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South Africa - The first season of the new television musical competition, Varstrap, aired on KykNet (DSTV), has just come to an end. It is set in a cellar at Lourensford Wine Farm in Somerset West where contestants compete for the best boere orkes (band).

Joshua Cutts of Visual Frontier designed the set and lighting, which had to be appropriate for television viewing. Travis Yeatman programmed and operated the show on an Avolites Tiger Touch. He flew to Cape Town every weekend where rehearsals were followed by a recording of the show.

Four bands competed every week. Two stages were erected on either end of the cellar with the judges and audience seated in the centre of the room. The lighting comprising of Robe Colorspot 575s, parcans, Philips Selecon Profiles and LED strips, was fairly simple and mostly to light up the props and create the warm, traditional type atmosp

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UK - Ian Kirby turned exclusively to the SGM catalogue for all his automated beam effects for Wonderland.

The lighting needed to be sufficiently versatile to cater for an entertainment programme ranging from comedy to burlesque, contortionists and acrobats to high-octane dance within a multi-role venue targeted at a slightly older age demographic. At the same time guests needed to feel they were interacting within a TV reality-type set.

"I think this was one of the reasons Steve [Thomas]contacted us," noted Kirby. "We have worked extensively in TV studio lighting, and it's programmes like X-Factor that audiences these days are used to seeing. SGM heads are perfect because they are quiet running, fully featured and produce beams of saturated colour."

Leading the charge are 10 new SGM X-5 white LED strobes - a revolutionary break from the traditional

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The Netherlands - Rotterdamse Schouwburg, which plays host to a wide variety of performances from every major Dutch theatre, dance and opera company, has recently increased its inventory of Robert Juliat zoom profiles with the purchase of 34 RJ 614SX 16° - 35° fixtures from distributor, LightCo, of the Netherlands.

The 879-seat venue's stock of aging profiles needed to be replaced so, knowing the Robert Juliat reputation for optical excellence, Joost van den Hil, lighting specialist for the Main Auditorium, organised a shootout and approached LightCo's Bas van Schelven who took along the RJ 614SX 1kW fixtures.

In addition to meeting the all-important optical criteria, the Robert Juliat profiles also excelled with their build quality and mechanical superiority: "The mechanics are solid, the shutters stay straight, even after long term use, and the shutter lock work

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Germany - The total donated at this year's Wolkenschieber (Cloud Pusher) charity ball held in Bremen's Maritim Hotel & Congress Centre exceeded the record set by the 2009-event. Following a five-course dinner, the 600 generous attendees were treated to a sophisticated entertainment programme.

The high point of the evening's festivities was the Flash & Flow laser show put on by tarm Showlaser, in collaboration with the Extra Energy dance ensemble, under the artistic direction of Wolfram Lenssen.

The team presented an audio-visual interpretation of the evening's theme, illustrating the motivation and history of the Wolkenschieber initiative in a series of scenes involving varied moods and dark clouds that finally disappeared and were replaced by the sun.

The Wolkenschieber initiative was founded by Joke Event AG in 2007 and supports local charitable organizations and as

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Germany - Hallescher FC is one of the most successful clubs in Germany's Regional League North. The club has great sporting ambitions - as can be seen also in the club's infrastructure. The best example of this is the club's new stadium, which was completed in September 2011.

The Erdgas Sportpark, as it is known, has a seating capacity of over 15,000 and includes eight boxes, 320 business seats and 30 places for the handicapped. After the first match in the new stadium, against Hamburger SV of the Bundesliga on 20 September, the club was able to report a full house. Three days prior to this, local inhabitants were given an opportunity to admire the city's new sporting landmark at an open door event to celebrate the completion of the project.

To compete in the highest leagues from the standpoint of sound technology as well, the city of Halle commissioned the construction compan

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France - October and November 2011 saw the fourth consecutive successful International Festival of Dance & Performance Arts (IFDPA) and International Gathering of Scottish Highland Dance (IGSHD) at Disneyland Paris.

Both events, organised and managed by Yorkshire event company Take Us 2 The Magic, gathered more than 40 dance schools from around the world performing and competing in front of hundreds of people. In total, more than 250 acts per event performed on the main stage located in the prestigious Disneyland Paris resort.

Take Us 2 The Magic approached Rosco as they needed a transportable yet durable floor which can take any type of dance (tap, freestyle, Ballet etc). Rosco supplied 160m (enough to cover 20m x 12m stage area) of the Adagio Tour chosen from the extensive range of performance floors Rosco is offering.

