UK - The new national tour of Chicago, the Musical starring Jennifer Ellison, opened in September at the Birmingham Alexandra Theatre. Having supplied the production in Dubai earlier this year, Stage Electrics is once again providing all lighting & electrics for the musical which is touring the UK for the next 40 weeks.

"This is a particularly busy time for us and with our London Bridge facility now firmly established as a vital resource to London's West End, coupled with our national network of branches supporting touring productions, we are ideally suited to provide a first class level of service to any show we are involved with" says Chris Patton, business development manager for theatre.

The fit up of over 16 tonnes of lighting equipment required for the West End production of The Sound of Music is now under way. Stage Electrics is supplying the ent

UK - A new breed of Internet search engine, designed to serve the specific needs of b2b users, will target electronics industry professionals as its first market. Developed by Reed Business Search, the Internet search division of Reed Business, Zibb.com aims to deliver a better search experience for b2b users than any other search engine.

Graeme McCracken, COO of RB Search, explained: "Zibb.com is a dedicated b2b search engine, honed to deliver the specific information that business users want. It delivers quicker and better answers for b2b queries than is possible with general search engines. Though still in its test phase, the site is now fully functioning for the electronics industry and this will be our first market.

"It's simply about using the best tool for the job. We challenge the industry's professionals to visit www.zibb.com/electronics, make the comparison

UK - Daddy Cool is showing at the Shaftesbury Theatre and is set to the music of 70s legends Boney M. This exciting musical is directed by Andy Goldberg and stars Michelle Collins, Harvey from So Solid Crew and Javine. Set design is by Jon Morrell, and the lighting design for the show is by Rob Halliday. The Mirror-ball, and Ma Baker's Bar are just two of the sets featuring lighting supplied by South Woodham Ferrers based LED specialists Chamaeleon Technologies.

Chamaeleon technical director, Adam Knight, says: "Working on Daddy Cool has been exciting experience for Chamaeleon. It's our first musical, and great to be involved with. It's given us a real in-sight and appreciation for the thought and scale that goes into set design." Knight reserved special praise for Simon Needle and the Electrolite team for the installation of the Mirorr-ball, for Ian Moul

USA - At LDI 2006, TMB is promoting products from around the world including Alpha One, FinnLight, Green Hippo, Kinesys and Interactive.

Falcon high-power, compact fixtures from Alpha One of Germany are designed for architectural and portable use. Xenon and Metal Halide models are available, in static or automated versions.

TMB is now worldwide master distributor for FinnLight Film/TV lighting products. Emmy Award winning Director of Photography Bruce Finn, will be on the TMB stand demonstrating his Toplight and new Maxilight Micro.

Green Hippo is showing the new V3 software for the Hippotizer media server. V3 makes loading media files "idiot proof", incorporates timeline based on-board control, true SDI output and complete networking and control of multiple Hippotizers.

Interactive Technologies' new CueServer playback processor is a self-contained, web enabled s

The Netherlands - As the countdown to ISE 2007 continues to gather pace, the show organisers have today announced that Russound, a leading supplier of multiroom audio-video systems, multichannel amplifiers, and loudspeakers, is to sponsor a lounge dedicated for European distributors to network with their resellers.

Russound has teamed up with the show organisers at ISE to sponsor this unique offering. Situated in Hall 1 at the Amsterdam RAI, access to this lounge will be free of charge to all distributors and specially invited resellers. This new initiative offers distributors and resellers a chance to network in a quieter atmosphere and to allow intensive one to one discussions away from the bustle of the exhibition floor. Complimentary refreshments will be provided throughout the day.

Jon Le Blanc, director International Division for Russound says: "This is a pivotal st

USA - Wybron announced the North American debut of its award-winning InfoTrace Control and Management System at LDI 2006 this week. InfoTrace (IT) is a new lighting design system that uses Remote Device Management (RDM) to control and manage DMX-controlled lighting devices.

"InfoTrace is a ground breaking lighting design system that garnered an extremely successful launch in Europe where we won the PLASA Award for Innovation during the PLASA 2006 show in London," said Larry Turner, CEO of Wybron. "We expect a similar reaction to the InfoTrace System at LDI and look forward to demonstrating the system for everyone attending the show."

The complete system consists of a number of main components. At the heart of the InfoTrace Control and Management System is InfoGate, specialised software and hardware.

InfoTrace features an InfoChip, which allows DMX devices

USA - Martin Professional heads to LDI 2006 in Las Vegas with a range of lighting and fog effects, including a number of company firsts.

