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Nigeria - With bases in Nigeria and Ghana, TV production company, Ultima Studios are responsible for developing high viewing television programmes such as the music talent show, MTN Project Fame West Africa and the territorial franchise, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.

As a premium media production organisation - one of the most prolific in sub-Saharan Africa - they are backed by their own cutting-edge production inventory to service their studio work - and this includes nearly 50 discharge and LED moving heads from Chinese manufacturer PR Lighting.

As they gear up for season seven of MTN Project Fame West Africa they will again turn to their large stock of XS 1200 Beam, XL Beam 300, XR 300 Beam, XR 200 Beam, XPar 360, XLED 1037, PR 5000 Spot and XR 230 Spot.

Both MTN Project Fame West Africa and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? are recorded

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USA - When San Antonio's Tobin Center for the Performing Arts opens in September, its H-E-B Performance Hall and Alvarez Family Studio Theater will boast Robert Juliat Cyrano and Buxie followspots, respectively.

The new Tobin Center rises behind the façade of the former San Antonio Municipal Auditorium along the famed River Walk downtown. The 1,750-seat multi-purpose house will be the home of the San Antonio Symphony and other resident companies; its inaugural 2014-15 season will feature such diverse performers as comedy legend Bill Cosby, radio icon Garrison Keillor and "The Prairie Home Companion" and the Scottish Ballet's production of "A Streetcar Named Desire."

The four-level H-E-B Performance Hall is the largest of the Tobin Center's performance spaces; it has installed four Cyrano 2500W HMI followspots whose narrow beam angle makes them the perfect

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USA - George Strait holds the record for the most number one country music hits - 44 top charters since 1981 - of all time. So it only makes sense that the final show of this music icon's national touring career would also set a record for attendance. Nearly 105,000 fans attended Strait's 7 June concert at AT&T Stadium, eclipsing the Rolling Stones' previous attendance record of 87,500 for the venue in 1981, coincidentally the same year the singing cowboy launched his professional career.

Dallas-based Onstage Systems, which has been rigging sound reinforcement for Strait's tours since the beginning of his performing days, pulled out all the stops for the final date on the tour, dubbed The Cowboy Rides Away, powering up a massive L-Acoustics K1/K2 loudspeaker system to fill the stadium, home to the Dallas Cowboys.

"K1 is the premier stadium line array system and we'

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Europe - Lighting designer Jamie Thompson has again turned to GLP's LED impression series to help create dramatic stage impact for this year's world tour by Bastille.

Three years after successfully integrating the impression 90s (and Zoom) into The Script's show design, his company MIRRAD, which he runs with experienced co-lighting designer Bryan Leitch and Dave Cohen, specified 60 of the German manufacturer's popular X4 moving heads. The inventory was supplied by PRG after first providing a demo of the fixtures.

Technology has advanced a long way in three years, and Thompson admits, "I'm really loving the X4 . . . I feel that GLP has made another huge leap with this new range. Combining both power and effects, this range has really come into its own."

The London-based band, fronted by Dan Smith, has been playing a range of successful shows, including the massive C

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Opening Acts - Rod Stewart is set to perform at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony in Glasgow later this month. He will be joined by Susan Boyle, Amy MacDonald, Julie Fowlis and violinist Nicola Benedetti. Glasgow 2014 organisers expect 40,000 people at Celtic Park on 23 July to watch the games kick off and millions more will watch on TV around the world. Chief executive David Grevemberg said the announcement of Stewart on the line up would take "excitement and anticipation to a whole new level".

Theatres In Perspective - Venues funded by Arts Council England are failing to attract new theatregoers and are instead relying on a core regular audience, the findings of a new report have shown. Data collected by theatre analytics company Purple Seven has found audiences attending national portfolio organisation venues and those visiting commercial ones are becom

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Ghana - The Gearhouse Group of Companies, the leader in the South African market for equipment rental for live events, is extending its service to the continent with the establishment of Gearhouse Ghana, a fully-stocked operation located in Accra.

The Group has seen a steady increase in demand for cross-border services in recent years, in line with the escalating interest in the African continent as an event destination. Gearhouse regularly services events in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Seychelles, Saudi Arabia, UAE, India, Brunei, Tunisia, Congo, Namibia, Egypt, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Zambia and Tanzania - amongst others.

Now, Gearhouse is able to provide West African events with the same level of technical services as would be available in any other major event destination, both quickly and cost effectively, the company says.

