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Slovenia - Accordionist Jure Tori is using DPA Microphones' d:vote 4099 Instrument Mics to bring extra energy and quality to the sound he achieves on stage. The internationally acclaimed musician recently bought two d:votes from DPA's Slovenian distributor, Sonus, and is now using them for all of his live performances.

A charismatic musician, Tori has performed on stage all over the world, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with other musicians, such as Austrian double bass player Ewald Oberleitner and guitarist Ariel Cubria. He also plays as part of the group Orlek and recently established the Tori Trio with Oberleitner and percussionist Ganesh Anandan.

"When you're playing an accordion, the whole body is involved," says Tori says. "Therefore, I need mics that enable me to move and express myself without limitations. With the DPA d:vote 4099 Instrument

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Australia - The MLC Centre, rising 67 floors above Martin Place in Sydney, Australia, was designed by renowned Australia Architect Harry Seidler. The MLC Centre has become an iconic Sydney landmark since the building - ahead of its time in its design - was opened in 1976.

Today, the complex - jointly owned by The GPT Group and Queensland Investment Corporation - includes a major commercial office tower, a retail precinct, and the Theatre Royal. The building over recent years has suffered from external degradation and a project worth 300m dollars was undertaken to fix it.

The building owners approached Australian artist Mathew Johnson to create a light art installation on the scaffolding, gantry and a joining buildings. D.T.S. Australia provided Mathew with a lighting design, cabling and control solution. A range of D.T.S. LED projectors - including Delta 8 B, FOS Power bars, T

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UAE - Most High Productions, a Dubai-based AV rental and installation provider, has purchased the Meyer Sound Lyon linear sound reinforcement system and become the first supplier of the new system in the Middle East.

Closed during the Prolight + Sound 2014 trade show in Frankfurt, the sale includes 24 Lyon linear line array loudspeakers, 12 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements, a Galileo Callisto loudspeaker management system, and four of the new MJF-210 stage monitors.

"I had the opportunity to experience the exceptional headroom and coverage of the Lyon system at a demo and I was blown away," says Avril Rodrigues, general manager of Most High Productions. "Our company has long been successful in the high-end corporate event business, and in recent years, we have been getting more requests for medium to large concerts of all genres. This new Lyon system is s

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UK - The live dance action at the heart of the newly released British movie Cuban Fury directed by James Griffiths and starring Nick Frost was given additional visual dynamics by S+H Technical Support's Video Floor product.

Thirty-six panels of the Video Floor were delivered and installed as a dancefloor surface at north London venue Koko by S+H for production company Awesome Effects. All the riveting salsa sequences were filmed there over the course of a week.

The floor brought colour, animation and plenty of WOW factors to the party, and is clearly visible in the scenes as the film reaches a crescendo.

Says S+H's Terry Murtha, "It's fantastic that our product was chosen for its part in the film ... it's great to have a bit of glamour in the house! The floor did a great job in adding excitement and bringing a whole new layer of depth to the filming."

The

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Qatar - Showforce has won a prestigious four-year contract with leading event agency, Sports & Entertainment Solutions FZ LLC, the company licensed by Feld Entertainment for the next five years to deliver Disney Live! and Disney On Ice in the Middle East.

The relationship began with Disney Live! Mickey's Music Festival in February and March in which Showforce supplied a host of event staff, crew and skilled labour to the exciting new stage show.

The hugely successful Disney Live! Mickey's Music Festival featured an all-star line-up of more than 25 Disney character and featured video projection of the frenzy backstage which spilled onto the stage before Mickey Mouse welcomed guests to the concert tour and a range of entertainment including hip hop and reggae beats, acrobatics, flying carpets and magical transformations and underwater displays.

With

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UK - Utopium has launched new sister company Utopium Rigging as part of an ongoing strategy to expand its specialist services ready for this year's summer events.

Utopium Rigging will be headed by director Ian Evans along with a team of event riggers with over 20 years' experience. Utopium's extended rigging services will offer venue managers, promoters and event organisers with qualified professionals, the latest rigging equipment and knowledge to construct anything from simple 3m flown truss to full bespoke ground support structures.

Ian Evans commented, "We have launched Utopium Rigging in response to increasing requests from clients for specialist services. Safety is paramount in every aspect in our work; we make sure each member of the team is fully trained to work at heights and complete work to the highest industry standards.

"In addition to event and venue

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UK - SGM LT-100 and LT-200 LED pixel tubes were deployed in an unusual context, when London Contemporary Voices (LCV), one of London's leading non-traditional choirs, staged its Reflections concert at the 18th century Church of St. John-at-Hackney in London.

