UK - Ian Kirby, who originally set up Martin Professional's UK operation, has taken on the role of SGM's head of sales in the UK, as Peter Johansen, director of R&D and strategic sales development, looks to reassemble key members of his former team.

When the Dane was appointed to head up the new R&D initiative last year, he recruited members of his old R&D team, tasking them with "developing a groundbreaking portfolio". He then turned his attention to international sales and Ian Kirby.

Kirby's role with SGM will run in parallel to his own company, LED Projects Ltd - the Kent based distribution and installation operation, which will double as SGM's UK sales office.

Kirby has already secured a major breakthrough for the Italian lighting manufacturers, with the installation of quantities of their new LED Balls in Mayfair's prestigious Playboy Club, while another large

UK - RCF spa has recruited the experienced Mick Butler to its UK sales operation, enabling him to team up with former colleagues Phil Price and Dean Davoile.

Based in the north of England, he will take on a twin role, with responsibility for promoting the company's entire Touring & Theatre (TT+) portfolio on the one hand, while serving as regional sales manager (covering Scotland and the North of England) on the other.

Butler formerly worked alongside Davoile at Fuzion plc, where he was area sales manager, and with Price at KV2 (as UK sales director). Most recently he was area manager commercial audio at Shure Distribution (UK).

"In terms of its depth and breadth the RCF portfolio is fantastic; you can hit all market sectors with quality equipment - and that was the prime attraction for joining," says Butler. "I have great admiration for the brand - and when t

UK - Systems integrator IVC Media, has announced that it has completed the installation of a video conference and IPTV system to help improve services for the charity Help for Heroes (H4H). As part of the deal, IVC worked to supply discounted equipment and arranged advantageous terms from suppliers and manufactures for the installation at the personal recovery and assessment centre for wounded servicemen and women at Tedworth House in Wiltshire.

H4H leases Tedworth House and is currently carrying out a £17m renovation project that will see the first group of personnel using it this month, and by September 2012, it will be operating at full capacity. The personal recovery and assessment centre will provide the facilities to support the two key parts of the recovery process; the holistic life skills course and the activities to get the wounded, sick and injured back out doin

Israel - SGM has appointed Tel Aviv-based Halilit to be its exclusive territorial distributor.

Operating as an importer, distributor and retailer, the company - set up by the Greenspoon family 70 years ago - is now in its third generation. They have worked for 20 years with SGM's parent company, RCF, which forms part of a strong portfolio of MI and pro audio brands - all represented on a sole basis.

Stated Halilit's Eitan Glickman, "The arrival of SGM within the RCF Group is timed perfectly with our plans to get into lighting. It is the natural partnership for our professional PA department."

In May, Halilit held a seminar at its facility providing the opportunity for the Italian manufacturers to introduce themselves to the local market and demonstrate their products, and the changes that have given them a competitive edge.

Said SGM area manager, Antonio Parise,

Olympic Countdown - A number of West End shows have extended their booking periods into 2012, in a bid to benefit from advance ticket sales in the run up to the Olympic Games.

According to the Society of London Theatre, more than half of all programmed West End productions are offering sales 15 months in advance in anticipation of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games in the summer of 2012.

Long-running shows that have announced an extended booking period include Disney's The Lion King, Les Miserables, Mamma Mia!, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, The Woman in Black, Legally Blonde the Musical, War Horse, Blood Brothers and Billy Elliot the Musical. New musicals for 2011 that have extended their booking into 2012 include The Wizard of Oz, Shrek the Musical and Ghost the Musical

UK - Chichester Festival Theatre is one of the UK's flagship theatres, with a reputation for producing a wide range of theatrical productions, from musicals and comedies, to classic drama and innovative new writing. Since opening in 1962, the theatre has established an international reputation as one of the UK's leading regional venues. The Festival Theatre was founded by Leslie Evershed-Martin CBE and its first artistic director was Laurence Olivier.

With 1206 seats, the Festival Theatre was the first modern theatre in this country to have an open 'thrust' stage with the audience seated around it on three sides, allowing it a close involvement with the actors. The emphasis of the theatre's programme is on the summer festival, which runs from April to September and includes the show Singing in the Rain, which is based on the classic MGM movie.

