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UAE - Dubai-based production company HQ Creative, working closely with Done Events, delivered the opening ceremony of the 18th Gulf Cup in Abu Dhabi's Zayed Sports City Stadium. The show, conceived by HQ's creative director Katie Veira, was a 37-minute mixed media spectacular, and the largest opening event to date for a football tournament.

The performance featured 1200 live performers, 55 horses and an international production team of over 400, working with around 1700 local crew over the build period. The show was enjoyed live by 55,000 excited spectators and a TV audience of 50 million who tuned in to Dubai Sports.

The building of the complex technical infrastructure was co-ordinated by production director Jo Marshall, working with his key HQ team including project manager Jo MacKay, production co-ordinators Ian Greenway, Candice Dalziel, Nadine Manning and site manager Nig

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Hong Kong - Being one of Europe's oldest university towns, Bologna is synonymous with Italy's largest motor show which is hosted annually. In December 2006, the event was once again the showcase chosen by many motor manufacturers to launch their new models. There was widespread use of AV technology at the show, and several key exhibitors including Mercedes, Audi, and Subaru, chose Lighthouse LED screens at their booths.

"Motor shows are a particularly innovative arena with the major manufacturers continually raising the bar for the design of their stands," says Roberto Segato, Lighthouse sales director. "Lighthouse LED screens have become an important part of this for many high profile car manufacturers and it's good to see this trend continued at Bologna."

Three Italian rental companies used Lighthouse LED screens on several key exhibitor's stands to let v

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USA - Total Structures, Inc., a manufacturer of industry standard truss, custom set and structures and a Columbus McKinnon hoist distributor has announced a new initiative to benefit The ESTA Foundation's Behind the Scenes Programme. Total Structures will donate $10 to Behind the Scenes for every Lodestar and Prostar Columbus McKinnon hoist they sell.

Adrian Forbes-Black, vice president operations, made the announcement to Lori Rubinstein and Bill Sapsis, members of the Behind the Scenes Committee, during the recent LDI exhibition.

"Behind the Scenes is a wonderful programme and we wanted to find a way to help," said Forbes-Black. "There are a number of people and organisations that have put together programmes to benefit Behind the Scenes, and this idea seemed to be a good way for us to do our part." Forbes-Black also noted that "this initiative is fo

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USA - In one of the most anticipated tours of 2006, Barbara Streisand, hit North American venues last autumn in her first U.S. tour since 1994 and the first live events since her farewell concerts in 1999. Sharing the stage with the iconic singer was operatic pop group Il Divo.

Billed as an effort to raise money and awareness for multiple issues, the show was heavy on standard classics. Streisand left it up to lighting designer Peter Morse to "create the moods with light. I've been with Barbra for quite some time - she trusts me and lets me do my thing," he says.

Streisand played in the round with very limited scenery. The stage was an open platform with long, tiered, lit runways surrounding a full symphony orchestra. "The stage design was basically a square with a pit in the middle," Morse explains. "I used a series of square trusses above and dropped

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UAE - Located at the lobby level of Dubai's Al Murooj Rotana Hotel, C Bar is a sibling of the popular Crystal restaurant and certainly lives up to the latter's chic and contemporary reputation.

C Bar is an L-shaped venue with a relaxed yet elegant feel, where curves predominate, from its entrance - right the way through to its furniture. Also installed is a Turbosound loudspeaker system that comprises eight TXD-121s, four TXD-215s, four Impact 80s and a TXD-118 subwoofer all controlled by an LMS-D24 Loudspeaker Management System, installed by Louay Agha's Lebanon-based installation company, Thunder Electronics.

"The entrance to the bar is on the small side of the 'L'," explains Louay. "This is where we have installed the Impact 80s [compact passive 2-way loudspeakers with 8" LF drivers] with TXD-118 subs, as this area has a more subtle type of music. In the

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UK - Plans for a National Skills Academy for the creative and cultural industries have been boosted with the addition of more influential supporters. PLASA - the Professional Lighting and Sound Association - is the latest organisation to join the unprecedented alliance of employers and industry bodies backing the project.

The Academy is designed to address shortages in offstage and technical skills for live music and the performing arts. Detailed plans being prepared by Creative & Cultural Skills, the employer-led Sector Skills Council, will be submitted to the government in April 2007.

