USA - Northwestern University's Department of Theatre has been named the 2004 recipient of the Martin Intelligent Lighting Technology Grant. The Grant was presented at a special ceremony at the recent LDI exhibition in Las Vegas. On hand to accept the award on behalf of the University was Joe Appelt, Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Director of the Lighting Design Program. Appelt was accompanied by Peter Anderson, supervisor of the department's lighting and sound shop, as well as several University alumni.

Claudia Kunin, interim managing director of the University's Theatre and Interpretation Center, stated: "All of us here at Northwestern are thrilled to have been chosen to receive this prestigious grant. The resources Martin Professional is making available to us will enrich the education of our students both in the classroom and in production. The M

Belgium - EML, one of Europe's leading sound, lighting and video hire companies, has laid claim to the first purchase of a DiGiCo D1 Live digital mixing console, and has found it an ideal solution for Night of the Proms in the Antwerp Sportpaleis. The idea behind this successful series of concerts was that of two Belgian students, Jan Van Esbroeck en Jan Vereecke. Based on the UK's Last Night of the Proms, the show takes the concept one stage further by adding in contemproary artists to widen its appeal. In 1990, organizers PSE took the concept to Holland for the first time, shortly followed by Germany in 1994. Now in its 19th year, it is one of Europe's most successful musical events.

This year's rock contingent include James Brown, Joe Cocker, Supertamp's Roger Hodgson, Shaggy and Cyndi Lauper, who will entertain audiences with 56 concerts from 15 October until 22 December in

USA - Production Resource Group (PRG) hosted a two-day training session for Medialon's show control software at its Las Vegas facility on October 25-26, following the conclusion of the LDI show. PRG is an official dealer and programmer for Medialon software, and the training program was open to all industry participants. Yan Terrien of Medialon taught the program, and Jason Goldenberg of PRG assisted.

Seven technicians from across the US participated in the classes, which covered basic system programming procedures and advanced system features. Upon completion of the course, each participant received a Qualified Medialon Programmer certificate, which entitles the recipient to be recognized as an official programming resource on Medialon's website. Medialon is one of several show control systems sold and supported by PRG. Other systems include Alcorn-McBride, AMX, and PRG's prop

UK - The Institute of Sound & Communication Engineers (ISCE) has announced that Dr. Roy Lawrence, HonFIOA, MInstSCE, is presenting a two-day course tutorial in Manchester on "Basic Acoustics for Sound System Professionals". The course, which will take place on 9-10 November 2004, is available to PLASA and ISCE Members at £200 (plus VAT) and to non-members at £250 (plus VAT). The course is ideal for both newcomers and those wishing to brush up on their knowledge. Fees include course materials, and limited numbers of places are available. Full details and booking information is available from Ros Wigmore, PO Box 7966, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 7WY, phone/fax: 0118 954 2175, or at the e-mail address below.

(Lee Baldock)

UK - Grammy-winning, multi-platinum-selling Canadian jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall is currently touring prestigious venues around the world, including a run of five dates at the Royal Albert Hall in London, in support of her latest release 'The Girl in the Other Room'. A Heritage 3000 at FOH and a Midas Venice 320 for monitors (monitor engineer Eric LaLiberte) will help to ensure that Krall's legendary vocal talents are delivered with warmth and clarity to her demanding audiences.

Dave Lawler of Docktrdave Audio Inc in Capistrano Beach, California, was contracted to mix sound at FOH for the tour and brought in his 48-channel Heritage 3000 console. Though onstage electronics are minimal, with boutique amps, custom instruments and German microphones being par for the course, Lawler's FOH setup belies the simplicity of the DSP-free backline, incorporating no less than three

USA - ESTA (the Entertainment Services and Technology Association) announced the winners of the 2004 Dealers' and Manufacturers' Choice Awards during the LDI exhibition in Las Vegas last week. The Dealers' Choice Customer Service Awards offer ESTA's Dealer Members the opportunity to publicly recognize those manufacturers that provide consistently good customer service throughout the year. The awards recognize superior performance in four main areas: Customer Service, Shipping and Billing, Technical Support and Quotations/Project Management. Dealers cast their votes for manufacturers in each of three categories based on the Manufacturers' number of employees, 1-6, 7-25, and over 25 - and the winners for 2004 were Doug Fleenor Design Inc; City Theatrical and Apollo Design Technology Inc, respectively.