Adagio Tour is a vinyl surface which is specially suit

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USA - Open house receptions are nothing new at Gemini Light, Sound & Video. The Dallas-based lighting and production company holds them annually to showcase its inventory and services and educate its customers. But this year's event, held 16-17 November, was extra special for a couple reasons: it marked Gemini's 30th anniversary in business; and it gave many customers their first view of the company's recently expanded 76,000sq.ft warehouse.

Nearly 250 existing and prospective clients attended the two-day open house, which took place in a section of the warehouse set up to replicate a theatre.

"Back by popular demand, we set up a 'black box theatre' demo area to achieve an actual production space within our working warehouse," said Cassidi Cain of Gemini. This allowed customers to see some of the company's newer lighting and video products in action as they would app

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UK - The Coemar Infinity ACL beam projector made an appearance on a recent edition of the BBC's Later with Jools Holland, backing the Mercury- and Brit-nominated band Friendly Fires for lighting director Chris Rigby.

"We gave the units a gentle run on Later, where they performed very well." Rigby comments. "The most striking thing about them, to my eyes, was the bright and vibrant colours they offered. They were more than bright enough for High Definition studio cameras. We liked the iris feature, which makes the Coemar unit more versatile than others in its class, and obviously we liked the gobo selection, which makes the fixture a lot less one dimensional. In short, we liked them."

The Infinity ACL is Coemar's moving-light re-invention of the classic, intense ACL beam effect. It offers CMY+CTO colour mixing plus a five-slot colour wheel that

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USA - When Northern Kentucky University (NKU) decided to implement a school-wide 'green' initiative, lighting designer Terry Powell leapt at the opportunity, and worked with Adam Hayward at Vincent Lighting Systems to overhaul his lighting rig with 24 PL3 Wash luminaires from Philips Selecon and a Palette VL control console from Philips Strand Lighting.

"In the past, my boss and I had been talking about LED technology and all the benefits we would get by using it in the theatre," began Powell. "So when the University established a pool of money that was to be used for sustainability, we jumped at the opportunity to put together a proposal, and contacted our longtime friends at Vincent Lighting Systems to get the project going."

"Vincent Lighting is very proud to have been involved with NKU for a number of years," added Hayward. "We first beca

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Singapore - Clear-Com is enabling flawless communications for the Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay in Singapore's Marina Bay. The performance complex relies on Clear-Com's FreeSpeak and Tempest 2400 wireless systems to ensure smooth, reliable communications across its four major indoor venues and outdoor theatre, covering a variety of events, including theatrical productions, classical concerts and performances by pop and rock artists.

Clear-Com's FreeSpeak and Tempest2400 enable the Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay to provide touring companies and other performers hiring the venues with the no-fail communications necessary for managing productions across its four major performance spaces.

These spaces include a 1,600-seat concert hall (the facility's premiere venue), a 2,000-seat theatre, a recital studio and a theatre studio. Although their existing legacy Clear-Com partyline

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USA - A long overdue renovation of the lobby and atrium at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas, began shortly after it was announced that the Hilton Anatole would be the NFL headquarters hotel for the XLV Super Bowl.

R2W's Dallas office was tapped to handle the design and installation of a new sound system for the atrium as well as other system required by the renovation.

The renovation consisted of gutting the existing lobby of the 1,606 room hotel and creating a new 11 story high atrium that features a prominent water element and new Media Grill + Bar. The 11,000 square foot space required an unobtrusive, distributed sound system for music playback in the area.

The hotel design team placed 25 custom light fixtures throughout the area and allocated space within the fixtures for loudspeakers.

"Our job was to come up with a system that would provide the audio qua

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Columbia - Audio Concept CA, distributor for the Prolyte Group in Venezuela and Colombia, has recently added the Prolyte i-line range to its package of products and services.

With both the addition of a new office in Bogotá, Colombia and the opening of a vast new showroom in their Margarita offices, Audio Concept is steadily spreading the success of their company.

The addition of the i-line range to their package of Prolyte products is another step in answering the demands of their customers and local partners, says the company. "Bringing professional products, like Prolyte, into the market at affordable prices is an enormous stimulus. The introduction of the i-line range underlines the importance of not only supplying quality products at the best prices, but also backing this up with excellent availability and the best service and support you can get.

The first contai

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World - Judas Priest, one of the most renowned and influential heavy metal groups, has embarked on what the band is calling its final world tour, with abundant support from Meyer Sound equipment and supplier Major Tom Limited. Judas Priest's Epitaph tour has included Europe, South America, Mexico, and 35 stops in Canada and the US (wrapping up 3 December in Biloxi, Mississippi). The next stop is Japan in early 2012.

