Business

Details
UK - Currently breaking box office records at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Trevor Nunn's acclaimed National Theatre production of the Cole Porter musical comedy Anything Goes has extended its booking period yet again. Having recently transferred to the West End, the production originally opened in the Olivier Theatre at the National where it picked up the prestigious 2003 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Musical Production.

Set design is particularly impressive, with the Theatre Royal Drury Lane - one of London's largest stages - filled with John Gunter's recreation of an Atlantic liner. Since the production's transfer, Stage Technologies has taken over the automation for the show, providing revolve and a hand-held Saxis controller.

Since its launch last year, the Saxis has proved a popular addition to the rental department, having already been used to control si

Details
UK - Sound Division recently provided sound, lighting, effects and DJ services for 40th anniversary celebrations of the promotion of the French food and wine industry in the UK. Hosted by Sopexa, an agency that specializes in marketing and PR for the French food and wine industry, the event was held at the Commonwealth club in London and targeted 200 industry professionals including journalists, importers and buyers as well as officials from the French embassy in London.

According to Sound division's Chris Baxter, who designed the system, this was one of Sound Division's more unusual events. "We do a lot of work in the corporate market, but I've never worked with quite so much food and drink on display that was not meant for consumption!" He continues: "I enjoyed the challenge, because lighting the food displays took some considerable expertise to create the right

Details
Italy - Eurovideo of Italy has recently used an Electrosonic Vector processor for an Italian TV show called Buona Domenica, shown on Channel 5 every Sunday at 2.00p.m. The celebrity guest show is presented by Maurizio Costanzo, one of the top anchormen in Italian television.

The large display installed by Eurovideo in the studio is a Lighthouse 10mm (pixel pitch) LED screen with additional image processing provided by Vector. The Lighthouse screen is made up of 64 10mm LED panels arranged in an 8 x 8 format, and requires four Vector outputs. The sources used are two SDI (digital video) feeds.

The advantage of using Vector in this application is that it can provide multiple outputs and multiple inputs. The video sources are applied to the Vector, which then provides multiple outputs to the Lighthouse LIP that prepares the image for the LED panels.

(Lee Baldock)

Details
Japan - On 30 November, Yokohama, Japan's China Town, saw the opening of an original China Town attraction, Yokohama Daisekai ('big world'). Lighting design and supply for Yokohama Daisekai was completed by Q Works Corporation through Martin's Japanese representative, Martin Japan.

Yokohama Daisekai is a multi-story themed museum representing 1920s and 30s Shanghai. It consists of several different 'worlds' and attracts more than 20,000 visitors every week. The themed concept incorporates dynamic visuals in the form of intelligent lighting and video projection to create atmospheres in the various areas of the museum. Upon entering visitors receive a ticket to 'The Past World' and jump into an elevator that whisks them to the top (8th) floor. Here, the tour starts in Old Shanghai and descends through the different worlds and floors below where 26 MAC 250 Kryptons and three MAC 5

Details
UK - Following the successful launch of the new 8-bus Verona console from Midas, one of the very first purchasers was Surrey-based rental company, PMI Ltd, who purchased the console from LMC Ltd. Owner Peter Maciuk said: "A significant part of our business is corporate and the Verona is tailored to meet our needs in this market. It plugs the gap between the Venice, which although a great console, often proved to be too small to handle a mid-sized conference, and the Heritage, which is often physically too big. The Verona however, remains a compact console whilst still having eight sub groups, eight auxes and an eight by four matrix. The market has been crying out for a new desk like this, and the fact that it is Midas makes it instantly synonymous with the quality required for today's corporate market. The Verona is set to be a massive success for Midas.''

UK sales manager

Details
USA - DiGiCo LLC has recently added seven new representative firms for various territories within the USA. The reps will handle the company's complete product line including the D5 Live digital mixing console and DiGiTRACS hard disk show and rehearsal recorder, plus the full range of Soundtracs digital post-production consoles.

Dobbs Stanford of Dallas, TX has been appointed to handle the territories of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Missouri and the western part of Tennessee. On the East Coast, Sigmet Corporation of Manalapan, NJ has taken on the Metro NY and Mid-Atlantic region while Millar Electronics now covers the south-eastern USA for DiGiCo and Meyer Marketing of Wellington, FL handles all of Florida.