Working to a production design by Ali Abbas and Keny Ega-Bourgeois, lighting designer Owen Pritchard-Smith, of Spirit Design, sourced a number of the 3D graphic tubes from the inventory of Chris Morgan's Blueprint Events to create a ring of shimmering light from the sticks, which are loaded with LEDs, each individually addressable.

LCV had wanted to present a special stage set for the 300 people who attended, including Bat For Lashes member Ben Christophers and BBC Sound of 2014 nominee Luke Sital-Singh. While the choir performed a number of original arrangements of different songs, vocal percussion and beats were p

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UK - Veteran producer & mix engineer Chris Kimsey recently completed three days in London's boutique Kore Studios, recording the winners of Shure Europe's 2013 Call For Legends unsigned bands competition, Fingertrap.

The Welsh four-piece were selected as the competition winners from a total of 240 bands from 31 different countries, and used their winning session time wisely, managing to track and mix three new songs. During the sessions, Chris Kimsey also experimented with some new Shure microphones, particularly enjoying the KSM313 bi-directional ribbon mic.

"As with all my recordings, I tried a few mics to find the perfect sound, and ended up using the KSM313 mic on guitars and on vocals. It sounded outstanding on guitar, giving a 'full-fat' sound but with a top end not normally heard from a ribbon. It was also the preferred choice on most of the vocal recordings, sound

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Australia - Leading production designer LeRoy Bennett and lighting visionary Peter Johansen will become reunited in July this year - down under.

Responsible for specifying what was eventually more than 500 of SGM's game-changng X-5 white strobes on Beyoncé's The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour in 2013 - his unforgettable strobe dominated 'Wall of Inferno' creating one of the brightest stage displays ever - Bennett heads the line-up of speakers at Entech Connect, Australia's evergreen trade and technology show.

The conceptualiser, who has worked with many of the world's top artistes, will be discussing his personal philosophy of design on the opening morning of Entech Connect, which takes place at the Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne (23-24 July).

SGM will also be heavily involved in collateral events, sponsoring the Visitor Network Evening partnership, while Pe

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Sweden - Friends Arena, the home of Sweden's national football team, is Scandinavia's largest indoor arena and can accommodate up to 65,000 people for concerts, sports matches, and other events. Located in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Arenastaden in Stockholm, the arena is considered the centrepiece of an area surrounded by new residential, shopping, and commercial buildings.

Tyréns, one of Sweden's leading urban planning consultancies, was brought in to develop a lighting plan for the various areas around the arena, including the surrounding streets, bus terminals, ramps, roundabouts, squares, lifts, and stairs. The company installed a range of coloured lighting including Martin Professional Tripix 300 LED strips to create different effects and visual attraction.

Faced with strict budget constraints and the need for a retrofitted solution, Tyréns had to dev

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Germany - The 136th Audio Engineering Society Conventionopened today with healthy attendance at the Estrel Hotel and Convention Centre in Berlin.

Offering a wide variety of Technical Programme events, manufacturer exhibitions, the Project Studio Expo, and more, the 136th AES Convention brings attendees the latest in professional audio innovations, as well as networking and educational opportunities with leaders in the industry.

Additionally, AES executive director, Bob Moses, made the announcement that next year's European AES Convention will take place in Warsaw, Poland (Spring 2015) taking advantage of its burgeoning audio industry and growing base of audio engineers, producers and music aficionados.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - Ed Warren is well known for his innovative and different lighting and visual designs and is lucky enough to work with a list of equally interesting and inventive artists, one of which is UK electronic act, Metronomy.

Warren has designed their lighting since 2007. In March 2014 they launched their Love Letters album, the campaign for which kicked off in the UK - exclusively using Robe moving lights - and culminating in a spectacular show at London's Brixton Academy.

Before the start of each tour, he combines minds with Oscar Cash regarding set design, and this time around they came up with the idea of making it resemble a low-budget 1970's music TV show. Warren is also inspired by James Turrell's light art, and so wanted to have a canvas that offered multiple contrasts for lighting.

He decided to make all the band risers diamond shape, downlit with LED tape, also

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Serbia - Elation Professional's Serbian partner, Light and Sound Design, recently held a special Elation Open Day at the prestigious National Theatre in Belgrade where the latest in Elation lighting technology was demoed for lighting professionals from Serbia's television and theatre industries.