The Meyer Sound system includes 48 MIlo line array loudspeakers, 24 700-HP and four 600-HP subwoofers, three M'elodie line array loudspeakers, and six MJF-212A stage monitors.

"It's a very full sound," says production manager and front-of-house engineer Martin Walker, who has been with Judas Priest for more than a decade. "Milo is a consistent-sounding box. I try and keep the system as flat as I can, and the coverage is great and very even. Wh

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UK - Production for Will Young's recent sold-out UK Echoes tour was provided by Britannia Row Productions who deployed part of their extensive Outline inventory for the project.

The main system comprised an 18 per-side configuration of Butterfly CDH 483 enclosures, with two Mantas 120-degree cabinets under-hung as down-fills. A dozen Outline Subtech dual 18" subwoofers provided low-frequency reinforcement and the whole system was driven by Outline T Series amplifiers.

System technician Dave Compton said: "This system is so modular and light it is perfect for these venues as we can fly lots of boxes from a single point and not have to worry too much about the weight limit. I have used it now for five years and it never fails to impress me."

FOH engineer Davide Lombardi confirmed: "It always sounds great - I am using a DiGiCo SD8 and record every nig

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Israel - L-Acoustics' Israeli distributor Lightone has supplied a Kiva ultra-compact modular WST line source system to the 950-capacity Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv.

The Cameri theatre uses L-Acoustics coaxial products for its touring productions. Having found themselves happy with the brand's audio quality, ease and reliability, it was decided to specify it for the theatre refit, replacing an older system that couldn't cope with the more demanding productions.

Independent sound designer Eytan Gidron created the system together with L-Acoustics' tech support engineer Germain Simon, using the company's proprietary Soundvision 3D acoustic simulation software. Nine Kiva and three Kilo low frequency extensions per side have been flown as the main left/right 'music' system. Below each array is a single 112P self powered coaxial speaker, used to bring down the sound image and fill the

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Denmark - Set amid the pastoral greenery of Denmark's Birker°d village, Mantziusgården Culture Centre has recently upgraded its venerable Meyer Sound UPA-1 loudspeakers of 21 years to a JM-1P arrayable loudspeaker system. Stouenborg of Kastrup, Denmark handled the sound system design and installation.

Introduced three decades apart from each other, Mantziusgården's new self-powered JM-1P system and its previous conventionally powered UPA-1 loudspeakers are both point source systems from Meyer Sound. "As a company, Meyer Sound is built on an appreciation for excellent sound," says Thomas Normann L°ve, the venue's resident sound engineer. "This commitment is clearly heard in the exceptional performance of our Meyer Sound equipment."

With a seating capacity of 750 patrons, the intimate Mantziusgården Culture Centre stages a remarkably diverse array

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Germany - As the indie rock band Incubus prepared to launch their 2011 world tour in Berlin, Germany, lighting designer Robb Jibson stood ready to unveil both some old and new tricks. Having been the band's designer since 2005, Jibson was familiar with how the music and lighting should blend together, but this year he also had a new look that no audience had seen before. To help him achieve his latest design, Jibson relied upon Vari*Lite automated luminaires from Philips Vari-Lite, supplied by Upstaging and HSL (Europe).

"Having worked in the industry as a designer and technician, I am familiar with the complete product line and I have always been a fan of the Vari*Lite colour," began Jibson. "I mostly default to Vari*Lite fixtures on my projects because of their optical clarity and color systems, but on this tour I chose them for a few other reasons as well.

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Australia - With Phase One of Project Energia well under way, Adamson along with CMI Music and Audio has announced that Norwest Productions has joined the group of beta partners with the purchase of an E15 beta system to service the Australasian market.

Chris Kennedy, founder of Norwest Productions who already own a large inventory of Adamson including Y18's, Y10's and T21's, states, "Our Adamson Y18/Y10 systems are our flagship premium systems and demand for them is always very strong. This is an opportunity we could not pass up."

CMI Music and Audio has had quite a success in achieving market penetration since becoming Australian & New Zealand distributors of Adamson, supplying systems to rental companies and facilitating several installations into churches, not least is one of the world's largest permanent installations at Hillsong Church's headquarters in Baulkha

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Norway - Barco reports that entertainment equipment rental company AVAB CAC selected 17 Barco's event projectors and 100 MiSTRIP creative LED strips to support the Nobel Peace Prize Concert on Sunday, 11 December. This year's edition was co-hosted by Helen Mirren and Rosario Dawson and featured artists such as Evanescence, Ellie Goulding, Jill Scott and many others.