In the West, GLS Marketing of Huntington Beach, CA is the appointed representative for southern California and southern Nevada; Plus Four Marketing of Concord, CA for norther

Details
UK - When Walker Dance Park Music were invited to perform their unique style of dance at British Dance Edition 2004 in Cambridge, it was British Harlequin's Allegro flooring that organizers Dance East requested to convert a wooden concert stage into a suitable dance floor. Described as a 'distinct marriage of music and dance' Walker Dance Park Music, an associate company of the Royal Opera House, presented Silence of the Soul at the West Road Concert Hall in a performance sponsored by British Harlequin at BDE 2004.

Harlequin's Allegro floor, especially developed for such situations, is the thickest roll-out floor currently available and offers high quality protection against hard sub-floors, such as concrete, to provide a 'semi-sprung' dance floor. Allegro can be used as a loose lay floor that is tough, that always lays flat and provides an excellent dance surface to hel

Details
UK - Lightfactor Sales hosted a series of Product Awareness days last week, aiming to highlight the diversity of the company's product portfolio. The product range on show included quality brands such as SGM (moving lights and lighting consoles), LightProcessor (touring and installation dimmers and compact lighting desks), LDR (theatrical lanterns) and Apogee Sound (touring and installation speaker enclosures), plus other distributed lines such as LED lighting products from Xilver, James Thomas, Osram, Color Kinetics and Pulsar. One of the featured DJ products was the new XP10 MP3 player from EKS Finland, while the latest brand now offered by Lightfactor is the Swiss-made VXCO DMXCreator PC-based range of lighting controllers.

The product awareness days attracted people working in all areas of the professional lighting, sound, production, presentation, leisure and entertainment

Details
UK - Nestling off the West Coast of Scotland is tiny Easdale Island, home to a thriving community of around 50 people. Recently, the Easdale Island Trust, a charitable organization run by the Island's residents, completed a major refurbishment of their community hall which had been roofless for some time following a storm.

Following a report produced by Mick Andrew, production manager of Mull Theatre, and with the aid of a Community Fund Lottery Grant, work began on the refurbishment, with Edinburgh based lighting equipment specialists, Black Light Ltd, called in to advise on lighting for the hall.

Having seen the proposed re-construction, Black Light's Paul McGreal decided that a mixture of Selecon lights would be 'spot on' for the job. He explains: "We drove the van with the equipment as far as Seil Island, near Oban, from where we could see Easdale Island some 400m aw

Details
UK - For the last 17 years, the Square in Harlow has taught its young musicians the gospel of rock 'n' roll according to ElectroVoice. The Square is funded by Essex County Council's Youth Service to provide musical education for young people between the ages of 13-19, and to host live music events. Three nights a week, up-and-coming local acts play live at the Square, as well as touring acts from further afield. This year, the leading rock school in Essex has bought a new front-of-house system for its 300+ capacity live venue - an Rx system from EV.

Technical team leader Dan Moriarty, who installed the Square's new EV Rx system, purchased from the Wembley PA Centre, says: "We've got Rx 112/75s left and right of the stage, and another pair in a centre cluster, supported by MTL1X subs on either side. The system is run by ElectroVoice DX38 processing. Intelligibility used to

Details
China - IIR Exhibitions has confirmed the dates for CALM Expo 2004 as 30 May - 2 June 2004. These dates, say IIR, are chosen as this is the only period where all the halls at CIEC (China International Exhibition Center) in Beijing are available, as the event is currently 90% booked.

Visitors to CALM Expo can look forward to a major event for professional sound, lighting, audio-visual and music technology, with special events including new product launches, buyers-sellers meet, educational conference, showcases and a DJ competition to enhance the experience.

For more information on CALM Expo 2004 please contact Adrian Lau, senior project manager, at the e-mail address below, or visit the CALM website.

(Lee Baldock)

Details
USA - Allen & Heath will be the exclusive DJ mixer supplier for this year's annual Ultra Music Festival USA in Miami. Xone:V6, Xone:92, Xone:62 and Xone:02 models will be in use on all 11 stages at the event. Now in its sixth year, the 14-hour long, non-stop Ultrafest, is the premier event on the US dance calendar and will once again be held at Miami's 32-acre Bayfront Park during the annual Winter Music Conference, on Saturday 6 March 2004.

Allen & Heath will also be co-sponsoring the VIP Ultrabeach Arena with the Hard Rock Café. The stage will feature top DJs spinning day and night, including Andy Rigby-Jones, the designer of Allen & Heath's Xone products. Rigby-Jones is an established DJ with over 20 years' experience. The VIP Ultrabeach Arena will also serve as a preview of the Ultrabeach Party planned for summer 2004 in Miami. The PA system will be supplied by the UK's ren

Details
Australia - Exhibitions and Trade Fairs Pty Ltd (ETF) has announced that it has acquired the Entech trade show from the founder of the event and publisher of CX Magazine, Julius Grafton. Ben Ashton, CEO of ETF, said: "We are excited to be bringing on board the premier trade event for the entertainment technology industry. ETF has the capacity to add real value for Entech exhibitors and visitors through our depth of experience in organizing trade shows and the backing of the PBL media group, whose interests include broadcasting, media and entertainment."