The Manufacturers' Choice Dealers of the Year Awards offer ESTA's Manufacturer

UK - Barry Walker's TV and recording showgroup, Smackee, has invested in a new Robe Show Lighting moving light system, complete with Robe 1024 control desk, for its busy live performance schedule. The move was prompted by the company's popular Abba - The Show landing a high profile seasonal booking at Blackpool's North Pier Theatre.

Walker explains: "Blackpool is world famous for its illuminations, and the time was definitely right to get some new lighting technology onboard. Lighting can make or break a show, and we wanted to have the best lightshow in town."

The production has successfully toured Europe and the UK for four years. Smackee also has several other shows in their repertoire, including, The Musicals featuring the top scenes and sounds form favourite shows. When it came to specifying a lighting rig, Walker - also show producer and MD - want

UK - Edinburgh lighting specialist black light got to the heart of Scottish democracy in October when 46 of its luminaires were used at the official opening of the Scottish Parliament's Holyrood building. Taking place on 9 October, the opening of the building was televised by the BBC. The 40 Source Four MCMs and six Source Four Juniors supplied by Black Light were used by main lighting contractor Lee Lighting in the main debating chamber. Their purpose was to augment existing equipment to light the Queen, the Presiding Officer and the Scottish National Orchestra, amongst others.

"The Holyrood building has been at the centre of the news in Scotland ever since it was first mooted, so we were very pleased to be able to contribute to the opening of the Parliament's official home," says black light managing director Gavin Stewart.

"It's was another example which sh

UK - A.C. Lighting's Special Projects division has supplied and programmed fixtures for the largest installation of Solar LED equipment in the UK. The project, designed by LightMatters, involved providing an architectural lighting and control solution for illuminating the crown of Wall Street broker Lehman Bros' European headquarters in the prestigious Canary Wharf area of Central London. The 32-storey building, known as 'HQ2', is located amongst some of the capital's tallest buildings and the world's leading financial institutions.

To obtain the luminaires for the cutting-edge lighting project, LightMatters consulted A.C. Lighting's Special Projects division, who used its in-depth knowledge of LED fixtures to source the solution used. The whole project was managed by Canary Wharf Contractors Ltd.

The lighting system consists of 152 no. IP67 rated Solar M200B RGB LED luminarie

UK - XL Video supplied equipment and crew to HFM Lighting to help realize the projection of three separate giant moving images onto the curved fascia of Kingston-Upon-Thames Guildhall building. The 50ft high Guildhall was chosen because its circulator shape reflects the 'Zoopraxiscope' invented by Muybridge, which was used to animate film.

The Muybridge Festival celebrated the life and works of Eadweard Muybridge, one of the finest pioneering Victorian photographers who was born in Kingston in April 1830. The majority of his highly acclaimed experimental work was completed in America, and Muybridge is credited with being a founding father of modern cinema.

XL Video supplied three 17,000 lumen Barco ELM R18 projectors to transform Kingston High Street into a public gallery for two evenings as part of a wider series of Muybridge events and exhibitions.

Artistic director Robin

UK - The COHEDRA Coherent Dynamic Response Array system from Germany's HK Audio was given one of its biggest challenges to date on the first UK production tour for boy-band sensation McFly. COHEDRA's longthrow projection was invaluable at cutting through the screams of the teenage girls who packed the venues to see their idols in action.

The three-week tour in late September and October featured a rig of 12 COHEDRA mid/high cabinets per side at most venues. The system was supplied to Production North by HK AUDIO's UK distributor John Hornby Skewes, together with two COHEDRA PR-8 and two PR-16 Power Racks. It was configured by FOH engineer Nick Warren using HK's CAPS Aiming Software prediction software. " COHEDRA exceeded my expectations for this tour," says Warren. "Firstly it is fantastic to fly and put together. The way the rigging is configured means that apar

UK - After a competitive tender process, AV systems specialist Tiger AV has been awarded a key contract by Cheshire County Council. The contract is valued at £38,000 and is to provide audio-visual maintenance services to schools in Cheshire.

Over 150 schools with pupils of all ages have subscribed to the project, which is proving so successful that schools outside of the catchment area are now also interested in coming on board. The contract covers the repair of AV equipment including TVs, videos, DVD players, OHPs, slide projectors and a range of audio equipment. Tiger AV guarantees an engineer on-site within three working days of a fault being reported, thereby minimizing any 'down-time' of AV equipment.