Heading up the new company are Bil

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Romania - SGM partner, production company FIVE'S, is providing full technical production services as well as stage, sound and lighting design for the Bergenbier Friendship Tour in Romania. This summer festival covers ten major cities with two shows per weekend, bringing people together with the message of building up friendships and spreading love and happiness throughout the world.

Bergenbier is one of the leading Romanian beer brands and its tour features the top musical trends and bands in Romania and expects a total audience of 500,000 visitors.

The mission for FIVE'S has been to select the most sustainable technology to support this show concept, and for this general manager Andrei Popea and his team decided to include six SGM G-Spot moving heads, four P-5 wash lights, 12 X-5 white LED strobes and 12 SixPack blinders.

Opting for an SGM LED solution has its clear benefit

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Belgium - One of the Belgium's best-known football teams is celebrating an audio refurbishment at its home stadium, the Stade Constant Vanden Stock, known better as the Stade d'Anderlecht.

Home to Anderlecht FC, the 24,000-capacity Brussels stadium, used solely for football, needed to upgrade its 25-year-old PA/VA system. Following evaluation of three possible solutions, long time Anderlecht solution supplier Prosonix, together with Nexo's Belgian distributor's Pascal Deneef, proposed a Nexo compact, two-way Geo S12-ST system. The Geo S12-ST, a specialist stadium version of the popular Geo S12, fitted the stadium's requirement for long-throw line array cabinets perfectly. Another major reason for choosing the Nexo option was the success of the Geo S12-ST system installed in France's Stade de Valenciennes, a similar venue in size and design.

Nexo's Paul Massiani, together with

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Europe - The climax of Hard Rock Rising On The Road, the European mobile music tour organised by Hard Rock Cafe was staged in Rome on 12 July, with a major live show, Hard Rock Live Roma taking place across two stages in the city's Piazza del Popolo in the lead up to it, a DiGiCo SD9 has been mixing the 15 date European tour, featuring some of Europe's hottest musical up and coming talent.

Taking in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, London, Brussels, Cologne, Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Nice, Venice, Florence and Malta before the Rome show, the tour travelled over 8000 miles and required fast set ups, sound checks and turnarounds.

Touring Europe with an articulated truck stage and a long wheelbase van and just four personnel is a tough assignment, so a compact but versatile and fast to set up mixing console was essential. This is why Darren from ProTechTour and Hard Rock

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Romania - When the SCF Black Sea Tall Ships Regatta Constanta 2014 took place recently on the Black Sea in Romania, PR Lighting, and their local customer Temple Media were on hand to provide the technical dynamics for a spectacular show on the waterfront.

Temple Media invested in large quantities of XR 200 Beam and XLED 1037 washlights. In fact they deployed 20 of each at this event to meet the imaginative stage design conceived by the company's CEO, Dan Chiorcioiu, (formerly director of photography on TVR, Romanian National Television) and Ramon Barbu, Temple Media's in-house LD for the show - which included a performance by Romania's leading pop rock band, Holograf.

This time around the rental company provided all staging and technical infrastructure, including a full lighting manifest and d&b sound system, in conjunction with with Iasi-based rental company, Tricorp Events (

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Norway - The triple award-winning Clay Paky B-EYE has been dubbed a 'fixture without limitation' due to its '100% perfect' performance whilst on tour with popular Norwegian pop-band Postgirobygget.

The A.Leda B-EYE is the latest LED effects light to be released from Clay Paky and has already accrued a PIPA 2014 award for best light, as well as industry awards at both LDI 2013 and PLASA 2013. Lighting designer Petter Nilssen of Norway based distribution house Elektrik Solutions specified 12 of the B-EYE K20s from rental outfit Spekter A/S for use on his vibrant lighting design for Norwegian pop-stars Postgirobygget.

"We needed a fixture that was easy to tour but also gave us unique looks at all the places we visited," explains Nilssen. "The A.Leda B-EYE K-20 really is the fixture Postgirobygget and I have been waiting for. It is such an incredible fixture that we

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USA - Mobile production is most often associated with the world of sports and large entertainment events, but a growing contingent of non-broadcast organizations are looking to outside production teams to increase quality and expand audience reach.

TNDV recently brought its mobile production expertise to the campuses of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, achieving these goals and more for their spring graduation ceremonies. TNDV transitioned both commencement productions to HD for the first time, vastly improving image magnification quality for the large attending crowds. The company also streamed the live ceremonies worldwide to ensure families, friends and alumni could tune in from anywhere.