GDS were commissioned to d

USA / Belgium - After three years on the road and 112 live shows to over 6.8m fans, U2's record-breaking $700m grossing 360° tour came to an end on Saturday at Magnetic Hill Music Festival, California. The tour spanned five continents and saw U2 perform over 2,600 songs, and it was not just the band that grabbed headlines across the globe - the now-famous Stageco stage on which they performed captured many people's imagination.

Following the speculation across the international press last week that the stage, nicknamed the 'Claw', will be available to buy after the tour, stage design and manufacturer Stageco prepares to welcome the systems back to their US and Belgium headquarters.

Stageco was involved from the earliest stages of the Claw's planning and conception, working closely with U2, show director Willie Williams, set designer Mark Fisher and production manager Jake

UK - Hall Stage has added the range of hoists & control systems from long-term partners Maquinas Iberica. Offering a wide selection of tried & tested powered flying systems and control options, Maquinas systems complements and extends the Hall Stage catalogue to include zero-fleet and wire rope point hoist options "at very affordable prices".

Hall Stage has designed a specific entry level zero-fleet hoist - the DGZ - with a 350kg load on four lines & 15m travel, moving a stage flybar at 12m per minute - three times the speed of regular chain hoists or standard pilewind units. Designed for service use with lighting and technical equipment or basic scenery moves, the unit comes complete with all necessary drop pulleys and bar, wire ropes and local control for less than £5,000.

Additional options include programmable control, variable speed up to 1.5m/second, flyi

Australia - Canterbury College is an independent, co-educational, day school affiliated with the Anglican Church of Australia. The campus is located on 32 hectares in Waterford, between Beenleigh and Loganlea in Queensland.

The College is very pro music and sports hence their new Canterbury Events Centre caters to both disciplines. The footprint of the building is 75m x 45m with a stage size approximately 24m x 12m plus wing space and side of stage areas. In full seating mode the centre can host 2000 seats.

The building itself is a BER funded project whilst the sound, lighting, audio visual and curtains have been funded by the College via fundraising along with some government funding.

"The Events Centre is used for many presentations such as speech night for senior, middle and junior levels and recently a Disney mjusical Beauty & the Beast with three fully sold

UK - Earlier this year The Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST), along with 97 other architectural projects, won a much-coveted 2011 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Award. Six of the 97 projects went on to be shortlisted for the prestigious Stirling Prize; the RST was one of them. The team at Charcoalblue Theatre Consultants, the company responsible for the design and planning of the theatre auditorium and the technical facilities, both in the auditorium and backstage, is delighted.

Managing director Andy Hayles comments, "This is the fifteenth project that the Charcoalblue team has worked on to win a RIBA Award and the third that's been nominated for a Stirling Prize. From the moment the RST opened it quickly and emphatically showed its strengths. The single-space, thrust stage format is an exciting, intimate and aesthetically enchanting space to inhabit.

"I

UK - When Daybreak, a UK TV breakfast show, was launching at the end of last year, it wanted to do so with a flourish. Not only did the station spend a great deal of money enticing stars from other channels, but they knew the studio needed to look great.

The studio, on the south bank of London's River Thames, would have windows on three sides, and be facing the iconic St Paul's Cathedral. In winter time, when it first comes on air at 6am, it will be dark, with it gradually getting brighter until there would potentially be full sunlight streaming through the windows by the end of the programme at 9:25am.

Lighting director Matt Carter looked to technology to solve the lighting problems that presented. Employing Stage Electrics, he first had £130,000 worth of dimmable 2.5m high glass windows installed, which, when attached to an ETC Paradigm control system, automatic

Denmark - Danish Rental Network Agents have provided L-Acoustics WST line source systems for Roskilde 2011, one of Europe's largest summer festivals. Nordic Rentals deployed its K1 system for the Orange stage, while Moto Rental, also a Rental Network Agent, supplied a V-DOSC/dV-DOSC system for the Arena stage.

The extensive system on the Orange stage consisted of 72 K1 cabinets with 24 K1-SB subs, 48 SB28 subs, 26 KUDOs, 28 KARAs and six SB18 subs, all powered by 75 LA8 amplified controllers in LA-RAKs.

"The sound was especially designed for the broad range of artists who visited the Orange Stage," says Nordic Rentals' Thomas Christensen. "It was able to create an almost electronic club sound for artists like Deadmau5, as well as classic stadium rock for artists such as Kings of Leon."

