USA - Nashville River Stages is a three-day music festival held from 2-4 May in Nashville, Tennessee. Consisting of five stages spread over Riverfront Park in downtown Nashville, the centre district will be closed to traffic along the banks of the Cumberland River for the festival’s sixth year. Acts range from local singer/songwriters to national and international headliners and draw crowds of up to 25,000+ each year. There are over 60 bands booked and five stages for lighting supplier Bandit Lites to work with.

For each of the five stages, Bandit Lites is supplying a basic 120k rig. In addition, the two barge stages will be augmented with six Martin MAC 500s and six MAC 600s per stage. The bill inlcudes acts such as Def Leppard, John Meyer, the B-52s and Joe Cocker. "We are extremely honoured to be a part of this event as well as working with such a great production

France - Nuit Celtique 2003 provided Paris’s Stade de France with a celebration of Celtic musical culture - and the huge heritage that resides in Brittany, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It was deliberately designed to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day - the patron saint of Ireland.

A collaboration between Stade de France Productions and Festival Interceltique (I3C) the one-day festival built on its inaugural success last year and used Coemar lighting heavily in the production. This was designed by Roch Segovia and supplied by Paris-based contractors, NAT. Programming was by Fabrice Delmontel and Jerome Feuillade.

NAT supplied two each of their newly-acquired iWash Flex and iSpot Flex, for which they provided a world debut earlier in the month for Renault, at the Geneva Motor Show. These were used with 45 of the Coemar CF1200 HE and 22 CF1200 Wash lights, along with 40

UK - Metropolis AV has completed a cutting-edge sound, effects lighting and AV installation in Manchester at Lucid - the first of a new genre of multimedia concept venues.The unusual concept was developed by the Canadian-owned MagicCorp Group, and is expected to be subject to a selective roll-out. Metropolis was asked onboard by Lucid’s technical director, Nick Meacham, to implement the technical infrastructure that he’d helped design.

Metropolis’s brief also included the design of an integrated operating system for all things technical in the venue. The Metropolis team was headed by Simon Harris, and included site manager Stuart Clowes, technical director Shane Winterbourne, design project manager Martin Geraghty and installation engineers Shane Stanley and Ian Benstead.

The open plan venue has three levels, including a 1200-capacity Function Room/Showroom;

UK - CIE-Audio and Armstrong World Industries have announced the launch of the ‘i-ceilings Sound Systems Approved Installer Network (iSSAIN) initiative - the latest development in the i-ceilings (intelligent ceilings) initiative.

A new concept in integrated acoustic ceiling systems, i-ceilings is the latest development from Armstrong, the world’s leading manufacturer of ceiling products. i-ceilings utilizes flat panel speaker technology to provide a unique loudspeaker system which exactly matches Armstrong’s market-leading range of suspended ceilings, to combine their existing aesthetic and passive acoustic qualities with the audio benefits provided by NXT.

Announcing the launch of the i-ceilings Approved Installer Network, CIE-Group marketing manager Chris Edwards explained: "The partnership between CIE-Group and Armstrong World Industries has brought t

UK - Liverpool-based Adlib Audio has supplied a rocking sound system for The Coral’s first production tour. This was the latest UK leg of an ongoing world tour by one of the hottest bands of the moment. The tour has been somewhat elastic in nature as has extended several times to keep pace with the rise in the band’s popularity.

Adlib’s Dave Kay has been onboard as FOH engineer with the Liverpool-based outfit since last summer, when they supported Oasis at Finsbury Park. The Coral are a unique-sounding band, with musical influences from reggae to rock, Motown to country and western, and Kay naturally jumped at the opportunity to work with them. He describes mixing each song "like it’s a different gig" - from dreamy ballads to hardcore guitar thrash.

With six band members, four of whom sing, it’s vital that the vocals have are prominent i

UK - London’s City of Westminster College students are to produce a showcase sound and lighting event ‘see the sound’, engineered entirely by students on the BTEC ND Sound Engineering Courses and the C&G 1810 Theatre Electricians Courses.

Students on these courses are training to be sound recording or lighting engineers respectively; they will be in charge of every technical aspect of the event from pre-production to rigging and operating the show, staged at the college’s professional theatre venue, the Cockpit Theatre. "We want to give the students an opportunity to produce, rig, light, record and operate a major event of this type," commented music technology course Tutor Steve Hepworth. "This is the only way you can give students a feel for what happens at a real event, and give them an opportunity to receive invaluable experience. We ha

UK - With German pro audio company HK Audio having made huge inroads into the UK & Eire pro audio market in recent years, the JHS Event 2003 (which takes place at JHS’s Leeds’ facility from 15-17 June) will present the perfect opportunity for HK Audio to demonstrate the versatility and power of its range.