On display at the Martin booth (#194) will be the company's first tungsten lighting fixture, the MAC TW1, as well as the first fixtures in a new LED product range.

Another first is a compact and feature-rich laser unit, the RGB Laser 1.6. The next luminaire in the high powered Xenon source series, the 3 kW Littlebig 3.0, will also be on display. The companion washlight to the popular MAC 700 Profile, the MAC 700 Wash, will also feature as will new Mania series lights.

On the control side Martin will be showing a new computer based version of the popular Maxxyz console, Maxxyz PC, as well as a compact version of the Maxedia Digital Media Composer. Jem smoke will be showing five new products in its extensive Jem and Magnum product lines and

UK - Flux Events staged and production managed the recent Secret Policeman's Ball at the Royal Albert Hall for Amnesty International, working in close collaboration with TV producers, Tiger Aspect.

The charity event featured Eddie Izzard, Russell Brand, Chevy Chase, Seth Green, Dylan Moran, The Mighty Boosh, Graham Norton, John Culshaw, Al Murray, Andrew Maxwell, plus live music from Natalie Imbruglia, The Magic Numbers and The Zutons.

"The design brief was to produce a simple and memorable set that effectively communicated the Amnesty message" says event producer John Farquhar- Smith. Two large LED screens flanked the organ; a satellite stage in the shape of amnesty's logo and large projection screen was added at gallery level for those sitting behind the satellite stage to see the faces of those performing on it.

The satellite stage at the centre of the au

Europe - Bandit and Chicago-based rock band, Disturbed, have just finished a European tour to promote the band's latest album, Ten Thousand Fists. The band, which formed in 1996, is set to begin touring in the United States in mid-November.

For the European tour, Lighting designer, Travis Shirley, chose to use Martin MAC 2ks, MAC 500s, MAC 250s, Martin Atomic Colors, High End Systems Studio Beam PC, Pulsar Chromabanks, PARS, and Color Kinetics Colorblast.

Shirley said that the overall lighting design was created to produce a concert atmosphere that matched the mood of the band's music. An important feature of the lighting design was the rig itself. Shirley said that he wanted the rig to display a dysfunctional look- to give a "disturbed" feel. The juxtaposed placement of fixtures created a multi level, asymmetrical wall. The strobes were in a grid allowing ver

UK - Northern Light has teamed up with the Edinburgh Clubbing Community Forum (ECCF) and the cream of the city's after dark scene to host a charity club night in aid of the Edinburgh Sick Kids Friends Foundation.

The Halloween event takes place on November 4 in the atmospheric venue of The Caves in Edinburgh's old town, situated in the old underground vaults of the city.

Northern Light is providing its expertise in sound and lighting free of charge for this event, which boasts a line up of DJs from the very best of the Edinburgh clubbing scene.

The event is showcasing 14 different clubs over four subterranean rooms and all profits will go to Edinburgh's Sick Kids hospital. In addition, the National Lottery has agreed to match all funds raised pound for pound.

Colin Cuthbert, managing director at Northern Light, said: "I'm delighted to offer our services to help such a

Italy - For the first time, Nokia Trends, a music, mobility and multimedia arts festival, was staged in Italy. The show, which featured artists such as Gotan Project, Tiga and Timo Maas, was held in the former Stazione Leopolda, in Florence - a railway station transformed into an atmospheric arena for hosting fashion events.

One full-size and one light grandMA console were used to light the two main stages. The video content came from two grandMA mediaPCs with grandMA video. Another grandMA full-size controlled the entrance, meeting, demo rooms and dance floor area lighting. Additionally a grandMA micro was utilised.

On the two stages the artists performed at different times. For this reason each media server was dedicated to a specific stage which had a unique screen composed of a high-resolution Barco LED wall and a low-resolution VersaTube on the top and bottom parts. Light

USA - Bandit Lites has been named 'Lighting Company of the Year' at the 2006 Parnelli Awards Ceremony. The annual event was hosted at The Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas in conjunction with LDI. Dizzy Gosnell attended the event and accepted the award on Bandit's behalf.

Bandit CEO, Michael T. Strickland, commented, "I wish to thank the entire global staff at Bandit Lites for making this award possible. We are very honoured that the industry has again chosen Bandit Lites as the 'best of the best' and we promise to live up to the accolade. On behalf of Bandit, I would like to thank all of our clients, their staff, TerryLowe and the great people at PLSN Magazine for allowing Bandit this opportunity."