According to Nic Dugger, owner and president of TNDV, an increasing number of his clients across education, government and corporate ve

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UAE - Nicolas Kyvernitis Electronics Enterprises (NMK) has been appointed as Mackie distributor by Loud Technologies.

NMK is taking over the distribution in the whole region covering the countries that haven't been directly covered before. Aside from the distribution itself, the key element of the company's business is the quality service centre which provides required maintenance or repair of both Mackie's new and old models. To provide the best after-sales service during and after a warranty period, NMK keeps investing in training and developing its employees.

NMK began operations in 1987 focusing on the audio, video and lighting industry. From its humble beginnings in Sharjah, the company has grown into a leading distributor of professional audio products in the Middle East. Together with its portfolio of reputable brands, a dynamic team and strong financial foundation ther

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Singapore - To light a show within budget and with a limited fixture inventory has always been one of the lighting designer's most common challenges. But when lighting designer Jonathan Sin knew he could use eight Source Four LED Lustr+ luminaires for his five dance pieces in Singapore's Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts' (NAFA) 2014 graduation show, Crossings, he felt relieved as "things became promising when I knew I had the privilege of using ETC's new LED fixtures."

Sin chose the Source Four LED Lustr+ luminaires as side lights to support the tungsten Source Four fixtures in his design. "This decision allowed me to have very flexible colour changing options while minimising the rig on my side booms to four fixtures per boom," says Sin.

Another reason Sin fell in love with Source Four LED Lustr+ luminaires was their extraordinary range of colour and su

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UK - Engage Production Ltd, specialist in interactive technologies for branded environments, has announced a showcase of holographic technologies at its dedicated FLUX Innovation Lounge on 23 July. Engage staff, along with innovation partners and experts in the field, will share a range of holographic solutions with visitors.

Holographic technology continues to make rapid advances. Visitors to the FLUX Innovation Lounge will discover a range of approaches including the two metre tall Holo, designed by Conran Partners, the world's first 360° interactive hologram. Also featuring is Holotronica's Hologauze, which allows large scale holograms to appear to 'float'. Finally, FLUX will also demonstrate a number of smaller holograms, suitable for POS or exhibitions.

"Today's customer is becoming increasingly desensitised to typical methods of digital signage and now require m

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USA - The second annual Many Hopes Gala had a clear, if somewhat ambitious, goal in mind: raise $400,000 to open a new school in Kenya for 900 students. Being a relatively new charity, the event's organizers needed to accomplish this worthy objective without relying on some of the lavish trappings that more established Manhattan non-profits often use to attract donors.

Nevertheless, the new charity managed to accomplish this feat in stunning fashion with a gala-dance party for young professionals that featured up-and-coming theatrical stars and a snappy DJ booth area energized by PVP S5 LED video panels from Chauvet Professional.

Held at the legendary Canoe Studios in the city's Chelsea section, the event was hosted by a group of young glamorous stars like actress-singer Leighton Meester, AnnaLynne McCord from Dallas and Zachary Levi, who plays Chuck Bartowski in Chu

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USA - What started as a late-night effort between two brothers in 1987 to perfect their mother's secret recipe turned into Crabfries and launched their fledgling restaurant, Chickie's and Pete's Crab House and Sports Bar, to critical and commercial success. ESPN recently proclaimed the establishment to be the 'Number One Sports Bar in North America' and Maxim magazine deemed it the 'Greatest American Neighbourhood Bar'.

Now a well-established Philadelphia favourite, Chickie's and Pete's is expanding its reach and recently opened its 26th location in Atlantic City's Tropicana Resort & Casino. As with all of the other Chickie's and Pete's locations designed and installed by Cherry Hill, New Jersey-based Pro Systems, the new one uses Symetrix processing. This time it's two SymNet Radius 12x8 Dante network audio DSPs paired with two SymNet xIn 12 and two xOut 12 audio I/O exp

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UK - Famously unfinished at his death, Mozart's Requiem Mass in D Minor was completed the following year by the composer's student Franz Xaver Süssmayr, prompting over 200 years of debate as to what Mozart really intended the finished piece to sound like. A brand new interpretation of the piece has recently been recorded using Neumann digital microphones, prompting universal praise.

Performed by baroque ensemble The Dunedin Consort under the direction of conductor John Butt, the recording was made in Edinburgh's Greyfriars Kirk and issued on Scottish independent label Linn Records.

