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Europe - Pink's current tour is called I'm Not Dead which is dramatically indisputable to those who have witnessed the acrobatic and physically demanding show she is performing across Europe until the end of the year and worldwide in 2007.

Bandit Lites UK is supplying full lighting production and crew for Pink's tour, a rig that includes Martin MAC 2000 Washes, MAC 2000 Profiles, Atomic strobes and Jem ZR fog machines.

The production and lighting design was created by Mark Fisher and Barry 'Baz' Halpin. With considerable input from Pink, they've woven lighting, video and scenic elements into a stimulating and provocative visual collage.

"This is not a standard pop show," says Halpin. "It's full of tricks and gimmicks and is highly choreographed. Pink is very versatile and is heavily involved in design and production of the show."

Some 110 MAC 200

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UK - Adlib Lighting is to host two WholeHog 3/iPC training courses in conjunction with High End Systems from 10 - 14 January. Each course will provide two days of training. The training days will be held at Adlib's Liverpool HQ and will be presented by Frank Schotman from HES Europe.

There are six available places per course. The course has been specifically designed to allow attendees sufficient attention time on each console - which will include the WholeHog 3 and Hog iPC.

"It's very much hands-on and practical in approach" says Abraham, who adds that the courses are being run due to popular demand after numerous requests form visiting crews and operators, and also because Adlib is keen to embrace the ongoing convergence between themselves and High End Systems.

The company has recently invested in new lighting consoles including a Hog iPC which is currently in ac

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UK - PA Installations of Llanelli Wales have just completed a major re-design, and re-fit of a new audio installation at the Essex University, Colchester Campus Student Union.

Having operated for many years as the main focus of all entertainments and functions within the campus, the venue attracts several large name acts as well as breaking new up and coming bands and artistes. Consisting of a very acoustically live room with an approximate capacity of 750, the building offers a 1970's style construction with concrete walls, pillars and floors.

Andy Bonehill, operations and projects director for PAI, having already attended several meetings and presentations, knew without any doubt that to increase performance and value and to meet the high expectations of the experienced management team of the venue, as well as the notoriously fickle likes of the graduates, they would need a

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UK - Nearing the end of a record year for touring, Entec Sound & Light have boosted their inventory by investing in a further Yamaha PM5D-RH digital console from Marquee Audio.

With digital consoles now a standard inventory requirement, Entec once again needed to call on all the expertise of the Shepperton based suppliers, and their digital specialist Andy Huffer.

Head of sound Dick Hayes remembers the support provided by Marquee when they entered the brave new world of digital, purchasing a Yamaha PM1D from the resellers four years ago for use on the David Bowie tour. This gave them the confidence to buy their first PM5D-RH when it was released - and now their second.

Entec's sound assistant Peter Codron, says that winning the TPI award last year has raised the general level of perception, and suddenly Entec found themselves prepping up for tours by Lily Allen, Jet and Tool

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UK - Popular Leicester Square music bar Sound has relocated from the Swiss Centre to the prestigious No.1. Leicester Square building. The expanded enterprise now makes provision for a new bar, fine dining restaurant, private VIP rooms and nightclub, operating on the three floors once occupied by Home, and more recently the Marquee Club.

Sandwiched between the MTV Studios and Penthouse Club, managing director Roger Payne of Sound Too Ltd has spent £1.3m - part of it dedicated to a new Martin Audio sound system - supplied by LMC Audio and installed by Carl Broadhurst's CTS Productions.

When Sound reopened at the beginning of October it extended an 11-year association it has enjoyed with Leicester Square. In fact it was while working as a technician at the old venue that Carl first became acquainted with Roger Payne, nearly a decade ago.

The installer exclusively specifie

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UK - London bar and live venue operators the Canteloupe Group have extended their relationship with Soundcraft mixing consoles. Nearly three years after specifying a 32-channel MH3 multi-purpose desk in the FOH position at popular 500-capacity Shoreditch venue Cargo London, the company's contracted installers, Marquee Audio, have recommended a 24-channel GB4 console for the new Big Chill House at Kings Cross.

The venue is the brainchild of Big Chill Festival promoters, Pete Lawrence and Katrina Larkin, who merged with the Cantaloupe Group at the end of 2002. First they converted The Peacock in Brick Lane to the Big Chill Bar before raising the stakes with the £1.2m development of three original town houses (which had variously operated as The Crossbar, The Bell and Sahara Nights) into the 550-capacity Big Chill House.