Julius Grafton, CEO of Juliusmedia, said: "I am delighted that Entech is now owned by one of the leading trade show organizers in Australia - ETF. I am further excited that Australia's most prominent and successful media company has backed the acquisition. The decision to sell arose following an approach by ETF, wi

Details
UK - Several thousand fans assembled in London's Trafalgar Square to catch a glimpse of pop stars Beyoncé, Britney Spears and Pink at the premiere of the new Pepsi advertisement - via a giant screen provided by imag specialist Creative Technology. The event marked the launch of the consumer brand's new multi-million TV and cinema campaign, held at the adjacent National Gallery near to the famous London Landmark.

Out of the Blue Production & Management Ltd, the overall event production company, contracted CT to provide the audio-visual and lighting equipment. Having provided the big screen reinforcement in the Square in September for nearly 14,000 fans - who witnessed a free concert lined up by Mayor Ken Livingstone and Visit London - CT returned this time as one of the contractors, providing a full lighting rig in addition to video services.

The ad, which was filmed in Rome

Details
France - The organizers of the SIEL exhibition, which took place in Paris at the beginning of this month, have claimed a 10% increase in attendance over last year's event, with a record 25,893 visitors attending over the four days.

By moving into the brand new Hall 5 at Paris expo, SIEL effectively created two distinct shows this year, with the ground floor hosting the World of Night and Music, and the first floor the World of Live Entertainment and Events, including pro audio and lighting. "Thanks to this increasingly specialized division into sectors, with each world offering trade professionals the supply of products and services appropriate to them, SIEL 2004 managed to arouse the interest of many new SIEL visitors, attending for the first time," say the organizers.

(Lee Baldock)

Details
USA - Since its debut on Broadway in the summer of 2002, Hairspray, the lively Tony Award-winning musical, has been packing audiences in at the Neil Simon Theatre. Capitalizing on its success, a duplicate of the smash hit began touring major cities across the US last year, appropriately starting with Baltimore, the setting for the story.

Like the Broadway production, sound design for the tour was provided by Steve Kennedy, well known for his previous work on The Producers, The Lion King, Rent, Aida and Tommy. Upon the recommendation of fellow sound designers John Shivers and Andrew Keister, Kennedy chose to specify 10 L-Acoustics dV-DOSC loudspeakers to deliver intelligible coverage to the often 'acoustically-challenged' balcony seating areas of host venues out on the road. Sound Associates of Yonkers, New York provided the sale of the dV-DOSCs, as well as a

Details
Austria - Timed to coincide with the 250th birthday of Salzburg's most famous son, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the present Kleines Festspielhaus is to be refurbished and modernized, transforming it into the 'House for Mozart'. The task of modernizing the lighting systems has been entrusted to Holzkirchen-based transtechnik Lichtsysteme.

The Kleines Festspielhaus was opened in 1925 but proved to be too small for the city of Mozart. In 1960, therefore, the much larger Großes Festspielhaus was opened. Its 100m wide stage (including side stages) and space for a 2,173-strong audience makes this one of the largest stages in the world.

Alongside traditional lighting control elements, Salzburg decided to upgrade the stage lighting itself, and the venue has become the first European theatre to order the automated Source Four Revolution luminaires from ETC. The regional head of general c

Details
UK - Quested Monitoring Systems has appointed Sonic8 as its UK distributor. Ian McCarthy approached Stephen Helm, managing director of Sonic8 not long after the acquisition of Quested by himself and co-director Terry Clarke. Following final negotiations, the appointment of Sonic8 was formally announced at Sounds Expo last week.

Sonic8 was set up in March 2003 by Stephen Helm and Greg Cato and is based in Leeds. The company now has a team of highly motivated product specialists covering the UK for sales and customer support. Over the past year, Sonic8 has been appointed as UK distributor by a number of manufacturers, including ART, an American company, which provides solutions for the home recording and studio markets and the innovative Scottish signal processing company, CLM Dynamics. Quested, with its well established reputation for uncompromising sonic accuracy, will fit well

Details
USA - In the wake of the recent NAMM launch of the new 8-bus Midas Verona, among the very first US recipients were the United Nations building in New York City and the Ordway Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota. Herbie Hancock played a World Peace benefit concert at the UN, and an emotionally charged series of Children of Uganda productions at the Ordway Theatre in St. Paul also put the Verona through its paces. Children of Uganda is an acclaimed dance troupe of 20 Ugandan children aged 8-18 orphaned by HIV/AIDS. The troupe has toured the US biennially since 1994 with the aim of supporting the 1.7 million Ugandan children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS while maintaining global awareness of the disease and its devastating impact on children.

