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UK - HSL once again supplied lighting and power distribution to C venues' performance spaces at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. C venues is the home to the largest theatre and new writing programme at the event, featuring a busy schedule of physical theatre, drama, comedy, dance, music, musicals, mime, opera, children's shows, visual arts and more.

HSL project manager Mike Oates worked closely with C venues' production manager Richard Williamson co-ordinating the requirements for their 16 different performance spaces spread across five buildings in central Edinburgh.

Williamson says: "HSL has been great to work with as always - they are efficient, flexible, and extremely quick at sorting anything if the need arises. They are not the cheapest option, but we wanted a quality and level of service to suit our extremely busy and demanding production schedules."

The

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Malaysia - When Peabo Bryson performed for a charity gala dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Kuala Lumpur last June, the Soundcraft Vi6 and Si3 consoles were used for front-of-house and monitor mixing. The sgow was part of the High Networth Summit and Pride Foundation Charity Gala Dinner, both of which were set up by former Malaysia Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Badwal as an initiative to support breast cancer patients.

For the event, sound company Show Gear deployed a Soundcraft Vi6 front of house console and Soundcraft Si3 monitor console, which were supplied by Soundcraft distributor Systems Electronics & Engineering.

"The Soundcraft Vi6 is easy to set up and repatch, and the usability allows even the most elementary sound engineer to programme and run any level event, even on their first use," said the Show Gear team. "The user interface is very straight

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Bulgaria - Much like its Eastern European neighbours, Bulgaria has experienced some rapid growth in the night club sector in recent years, possibly reflecting the increasing levels of disposable income among the young adult populations that typically fuel that market. Club Deluxe, in the southern city of Asenovgrad, close to Bulgaria's second largest city of Plovdiv, is a good example of the shiny new dance music clubs springing up across the country.

Located over 500sq.m split across two floor levels, Club Deluxe is open six days a week running from Monday to Saturday and caters for just about every musical genre from retro and pop to house and techno. Designed by acoustic and stage lighting specialist, Eliana Spasov, the style of the club is distinctly modern, with an arty-industrial feel to it. Low level neon and laser lighting is used carefully throughout, coupled with indus

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Europe - Linkin Park returned to Europe this July and August with selected headlining dates and festival appearances. Linkin Park carried their own board group, stage set and monitor package consisting of 10 Adamson M15 wedges and four SX18 for their on stage side-fills delivered by SSE (UK). European Adamson Y-Axis partners Livesound B AG (Switzerland) and Satis&Fy AG Werne (Germany) teamed up to support Linkin Park's non-festival dates in Switzerland and Germany.

Livesound B AG provided a complete audio package for the single indoor show of the tour in Zurich, Livesound's system engineer Sven Gerber did the initial Hallenstadion Shooter simulation, and worked closely with Linkin Park's systems engineer Chris Hoff on alignment and tuning of the system. The design featured flown L and R hangs of 12 Y18's, and six T-21 Subs per side on the ground. A total of 16 Y10's were flown a

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USA - A cantilevered Milos QuickTruss structure proved to be the solution for New York-based event production company SIA Acoustics and Madison Square Music, a popular summer concert series held in New York City's Madison Square Park.

SIA Acoustics designed the cantilevered QuickTruss structure using only two towers to suspend the roof canopy and technical systems above the stage. Instead of ballast, concrete footings poured beneath the walkway were fitted with threaded rods and QuickTruss connectors. Completely concealed when not in use, the anchors could be uncovered only when needed, the towers dropped onto the Milos connectors, and the roof then placed on top.

The structure also complements the spirit and feel of the park in many ways. The Madison Square Park Conservancy strives for a peaceful musical experience for its listeners, rather than a big rock concert production.

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UK - Cast Software has a lot in store for visitors at PLASA09. Every day during the show, Cast will host a professional wysiwyg User for attendees to meet. This relaxed format will display samples of work, Q&A time, and a chance to meet new faces. Visitors during the Guest Speaker times can enter a business card in a draw to win a free 3-month extension to an existing membership (or a special price for new software). The guests include:

Richard Cadena (Sunday), the author of Lighting Design for Modern Houses of Worship, Electricity for the Entertainment Electrician and Technician and Automated Lighting: The Art and Science of Moving Light. He is a freelance lighting designer/consultant and an Authorised wysiwyg trainer.

Mikael Berglund (Monday) who has a 30-year career in lighting design in everything from theatre and live concert tours to architectural a

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UK - Systems integrator IVC Media, has announced the completion of the communication centre for the Attenborough Studio in the Natural History Museum's Darwin Centre, opening to the public on 15 September 2009.