The Parnelli Award marks the third 'Lighting Company of the Year' Award that Bandit hasreceived in 2006. The company was also presented similar awards from Po

UK - As the 'convergence' between lighting and video becomes ever more integrated, UK rental house XL Video, supplied 76 VersaTube LED lighting fixtures and a Catalyst digital media server system to the final leg of Maximo Park's A Certain Trigger Tour.

Lighting designer Stevie Marr specified the VersaTubes and the Catalyst, with the Tubes also forming the main architectural element of the performance space upstage of the band and stretching right out to the sides of the stage. The VersaTubes were attached to 18 vertical sections of A-type trussing - four per tube - clamped to the two onstage chords of the truss.

Marr produced all the video content used to drive the VersaTubes himself, as part of his masters degree in Graphic Design (specialising in Interactive Media) at the Arts Institute of Bournemouth.

The Maximo Park tour was project managed for XL by Jo Beirne, a

Belgium/Dubai - Barco reports that it has signed its largest contract ever for a fully integrated, creative LED solution. The contract with Emaar, developer of the world's biggest shopping mall in Dubai, is worth over 24 million euro. The LED displays will be used both to inform and entertain visitors of the Dubai Mall. The Mall will officially be opened in September 2007. Deliveries for the installation will take place in 2007.

The contract for Dubai Mall includes a total of 571 square metres of LED. The Mall will host over 1200 outlets, spanning in excess of 336,000 square metres of retail space, and will also include an array of leisure pursuits, including an aquarium, fashion show arena, gold souk and Olympic size ice ring.

Emaar executive director Rashid Doleh comments, "We have selected Barco as we are convinced that the quality and creativity of their solutions is

USA - Barry Manilow, a regular act at the Hilton in Las Vegas, is adding several tour dates to his schedule through January of 2007. Bandit Lites is working with lighting designer Seth Jackson, to provide the lighting.

For the hard-edge fixtures, Jackson has opted for a combination of VL2500s and Martin Mac2k Performances. For the 2ks, he added in the Patrick Woodroffe Gobo package to give some new variety to the light, which he says made a world of difference. Jackson also uses Syncrolite B-52s along with Mac 300s and Mac2ks.

The show is packed with video- including an upstage LED wall that is 30 feet wide, and then another 40 feet of Low-Res panels (built by Screenworks). It became essential to match the video with a lot of lighting, in order to cut through a backdrop that produces a fair amount of light on its own.

Jackson uses Morris Leasing's ESP Vision Studio in Nashvi

UK - Visits to project sites by judges of the Lighting Design Awards 2007 will start in early November and continue until the end of January. They will assess each site on all its merits including aesthetic, functional and technical.

This thorough evaluation process ensures that all projects are assessed on the excellence of the lighting design as a whole rather than relying solely on possibly misleading photographic evidence. The long list is compiled by the judging panel from written and photographic submissions put together by all the entrants.

The presentation ceremony of the Lighting Design Awards takes place at the London Hilton Hotel on Park Lane on Thursday 15 March 2007. The black-tie ceremony is a highlight of the lighting industry's calendar. The Lighting Design Awards is organised by Emap, the publisher of Lighting magazine, and the Institution of Lighting E

Germany - The Index in Schüttorf is one of the ten largest discotheques in Germany. With around 4,000 square metres of floor space, it attracts around 7,000 punters every weekend. It reopened recently after seven months of refurbishment, including the installation of the world's largest ice bar which extends over 850 square metres and composed of 320 tonnes of ice. In addition to the Ice Bar, there are three other sections, named Main, Tender and Goldfish, each with its own ambience.

"We see this as a disco of superlatives," says Index managing director, Holger Bösch. His plan is for the Index to function as a disco at the weekends, whilst remaining available during the week for corporate functions, wedding parties and other events. "We aim to offer guests the optimum experience, so nothing less than the finest equipment will suffice,"

Germany - Popular, chart-topping German teenage rockers Tokio Hotel have completed an extensive tour in support of their "Schrei" (Scream) album,using Robe ColorWash and ColorSpot 1200E AT fixtures at the core of their lighting rig.

The 24 ColorWash 1200E AT, 12 ColorSpot 1200E ATs, plus eighteen Robe StageBanner 10 ATs were specified by lighting designer Gunther Hecker. Hecker - also the inventor of the StageBanner - who developed an attractive, flexible and unusual design with the 18 StageBanners, with each holding a reversible screen. The banners, each measuring 1 metre wide with a 10 metre drop, were all rigged off the back truss.

