France - Along with St. Moritz and Kitzbühel, the French ski resort of Courchevel is one of the favourite playgrounds of the international jet set - a fact to which the presence there in recent years of Prince William, George Clooney and Robbie Williams is testimony enough. One of the most chic restaurants in the resort, without question, is Le Cape Horn, which, at an altitude of 2,100m, boasts an outstanding location, first-class cuisine and a peaceful ambience.

The sense of perfect wellbeing in Le Cape Horn owes much, naturally, to the sound system. To offer its highly demanding clientele the finest possible acoustic fare, the restaurant's managers invested recently in a new distributed sound system from Electro-Voice. This serves the 1,250sq.m outside terrace as well as the interior of the restaurant. The design and realisation of the installation was the work of the Paris-b

USA - Opened early in 2013, San Francisco's SFJAZZ Centre is the first performance and education complex in America that was built from the ground up exclusively for jazz. At the centre's heart is the world-class Robert N. Miner Auditorium, which strikes a meticulous balance between the hall's controlled natural acoustics and the transparent audio reproduction by Meyer Sound's MIna line array loudspeakers.

The design of the audio system and the room's physical acoustics presented a challenge to Sam Berkow, founder and principal of SIA Acoustics.

"SFJAZZ wanted the ultimate room for musicians to play in, for the audience to listen, and for engineers to record," Berkow says. "To do it all in a relatively small space that allowed flexible seating for up to 700 wasn't easy."

As the hall's natural acoustics are designed to carry the stage sound into the audien

UK - After taking Ibiza by storm this summer, Hot Creations brought their Ibiza party to London for a special Paradise event at Brixton's O2 Academy on 13April 2013.

This in-demand event featured the live debut of Hot Natured, the collective of Jamie Jones, Lee Foss, Luca C and Ali Love. Latest single Benediction has become one of this year's biggest dance tunes, and their debut album and live shows are set to be one of the significant stories in electronic music in 2013. DJ support came from Jamie Jones, Lee Foss, Richy Ahmed, Infinity Ink and PBR Street Gang.

PRG's Andrew Strachan worked alongside Ben Pound, director of Futureline Events to supply lighting, media server and creative LED. Gregory Douglas was overall project manager and Chris Scott was crew chief.

Cameron Bannister worked with Strachan and Pound to design a complex array of 50 x 1500mm and 12 x 375mm

UK - Multi award-winning lighting designer, Tim Routledge, chose to specify Clay Paky 800W Alpha Spot QWO 800 luminaires to deliver an intense sparkle to British singer Gary Barlow's glittering UK tour.

Routledge, known for his work with Madonna, Katherine Jenkins and Sterophonics, specified 26 powerful Alpha Spot QWO 800s, supplied by Neg Earth, praising them as 'superb optic spots, perfect for cutting through LED'.

"I specifically picked the QWO800s having used them on the Queen's Jubilee Concert," says Routledge. "For the Gary Barlow tour we were playing theatres and smaller concert venues and I really wanted as bright a spot as I could find in the smallest body - I really dislike seeing big ugly fixtures spoiling the architecture of a show or a venue. The QWOs really fitted that bill - they are small, compact and extremely bright and moreover the optics on t

World - Avolites Media's Ai Media Server is delivering fast moving evocative visuals on The Script's sell out arena world tour. Conceived by award winning lighting designer Jamie Thompson, in collaboration with members of the band and creative London based content producers Immersive, the show visuals are operated by US based Jeffrey Brown.

"The theme of '3' - reflecting the album and tour titles - was very important, and dictated much of the layout of LED fingers and stage graphics," says Thompson. "The Ai is being used to power a mixture of live camera feeds, video and visual content onto the main back video wall, and over the three, three-dimensional LED screens, which are embedded in the stage floor and run above the stage to reach into the audience like outstretched fingers. After witnessing the power of Ai at previous events, I knew we could create a stunnin

Austria - For two weeks in February it was all downhill for the Austrian town of Schladming, as the Alpine World Ski Championships provided thrills, spills and plenty of entertainment. Broadcaster Euro TV subcontracted Hannover-based TVN Mobile Production to supply outside broadcast facilities for the men's course, which included a Yamaha CL3 digital system.

The Championships featured 650 skiers from 70 nations taking part in 11 events. Including the opening ceremony and training runs, TVN delivered 50 hours of live production over 14 days. With over 100 microphones and 98 cameras, many located from the top to the bottom of the men's course, the broadcast was both a technical and logistical challenge.