"We had an excellent turnout with over 30 attendees spending quality time and getting a closer look at Elation products," stated Milan Scepanovic, general manager of Light and Sound Design. "All the attendees were professionals, many representing government institutions or TV stations, and half of them came with their own lux meters and measuring devices. We had a lot of products on hand and a beautiful venue to display them in. Overall the response was very positive and the day quite a success."

A full range of Elation LED lighting solutions optimized for theatre,

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Short Run - The West End musical based on The X Factor is to close after just two months. Co-written by Harry Hill, I Can't Sing! pokes fun at the talent show and its creator Simon Cowell. The show, which opened to glowing reviews at the London Palladium in March, will close on 10 May.

Rebecca Quigley, chief executive of producer Stage Entertainment UK, said the show had been well received "but it seems that isn't always enough...The West End can be an unpredictable place as the closure of a number of high profile productions recently has shown."

Announcing the closure, Nigel Hall of Cowell's production company Syco Entertainment, said: "Alongside Stage Entertainment we'd like to thank the cast and crew who have worked so hard on this show. To everyone at Really Useful Theatres and the ever supportive staff at the London Palladium, and everyone inv

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Norway - Until recently, the lighting system at Oslo's Det Norske Teatret consisted of some 100 conventional and moving lights. But the theatre produces both musicals and plays, and the noise level from the lighting rig often became an issue: they were forced to turn off movers and keep scroller use to a minimum.

So when a lighting renewal was suggested, the managers decided to see what new technology was available. They already had Eos®-family control desks in each space, along with Sensor dimming and ETC Net3 networking, so they wanted to get the most out of the equipment they had invested in.

After having a shootout with various types of fixtures - both conventional and moving lights - they "fell in love with the ETC Source Four LED Lustr+ units" that had been brought along by ETC dealer Elektrik. Says resident lighting designer Torkel Skjærven, "The fan

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USA - The organisers of The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival raised eyebrows when they announced that they were adding a second weekend to their iconic event. Would it be possible, the naysayers wondered, to sustain Coachella's well-known spontaneous sense of excitement over such an extended period?

As anyone who was at the 2014 edition of the famous festival can attest, the answer to this question was a resounding "yes!" With surprise appearances by Beyoncé and a parade of other stars, the festival was as fresh and bright as a summer's morning. The "bright" part was helped along by dynamic lightshows, like the one at the high-profile Outdoor Theatre anchored by 36 Nexus 4 X 4 panels from Chauvet Professional.

Todd Roberts and Brandon Dunning of Visions Lighting (Brea, CA) specced the Nexus panels for the Outdoor Theatre Stage rig, because

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UK - Established lighting designer Richard Rhys Thomas of the Royal Albert Hall turned to the high-quality colour and reliability of Clay Paky fixtures to implement his richly layered lighting design for the Mountbatten Military Festival of Music at London's Royal Albert Hall (RAH).

Her Majesty's Royal Marines performed traditional marching songs alongside bespoke compositions and a soaring rendition of Swedish pop-group Abba's top hits. Thomas's lighting design wrapped the orchestra in swathes of colour, working in flawless harmony with the score.

"The brief was to create lighting that would seamlessly complement the music," explains Thomas. "The music ranged from film to classical, big band to traditional marches and the spectacular corps of drum displays. The standard of music was remarkable and so it didn't take much to create a spectacular show."

Tho

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UK - Early March saw thousands of eager party goers shake off the winter doldrums and dance the weekend away at Outbreak Spring Festival at Ricoh Arena in Coventry. The all night dance party went on until the wee hours of the morning beneath an Elation lighting system supplied by live event equipment hire company MusicMann of Walsall.

Outbreak is the UK's fastest growing House Music festival and features a full list of top DJs and other artists.

Production manager for the event was Steve "Shaggy" Wright, lighting, video, and production pro at MusicMann, who speced an all Elation lighting rig for the event.

"We've carried a full line of Elation products for many years and they've proved very reliable for the variety of events that we do like this," he stated. "It's the first year they've held Outbreak on this scale; it's a real arena-sized show now an

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Russia - Moscow's Arena Club played host to the Welsh band, Bullet for My Valentine, on 6 March 6 with Martin Professional lighting fixtures and the M1 Console, provided by Moscow's Euroshow Rental Company. Robert Coleman, the lighting designer for the tour and Moscow show, deployed Martin to bring out the most of his creative ideas.

The set of lighting fixtures included 10 MAC 700 Profiles (six on the middle truss, four on the back truss), 14 MAC 401 RGB Zooms (four on the side truss, five on the middle and five on the back), nine Atomic 3000 DMX strobes, six MAC Viper Profiles and the M1 Professional Lighting Console.