Tiger AV's technical director, Tony Crossley said: "There are a number of reasons for the success of this contract. The first being our flexibility; in the fact we o

Sweden - In 2002 the old Market Hall in Uppsala, Sweden was severely damaged in a fire which left little of the old building behind. Now after two years of work, the Hall has been restored as a fresh vegetable, fish and meat market featuring several top quality restaurants. The owner of the restaurants, Svenssons Krogar, decided to give each restaurant its own specific style, and brought Gothenburg-based Diroco Sound and Light in to the planning process early on to develop a well thought out lighting scheme. Diroco set out to integrate Martin intelligent luminaires along with conventional lighting to create the environment the client was looking for.

As the building was not yet complete when Diroco was contracted, they used Martin's ShowDesigner lighting design software package to create the lighting solution. It was, among other things, the ShowDesigner that convinced the cl

UK - Edinburgh lighting specialist black light recently lit a forest walk in the heart of Perthshire, known as Big Tree Country. The annual Enchanted Forest walk at The Hermitage, situated near the town of Dunkeld and owned by the National Trust for Scotland, has become a very popular attraction for both locals and tourists.

Open to the public from 22 October to 7 November, this is the first year that black light has designed and installed the lighting for the Enchanted Forest. "The Hermitage had come up with a theme of the four seasons, but that wasn't entirely practical. For example, how do you portray 'summer' in a forest at night in the middle of autumn?" says black light's Paul McGreal. "We thought that having focal points was important, as opposed to a linear route which is more-or-less the same throughout. We felt the four elements - Earth, Fire, Air and Wa

USA - Another prestigious LDI award has been bestowed upon Total Structures - bringing their total to three awards in four years. Following awards for the revolutionary OMNI connector and the highly innovative and critically acclaimed new wave truss, the judges selected Ballast Truss to be Product of the Year in the Staging, Rigging and Hardware Category from the four new aluminium products launched by Total Structures at The Entertainment Technology Show - LDI 2004 in Las Vegas.

The redesigned medium duty fold flat truss, the fixed catwalk truss for permanent installations and the value engineered, industry standard trusses that form the Element range, all attracted considerable interest, but it was the Ballast Truss, a practical solution to the issue of stability of outdoor delay towers and roof structures, that won the vote. Peter Hind (Total Structures' VP engineering) acce

UK - Stage Electrics will be holding an auction in North London on behalf of Northern Light on Saturday 20 November. 850 stage and entertainment lighting, sound and miscellaneous lots will be under the hammer at the Millennium Studios, 5 Elstree Way, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire from 10:00am. Over 2500 invitations have been distributed and the level of response has been impressive. Viewing of the equipment takes place on Friday 19 November from 14:00 to 20:00 and on the Saturday morning from 08:00.

There will be new and used equipment to suit every budget. From large Gladiator follow spots to small birdies, Patt 23 to Strand SL Profiles, From Carousel to Barco LCD projectors. The list is endless and an up to date version can be found at the website below.

(Sarah Rushton-Read)

UK - A.C. Lighting's Special Projects division has provided the £200k supply and installation of all technical facilities for a theatre studio and other teaching rooms at the B6 Sixth Form College in Hackney, London.

The College is the first of its kind for London in ten years and runs a wide range of further education courses for students in the borough, including Performing Arts vocational courses in Technical Theatre, Acting and Dance. When the College was granted funding to build new teaching rooms for the Creative Arts and Media department, it commissioned Theatre Consultant Crin Claxton to produce a detailed specification of the technical facilities required for a new theatre studio, dance studio and film screening room. The theatre would be used to host multiple types of student and guest artist performances, and provide teaching space for the various production and perf

UK - XL Video supplied projection and playback equipment, while Enttec Sound and Light supplied the lighting, for the 2004 National Television Awards, staged recently at the Royal Albert Hall. It was the first time that XL has been involved in this high profile event. Lazlett recommended XL to the show's producers, Indigo Television, and the project was managed for XL by Paul Wood.

The screen was custom made for XL by ECT from Matt Brite material to Bill Lazlett's set design, co-ordinated by Wood. It measured 29m wide and was 10m high at the stage right end and 2m high at stage left, curving around the rear of the stage. The projection was via 10 Barco ELM R18 projectors, with five projectors overlaid in two stacks for optimum brightness, situated in the RAH's Grand Tier boxes.