TVN is renowned for providing cutting-edge technology and staff for broadcasting projects for nearly 30 years and the company installed the CL3 to handle submixes in its TVN-UE2H

USA - Movie theatre powerhouse Regal Entertainment Group recently held its General Manager Conference at the Knoxville Convention Centre. The three-day conference started on 8 April and included sneak peeks into upcoming theatrical releases, presentations varying from safety and marketing, and insight into best business practices.

With 6,854 screens in 537 theatres at the time of this writing, Regal Entertainment Group is the largest and most geographically diverse theatre circuit in the country, and required a lighting design befitting the royally inspiring name.

Lighting designer Giff Swart adeptly created a massive design that imitated Regal's crown logo. Fifty-nine Chauvet colour dash accents illuminated the trussing with the red, yellow, blue and green colours surrounding the crown.

"I wanted to give them something a little more than just a utilitarian structure to

USA - Mohegan Sun, one of New England's top destinations, has purchased a number of Clay Paky GlowUp portable, battery-powered luminaries.

Located in Uncasville, Connecticut, Mohegan Sun offers gaming in three casinos, fine dining, luxury accommodations, retail shopping, live entertainment and sporting events. Attractions include an indoor 55ft waterfall, electrifying water wall and the world's largest indoor planetarium dome. Entertainment venues are a 10,000-seat Arena, 350-seat Cabaret Theatre and 300-seat Wolf Den.

"We chose Clay Paky GlowUps because we do a lot of events on the fly in various locations," says Brian Horne, lead lighting technician for sports and entertainment at Mohegan Sun. "We were looking for a wireless LED that we could connect to a console. One challenge is that since we're a casino, WiFi can interfere with some of our equipment. The Gl

USA - When visitors come to the new TELUS Spark Science Centre (formerly the TELUS World of Science) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, they'll not only be awed by the sights inside the 153,000sq.ft facility, with its four exhibit galleries and 164-seat Presentation Theatre, but they'll also be thrilled by the sounds, thanks to several systems that utilize RoomMatch loudspeakers and PowerMatch amplifiers from Bose Professional Systems Division.

Faced with a new space that was visually stunning but acoustically problematic due to the extensive use of hard, reflective surfaces such as glass and wood, TELUS Spark management knew they needed a special solution - one that could offer a high degree of intelligibility yet at the same time be as unobtrusive as possible to maintain the new facility's sleek visuals. Once Martin Topp, Western Canada manager for Bose Professional Systems, put Bos

UK - West Midlands-based live video specialist Central Presentations Ltd (CPL) supplied video design, equipment and crew - including widescreen projections, cameras and PPU - to Telecom Plus's annual two-day sales conference which was attended by over 7000 people.

The CPL team headed by Simon Haydon and Lee Gruszeckyj worked closely with Jeff Whiteley from the show's producers, Inteva Productions, for the event, staged in Hall 1 of the Telford International Centre.

Inteva Productions has worked with CPL on this event since 2008 when it was a one day show for 3000 delegates. As the sales have increased and business has expanded, it has now progressed into two days with identical content with over 3500 delegates each day.

"The look of the event had remained the same for a number of years although the technical element became more ambitious each year," explains Whitel

The Netherlands - Amsterdam Light Festival is calling on artists, architects and engineers from across the globe to submit designs for the second edition of Amsterdam Light Festival. The festival will be held from 28 November 2013 until 19 January 2014 in downtown Amsterdam, with 'Building with light' as its central theme.

The proclamation of this call for concepts also constitutes the start signal for professionals in the international art, design and architecture industry to submit their own interpretations of 'building with light'.

Curator and artistic leader of the festival, Rogier van der Heide states, "We want to demonstrate the importance of light in all its facets, to the city but to mankind as well. We want to start Building with Light, but not just in the architectural sense. Because we also want to build an experience and invite artists to explore the materiali

USA / Europe - After a four-year hiatus, The Killers returned to action last year with a new album, Battle Born. This year the tour continues and the band are playing live shows across Europe, the USA, Canada and South America. With a lighting rig full of Martin Professional luminaires, ahead of its official launch, the company's latest MAC Viper AirFX fixture is giving the shows added visual bite.

The tour's lighting and video designer Steven Douglas has been working with The Killers for over eight years. Juxtaposing the band members' onstage proximity with their desire for an 'open' look - plus the fact that there are several different possible versions of each song - presents both challenges and opportunities for the lighting design.