Coleman, who was introduced to the M1 console a few years ago but never previously had the opportunity to use it, worked with Alexey Zhuravlev, lighting designer, Euroshow Rental Company, to programme the Moscow show.

"I thought the design was good, and

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Brazil - As the owner of creative content and social impact company Content-OS, producer Andres Levin is an expert in developing inspired content for cause-marketing campaigns. When presented with an opportunity to collaborate on an awareness campaign for The Rainforest Alliance, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving biodiversity, Levin knew he wanted to take the project to a new level. To offer viewers a true-to-life snapshot of the environment, he traveled to the depths of the Tijuca Forest to record a unique musical and cinematic production.

Knowing he'd be faced with extreme temperatures, high humidity, limited space, and less than four days to record, Levin knew rugged, reliable gear, that could withstand the harsh conditions and consistently record professional-quality sound, would be imperative to his success. Based on his decades of experience u

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UK - Le Mark have produced their professional tour labels for the Production Office Ltd for the Gary Barlow Since I saw you last Arena Tour 2014.

"Thinking about design is hard but not thinking about it can be a disaster," wrote Ralp Caplan. The Production Office Ltd is one of the world's leading concert tour & event production companies with offices in London & New York proving how important this statement is.

Georgie King contacted Le Mark's Linda Gibbons with a brief to produce a clear, durable and position specific labelling system. This would be used on all the road cased equipment destined for the tour.

Le Mark's tried and tested Tour Labels were chosen. This enabled TPO to select Le Mark's multi colour digital printing option. Enabling 12 sector specific designs to be produced running consecutively 1 to 12. This provided a simple but very effective 12

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UK - West Midlands UK technical production and rental specialists Central Presentations Ltd. (CPL) supplied the design and full technical production - video, lighting, audio, set - including a bespoke projection screen - and staging - for the 2014 TaxAssist Accountants' AGM. The event was staged in the Caernarfon Suite at the Celtic Resort & Conference Centre in Newport Wales, UK.

CPL's team was headed by dynamic project manager Jimmy Smith who was working to a brief that required a clean, contemporary conference environment for the daytime sessions, which would be quickly and seamlessly transformed into a glamorous evening location for a gala dinner and Awards event!

With that adaptability in mind, he designed a practical and highly effective solution to meet the client's needs.

Behind the stage a 42m wide starcloth backdrop was installed and in front of that the set was bu

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UK - American R&B trio, TGT, played London's iconic Eventim Apollo (formerly the Hammersmith Apollo) on 27 March on their Shirts Off tour beneath an Elation lighting rig of Platinum Series and other Elation fixtures supplied by UK rental company MusicMann.

Handling production on the London show was Steve "Shaggy" Wright, lighting, video, and production pro at MusicMann, who speced an Elation lighting system that included Platinum Wash ZFX Pro LED moving heads, Platinum Spot 15R Pro discharge moving heads, Platinum Beam 5R ACL beam effects and Rayzor Q7 LED moving heads, along with warm white Cuepix Blinders.

"TGT play a lot of ballads and the lighting needed to reflect that slower, smoother pace," Shaggy stated. "So I used a lot of soft washes from the Platinum Wash ZFX Pro's, which I used as the main stage wash and for general stage lighting fr

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UK - Now in its third consecutive year, the 25th of April saw the return of the hugely successful PLASA charity golf day. Since its inaugural competition in 2012, the popularity of this event has snowballed, drawing in suppliers and manufacturers from all over the UK to the leafy suburbs of Surrey where giants of the theatre and events industry do battle to become PLASA golf champions. With more teams competing than ever before, this year's competition raised a phenomenal £7,500.00 for Behind the Scenes - a charity which provides support to entertainment technology industry professionals when they fall upon hard times.

Teams were entered from Autograph, Sennheiser, Shure, d&b Audiotechnik, PSCO, Blitz, Sound By Design, Delta Sound, ATG, White Light, Martin Audio, Meyer Sound, Entec, CSE Cables, PLASA, Philips, Crewsaders, Creative Technology, and Stage Technologies.

With

  1. £2.5m start up cash for London entrepreneurs to become reality
  2. Clay Paky B-EYEs and Sharpys on Excision tour
  3. Outline brings live sound to 4K cinema
  4. Presteigne on the Thames for Boat Race coverage
  5. Break of Reality take DPA d:vote on tour
  6. Paul Sandweiss opts for Focusrite's RedNet 6
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