Marquee Audio installation manager, Scott Wakelin, wh

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People's Republic of China - For the first time all Portuguese-speaking countries came together for a sporting event - the Lusofonia Games. The games were held in Macau, a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. With an impressive opening ceremony in the Macau Stadium, Beijing based lighting director Simon Leeds, and lighting operator Jason Weng, announced the beginning of seven days of competition between eleven nations, 733 athletes and four continents - all united by their language. Three grandMA full-size and four NSPs controlled the huge lighting rig which consisted amongst others of 400 moving-lights, 60 Sky Art 4k CMY searchlights and 820 PAR cans.

"The grandMA was the most suitable due to all the different fixtures being used and its ease of programming," explains Leeds, "another important factor for choosing MA Lighting technology

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UK - For the fourth year in succession, entertainment lighting supplier White Light was commissioned by the Estée Lauder Companies to turn a major UK landmark pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. Previous years have seen White Light's team transform landmarks from the Royal Opera House in London to the Biomes at the Eden Project in Cornwall.

To achieve the dramatic lighting of Nelson's Column White Light's Simon Jones used a wide selection of equipment from White Light's extensive rental stock, including ETC Source Fours, White Light Exhibition Uplighters, Clay Paky Alpha Wash 1200s, StudioDue Citycolour 400s, Martin MAC2000 Profiles and Vari*Lite VL2000 Washes all controlled from an MA Lighting grandMA Lite console. The equipment was installed by a team led by Jones and production electrician Ben Cash.

The most challenging part of the project was lighting

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Czech Republic - Stage Electrics' Video Department was recently responsible for providing projection facilities for the latest Vodafone advertising campaign, currently being shown across the UK TV networks and also featuring on large-format panels.

The company was contracted by Thomas Thomas Films and travelled to a freezing cold Prague for the location shoot. The brief was to project specially filmed video onto buildings surrounding the custom-built set. During the three nights of filming Stage Electrics carried out nine separate moves, projecting images up to 14m wide onto the buildings around Loretta Square.

Following a site visit to the location and subsequent tests at Pinewood Studios Greg Hughes, Video Department Manager from Stage Electrics chose to utilise the features of the Sanyo PLCXF46 12000 for the smaller projection area and a Christie Roadie 250,000 lumen projec

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USA - G-LEC, the developer of transparent LED video display solutions for the entertainment industry, has announced its further expansion with the opening of G-LEC America Inc. Based in the Greater New York Metropolitan area, the new facilities will serve or facilitate the company's rental, sales and installation of display solutions in the United States and NAFTA region, the company says.

G-LEC, a pioneer of low-resolution transparent LED graphics displays, has been widely specified by designers in the entertainment industry since the company's formation in Europe. It has been specified for use in projects as diverse as the Jay-Z and Friends tour and at Madison Square Gardens in New York and the NFL opening ceremonies in Foxboro, MA as well as a BMW showroom in Berlin. G-LEC products were also on display during the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

G-LEC managing director Lars

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UK - In Glasgow, the Classic Grand is under new management, and its new owners are thinking big. Their ambition is to be the number one live venue in Glasgow, if not in Scotland, and the installation of a new large-format Electro-Voice PA system was the necessary first step towards realising that goal.

The 500-capacity club is housed in one of Glasgow's first cinema buildings. Set over two floors, the Classic Grand's live music policy encompasses anything and everything, and gigs are usually followed by club sessions by the likes of The Friday Factory and Porno. With the venue also aspiring to attract corporate event hire, the criteria for a sound system was necessarily that it should be highly flexible.

Locally situated in Glasgow, Andrew O'Neill of Flashlite has been working with the club's owners for 15 years so he was a natural choice to re-furbish the technical facilities

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USA - Italian pro audio manufacturer RCF SpA has announced that its US subsidiary RCF USA Inc has just moved to a new location in Hampton, New Hampshire. RCF's sales director Fausto Incerti explained: "The popularity of the RCF brand has grown rapidly as more and more people learn of its quality and reliability. It has always been our intention to produce audio products that the US market wanted. I feel that this move will help strengthen our position in North America.

Hans Radda, director of RCF USA Inc, added: "With the opening of our facility in New Hampshire, it enables us to increase our stock holdings of all major lines, including ART, 4 PRO, TT+ and Transducers. It will also help us support our reps sales network, who now cover the entire USA territory."