Taking a 'big canvas approach', screen content was created for the show by Richard Turner and his c

UK - Sound design and installation specialist CP Sound has completed a JBL installation at Octave - Covent Garden's newest live Jazz Bar and restaurant. CP's Colin Pattenden was asked to handle all Octave's audio elements, after completing other successful projects for owner Glendola Leisure.

The intimate new venue consists of one large area with bar, divided into several different level zones - raised or sunken - complete with two separate areas for live performance, which together with the low ceilings produced an interesting set of acoustic conundrums.

The Stage B position is the favoured one for performances - an expediently sized area with just enough room to get a duo on stage, adjacent to the resident piano.Pattenden's sound proposal was designed to allow them to stage simple live acts with mic inputs, as well as a background music system with full zone control for the

USA - San Diego-based design and installation company, Bluewater Audio, recently furnished U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Miramar with a multi-zone paging system using Allen & Heath's iDR-4 programmable DSP distributed audio system. The installation was the finishing touch on a $4 million construction project to build a state-of-the-art facility to support the embarkation and debarkation of service members to overseas areas.

"We put in a six zone paging system using the iDR-4 as the heart of the system," explained Paul Svenson, co-owner of Bluewater Audio. "We also put in a remote controller - the PL-3 - at two locations, duplicating each other; there's one by the door and one by baggage handling."

Based on the same technology as the Allen & Heath iDR-8 system, iDR-4 is a 4 input / 4 output digital processor, with additional 2 input / 2 output dual-function

UK - Drapes and rigging specialist Blackout was appointed by London based production house Robbie Williams Productions Ltd., to supply all the branding materials and soft goods for the British Olympic Heroes Parade.

Double Gold Medallist Kelly Holmes led the victory parade of 100 medal winners from Team GB along with Paralympic medal winners. The celebratory procession, comprising five giant branded floats, started at Piccadilly and snaked along The Haymarket before arriving in Trafalgar Square. It culminated in a presentation attended by over 15,000 fans, which launched London's 2012 Olympic bid campaign slogan - " Make Britain Proud".

For each float Blackout produced five giant perforated vinyl mesh banners, each measuring 14 x 2.4m to fit each flat bed trailer deck. Designed by Mark Norton of Think Farm, they depicted five different sports disciplines - rowing/sai

UK - Summit Steel installed over 5,000m of 4 mm steel wire cable at the Frieze Art Fare in Regents Park to support muslin ceilings in four Owen Brown clearspan structures, with interiors designed specially for the event by architect Davis Adjaye.

The four-day Frieze 2004 was the largest ever contemporary art exhibition and events programme staged in the UK, and was enjoyed by over 40,000 visitors and art lovers. The look and feel of the exhibition space was airy, open and predominantly white. Following the phenomenal success of last year's inaugural event, this year the area Summit was dealing with increased to total 15,720sq.m. The largest of the structures measured a massive 200m x 40m with a capacity of 8,000sq.m.

The steel cable was secured to the structures using Summit's custom designed rafter clamps - two part metal clamps, which fix into the lower grooves of the roof r

UK - Maycom, the Dutch company which has pioneered the design and manufacture of compact flash card sound recorders since 1994, has appointed Solid State Sound to distribute its range of HandHeld II, EasyCorder and MP3/MicTube solid state recorders in the UK and Eire.

Based near Warminster, Wiltshire, Solid State Sound specializes in the sale of digital audio card recorders and their accessories, including suitable microphones and headphones. The company is owned and run by Rodney Wayman who has over 20 years' experience in pro-audio equipment sales, and some 10 years in broadcast production before that. "Having used and sold several million pounds worth of every conceivable audio device in my time, all the way from open reel to hard disk," says Wayman, "it is such a pleasure to be so closely involved with what the industry has been working all this time to achie

France/China - French digital mixing console manufacturer InnovaSON has appointed its first Chinese partner, Hua Nan (HN) Audio. For several years InnovaSON has been testing the water in China, and the new appointment reflects an aim to step up its presence in the region.

"The Chinese market is a huge and difficult one," says Philippe Pelmelle, market development manager at InnovaSON. "If you do not have somebody in the country working for you with experience of your technology and products, together with a great knowledge of its market, and ability to do business right across the region, you will not succeed. My strategy was to find a company not only able to do this, but which also represented other product lines compatible with InnovaSON."

HN Audio was able to meet Pelmelle's criteria. Located in the southern Guangdong province and active across the whol

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