller and DMX Measurement Tool at PLASA 2012.

The XMT-350 combines the features and functions of a RDMController with the company's current DMX Measurement and Testing Tool. The XMT-350 is easy to use, simple robust and very reliable. Set and patch DMX addresses, select DMX personality, and receive device information and updates. The XMT-350 works together with wireless RDM over Artnet. It's like the Swiss army knife for the Entertainment and Architectural Lighting.

Swisson will also be showing the XSW Wireless DMX Splitter. The XSW combines CRMX wireless DMX technology with Swisson's entire line of DMX splitters. The XSW can operate as a DMX transmitter or as a DMX receiver at the press of a button. The DMX splitter functionality is always available regardless of whether the device is configured as a transmitter or receiver. If onl

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