(Lee Baldock)

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UK - PLASA, the Professional Lighting and Sound Association, in conjunction with The Eden Project and Lighting&Sound International magazine, is looking at the possibility of supporting a conference on environmental awareness in show and event production.

The proposed conference will broadly examine the current practices of the production industry and look at how companies and organisations can take steps to minimise the carbon footprint of staging shows, supplying and touring equipment, catering for audiences, etc. The event will draw on the expertise of the team at The Eden Project, the popular tourist attraction in the South West of England, whose environmental policies underpin a series of 'green' gigs at the venue.

At this stage, PLASA is gauging the level of interest in such an event, so we want to hear from everyone in the industry who would like to be involved. If you w

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UK - The world famous Eden Project hosted BBC coverage of the Children In Need fundraising evening this month, employing Allen & Heath's new iLive digital mixing system to manage audio for two musical events that took place during the evening for the enjoyment of the visiting fundraisers and viewing public.

Comprising an iDR-64 mix engine with iLive-144 control surface, the iLive system was initially installed in Eden's Warm Temperate biome, where the Carnawn Ladies Choir sang a mixture of Christmas and traditional Cornish songs.

"The Biome's dimensions are 135m long 35m high and 65m wide, and with many twists and turns, open spaces and enveloping vegetation, it is acoustically challenging to fill all areas. However, iLive - feeding an EM Acoustic speaker system - filled the biome with the choir's pure harmonies," explains Steve Yelland from local PA company, SPS Sys

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Norway - Once again, the open air performance of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt with music by Edvard Grieg at Gålå (Norway) was one of the most impressive live events of the year. MultiTechnic was charged with the production and relied on a Dynacord Cobra system.

Since 1989, the performance of Peer Gynt in Gålå has been one of the highlights of the Norwegian open-air season. This year, more than 150,000 spectators made their pilgrimage to the open-air stage in its idyllic lakeside setting framed by mountains and forests to enjoy Ibsen's celebrated drama set to music by Edvard Grieg. No cars, or trains, or city noise distract the listener: every word spoken and every note played is perceived with a far greater intensity than in the theatres, concert halls and opera houses of the major cities.

To make the most of the unique acoustics, the organizers asked their produ

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UK - The Lighting Design Awards 2007 have gained a record number of entries this year with the figure up 15% so far. The deadline for the Entertainment Lighting category is still to come, so this figure is expected to raise even further.

Ray Molony, editor of Lighting magazine commented that the Awards have gained increased global recognition this year. "I am particularly pleased to see the sheer volume of entries from British designers working on global projects," he said, after an initial review of the entries received. "Our lighting designers are really punching above their weight in the international arena."

Similar comments are expected from the judges when they review the entries in preparation for the site visit process. These visits will commence at the end of November and continue throughout the winter months.

Since the awards were launched a dec

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UK - tsg, the UK's leading music programmers and system designers, have recently provided ILVA, the Danish furniture retailer, with Promedia hard disk systems and a bespoke music profile for all three of its UK stores.

Launched in the UK this year, ILVA is a different kind of home furnishing store with three 120,000sq.ft outlets in Thurrock, Manchester and Gateshead. Aiming to replicate the success of its existing Scandinavian stores, ILVA offers a wide range of quality furniture and accessories at affordable prices. It aims to set trends within home décor and provide inspiration for shoppers in an enjoyable shopping environment.

Designed by acclaimed Danish architects Schmidt, Hammer and Lassen, the stores have won civic architectural awards and have been hailed among the most modern and beautiful in Northern Europe. The flagship store in Malmo, Sweden, recently won 20

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UK - Vanguardia Consulting, the Surrey-based acousticians, sound system designers and noise control specialists, have been called in to design and specify a substantial temporary audio system for Twickenham Stadium's brand-new South Stand for the current series of Rugby internationals.

The system marks the six-month-old company's first live sound project since U2's legendary soundman Joe O'Herlihy joined the Vanguardia team in a consultancy role in September. The South Stand, which takes Twickenham's capacity to 82,000 for matches, allowed the stadium to host a record crowd when the stand was opened for the Investec Challenge match between England and New Zealand on 5 November. However, its roof has yet to be finished, meaning that a temporary solution had to be found to provide a fully certifiable public address and voice announcement (PA/VA) system to cover the South Stand for

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South Africa - The Stones chain of entertainment venues is rapidly becoming one of South Africa's most established and successful hotspots and has been successfully franchised across 19 branches nationwide. Two of the chain's key venues in Cape Town and Pretoria now boast state-of-the-art EAW sound systems throughout, supplied and installed by EAW's South African distributor, Johannesburg-based systems specialists, Surgesound.