Children of Uganda FOH engineer and Kampala, Uganda-based Emmy Studios managing director Luswata Emmanuel remarked: "The Midas Ve

Details
France - Barco hosted its annual European rental partner meeting at the Euro Disney resort in France last week. Barco's annual three-day European rental partner meeting, which brings together the company's rental partners for its annual strategy presentation and new product introductions, was attended by 120 key commercial and technical representatives from 60 rental and staging companies throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

This year's agenda included strategy and product line presentations, as well as hands-on workshops on some of the latest Barco products, including the revolutionary MiPIX LED block, the ViewScape, Barco's Events Controller and Solaris LC40. With Barco's recent acquisition of Sacramento-based Folsom Research, this year's agenda also presented Barco's rental partners with the opportunity to get hands-on demonstrations of the Folsom ImagePRO and Scree

Details
UK - Marquee Audio has returned to Shoreditch's club/live music hybrid, Cargo, three years after carrying out the original fit-out, to reinforce the sound system. Matt Smith, technical manager of the Cantaloupe Group's venue, said that Marquee was called in when it was felt that certain areas of the venue needed boosting. "In particular, we needed to upgrade the bass amps and add front-loaded 15" bass bins, to achieve a faster, tighter bass response from the system. We knew this would allow the existing speakers to concentrate on a narrower bandwidth, thus giving more clarity across the full audio spectrum."

Cargo also wanted to add more power to the existing set-up in the main room. To fulfil these requirements Marquee recommended QSC PowerLight PL4.0 (2 x 1400W) amplifiers to power the bass, which now consists of a pair of Turbosound TQ-425 (2 x 15"), with

Details
USA - Color Kinetics Inc, the LED lighting effects innovator, has announced the completion of a preferred stock financing round totaling $13 million. The round was led by Needham Capital Partners, with participation by new investors, such as ThinkEquity Investment Partners, and existing investors, such as SAC Capital Advisors.

The company says it intends to use the net proceeds from the financing for continuing technology and product development efforts, an expansion of its sales force, growth in its diverse markets and channels, and the continued support of its intellectual property portfolio. "This additional funding will strengthen the company's balance sheet and support our efforts to continue improving our technology, market and intellectual property position in intelligent LED illumination," said George Mueller, chairman and CEO. "We're committed to growing

Details
UK / USA - Bandit Lites is supplying full lighting production to US cult heavy rock band Dream Theater's 'Train Of Thought' world tour. This has just completed the first of three 2004 European legs - all serviced from Bandit's European base in Bedford.

Lighting and video designer Benoit Richard used Bandit on Dream Theater's last tour in 2002, and was keen to continue his working relationship with the UK office. Tennessee Bandit Lites Inc will be looking after the tour in other territories. With 55 potential songs to choose from - 'Change of Season' currently being the longest at 23 minutes - and a different three-and-a-half hour set list each night, it was important for Richards and video design associate Robert Baldwin, to have a fluid, organic and flexible show at their fingertips.

Three LED video screens define the upstage area, Richards has designed the lighting rig to co

Details
UK - An innovative exhibition, sponsored by Shell, has been in place on the Thames riverside in the heart of London for the last few months - an outdoor sound and light installation, powered by wind energy, intended to celebrate the natural forces of the planet. The exhibit stretches for some 600m along London's South Bank. At its heart is a full-size wind turbine, which generates the power to operate lighting, sound and effects units. Nexo PS8 compact loudspeakers are hidden in more than 40 trees, playing original music co-ordinated with the light and mist effects.

Sound design for the Shell Electric Storm was developed by Robin Whittaker of Out Board, and the system features Out Board's TIMAX system, a large number of digital processors to provide network capability, and an Apple Macintosh computer to respond to the atmospheric sensors and change the remixes according to the w

  1. InnovaSON is worthy of praise
  2. Digigram sells Audemat-Aztec shares
  3. Lighten Up - Friday Late at the V&A
  4. Calm Expo Sets New Record
  5. Canegreen & CT at the NME Awards
  6. L&SI Networks with Cirque du Soleil
Page 636 of 1813

Latest Issue. . .