According to the Natural History Museum: "The opening of the Darwin Centre represents the future for the Natural History Museum as a world leader in researching the burning issues facing humans and the natural world. The Darwin Centre unleashes the Natural History Museum's life as a major science infrastructure into the public arena, offering a voice of authority on the natural world and inspiring better care of our planet."

IVC was contracted to design and implement the technology to create a 64 seat, state-of-the-art communication centre for the general public. Known as the Attenborough Studio, the project leads the way in educational presentational technolo

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Record-Breaking Fringe - The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has broken its own box office records by selling more than 1.8 million tickets. Ticket sales for the Fringe were up by 21% on last year and 9% on its previous best ever year, which was in 2007. Organisers said a drop in international visitors had been offset by a marked increase in UK audiences.

The 63rd Fringe, which ended on Monday night, was the first with new chief executive Kath Mainland at the helm. She said, "Even in tough economic conditions, festivals chime with people in a way few other events manage to. Over the past three-and-a-half weeks I have seen some amazing work, sometimes perfectly trivial and enormously entertaining, sometimes incredibly challenging and often hugely moving. I have been blown away by the creative energy, artistic vision and drive of the people taking part, from performers and director

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UAE - Taking place from the 18 - 20 April 2010, at the Dubai International Exhibition Centre, the organisers of PALME anticipate participation of over 180 exhibitors, covering 15,000sqm of floor space, from 35 countries, including three group pavilions from Taiwan, Germany and China.

A series of seminars will focus on: system integration solutions; acoustic engineering; sound reinforcement; live events; LED technologies and smart home applications, while new show features will include Innovators Gallery, showcasing cutting edge technologies and the 'Intelligent Home', a fully automated house built on the show floor. The Middle East Events Awards, recognise and reward outstanding achievement in the Middle East live events industry.

Companies are competing fiercely with the various big projects ongoing in the region; from the $20 billion King Abdulla Economic City to the new 5,0

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Taiwan - Event production experts TAO Productions put together a team to manage European entertainment interests at the opening ceremonies for The Deaflympics 2009 in two venues in Taiwan this summer.

NewSubstance Creative Agency employed the TAO Group to provide logistics support, production management, CAD planning, health & safety and event consultancy for four shows in Hsinchu and Taipei

To achieve the client brief, head of TAO Andy Cotton flew a crew to Taiwan, including TAO's Ben Price (production), Darren Wring (lighting); Steve Waddington (rigging) and Gareth Lewis (sound).

Now in its 21st year, the Deaflympics, features 20 sports, from athletics to taekwondo. The event was previously known as The World Games of the Deaf, having been granted permission by the IOC to change names in 2001.

The opening ceremonies and parades were produced by Mirag

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UK - Peavey Europe cemented its ties with major festival sponsor Jägermeister at Creamfields over the August bank holiday weekend, following a successful debut earlier in the month at Sonisphere UK. 'Fantastic, really great,' had been the verdict from Jägermeister UK's music manager, Tom Carson, after the companies' inaugural collaboration, where the 'Jäger Truck' - powered by Peavey PA - was unveiled as the fourth stage at the Knebworth event.

"Even though it was the first time we'd done it," Carson added, "nothing went wrong. The bands were happy, Kilimanjaro [Sonisphere's promoters] were happy, and the guys from Peavey were great."

Carson immediately signed Peavey for a repeat performance at Creamfields, where Jägermeister's touring stage - actually a decomissioned Russian army truck, registration number J4 GER - hosted a

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UK - With just days remaining before the PLASA09 exhibition opens its doors (13-16 September, Earls Court, London), PLASA Media has published the Show Guide online in a digital format.

Readers of Lighting&Sound International's digital edition, which has been available worldwide for the past two years, will be familiar with the freely accessible online format.

This is the first time the PLASA Show Guide has been available prior to the show, and will allow those planning on visiting PLASA09 ample opportunity to browse the exhibitors' detailed information and plan their visit in detail. The PLASA09 Guide includes full listings for all exhibitors, with a quick reference A-Z listing and floorplans to make planning your visit as straightforward as possible.

In addition to this, the Guide also features advanced information

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UK - Shoreditch-based Mexican bar and restaurant, Green & Red Bar & Cantina, has upgraded the sound system in its dedicated 220-capacity basement venue, Chamucos.