"PLASA's support is hugely significant," says Tom Bewick, chief executive of Creative and Cultural Skills. "Its wide membership of leading specialists in professional audio, lighting, staging, rigging, communications and related disciplines fully understands what skills are neede

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Czech Republic - Students and graduates of art schools and young beginning artists have until the end of January to sign up for workshops that are being prepared within the framework of the Scenofest - Student Section of the Prague Quadrennial 2007. The international competitive showcase of scenography and theatre architecture, PQ 07, will take place from 14-24 June 2007. The Scenofest program is one of the three main sections of the event.

Workshops and informal meetings with authors working in the field of theatre will occur over the entire ten day event. The rich program will include scenography, lighting design, sound design, theatre costumes, puppet theatre and various types of theatre technology. The workshops will be held in the Central Hall of the Industrial Palace (in the centre of the Scenofest exhibit), at the Alfred in the Courtyard Theatre and the NoD Experimental S

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UK - A 22-way Kinesys Elevation motion control system was in action on the final leg of Kylie's epic Showgirl Homecoming tour - using an additional 10 Kinesys motors over and above the 12 on the original tour. The system was specified by lighting designer Vince Foster.

The 10 new motors - a mix of half and one tonne Liftkets - were used to control four extra high resolution video screens, two punchbags that dropped in for one song, plus the tips of a massive pair of wings that opened out at the end of the second encore.

The 10 original Kinesys 500kg 400mm/s vari-speed motors were utilised to suspend five lighting trusses, supplied as part of the lighting rental package from Neg Earth Lights. The other two 1 tonne Kinesys hoists flew the centre hi-res Barco I-12 screen that was in the original show.

For the updated Homecoming tour, all five video screens glided

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Spain - Midas' Spanish distributor Auprosa has delivered two Heritage 3000 consoles with 16-channel extensions to L'Auditori de Barcelona, the city's leading cultural centre which houses several music halls. One of the H3000s is for mobile use and can be moved wherever it is needed, though mainly based in the 2,340-capacity Symphonic Hall, while the second has a permanent home in the 700-capacity Chamber Music Hall.

Spanish installation company Twin Cam were responsible for commissioning the new desks into the halls, together with a package of Klark Teknik equipment including 24 channels of Helix DN9340 dual digital EQ and Helix DN9331 Rapide graphic controller. Five DN360 graphic eqs and four DN1248 Plus mic splitters join the second H3000 in the Chamber Music Hall. The Helix EQs were configured as part of a Show Command system, with the H3000's Solo Tracking System (STS), Rapi

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USA - Theatre Projects Consultants (TPC) began a year-long celebration of its 50th anniversary with a cocktail party on 42nd Street in New York City. The event was held in the Penthouse Lobby at the American Airlines Theatre on Monday 15 January. The party was attended by over 250 guests including architects, theatre and entertainment professionals, TPC clients both past and present, acousticians, theatre consultants, TPC alumni, the media, and other friends of TPC.

Speeches and toasts were made by Emmy and Tony-winning set and costume designer Tony Walton, theatre architect Hugh Hardy of H3 Hardy Collaboration, and Richard Pilbrow, TPC Founder and Chairman Emeritus.

TPC was the theatre design consultant for the renovation of the American Airlines Theatre (formerly the Selwyn Theatre) which reopened in 2000 and is now home to the Roundabout Theatre Company.

(Lee Baldock)

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UK - Mojo Barriers UK office ended 2006 in Aberdeen, supplying their Line-Up gates for Scotland's only Hogmany event to survive terrible weather, and then began 2007 at the opposite end of the country in Brighton for Fat Boy Slim's New Year Day Big Beach Boutique show.

Over 15,000 people attended Aberdeen's Hogmanay Party, at which Wet Wet Wet were the headline act. It was the only large-scale event to take place in Scotland on the 31 December 2006, with others falling foul of the Scottish weather the event.

Dorothy Anderson, Aberdeen City Council's events officer says: "This year for the first time we decided to implement an entry control system to monitor the numbers attending and to ensure public safety at the event. We were looking for a quick to assemble solution that would assist us in doing this and decided that the 'Mojo Line Up Gates' would be ideal. On the night

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Chile - Robbie Williams recently played the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile as part of his current Close Encounters world tour. A crowd of 50,000 people came to see and hear the English pop artist and songwriter, whose career began as a member of the highly successful band Take That. As part of the celebration of its 90 years in the nation, Citibank was the official sponsor of the concert in coordination with CIE Chile, one of Latin America's leading entertainment promotion companies.