The main outdoor stage at Event is traditionally flanked by 12 boxes of HK’s stadium-friendly R Series, offering a total of 7.2kW. An HK Projector system will additionally be positioned infield of the main stack, representing a good chance for show visitors to find out what these systems sound like when run at something approaching true outdoor SPLs. Elsewhere on the JHS site, a dedicated HK Audio demo theatre will feature many pro audio systems and components from the HK catalogue, including the successful L.U.C.A.S, E.L.I.A.S and A.C.T.O.R self-powered activ

UK - On Thursday 15 May, The White Light Group will be holding an Open Day at their headquarters in Wimbledon, south London. Originally conceived as another chance for people to explore White Light’s base following their move there almost 18 months ago, and for customers to bid White Light's Hire Director Mike Crossman farewell as he leaves the company on a round-the-world tour, the Open Day is now expanding into something of a mini trade-show.

As well as staff members from all of the White Light Group companies, including White Light Hire, White Light Sales, The Moving Light Company, The Service Company, Colourhouse, Modelbox and Enliten, the Open Day will allow visitors to explore the latest products from a variety of suppliers and manufacturers including Blackout (with their new LED starcloths), E//T//C (with the latest in large format projection equipment), Howard Eat

UK - Theatr Clwyd’s rolling policy of equipment upgrade to service its growing roster of tours, has continued with the purchase of its second Yamaha DM2000 digital mixing desk from Shepperton-based suppliers, Marquee Audio.

The theatre is Wales' major drama producing theatre company and arts centre, and is the home of a highly-acclaimed company. Head of sound, Kevin Heyes, says it was always the plan to buy a second DM2000, to add to the desk they bought from Marquee late last year. The high performance digital console offers 96 (24-bit/96kHz) audio input channels, extensive surround production features, integrated digital audio workstation and ProTools control, providing more than nine times the processing power of the Yamaha 02R.

"With 50-60 inputs on some of our big rock ’n’ roll pantomimes, we were filling our 02Rs to capacity," admitted Kevin.

USA - Theatrical Lighting Systems Inc has opened a TLS,Inc./Nashville branch-office and hired Kelsey Beard as project manager sales. The newest branch will be for sales only with the rental and service aspects of the business continuing to be handled through the company’s Huntsville office.

Kelsey Beard has a range of experience: he was most recently employed as a Certified Home Inspector for Pillar to Post, a franchise throughout the US and Canada. He was previously owner/partner in Beard-Wolf & Associates Inc (1976-1999) - manufacturer representatives for commercial, industrial and residential lighting products. During that time the company grew to achieve over $4m in sales in Tennessee. Beard worked closely with architects, electrical engineers, and owners in the design of lighting requirements of commercial and industrial buildings.

(Ruth Rossington)

UK - Many people are referred to as industry veterans, but few musicians can boast a career as illustrious as the latest member of the Audio-Technica endorsee family, jazz legend Acker Bilk.

Bilk’s long career has seen many milestones including the 1960 hit ‘Strangers on the Shore’ - the first recording to simultaneously top both the UK and US charts, a collection of gold and platinum discs for record sales, and the MBE he received in 2001 for services to music. 50 years at the top of his profession have not dimmed Bilk’s enthusiasm for live performance and during preparations for his 2003 UK tour, Bilk’s tour manager and front of house engineer for the past 30 years, Les Squires, called Audio-Technica to see if he could put a couple of microphones which had been recommended to him through their paces.

"Every time A-T put a microphone in fro

UK - Projected Image Digital has sold a second RADlite digital media server system to live video specialists XL Video, the video hardware suppliers for the final UK leg of Ronan Keating’s ‘2003 Destination’ world tour.

The RADlite was specified by lighting designer Peter Barnes - a great advocate and experimentalist with the RADlite system since first using it last year. Always a pioneer of utilizing video in new and imaginative ways onstage, Barnes has integrated RADlite on the Blue, Will & Gareth, S-Club and Blazin’ Squad tours. This time he went further, evolving its use as a visual effect working with a solo artist. The stage and video design for this final leg of the tour - which started back in 2002 - was a collaboration between Barnes and production manager Iain Whitehead of Production North. It consisted of five vertical upstage panels of Westerha

Finland - LA Audio has recently appointed Noretron Audio as the new distributor for Finland. As a result, LA Audio has already been included in the regular Noretron Pro Audio/Installed Sound Seminar scheduled for 19 and 20 May.