"The lighting is quite strong, it's not very pop," says Steven. "They wanted a wide open, Springsteen-esque kind of stag

Norway - Amas Producksjon is the latest distributor to join the Adamson team. They announced their new partnership while at Prolight+Sound this year. The Norwegian company started as a booking agent in the early 90's but quickly grew to include equipment rental, and in 2004 they began sales and distribution of top brands in the pro audio world.

Amas specialises in turn-key pro audio solutions in both the sales and rental markets. These services include everything from rental to full sound design, installation and 24hr service to their clients in installation and live touring markets.

CEO Morten Paulsen says, "Our main focus is always to create good complete, turn-key solutions for our customers, combining different products to suit each customer's specific need." The addition of Adamson products to their 'line card' paired with Powersoft Audio amplifiers will give th

UK - Creative Technology (CT) will be the first customer to take delivery of the new 8mm Outdoor LED product launched at Pro Light and Sound by Barco's specialist LED division LiveDots.

The new 8mm product is lightweight, low profile and silent in operation due to its fan-less design. With full outdoor brightness and high contrast to ensure optimal operation in direct sunlight, the product has been specifically developed by LiveDots in consultation with CT to service the companies growing portfolio of high profile sports events.

The C8 investment follows CT's successful introduction of the C5 and specially developed C16 as its mainstream indoor LED platform in early 2012. The C5 has established itself as the High Resolution product others are judged against and CT expect the C8 to be similarly successful. The new product is expected to arrive at CT in May and will immediately

UK - Two Allen & Heath iLive digital mixing systems and a total of 12 new ME-1 personal mixers were used by PA company, APR, to manage monitors for a large gospel event recently held at London's Royal Festival Hall.

Called Sing Inspiration!, the two day festival organised by iGospel, an inspirational music project providing vocal and music tutoring, songwriting, audio production and event management training predominantly for children. The 2013 event featured a London-based 500-strong mass choir and various other mass soul and gospel choirs from across the UK, Europe and USA, all backed by the renowned igmusic band, with special guest appearances by Jaz Ellington (star of BBC's The Voice), Israel J Allen, and MOBO award-winning gospel star, Rachel Kerr.

Taunton based PA rental company, APR Audio, provided the audio system, selecting an iLive-144 system handling g

South Africa - In celebration of Afrikaans punk rock band Fokofpolisiekar's 10th anniversary, Emperors Palace in Johannesburg played host to FaKing - "120 minutes of mind-blowing musical experience" by the multi-award winning rock bands Fokofpolisiekar and FaKing, formed by Fokofpolisiekar's Hunter Kennedy and Jaco 'Snakehead' Venter.

The show was held on 16 March at the Centre Court of the 'Vegas of Africa'. One of South Africa's leading rental companies, Sound Stylists was commissioned to provide a full turnkey solution for this epic event, and provided a Coda Audio Airline LA12 system to make sure this explosive performance was heard to full effect. The Centre Court's low roof - approximately 4m in height - and a drop-off at around 30m from the stage offered a few technical challenges for event.

"The usual solution for this would be the use of delay to

South Africa - Latest buzz on the musical theatre wires is that the newly opened Jersey Boys at the Teatro, Montecasino in Johannesburg is "absolutely unmissable". Fresh from its Singapore tour- where the show played to rapt audiences at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore - the show opened in South Africa on 3 April 2013 for a 10-week run.

A variety of rental companies from USA, Europe, Australia and South Africa quoted on technical supply for the production and the lighting equipment and staffing contract was awarded to South African theatre rental company, Gearhouse Splitbeam for the Asian and South African legs of the tour. The sound, LED, automation and rigging packages were all brought in from the USA.

Splitbeam's managing director, Alistair Kilbee took on the role of technical director and along with Splitbeam operators, Clement Makama, Simon Mashebane and

The Netherlands - At ProLight+Sound, Frankfurt, Duran Audio BV announced its schedule for their AXYS Acoustic Modelling & Product Training Events. Duran Audio offers free training on its range of Intellivox products, as well as on acoustic modelling, basic electro-acoustics and system design. This year's training events will be held at Duran Audio's R&D centre in Zaltbommel, The Netherlands on Tuesday 14 and Wednesday 15 May 2013 and also at InfoComm, Orlando, Florida on Monday 10 and Tuesday 11 June 2013.