Sound services for the Robbie Williams world tour are being coordinated through UK-based Britannia Row Productions. For the Santiago National Stadium show, local Chilean rental vendor Cristian Olavarria Ltd, a rental company with over 25 years of experience in sound reinforcement, supplied a total of 72 VT4888DP powered mid-size line array elements from JBL's Vertec DP Series, as part of the te

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UK - When Autosports International needed a special effect to open the high-octane event in the Live Action Arena at the NEC early this month, it was Laser Hire Ltd that they turned to. Laser Hire used four laser systems including a truss mounted 10W DPSS laser system controlled by a laptop, running Pangolyn laser 2000 and a Magnum III controller running three laser outputs 'live'.

Each of the 14 live shows started by the laser systems simulating the stage being cut away to release the Red Bull F1 car. Cutting 'sparks' were also produced by Laser Hire Ltd using various pyrotechinc effects through a running sequence from a pyromate control system to match the moving laser beam projected from the truss. The car was then raised to the centre of the stage through a cloud of smoke, creating a truly Bond like effect to start the thrilling live event in front of a packed house of over

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UK - The Long standing PMC user Jon Astley, mastering engineer at Close to the Edge Studios, has recently taken delivery of AML1 active two way monitors for installation in the Twickenham studio, to supplement his current PMC 5.1 configuration.

Astley is one of the UK's leading mastering engineers and producers, and has worked with such eminent names as The Who, Abba and Eric Clapton. The AML1s were acquired for mastering of the recent release from Jools Holland - 'Moving out to the Country' - and is currently mastering the imminent album from John Mayall - 'In the Palace of the King'. Due to the AML1's diminutive proportions and ease of integration, Astley will be taking the AML1s to Martian Sound in the West Country for use in the on going project with Tori Amos. He commented: "The definition is superb and the imaging is perfect. I can identify and resolve problem areas i

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The Netherlands - With just a few days to go until the fourth edition of Integrated Systems Europe opens in Amsterdam, the show organisers have announced that visitors to ISE 2007 will see a show that is bigger in size and has twice the number of special features than in previous events. These include some new education sessions in the conference programme. Over 350 exhibitors will be at ISE, representing a 40% increase on the 2006 event.

Halls 1 - 4 at the Amsterdam RAI exhibition centre are about to open to welcome the first of over 350 leading exhibitors who are on their way to prepare for what is now officially the biggest event yet staged by ISE. As Mike Blackman, show director confirms: "This is a true testament to not only the AV industry, but also the Exhibition medium, that many exhibitors are using ISE 2007 to show and introduce (new) products to the industry. We

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UK - XL Video has supplied design collective United Visual Artists (UVA) with Barco O-Lite modules for their critically acclaimed interactive music installation, 'Volume' at the V&A Museum, London. The work was commissioned buy the V&A as part of the Playstation Season, and is a collaboration between UVA, Robert Del Naja (3D of Massive Attack) and his long-term co-writer Neil Davidge (as part of their music production company, one point six).

Staged in the V&A's John Madejski Garden, the O-Lite is arranged into 46 columns mounted on 6 x 7 grid, each column consisting of 24 O-Lite modules stacked on top of one another. These measure 2.5 metres in height by 12cm wide, and the columns are placed 2m apart, each with a speaker on top.

UVA's Ash Nehru explains: "We've worked with XL in the past, and they have always been excellent, so were an obvious choice to supply the hardwa

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Europe - The new Walt Disney film Enchanted - due for release later this year - has a promotional tour travelling to the main European cities of London, Paris, Madrid, Brussels and Munich. One of the key features of the movie is an enchanted wishing well, and for this the tour makes use of a FogScreen walk-through screen.

A Finnish invention, the FogScreen walk-through screen generates a thin 'projection screen' of dry fog that people can walk through without getting wet. FogScreen walk-through screen uses ordinary water and does not contain any chemicals, and has been hailed as "the audiovisual innovation of the decade".

"We chose FogScreen because of the unique qualities it has that bring the magical well to life," explains Enchanted Experience project manager, Maria Walker. "Its real-life movement and fluidity capture a water effect like no o

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UK - Forty of the new i-Pix Satellite LED fixtures were used by lighting designer Nick Gray for shows in Manchester (G-MEX) and London (The East Winter Gardens at Canary Wharf) launching the Audi R8 super-coupe performance car. Gray and his company Renegade Productions were asked to design and supply lighting for the show by event producers GSP.

He specified the i-Pix Satellites to light a shroud surrounding the car. The gauze was rigged onto a circular truss above a raised rotating platform in the middle of the room. Illuminating the gauze in red, the Satellites effectively hid the R8 from view until it was time for the theatrical style reveal.

The lights were attached to the same circular truss as the gauze. The latter was on the inner cord, and the Satellites around the outer cord - down-lighting the cloth, "A simple but effective theatrical trick," explains Gray.