Adds Paul Jensen, from the Stage Section of the Roskilde Festival, &qu

UK - Rental company HSL continues its busy concert touring season supplying lighting and video projectors to the latest leg of the Brit Floyd UK tour - a new show celebrating the musical legacy of progressive rock band, Pink Floyd - which plays London's O2 Arena this coming week.

Brit Floyd under the musical and creative direction of Damian Darlington boasts a Floydesque style lightshow which is equally as original in its own right, has been co-designed by Dave Hill and Neil Trenell, with Trenell going out on the road operating.

The project is managed for HSL by Mike Oates who says, "Supplying a Pink Floyd show of any description is a lighting company's dream, considering they were such great technical innovators and responsible for evolving the whole concept of integrated visuals into a powerful, emotive, experience. In the process, they put the whole idea of touring and

USA - Delaware -based Main Light Industries has added Clay Paky Sharpy moving beam lights, Alpha Profile 700, and Alpha Spot HPE 1500 fixtures to its growing inventory of rental equipment.

Main Light, which serves all lighting markets from theatrical to touring, has become one of the largest rental houses in the US. After initially purchasing Sharpy fixtures earlier this year, the company has reinforced its Clay Paky offerings by acquiring the Alpha units.

"The features and quality of the Clay Paky fixtures uniquely position them in the market," notes Randy Mullican at Main Light. "We like the speed of the Sharpy - the unit is extremely fast and the beam projects out of the Sharpy incredibly far. They have no problem cutting through 1500-watt fixtures on stage."

Mullican cites the low noise level of the Alpha 700, which enables it to be used in theatre en

UK - White Light, the exclusive UK distributor for the Robert Juliat range of lighting fixtures, has recently supplied 18 of Juliat's Lancelot 4000W followspots to two other lighting rental companies, HSL and Neg Earth.

With a 4kHTI lamp and a beam adjustable from 2-5?, Lancelot is a followspot designed for the largest of venues and biggest of shows, giving a high output and a precise, controllable beam over even the longest of throws. This made it the perfect choice for shows by JLS - which HSL supplied from 12 of their newly purchased units - and Take That, which Neg Earth supplied from their new stock of six Lancelots. Lancelots are also in use on Shrek at London's Theatre Royal Drury Lane and on The Wizard of Oz at The London Palladium, as part of a rig supplied by White Light.

(Jim Evans)

USA - Infusing the excitement and atmosphere of a big rock show into a largely speech based national meeting can be a daunting prospect. "During the awards segments of the show the dBC weighted reading reached 106-108 dB SPL," said sound supervisor Chas Gerber of Gerber Acoustics.

"The programme was underpinned by lots of upbeat dance music with plenty of low end." Add the 37,000 highly motivated sales people for Primerica that thronged the reverberant confines of the Atlanta Georgia Dome and it's not hard to imagine the challenges facing Gerber. "With two cross stage lecterns for the presenters reading off the award winners' names, I needed to be extremely careful."

Gerber Acoustics has managed the audio responsibilities of this annual presentation before, and called upon the services of frequent collaborator Florida based Beachsound to provide a

Austria - The Donauinselfest - or Danube Island Festival - is a huge, free annual event that attracts millions of visitors to Vienna each June. This year, rental company Concept Solutions provided two DiGiCo SD8s for the Festival's Front of House and monitor duties, supplied to them by DiGiCo's Austrian distributor, TON Eichinger.

Concept Solution's Raphael Rupprecht explains what was involved at this truly massive event. "This is a three-day festival featuring open-air stages around the island," he says. "We started working at 9am every day, bands arrived at 10am for soundcheck and the show itself ran from 3pm to 12pm. It was a huge workload - we had to set up our standard backline, plus the individual amps and instruments for each band and sometimes there were as many as four drum kits on stage waiting to be miked up - but all acts ran smoothly and the overall m

UK - Le Mark Group, based at Houghton Hill Industries, has been shortlisted for a 2011 East of England International Trade Award. These International Trade Awards, sponsored by Santander Corporate Banking are the only UK wide business awards to exclusively recognize the success of exporters, importers and those trading overseas.

Despite the challenges posed by current global economic conditions, UK companies like Le Mark are still very much 'out there' competing on the International stage and the 2011 International Trade awards celebrate these ventures & successes.