Noretron Audio distributes a range of professional audio equipment, including Audient, AKG Acoustics, Genelec, Turbosound and Lab.Gruppen to a diverse range of customers, including installation, PA hire and broadcast companies, recording studios, post-production suites and theatres. When looking for a new signal processing range, Jyrki Mäkinen, marketing director of Noretron Audio, knew what he wanted: "We try to avoid taking on new lines which are competitive to our current product range - LA Audio offers excellent products for live, studio, broadcast and especially the fixed installation business, with very little overlap. This is very important

Spain - Since 1976 Trui Espectáculos has specialized in providing a total entertainment package in the Balearic archipelago. It also became the first company to offer sound reinforcement equipment to artists visiting the islands when managing director Miquel Jaume Perez realized that when top artists came across from the Peninsula, they had to carry their own production. This posed a double complication - of time (because marine transport could take up to three days) and cost.

Thus Trui Espectáculos decided to invest in its own equipment and contacted distributors, Lexon S.A, who have now been supplying professional audio equipment to them for the past 18 years. Trui’s first acquisition was a 32-channel Soundcraft 200B and this was swiftly followed by two 40-channel Soundcraft 500s - one for PA and other for monitors. Later they acquired a 40-channel Vienna and an SM12 f

UK - Newcomers to the world of theatre are being given an introduction to gobo and animation effects by DHA Lighting. The company’s Louise Tester is running a series of workshops and seminars to demonstrate how its products can be used to enhance lighting effects. These provide the chance to explore the potential of gobos, animation disks, gobo rotators, gobo YoYos and the DHA Digital Light Curtain.

Already this year there have been sessions for students at Westminster College and Mountview, as well as for new sales staff at AC Lighting. Louise also ran workshops at the National Student Drama Festival in Scarborough last month. DHA staff have led numerous workshops - not only in the UK, but around the world: Rainer Weggen recently hosted an Open Day in Lisbon, whilst further afield, the company despatched two moving-effect training kits to China, where they will be used to

UK - Bandit Lites have bought eight Coemar SuperCyc 2.4s from Coemar UK to fulfil Pete Barnes’ lighting design for Westlife’s 18-week European tour. Bandit general manager, Mark Powell, confirmed that his company was supplying 13 of the SuperCycs in all - some commandeered from their American inventory. "These are popular lights with us," he stated.

Board operator Barry Halpin confirmed that five of the SuperCycs were being used to rear-project onto a cyc immediately behind the band, while another is used to create a backlight effect as the band make their stage entry. In Pete Barnes’ design, the remainder are used dramatically as understage uplighters - firing up from the 4ft recess at a 60ft wide, clear perspex deck, treated with diffused gel.

Coemar’s SuperCyc 2.4 is a recent addition to the Panorama family of high power, wide angle CYM col

UK / Singapore - Digital Projection Ltd, the Emmy Award-winning manufacturer of high-performance projection systems, has appointed Electronics & Engineering Technologies Pte Ltd as a distributor of its large-venue projection products in Singapore.

Electronics & Engineering Technologies provides one-stop technology converging solutions, involving audio, video, IT and integrated control, and has a long history in system integration for the business, entertainment, conference, cinema and broadcast markets. The company handled the prestigious installation for E-Trading at the Singapore Stock Exchange.

On signing the collaboration agreement, Louis Kangean, CEO of Electronics & EngineeringTechnologies, commented: "We are very happy to be a partner of Digital Projection. They were the pioneers with Texas Instruments in bringing DLP-based projection products to the market. With t

UK - Following the Sound Division Group’s recent sound and lighting installation at the American Community School in Egham, Surrey, the company continues to build upon its reputation in the educational market with the completion of another comprehensive sound and lighting installation at Islington Green school in North London.

Islington Green is a large county comprehensive facility that educates over 1,000 students in the heart of one of the most culturally diverse areas of London. Sound Division’s brief was to provide a system for the main hall that was capable of handling everything from speech reinforcement to live and pre-recorded music in a variety of situations, including awards ceremonies, assemblies and drama productions.

