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14 March 2016

White Light, which supplied the lighting equipment to the ceremony and many of the nominated shows, as well as sponsoring the Lighting Design Award, would like to congratulate all of this year's winners.

In the lighting category, the award went to Bruno Poet for his work on Frankenstein at the National's Olivier Theatre. A central part of his design was a dramatic wedge-shaped light bulb ceiling made up of 3100 assorted light bulbs driven from just over 1000 dimmers allowing the creation of spectacular waves of light over the heads of the audience. White Light was proud to be involved with creating this effect (with a number of the exposed filament lightbulbs supplied by

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14 March 2016

With a recently opened York office, alongside its London headquarters, Mojo Barriers provides services to live events across the country including festivals, tours, sporting and cultural occasions, premiers, and council events. Its UK team is at PLASA Focus to discuss the extensive range of Mojo stage barriers, crowd barriers and fencing along with post and rope and cable ramp.

Mojo Barriers UK director Jim Gaffney comments, "People's safety at events and venues is the primary concern of Mojo Barriers and our team is at PLASA Focus to discuss and demonstrate the importance of crowd safety. We are looking forward to meeting venue owners, festival organisers and production managers to discuss how we can offer a bespoke service

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14 March 2016

JET by Ohm is a range of British-made speakers at affordable prices, which can be seen at PLASA Focus on the Ohm/Impact stand RA-A17. To celebrate the partnership, Impact is running a competition throughout the show to win five pairs of Ohm BR-5 loudspeakers, requiring visitors to answer a simple question correctly to enter.

Impact, which has just announced the opening of six new branches across the UK, can arrange auditions for trade customers anywhere in the country, and will be happy to arrange demos of the entire Ohm range.

"We had been looking for a very special distributor to spearhead our UK sales activities for some time," says O

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14 March 2016

Special awards were presented to lyricist Sir Tim Rice and to Dame Monica Mason, who is shortly to leave her post as director of the Royal Ballet after 54 years with the company. Sir Tim attributed the longevity of his career to "good stories and good tunes" and said "an awful lot of it was [down to] luck".

Golden Oldie - Sir Bruce Forsyth is to share a stage with Bob Dylan, Suede and Primal Scream at a music festival in Ke

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14 March 2016

AED Rent account manager Koen Conaerts cites a number of different reasons for the investment, including this year's large-scale sporting events such as the 2012 Olympics and UEFA Euro 2012 football championship and, in general, to support their AV clients through a busy summer.

"This year is a special one, and there are a lot of L-Acoustics users that need more equipment," says Conaerts. "We can now provide them with that extra equipment. We specifically bought the LA-RAKs as we're updating our stock to the K-Standard; with a huge st

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14 March 2016

They have been lit by lighting designer Steven Bewley of Box Fresh Lighting, ably assisted by MA's grandMA2 desk, and a host of Clay Paky Sharpys.

A long time user of MA consoles, Bewley explains his reason for his desk choice. "I've progressed through the ranks of MA consoles, and the grandMA2 is easy to use, and allows you to programme a spectacular show quickly. It just works, and it does it seamlessly alongside the other kit we use on the show - for video and for sound. It's powerful, and the size of the desk makes it adaptable to smaller venues as well. It's a console I'm falling in love with as it's so configurable."

Bewley specified 40 Sharpys for the lighting

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14 March 2016

Newly designed for the show's 25th anniversary, the tour will visit 10 cities over the next 13 months, having opened at Plymouth's Theatre Royal in March to rave reviews.

"Phantom is an extremely heavy show, weighing in at more than 25 tonnes," explains Unusual Rigging's senior project manager Simon Stone. "There's one piece of scenery downstage that weighs eight tonnes and has to be supported by a separate mini grid secured to the building. The famous Phantom chandelier, which has to swing in a treacherous fashion over the audience, weighs 500kg alone! Plus there are a couple of huge automated trucks on stage with a combined weight o

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14 March 2016

When it came to choosing moving lights for the students to train with, Philips Vari*Lite was the fixture of choice.

"We wanted to give the students experience of moving lights but they had to be good ones," commented Marcus Kelson, technical manager at NIDA. "Consequently we purchased four Vari*Lite VLX Wash Luminaires. These are used for student productions and also as a training tool within the lighting classroom. Plus, as they are a popular fixture we can also hire them out to users of our venues and thus generate an income.