While continuing to offer its noted Jaliscan-style cooking upstairs, owners, Underdog Group, have turned to the heavily themed live venue downstairs, tasking the Sound Division Group with augmenting the sound and distributing it evenly throughout the graffiti-walled, cave-like interior.

Sound Division MD David Graham has sensitively added to the existing Martin Audio/QSC sound system to maintain continuity, servicing and reinstalling part of the equipment, to provide greater flexibility and preserve sonic integrity.

At the same time the installers have added new amps and processing as well as providing a highly-specified DJ system, a live mixing console, mics, DI Boxes and band lighting.

This is not only designed

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The Netherlands - The CineMec complex in Holland is a Cineplex which doubles as a conference centre. Housed in a contemporary building with striking architecture, the award-winning enterprise, owned by Gerben Kuipers, is located in Ede, just 50 minutes from Amsterdam.

This summer the operation made its boldest statement yet with the opening of the new 3D CineMec XL - the largest 3D screen in Holland - with 20,000W (RMS) of purpose-designed QSC cinema surround sound helping to build the atmosphere.

The auditorium can host over 1,000 visitors and some seats can be lifted to the ceiling to convert the cinema into a multi-purpose hall for concerts, congresses or similar events.

Dutch-based specialists FTT Filmtronics (FTT) based their audio specification around a matched system from QSC Audio, using a total of 44 loudspeakers.

This includes a combination of their SR-46 4 x 6.5

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UK - The current Tracy Chapman tour lightshow has been re-programmed on to the new grandMA2 platform for its European and US legs. The show - which has been out since last year and is reaching its final stages - is designed by UK-based Paul Normandale. It was originally programmed onto a grandMA full-size by Canadian lighting director/operator Graeme Nichol. Due to other commitments, he couldn't work the final sections, so the role of lighting director was assumed by Glen Johnson from the UK.

Johnson had just been using a grandMA2 light on the Maximo Park tour, and was happy running the version 2 software, while rental company Lite Alternative has also just invested in grandMA2 consoles. So he and Normandale made a joint decision to re-programme the Chapman tour onto grandMA 2.

Johnson did this using a grandMA2 full-size and a visualiser, which was particularly helpful, and it

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Russia - One of the jewels in the crown of Russian performing arts, Moscow's Central Palace for the Culture of Railway Workers (CDKG) is enjoying its 80th season of performances after a major technical refit, which included the installation of a comprehensive ASL Intercom communications system.

Built by the country's then socialist regime to provide an active, literally 'social' focus for Moscow's army of railway employees, CDKG became the professional 'home' of popular composer Isaak Dunayevsky, as well as staging a wide range of plays and concert performances.

The venue's popularity continues to the present day, playing host to a diverse array of classical and modern performances, conferences, banquets and exhibitions in its seven spaces. In 2008, the Moscow office of major Russian supply and installation company LTM Music was contracted to give the entire complex a major te

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Italy - Proel Group has launched a new Proel Group Professional Division based in Sant'Omero, Italy, focused on the complete portfolio of professional Audio, Lighting and Video products.

Turbosound and Proel Group Company has appointed this specialist team to focus on marketing the UK loudspeaker company's expanding portfolio of professional audio products to the Italian market.

Effective from 1 September 2009, a new distribution agreement means that the Italian live production and audio installation markets will see a noticeable increase in the profile, supply and technical support of Turbosound's innovative ranges of loudspeaker systems.

Staff from the Proel Group Professional Division - together with Italian rental companies Hollywood Service and Lovato - visited Turbosound's factory in August for product training, and also took in a product demo at London's Music Bank re

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World - GE Lighting is supplying LED signage to Holiday Inn in a refit which is estimated will deliver savings of $4 million annually. As part of the hotel chain's $1 billion global relaunch, more than 3,200 hotels are being updated to improve quality at Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express hotels around the world.

A redesign of the iconic brand logo required new exterior signage for over 3,200 locations. The new signage incorporates energy-efficient, long-life GE Tetra LED lighting systems, which are GE ecomagination certified solutions from Lumination, GE Consumer & Industrial's LED business.

The signage will save Holiday Inn an estimated $4.4 million annually over previous neon and fluorescent lighting ($3 million annual maintenance savings and $1.4 million energy savings). This massive signage project involves more than 20 sign manufacturers creating 9,300 channel letter an

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UK - The arts resources at Bedford Modern School are outstanding and include its v own 300 seat auditorium with modern lighting and sound facilities. It was up to Maltbury Staging to help teacher Nick Parker complement this impressive resource with a customised staging package.