Although the courses are primarily targeted for consultants and contractors involved in designing and installing AXYS systems they also offer those people who wish to learn more about acoustic modelling and system design a real insight into the technology of beam steering and beam shaping products and the advantages derived through their use.

(Jim Evans)

USA - Ashly Audio, maker of powerful, high-performance, cost-effective signal processors and amplifiers, have licensed Dante digital media networking solution from Audinate.

"Ashly Audio is known in the industry as a leader in networked power amplification and signal processing, addressing multiple professional audio applications," says director of sales at Audinate, Dave Anderson. "We are pleased that Ashly has recognized Dante as the most interoperable networking solution available, and look forward to a range of products as they come to market."

President of Ashly Audio, Mark Wentling, comments: "Ashly is excited to be able to offer our customers yet another option in digital connectivity for our DSP processors and DSP enabled power amplifiers. Dante from Audinate currently brings the best in flexible, yet robust digital audio transport, to the pro-

Sweden - Wireless Solution Sweden AB has announced that Imlight LL Company, with offices in Moscow and Kirov, has been named distributor for W-DMX products in Russia.

Imlight is a steadily growing manufacturer and distributor of professional sound, light and stage equipment with over 20 years' experience. Services include manufacturing of professional sound, light and electronic equipment, movable stage pavilions, aluminium truss constructions, stage mechanics and clothing of the stage; distribution of professional light and sound equipment; design, delivery, installation, commissioning, and technical support; and architectural illumination.

The partnership is a strategic move for Wireless Solution, having recently invested heavily in a new approval for Russia, being the first company outside Russia that has import approval to Russia as well as an import license, with Russia p

UK - Capital Sound has been appointed the audio supplier for the Main Stage at the AEG-Barclaycard British Summer Time Concerts in London's Hyde Park. Taking place between 5 and 14 July, two headline shows by the Rolling Stones and one by Bon Jovi have already been confirmed, with further high profile acts to be announced.

It is the first year that AEG has promoted the shows and that Capital Sound has been asked to undertake this high profile role. The company is understandably delighted by the appointment.

"We are very pleased to have been asked by AEG to provide the sound for the Hyde Park main stage, utilising the Martin Audio MLA system and DiGiCo consoles," says Capital Sound project manager Martin Connolly. "Following extensive listening tests, the system was chosen thanks to its exceptional controllability and audio quality. We know it will perform extrem

USA - Axxis, Inc. of Louisville, Kentucky, has developed a versatile presentation and reveal set using Martin EC Series LED video panels as its main visual element. The set, made up of a curved LED wall turntable and LED columns, can be used for a variety of purposes, including product, speaker or band reveals and was inspired by the Axxis design team, led by Stewart Davis.

The system was conceived in early December as Stewart was flying back from a client visit in Tampa. "Their directive was to 'push the design envelope' and at 30,000ft, inspiration hit," explains Davis.

As the circle on a coffee-stained napkin morphed into a turntable, Stewart then imagined placing an LED wall on the turntable and curving it. "Then we thought, what if we flanked the turntable with more LED and put it on traveller track to have even more reveal and endless walk-on opportunities

UK - Entertainment industry training centre Backstage Academy has announced a new two-year BA Visual Production course, which will launch at its Wakefield facility in January 2014 (subject to validation).

Developed in conjunction with a range of industry partners including d3 and Fix8, the course is the first of its kind dedicated to the emerging convergence of visuals and lighting. It's designed to meet the demand for skilled visual professionals that can take a project through from the concept and design stage to the final application, using the right tools for the job.

Based on a workflow developed by d3, the course will teach students the personal skills needed to work successfully in the visual production industry worldwide, equip them with the ability to interpret a client's creative scope, supply a design response, understand how far technology can be stretched to meet

Finland - Genelec is reaffirming its environmentally conscious philosophy by dedicating itself to a renewed long-term green initiative, which will see the introduction of new products and revised, more energy-efficient versions of the existing product line, in addition to other company policies.

Genelec management has always strived to adhere to efficient manufacturing and shipping methods, and in fact the very concept of active monitors is at its core more energy-efficient than passive monitor/amplifier combination setups. Environmental consciousness is also a large part of the culture of Genelec's homeland Finland, with the country commonly ranking among the world's greenest.

Will Eggleston, Genelec marketing director, stated: "We believe people do care about the future of the planet, and Genelec has given serious thought about how we can more substantially participate

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