"The VLX is very punchy, easily con

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14 March 2016

"In the past we have been frustrated by the limited sound quality of traditional cinema loudspeaker systems," comments Paul-Henri Wagner, owner of 44.1. "Now, with EXP, we have a modern speaker system that we really enjoy listening to."

Meyer Sound EXP cinema systems will be available through EXP dealers, including the Acheron screen channel and low-frequency loudspeakers, X-800C cinema subwoofer, HMS-10 surround loudspeaker, and Galileo loudspeake

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14 March 2016

Key to the Company's aggressive growth plans are two new distribution partners: Bangalore-based E&E Systems India Pvt, who will handle exclusive country-wide distribution for the Mackie brand; and Mumbai-based Vardhaman, who will handle exclusive country-wide EAW distribution. E&E and Vardhaman join Musik City, the exclusive Ampeg distributor, to complete Loud's sales force in the rapidly growing Indian market.

"The Indian market is every bit as dynamic as the country's rich musical culture and requires both innovative products and world-class service," explained Mark Graham, Loud's CEO. "We are honoured to add E&E and Vardhaman to our Indian market team and know they will invest significa

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14 March 2016

The last 12 months has seen some serious construction and renovation work take place at the premises totalling an investment of over £1m including the property purchase.

The buildings and the existing one next door have been combined and optimised for Adlib's busy operation, with more room for all divisions of the company.

In addition to this, a further £1.2m was invested in new equipment last year to ensure that the current rental stock in all departments offers the latest, best and most popular technologies to Adlib's clients and projects.

Integral to the new warehouse is a

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14 March 2016

The stunning Georgian Revival-style building on Washington Street that the church calls home was built around two decades ago. It's an architectural gem that boasts high glass ceilings, soaring columns, and a U-shaped wrap-around balcony. The room's acoustics provide a wonderful complement for the piano, pipe organ, and choir that typically accompany most services. But that same architecture has represented a long-standing challenge for spoken-word intelligibility. As Greg Dieckhaus, President and CEO of Bolingbrook, IL-based Practical AV Solutions explains, the church has been through more than one attempt at addressing the issue.

"It's a gorgeous building, but problems with intelligibility and consistency of coverage have

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14 March 2016

Giddens may be a musician and owner of a bicycle company but he freely acknowledges the concept of combining the two was not down to him. "In 2010 the American pedal power band, the Ginger Ninjas toured Europe bringing their own system with them. This system worked fine but it was heavy and it was hard to pedal enough energy to power the so

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14 March 2016

"Powercubes deliver tremendous capabilities to owners of EAW mobile production line array systems," Rocha said. "Red Certification ensures that Powercube owners get the most out of these exciting, new products."

The Red Certification training seminar was designed by EAW technical training manager Bernie Broderick, a long time mobile production and concert touring veteran as well as an experienced instructor. Broderick will deliver the training seminars in North America and will work with EAW's world-wide Application Support Group members to deliver

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14 March 2016

HSL's project manager was Mike Oates who says, "It was great to work with Tim and production manager Neil McDonald on this, especially as it was a bit different. It both contrasted and complimented all the other music tours in which we are currently involved with a classy design that looked great and was completely appropriate."

The show was smaller in scale than Jenkins' last outing which played arenas. This was a deliberate move to return to playing more intimate spaces like theatres and concert halls, with the focus totally on Jenkins' vocal performance, rather than lots of additional razzmatazz.

She was accompanied by the 32- piece National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Anthony Inglis, and the t

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14 March 2016

Inductees included Guns N' Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Donovan, Laura Nyro, The Small Faces/Faces, Beastie Boys, The Crickets, The Famous Flames, The Midnighters, The Comets, The Blue Caps and The Miracles. Freddie King received the Early Influence distinction. Non-performing honourees included Don Kirshner, Cosimo Matassa, Tom Dowd and Glyn Johns. The show will be broadcast on HBO on Saturday, 5 May 2012.

Audio-Technica's Artist Elite 5000 Series UHF Wireless System was used with the AEW-T5400 handheld microphone/transmitter for frontline vocals on per

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14 March 2016

The entry that is deemed most in need of, or having faced the biggest issues in their lighting, will be awarded the prize at the PLASA Show in September.