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in the world. Every year, the ceremony takes place on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, and is followed by the Nobel Peace Prize Concert the day after. Featuring an international selection of musical artists and celebrity hosts, the concert honours the Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

The concert is held every year at the Oslo Spektrum Arena in the centre of Oslo. The customized three-tiered stage was able to host 50 singers and musicians a

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UK - The fourth annual PLASA Focus: Leeds event launches today with a new website and a sold out floor-plan. The leading event for audio, video, lighting and staging technology in the north of England will be held on 17-18 April 2012, at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds.

Long-standing exhibitors such as White Light, Martin Audio, Martin Professional, J&C Joel, Shure, Avolites, Stage Electrics, Robe, Sennheiser, Hawthorn Theatrical and Clay Paky have been joined by a raft of new exhibitors, including Bose, d&b audiotechnik, LSC Lighting Systems, Midas, Topdeck Stage Systems, Pete Smith Inspections, JoeCo, Amber Sound, Audio Logic, English Braids, Experience Lighting, Isophase Audio, The Lectern Company, Showtex, Smoke Factory, CLD Distribution, ADB, Wirelessled.co.uk and Total Solutions.

Packed aisles and major UK product debuts have firmly established PLASA Focus as an unmi

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UK - Blackout provided a comprehensive truss structure to help organisers extend facilities at the 2011 Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, 20-27 November.

The atmosphere reached fever pitch with a record quarter of a million fans in London's O2 Arena enjoying Roger Federer's victory as the world's eight top seeds competed over the eight day tournament. More than 100 million global viewers watched the event on television and online.

Blackout worked closely with client Detail Management to create an interactive Fan Zone visitor experience, meeting the specifications of both the ATP organisers and the official tournament sponsors Barclays.

Tom Lambert, Blackout's project manager coordinated with Detail Management's managing director Jim Mason to install 800m of Prolyte H30V Truss and screen support, 95 corner pieces with 63 support legs and additional black drapes. The Fan Zone wa

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UK - Over 250 people attended this year's joint ETC/Association of British Theatre Technicians (ABTT) Christmas party at London's Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. The theatre's Grand Saloon saw some of the leading people in the theatre industry, including theatre consultants and owners, architects, lighting designers, system specifiers and technicians.

Mark White, chairman of the ABTT and also regional manager for UK and Ireland at ETC, says, "The ABTT is now 51 years old, and throughout its history, has always campaigned on behalf of the theatre industry to ensure legislation is appropriate to the industry's needs. The annual Christmas party - which, itself, is in its 10th year, is a great opportunity for all manner of theatre people to get together for an informal chat over a glass of wine."

(Jim Evans)

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Armenia - December saw 13 acts from across Europe convene on the Armenian capital Yerevan for the ninth Junior Eurovision Song Contest. Won by Georgian 'girl group' Candy, a pair of Apex Intelli-X2 processors ensured that the sound hit the sweet spot throughout.

The show took place at the Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concerts Complex on 3 December. Stockholm-based Electrosound AB used the venue's Meyer audio system to deliver the front of house sound, but brought all their own electronics and processing equipment, including a pair of Apex Intelli-X2 processors.

"We used the Intelli-X2 processors because they have dynamics processing on the inputs and outputs, a more flexible matrix and much better options for creating and controlling crossovers," says Electrosound's Brollan Söderström.

"They fit my way of working. I'm not forced to used fixed, inflexible spea

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USA - Chauvet reports that Amnesia Miami, a former staple in the South Beach club scene, is back in business. After months of renovations, the multi-level nightclub became a state-of-the-art venue featuring 87 Chauvet fixtures.

Hundreds of partygoers flocked to the newly redesigned, 26,000sq.ft hot spot on Miami Beach to hear DJ Bob Sinclair, also co-owner of Amnesia Miami, rock the beats and take part in the nightclub's grand reopening celebration. The once open-air venue now features a roof, a vast dance floor, 70 VIP tables, two private VIP sections and revamped sound and lighting systems.

Michael Stone, vice president for HMS Inc specified the incorporation of 30 COLORado 2 Tour, 30 COLORdash Accent, eight COLORado 1 IP and seven COLORado 3p IP wash lights. Lighting designer Maxime Moussier created Amnesia Miami's extensive, yet intricate, lighting design.

The club's out

  1. Dynacord debuts specialist network
  2. VQ Series in Baltimore Church
  3. DTS debuts compact, lightweight moving head
  4. Singapore's School of the Arts opts for Clay Paky
  5. Institute achieves JAMES accreditation
  6. D.A.S. Audio deployed at Elon University
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