This overall design created a projection screen for custom produced video content that could either be displayed on a "standard" black background or onto the banners set at 90° - which had the effect of increasing the perc

South Africa - Stage Audio Works has been appointed as the exclusive South African distributor for the Chroma-Q, Tourmate and Tourflex entertainment technology brands. Under the agreement the company will supply the Chroma-Q Color Block and Color Web LED ranges, and Tourmate Multilock connector and Tourflex Datasafe cable ranges, backed up by full product demonstration, training and technical support.

Stage Audio Works is a supplier and installer of live entertainment and live event technology solutions to rental companies, theatres, television studios, schools, houses of worship and installations in South Africa and Southern Africa.

The Chroma-Q Color Web LED display matrix is available in a choice of 125 and 250mm cell pitches to suit different budgets and display requirements. The Chroma-Q Color Block, with its modular 'building block' design, offers many possibilities for

USA/Germany - Color Kinetics Incorporated and ARRI Inc. have announced an agreement through which ARRI, one of the world's largest manufacturers of motion picture equipment, will use Color Kinetics' technology and intellectual property to develop a line of LED-based studio lighting products. Slated for availability this year, the products will be ARRI's first to incorporate LED sources - delivering the benefits of efficiency, durability and digital control for film lighting applications.

"Given their visual impact and colour capabilities, LEDs are perfectly suited for many uses in film and broadcast, and we're excited to pursue new product ideas that these sources inspire. Color Kinetics' technology, knowledge and experience combine for a powerful advantage, and we look forward to adding this new category of advanced lighting products for our customers," said Franz Kra

USA - Strand Lighting chose LDI to introduce its next generation of Light Palette controls consoles which comprises three new models.

The Classic Light Palette offers the Palette OS graphical interface in a compact console. Each desk supports two standard dual playbacks and 12 submaster/playbacks for flexible control and operation. Dual video displays provide key data for programmers and the powerful point and click graphical interface speeds production.

Light Palette Live adds 48 submasters, allowing users to quickly run a live performance with lots of hands on control.

Light Palette VL features 24 submasters and a 100 key keypad that allows the rapid selection of moving lights, control channels providing easy touch selection and programming for moving lights. The VL, like the rest of the range also supports large touchscreen panels for added control and flexibility.

The

USA - The new COLORado 3 is a multi-faceted intelligent wash bank fitted with a total of 54 luminous 1 watt-LEDs and featuring full RGB mixing with or without DMX control. With an ingress protection (IP) rating of 65, it is designed for both indoor and outdoor entertainment and architectural wash applications. Additional functions include chase, flash and strobing.

Units are stackable. Thanks to multiple interlock points, several COLORado 3 units can be attached to create a seamless strip, a bank for use as a blinder light, or even as an entire wall.

Each unit consists of three pods of 18 ultra bright 1-watt LEDS arranged in circles. Life expectancy of the diodes is 100,000 hours. Seven of the unit's 12 DMX channels enable individual control over the colours red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow and white. RGB mixing in each of the three pods is also controllable individuall

UK -Though it is still over ten months away, PLASA07 has got off to an amazing start with applications for space beating all previous records. To date, just six weeks after the 2006 event closed on a massive high, over 60% of the show space has been applied for and further applications for space are coming in daily.

On the back of the success of PLASA06, many companies have increased their stand size and several have literally doubled their space, setting PLASA07 on course to be the major event of next year.

Further new developments for PLASA07 will also bolster its appeal: the full management of the show has been taken on by PLASA - who recently launched an Events Division to support this move - making it one of the few shows actually owned and run by the industry.

Along with the change of management comes a change of look as the show is moving onto one level and expanding

Russia - Music Moscow was held between the 12-15 October at theSokolniki Culture & Exhibition Centre. Proel, together with Russian distributor Yarovit Music, took over the whole of Hall 17. The 500sq.m hall featured a wide range of Proel professionalproducts, from sound reinforcement and installation to lighting and stageequipment.

The Sound Reinforcement display consisted of almost all of the systems currently available - Axiom, Edge, NEOS, TFLV, TPRK, SmarTV Plus and Next together with the Proel professional amplifiers, spiltters and processors.

During the event, the professional touring standard Axiom and Edge were demonstrated and backed-up with complete technical seminars.The Axiom progressive array system consisted of six AX3210P, six Edge121SP subwoofers, powered by three Powersoft K10 and the Proel DSO26 processor.

The Edge point source system featured four Edge212P,

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