Entrants are encouraged to explain how the Coemar products will benefit them in their day to day use. The lighting package on offer includes Coemar's Reflection LEDko Full Spectrum, Reflection LEDko VariWhite 3000/7000 K and Reflection LEDko White3200 K with an option of one the following optics: Reflection Soft profile12/30° F Lens, Reflection Soft profile 12/30° PC Lens, Profile zoom 18/40° HDLens.

Submission deadline is 17Augu

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14 March 2016

The festival takes place on the island of Zanzibar, with the main stage at the historic Old Fort in Stone Town. Four consecutive nights of non-stop, eight hour live performances meant that using a digital console made a lot of sense. Purchased for last year's festival, the DiGiCo SD8 and MadiRack had been stored in a container for a year, but had coped very well with the tropical climate and monsoon rains.

"After been cleaned and tested at the end of last year's festival, the co

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14 March 2016

At the centrepiece of this visual display are 38 Platinum Beam 5R moving head beam fixtures from Elation Professional. The Platinum Beams occupy a central position in the defining structures on the Brit Floyd set: a 16.5ft vertical circle of truss, flanked by a gigantic 84ft truss arch. Sixteen Platinum Beam 5R units are mounted on the truss circle, while anadditional 22 units hang from the arch. With this positioning, the Platinum Beams can shoot white or coloured beams in all directions, project gobo images, multiply their effects with the prism, or even wash the stage with the application of Frost. A dozen units of another Elation fixture, the Design Spot 1200C compact moving hea

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14 March 2016

Arlette Gruss promises its audiences a spectacle like no other with a top of the range show that encompasses trapeze artists, clowns, magicians, motorbikes and animals. With a six-month tour that takes in the towns of Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Rouen, Arras, Lille, Boulogne, Dunkerque, Valenciennes, Thionville, Mulhouse, Strasbourg, Colmar, Reims and Troyes, lighting designer Arthur Oudin needed a followspot that was small and tough enough to tour and versatile enough to be controlled with pin-point accuracy, as well as deliver top notch performance.

"The ideal unit proved to be the Robert Juliat FLO with a DMX controlled dimmer, shutter," says Oudin.

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14 March 2016

The lighting rig featured 24 PixelSmarts and 10 SmartLine4s which were used to design five different themes over the five week series. The flexibility of the SmartLine4 luminaires created both wash and effects - and the PixelSmarts were mainly used for graphics and rotating icons.

Lighting designer Tim Routledge states, "The SmartLines were a fantastic addition to the previous year's use of the PixelSmarts. The integration of the cold white in the units gave us some fantastic sparkle on camera which we use by randomly chasing the cells within the units.

"We were able to create unlimited chases and looks with the units and we

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14 March 2016

The theatre principals had long awaited the opportunity to present plays and other programmes with the added dimension of an enveloping audio experience. "For a long time, the sound department at Odense Teater wanted to upgrade with a surround installation," says Bent Lohmann, Odense Teater producer. "In autumn 2011, every ounce of energy was put into establishing the new sound facilities in time for the Christmas show last year."

Kastrup, Denmark-based integrator Stouenborg was contracted to install the Meyer Sound system with the goal of creating a flexible system that would deliver a coherent and sonorous sonic landscape.

Usingthe MAPP Online Pro acousti

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14 March 2016

Dedicated in 1993, and located in Minneapolis, MN's West Bank Arts Quarter, the 1,126-seat theatre/concert hall is a multi-purpose venue, hosting lectures, School of Music ensemble concerts, performances and master classes by the likes of the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and others, as well as a various community events.

"Because we need natural sound at both low and higher volumes, for both speech and music, subtlety is key," says Phillip O'Toole, U of MN Music Department technical coordinator.

In 2009, O'Toole noticed 'a scratching sound' coming from the hall's aging custom made centre cluster. "It was only noticeable at l

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14 March 2016

Davies Roberts, CEO, Flare Audio, comments, "It was a pleasure to work with Vertigo Films on this new UK blockbuster feature film that's now just been released. The challenge for us was the rate at which the production progressed; simultaneous filming took place in various places in London during the height of the summer season which caused its own set of logistics issues for us. There was kit flying