Offering customers a huge choice of entertainment, Stones venues incorporate chilled lounge areas, up-beat dancefloors, live music stages and a relaxed bar and pool table environment, all open seven days per week. After hearing the EAW system recently installed by Surgesound in the Manhattan Club in Johannesburg, Adam Collingwood, operations manager for the Stones Group, had no hesitation in commissioning Surgesound to supply and install a customised Lab.g

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Japan - Geo-E-Site, a major hydroelectric power station, is sited in the Gunma Prefecture, 100km north-west of Tokyo, and covers most of the energy needs of the surrounding area.

Aiming to create an exhibition which would illustrate the processes that lead to the production of hydroelectric power, the owners have built a subterranean environment, about 300m below the level of the power station. The site hosts many Japanese and foreign tourists, including many school trips.

Six Clay Paky CP Color 150-E projectors are used through the exhibition, both to make the visit more pleasant and to highlight some of the fundamental parts of the power station. "The use of projectors with IP65 protection became indispensable since the place, by its nature, is very damp and dusty," said architect Keiko Yonezawa, president of Strise, the company which implemented the project. "

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UK - In the blaze of publicity unique to the phenomenon of the 007 franchise, the world premiere of the latest James Bond movie took place in London's Leicester Square. Attended by Her Majesty The Queen, the occasion presented several new twists for the team from event services company PSL, on hand to provide the giant display screen in the Square.

Working to a brief from production company Banana Split Productions, PSL crew erected a special structure to support the 4m x 2.5m Lighthouse LED screen, which carried live interviews with all the film's creators and stars. Marking a change from the usual red carpet approach, a bridge was constructed to carry the celebrities from the Square's central garden over the cast-iron fence railings to the terrace in front of the Odeon Cinema. PSL's screen was positioned at the highest point of the bridge, allowing a clear view for all the tho

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UK - Technical staging specialist Blitz has been commissioned to work alongside director Paul Kerryson, and the production team of The Wizard of Oz. The show, featuring Helena Blackman, finalist from BBC's How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? will be staged at the Haymarket Theatre in Leicester. The production runs throughout the festive period, from 1 December 2006 to 20 January 2007.

Blitz is providing a full range of services for the show, supplying AV equipment including video control systems and two Panasonic projectors, as well as complete sound solution and extensive technical staging direction. Working alongside well-known director Paul Kerryson, Blitz's project manager Mark Lewis will be offering innovative technical advice from the outset of the project to help create maximum impact from the stage production. This is a proposition which Blitz is continu

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The Netherlands - The latest phase in the development of Amsterdam's legendary Paradiso nightclub was recently completed with the addition of Synco compact stage monitoring on long-term rental from Synco Europe through Ampco Pro Rent (APR).

The floor monitors, which are used both on the Paradiso's main stage and its smaller stage upstairs, are rented on a 60-month arrangement - under the same formula that applies to Synco wedges already on long-term hire to six other top Dutch clubs, the Tivoli, Het Paard, the Music Centre Utrecht, O 13, Nighttown and the Milky Way. The monitors were chosen by the club after their regular use there by both Dutch and international bands.

In 2003 the Paradiso - which is housed in a beautiful former church, complete with stained glass windows that overlook the stage - completed a massive refurbishment of its main hall, which included the addition

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UK - Glam New York rockers the Scissor Sisters are currently on tour promoting their new album titled Ta-dah. Lighting designer Dave Ross first met the band over two years ago when they headlined their first ever show in the UK at The Scala London. Dave specified numerous PixelLines 1044s for the gig, which started an 18-month stint of touring. The 1044s soon became a big feature of the show, especially in the US where 1044s where relatively new to the market.

For this tour Ross, works alongside show and set designer Roy Bennett. An integral part of the design is a flat wall of 144 PixelPar 90s - 16 fixtures wide by 9 fixtures high upstage behind two Kabukis. Ross explains: "The band has very set ideas concerning the use of lighting and video and they are always keen to build their show gradually. And although the PixelPars are only really used for the last two songs

  1. Christie at MPH06
  2. Corinne Bailey Rae tours with Sennheiser
  3. The Middle East Lighting Design Awards
  4. Stones Group chooses EAW
  5. grandMA on Shakira's Oral Fixation Tour
  6. Adamson gains new partner
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