The 12 regional finalists will be invited to the UK final at a prestigious Gala Luncheon and Awards presentation at the House of Lords where three national award categories winners will be announced. Le Mark were selected for the SME category, as a company who shown outstanding International Trade achievement with a

UK - The team behind the UK's National Student Drama Festival are seeking entries and support for the first ever International Student Drama Festival, which will take place next year from the 22-30 June in the UK.

The NSDF12 - ISDF - being presented in conjunction with Sheffield Theatres, RSC, LIFT, The Old Vic Tunnels and Menier Chocolate Factory - will feature a nine-day celebration of young people's theatre featuring the best of British work alongside exceptional student productions from across the world.

The Festival is an opportunity for young people to come together and present their work on the world's stage to an international audience of theatregoers, industry experts and peers. Participants don't have to be studying drama to be a part of it - they just have to enjoy it and want to watch it and make it.

NSDF12 - ISDF will feature over 100 performances of 20 internat

Live Statistics - Box office takings for pop and rock concerts in the UK fell for the first time in more than a decade in 2010, according to a music industry report. PRS For Music said fans spent 12% less on face value tickets than in 2009. Part of the drop was blamed on the fact that acts including The Rolling Stones and Take That did not tour last year. And some major artists, such as Kings of Leon and Rod Stewart, opted to play in arenas instead of stadia as a result of the economic downturn, PRS said.

But the organisation, which collects royalties on behalf of songwriters, said this year's revenues were likely to bounce back thanks to Take That's record-breaking stadium shows and tours by Rihanna, Westlife and Justin Bieber. The report says, "It would be very tempting to look at these numbers and jump towards a knee jerk reaction that the live music bubble has burst. We

UK - SES Entertainment Services on Stand number 1J-11, are running a competition at this year's PLASA show, with one lucky winner walking away with a holiday in Sunny Florida.

For every order placed on the stand this year, an entry will be placed into the competition to win a two week stay in a five-bed luxury villa in Kissimmee, Florida in 2012.

Just 10 minutes drive from the Gates of the Walt Disney resort in Orlando, Florida, the home sleeps up to 10 people and has a very large pool. Just off the highway 192, you will be in the heart of all the major attractions within a few minutes drive. The home benefits from four bathrooms, full air conditioning and a games room. Dates for the stay are subject to availability (Summer dates are still available) and the prize does not include flights or car hire. The value for entry is subject to a minimum spend of £250.00, but mult

Italy - London-based production company LarMac Live (LML) production managed the launch of the latest high profile Hard Rock Cafe venue, which has just opened in Florence.

Having a 'grand opening' event was fully endorsed by the Mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi. It was attended by a host of local dignitaries, politicians and celebrities, plus about 10,000 members of the public who pitched up to enjoy a free concert headlined by British rock superstars Simple Minds in the prime location of the Piazza della Repubblica, Florence (the venue is on Brunelleschi, 1 - just off the Piazza).

LarMac LIVE won the contract to produce and co-ordinate all technical production elements needed for the event through their previous work and connections with the client. They have worked on Women of Rock shows and Hard Rock Calling events in Hyde Park, London among others. They were also highly rec

UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) Ltd's managing director, David Leggett has been appointed to the position of executive chairman. Former UK sales director, Phill Capstick has moved over into David Leggett's role as managing director and Jonathan Walters has expanded his responsibility to UK sales director from Northern sales director.

David Leggett comments, "I am very excited about this new position as it allows me to concentrate on the direction of the way the company is headed and frees me up from the day to day management."

Phill Capstick adds, "I have been working with David on managing the company for several years now; relinquishing the duty of UK sales director to Jonathan will allow me to concentrate fully in my new capacity as managing director. I am looking forward to my new task within A.C. Entertainment Technologies."

Jonathan Wal

USA - ETCP Certification is a fundamental aide to employers who are looking for qualified technicians for lead positions. It guarantees a reliable level of expertise and skills because the exams are specific to this industry and a fair assessment of your knowledge. Don't delay in getting your certification!

All three ETCP examinations will be given at the October 2011 LDI show in Orlando. The Entertainment Electrician exam is scheduled for Friday, 28 October; the Arena Rigging exam is to be given the morning of Saturday, 29 October and the Theatre Rigging exam is scheduled for that afternoon. Candidates who wish to take multiple exams will receive a discount for the second exam. Interested applicants must submit their application, along with supporting materials and fee, to the ETCP office no later than 29 September 29.

Candidate information, including eligibility requirements

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