"In many ways it was a way of rehabilitating Süssmayr," says Phillip Hobbs, chief producer at Linn Records. "Ever since Requiem was completed, there has been a huge amount of discussion about whether he did a good job of it and so people have been coming up with new ways of f

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UK - PLASA has become the latest Associate Member of JAMES (Joint Audio Media Education Support), further strengthening the JAMES industry accreditation and education support process.

Matthew Griffiths (CEO PLASA) said, "We have watched the quality work of JAMES grow over several years. We are now very happy to join with the other trade organisations in JAMES, playing our part in supporting education. Being part of the JAMES course accreditation programme will ensure that our sectors will have representation in course design and delivery."

The new association will now allow JAMES to work alongside PLASA to create and develop HE course accreditation structures for the event, entertainment and installation industries.

David Ward (JAMES policy director) commented, "The years of industry experience represented by the PLASA membership is very well-respected and we

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USA - Community Professional Loudspeakers unveiled its new corporate brand identity at InfoComm last month. Community's booth and demo room showcased the new look of the brand while I Series, a family of premium point source loudspeakers launched at the show, signalled a bold new direction for the company's product design language.

Founded in 1968, Community has an impressive record of innovation and longevity and the company continues to reinvent itself in response to changing customer needs, global market forces and technical advances in the industry. The new brand identity and product design language are key elements of a branding initiative which reinforces Community's focus on the installation markets and its commitment to innovative product design.

"The revised corporate identity is a vibrant and engaging new expression of the Community brand legacy - past, present

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USA - The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) houses one of the most extensive collections of natural and culturally historic artifacts on Earth, over 35m objects in all, some dating as far back as 4.5 billion years.

Since opening in 1913, the NHM's mandate has been to preserve, protect and research those artifacts, and to curate ever more immersive exhibitions in an effort to inspire "wonder, discovery and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds" in visitors. With the 2013 addition of The Otis Booth Pavilion, which features a cutting edge AV system that relies heavily on Tannoy's QFlex, VLS and CMS Series loudspeakers, the NHM has created a space that will allow them to do so more effectively than ever before.

Made possible by a $13m gift from the Otis Booth Foundation and designed by CO Architects, the construction of the pavilion was part

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UK - Chilfest 2014 - the three day music extravaganza staged in Tring, Hertfordshire, UK and produced by Universal Event Productions (UEP) - was another resounding success.

The event, compered by Keith "Cheggers" Chegwin brought two days of the very best music from the 1980s - indie rock from the Boomtown Rats, Big Country, Heaven 17, etc.; classic pop from Jason Donovan, Boney M, Go West - and contemporary pop with Union J, 911, Stooshi and many more to the leafy heartlands of Tring.

Chilfest was started last year initially as a novel and interesting way of celebrating UEP's 15th year of successful operation. As the idea gained momentum, it took on the format of a full scale two day music based festival with fun and entertainment for all the family.

The Chilfest event and concept went down such a storm that Steve Butcher and his team decided to go ahead and do it

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USA - Synergetic Audio Concepts (SynAudCon) has announced their in-person seminar schedule for the fall of 2014. SynAudCon provides real-world audio education through web-based and in-person training worldwide.

Sound Reinforcement for Technicians (SRT) is a three-day seminar that covers the theory behind how sound systems work and demonstrates how to use instrumentation to troubleshoot systems. The seminar is will be offered in Charlotte, NC on 17-19 September, 2014 and again in Dallas, TX on 6-8 October 2014.

During day one and two, instructor Pat Brown provides hands-on exercises that use a signal distribution system and an iPod Touch loaded with software apps that allows attendees to measure voltage, impedance, polarity, SPL and STIPA. Attendees learn what these measurements mean along with how to use them to troubleshoot systems and make sure they are performing opt

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UK / USA - In support of Coldplay's latest album Ghost Stories, XL Video has supplied a video solution for the televised album launch and worldwide promotional shows, culminating in two sold out shows at London's Royal Albert Hall.

The visual concept for these shows was developed jointly by Ben Miles, Paul Normandale, Misty Buckley and Phil Harvey.

The shows were managed for XL Video by project managers Phil Mercer and Gareth Jeanne. In contrast to their Mylo Xyloto stadium shows, the performances for Ghost Stories called for an intimate ambience, bringing the audience closer to share the new songs.

For the global album launch event at the Sony Pictures Studios in LA, XL Video were asked to create a planetarium-style 360 degree projection all around the space and across the entire ceiling above. To achieve this XL supplied 46 Panasonic PT-DZ21K projectors contr

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