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UK - The St Peters and Broadway Bridges in Maidstone were brought to life over the holiday season by lighting artist Peter Freeman and Maidstone Borough Council. The new permanent installation project, called Light Elements, makes use of a Wireless Solutions W-DMX system supplied by White Light.

According to Peter Freeman: "The inspiration for Light Elements came from the proximity of the two bridges and how they form a circle of traffic movement around a basin oasis of calm with fishermen and pedestrians on the riverbanks in between. My aim was to create a light installation that would be informed by the structure of the bridges, visually connect the two bridges, and create a dialogue between the bridges and the space between them using reflections and animated coloured light." Freeman also opted to make Light Elements interactive, with the public able to text phrases

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UK - Cadac reports on an interesting audio dynamic on the West End musical Daddy Cool, which has been running at the Shaftesbury Theatre as one of this season's only non-Broadway new productions. From an audio perspective, the show stands out from the crowd on a number of counts, with sound designer Richard Brooker establishing several technical firsts. Richard's design deploys a combination of Cadac analogue and digital mixing equipment, with an 82-input J-Type live production console and a Digital Series stage rack, comprising D16 digital mix matrices and M16 remote controlled microphone amplifiers. He is also using a large-scale Opus Audio PA system - the first time the rig has been specified for a major new West End show.

Directed by Andy Goldberg, with music from Boney M and Frank Farian Productions, Daddy Cool has a Romeo and Juliet-style plot set agai

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UK - Bedfordshire's Amalfi Suite, the adjacent Vesuvio Restaurant, and the overarching Sharnbrook Hotel are three separate entities, but under the ownership of the Ciampi family, an offer a conference facility, with accommodation on site.

The Ciampi family called in local installation company A.I.S (Audio Installation Services) of Bedford to devise an audio system that would enhance the environments. Luke Magliaro of A.I.S. in turn called in the services of David Howe of Shuttlesound, the projects support specialist for Electro-Voice in the UK.

"Initially, the design brief from the client was pretty straightforward," explains Howe, "they simply wanted to send any audio signal from any area into any other area of the hotel. Not an unreasonable request but managing all the local inputs from the function suite, conference rooms, bars, restaurant and the multiple sa

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UAE - World renowned lighting architect Jonathan Speirs is giving his full backing to this year's Install Middle East 2007 - a principle feature of the PALME Middle East Show in Dubai (Dubai International Exhibition Centre, May 20-22).

Part of the successful UK-based Speirs and Major Associates partnership (with Mark Major), Speirs commends the introduction of Made of Light - The Art of Light and Architecture feature which he helped to conceive, within the expanded Architectural Lighting and Interior Illumination Zone. In addition to the company's participation here, Jonathan Speirs will also be active in the exhibition's seminar programme, which will include a day of 'Lighting Masterclasses'.

The architect also praised the MELDA Lighting Design Award initiative (which he helped to structure) stating that PALME was not only recognising the convergence between entertainment and

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Norway - Vamp is one of Norway's most successful bands, and has just completed a national tour, playing on stage with the Norwegian Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra. The three-week tour of Norway's largest cities culminated in the Oslo Spektrum Arena, where VAMP delivered their unique blend of Norwegian folk, Celtic music and rock to a sell-out crowd of 8,000.

For the tour, the role of monitor engineer was filled by Espen Andersen, using one of Soundcraft's new Vi6 digital audio consoles. "A tour is the real test of a console, not what you see in the demo. The Vi6 performed perfectly on each of the 14 dates, and I thought that the sound quality was amazing."

The Vi6 is already making quite an impact in Norway, purchased by the National Theatre, and also by Oslo-based PA company Christiania Lyd. With a customer base that encompasses live music and corporate events, Chr

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UK - Shuttlesound has delivered a Midas Venice 160 audio mixing console to a rather unexpected customer, Air/Strongroom Studios. The desk is intended to service the growing clientele of Breathe Post-Production, the recently-formed joint venture between the two studios' post divisions.

The purchase comes as a result of a demo by Keith Malin of KMR Audio, requested by Air's technical manager Tim Vine-Lott. "I was looking for a desk with up to 16 channels, easy headphone monitor mixing, effects sends, stereo mix bus, which would work for Post and Music, and wouldn't cost more than £2.5k," he explains.

It took about an hour of research on the Internet to find the Midas Venice. "Although I know Midas and its reputation through live work, my main concern was the mic pre's, as we needed pre's that would work for ADR and band overdubs. We were very pleasantly surp

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  5. Hawthorn supplies Christmas party season
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