As a result, the company specified and installed a Crown-driven ElectroVoice sound system based on EV Sx300 loudspeakers supplemented

UK - Polydor recording artist Daniel Bedingfield has recently embarked on a UK tour with wireless systems from Hand Held Audio. Tour manager John Gibbon approached HHA to look after this new artist after being impressed with the service he'd received from the North London radio mic specialists on previous productions such as The Appleton sisters and Jon Bon Jovi.

The first thing on the agenda was custom ear monitors. Although HHA had fitted Daniel with a set of Future Sonics in 2002, the singer felt he'd like to try a different ‘feel’ and commissioned a set of Ultimate Ears UE5 Ambient dual driver monitors. These earpieces feature user-changeable filters to control levels of ambience and bass response - a level of individual control that appealed.

During rehearsals in London, John Gibbon was also keen for the artist to assess different hand-held radio mics and in-

Australia - Although Dynacord products have only been distributed in Australia for two years, they already enjoy popularity in the region, as the first Dynacord Dealers Meeting made clear.

The meeting in Australia was upbeat - not just because the Australian DC distributor, Bryan Davidson, had chosen Lindeman Island as the location, with the Great Barrier Reef as a backdrop, but also because the eight Dynacord dealers that made the trip had strong turnover figures to report. "Dynacord has an excellent reputation in Australia," comments Davidson. "LittleMax, Corus Pro and Cobra are all best-sellers." The world's first compact line array system seems to have been especially successful in winning converts. "I never seem to have enough Cobra systems in stock," Davidson told us.

During the DC Dealer Days, in addition to various product demonstrations

UK - White Light North has been chosen as the lighting supplier for the 2003 Garsington Opera season - Garsington Opera's 15th anniversary - which runs from 14 June to 12 July. First established in 1989, Garsington Opera performs a repertoire of operas in a purpose-built semi-outdoor auditorium in the grounds of Garsington Manor, near Oxford. The festival often stages works never before seen in the UK, and provides a platform for new singers; for the successful realization of these aims, the company received the European Culture Project Award for Performing Arts from the Pro Europa European Foundation for Culture.

In recent years, the lighting design for Garsington - a challenging brief that involves incorporating the ever-changing outdoor lighting into the design for each production - has been handled by Bruno Poet. When putting together the package for this year's season, whic

UK - Based in Kirkmichael, Scotland, GAB Audio Engineers specialize in installing high quality sound and AV systems in places of worship, council chambers and concert venues. They also have a thriving hire division catering for small to medium PA requirements. Among the gamut of products they have specified from the Martin Audio catalogue, the C115 surface-mount architectural enclosure rules supreme for the style of installation in which they specialize.

In fact GAB have just installed six in a 100V line distributed system, discretely mounted in the Grade A-listed Garnethill Synagogue (the oldest in Scotland), for concerts and school festivals. A further four grace the ornate meeting room at the Merchants Hall in George Square, again in the centre of Glasgow and the listed Meeting Chambers of one of the city’s oldest institutions. "The aesthetic styling and performanc

USA - In one of the LED fixture’s first outings with a major American concert act, the spectacular lighting system on Tim McGraw’s 2003 tour includes eight Pulsar ChromaBanks. The LED strip fixtures, specified by tour LD John Broderick, are used for chasing color washes and very bright ‘blinder’ effects. They are arrayed symmetrically above the custom three-tiered black stage and its 40ft wide backline of 4ft x 4ft video cubes. Tour contractor Premier Global Staging of Nashville, Tennessee obtained the ChromaBanks through Pulsar distributor TMB.

Tim McGraw designed the set and rolling stage, which Premier Global Staging fabricated into a working structure. According to account manager, Steven ‘Creech’ Anderson: "We’ve used LED blasters in the past and always saw potential, but these ChromaBank LED strips are four feet long, and

Germany - Following the huge success of Showlight 2001 in Edinburgh, plans are already underway to ensure the 2005 event, which will be held in Munich on 21-24 May, will be better than ever.

Occurring just once every four years, Showlight is a three-day event organized by lighting professionals for lighting professionals. The colloquium, unlike other trade shows, places emphasis on debate stimulated by papers from respected industry experts and provides a gathering ground for like-minded people. 2001 proved to be the most successful show yet, with 42 sponsors and more than 300 delegates from the world of entertainment lighting passing through its doors.

John Watt, Chairman of the event’s organizing committee explains: "Showlight 2005 is being held at the magnificent Prinzregententheater. Their patronage and that of the associated Bayerische Theaterakademie, plus th

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