Bedford Modern students regularly take part in an extensive programme of concerts, plays and exhibitions. Highlights this year were Romeo and Juliet and a choral concert of Mozart's Requiem. These ambitious productions demand complex and varied sets, which is why Nick Parker's original objectives for staging were flexibility and strength. After meeting with a representative from Maltbury Staging's sales team it was decided that the Ambideck system would be the answer.

A short time later Bedford Modern School accepted delivery of a package of Ambideck which met their strict deadline with a

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UK - Singer songwriter Dan Black, is currently touring Europe and the festival circuit with an innovative audio set up from Allen & Heath's iLive digital range.

Black's FOH engineer, Steve Pattison, has selected a compact touring system comprising an iDR-32 MixRack and a laptop loaded with iLive Editor software, which he uses as a virtual control surface. The system not only mixes FOH audio but also wedge and IEM monitor requirements.

"I'm running the iDR rack and that's it... no desk, no surface, just the stagebox, which is mounted into our onstage loopstation," says Pattison.

Pattison runs looms out of the loopstation to the band's mics and DI's and a loom into the house system so that all the mics and DI's run straight into the stagebox and from there are output to a master L&R mix and 3 wedge mixes, which are fed into the house multicore. For monitors, two line

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UK - AV Magazine, in association with Sysco and Studio Simple, will host a special presentation (free to all registered PLASA09 visitors) that looks behind the scenes of one of the year's highest-profile AV projects - the British Music Experience at London's 02 Arena.

Entitled Going Interactive At The British Music Experience - A Look Behind The Scenes With AV Magazine, the session will be held on Tuesday 15 September from 3.00pm - 4.00pm in the Whitehall Room, Earls Court Two.

The use of AV was pivotal in helping to achieve the objectives of one of the most challenging installations of this year, the British Music Experience at O2. Carried out by system integrator Sysco, working alongside Land Design and software designers Studio Simple, ISO and Clay, the installation packs in top-end kit at almost every turning to incorporate the audio and the visual into a sea

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UK - The newest addition to the Audient console family, the Zen is the focus of a UK tour organised by distributor SCV London, where the next stop will be music technology retailer Digital Village in Clapham, SW London.

At the 23 September event at Digital Village, visitors will have chance to pick the brains of Audient's product specialist, Steve Flower.

Starting at 2pm and running through till early evening, Zen will be on show alongside other products from the Audient range. Flower says: "Zen is such a great console, it's important to get as many people in front of it as possible. We're looking forward to getting users excited about using Zen to lift their whole experience of recording up to a new level."

Launched at this year's Pro Light & Sound exhibition in Frankfurt, Zen is a compact, classic recording and mixing console, combining analogue mixing technology

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UK - D.L. Electronics, Northern Ireland, has recently installed a Duran Audio AXYS Intellivox system in St Patrick's Church, Dungannon.

St Patrick's was designed by J.J.McCarthy, one of the most notable Irish architects in the 19th century, and the building was dedicated on Trinity Sunday, 11 June 1876. The church is 130ft long, 65ft wide and 60ft high and the new sound system, installed by D.L Electronics, was part of a £5 million refurbishment of the church which started in 2007. The project was not only about refurbishment and repair, but also a work of restoration and conservation.

David Dalzell, owner of D.L.Electronics reports: "We have been installing Intellivox products in highly reverberant spaces now since 2002, in my opinion it's the only choice when you're faced with a difficult acoustic. Their ability to steer the beam onto the audience and reduce the r

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The Netherlands - Madonna's Sticky and Sweet tour was a dazzling show even by the usual technically pace-setting standards of Madonna's live productions. A large XLNT CyberHoist intelligent motor system was responsible both for animating the opening seconds of the show and a multitude of complex screen and lighting movements throughout the evening.

Showcasing mostly the same material as the 2008 tour, Madonna added some new numbers, a standout moment being a tribute to Michael Jackson, with one of her dancers performing the Moonwalk in full Jacko regalia.

The largest screens were controlled by XLNT's InMotion3D software running on a CyberHoist FPS Full Production System with dual Apple MacPros, in the hands of senior programmer and project manager Martin Hoop or his deputy Erik Gielen. The action began with a giant video cube that opened the show displaying a replica of

  1. MAC 250 Beams added to Coldplay production
  2. Major expansion at Robe Lighting
  3. L-Acoustics system reinforces Chongqing Grand
  4. Sennheiser golf day raises £17,000 for charity
  5. grandMA2 on course in South Africa
  6. Bose goes al fresco in Heddon Street
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