Turkey - On 3 March 2009, the newly completed Ahmed Adnan Saygun Arts Centre in Izmir, Turkey, designed by Arup and Tozkoparan Architects, opened its doors to the public for the opening performance of the 16th European Jazz Festival. Grammy award winning American jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater was accompanied by the Istanbul Big Band at the event.

Arup Acoustics and a multidisciplinary engineering team from Arup worked closely with Turkey-based Tozkoparan Architects to deliver the new Centre. The acoustics and venue planning were an integrated part of the design from the outset with the goal of providing a building with world-class facilities within affordable budgets.

The new arts centre, known as AASSM, is named after Turkish composer and musicologist Ahmed Adnan Saygun, who died in 1991. The Centre incorporates a 1100 seat concert hall, a 300 seat recital hall as well as v

UK - Over the years, the Loppington Players have put on pantomimes, pageants and plays originally with no stage at all, then with demountable chipboard staging bought second-hand as a catwalk from a nearby department store. This stage did sterling service but it was heavy, hard to erect and dismantle and had suffered from many years of being stored in a garage.

In December 2008 Loppington Players were awarded a grant from the 'Grassroots Fund' administered by the Community Council of Shropshire and this, together with a generous contribution from Loppington Village Hall, enabled them to buy new staging from Maltbury Staging. After visiting the Glasshouse Studios which already owned a substantial package of Metrodeck, Lally Cheeseman was sure that this was the appropriate system for their requirements.

Members of Loppington Players have built wings and a proscenium arch for th

UK - The latest phase in Litestructures' studio's development will be to create a dedicated, permanent exhibition space within the building. This will be accessible to performers, technicians, riggers and all production crew and visitors. As such, it will provide a sales and display opportunity for companies and organisations offering products and services to this important industry sector, says the company.

Those interested in supporting this venture and in exploiting the potential it represents should contact Laurie Giraudeau or Ben Brooks to discuss their detailed requirements or to explore the options and alternatives.

Litestructures exhibition will be based around well lit spaces for exhibitors created from Litestructures trussing and staging products, giving an attractive display for all participants. The maximum booth size will be 4m2 per exhibitor.

(Jim Evans)

Korea - A QSC WideLine-10 line array system has been installed in a new cultural centre in Korea. With two hangs of four WL2102 enclosures per side, the line array forms part of a complete QSC solution proposed by the manufacturer's Korean distributors, Sama ProSound, to deliver optimum sound at the YEJU Cultural Art Centre in Yeongdeok-gun, Gyeongbuk.

The Centre was originally opened in June 2004 to promote comprehensive culture and art within the community. It was equipped with a variety of facilities such as a 530-seat performance hall, exhibition room, cultural lecture room and library; and it is in the performance hall that the WideLine-10, with its 140° horizontal dispersion characteristic, has been specified.

With responsibility for staging a variety of cultural and community events - including classical and concert performance - the Centre had insisted on top quali

UK - Lighting control and automation group, Dynalite, has drawn on its extensive expertise in the residential and hospitality sectors to secure contracts with four prestigious hotel projects in England. The installations--at the Rockliffe Hotel in County Durham, the Hilton Hotel in Liverpool, the Bridges Wharf Hotel in London, and the Berners Hotel in London - all of which are expected to be completed by year-end 2009.

Dynalite's involvement in these hotel installations will span from the design phase through to commissioning. In each case, the company will supply an automated lighting solution comprising a range of Dynalite controllers, wall panels, touch-screens, interfaces, sensors, and software.

At the heart of the Dynalite systems are the modular DIN rail-mountable DDMC802 multipurpose controllers. These support large quantities of small loads in hotel and high-density re

Show Time - The lighting, sound and production industries head to Frankfurt this week for ProLight+Sound 2009 and judging by the flood of pre-show product information - and launch party invitations - received by LSI, there will be much new to see and hear. Not surprisingly, then, the organisers are anticipating healthy attendance figures.

Woodstock Reprise - Michael Lang, the co-founder of the legendary 1969 Woodstock festival, is reportedly seeking sponsors for a 40th anniversary reprise in New York City. "The chances that something will happen are probable," he told the Times. "But I don't really have the answer yet as to what that will be." Central Park has been suggested as a possible location for the event. The Who were among the acts who played at the original concert, which took place in Bethel, New York State. A 30th anniversary concert

UK - Since it was first established the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts (LIPA) has developed a diverse and expansive curriculum. With recent advances in technology, particularly on the digital side, there are inevitably, multiple demands and expectations upon any equipment investments it makes. That certainly applies to the recent purchase of loudspeaker systems and digital consoles from TMC based near Bradford.

"There were several demands that led us to choose d&b audiotechnik equipment for the sound technology courses," said John Attewell chief technician at LIPA. "On the one hand we were looking for two systems identical in performance, and of professional scale. We've had an in house PA system for some time, but not one that meets that last parameter. The choice of C7-TOPs and SUBs gives us that ability as well as being useful in the wider context,

UAE - The recently-opened Dubai Mall is one of the largest malls in the world, boasting 1,200 retail outlets, two department stores and more than 160 food and beverage vendors. The mall's 220-store Gold Souk is an elaborately decorated area used for special events by the UAE Royal Family and other dignitaries, in addition to serving as an impressive entertainment area for mall visitors.

The Gold Souk features a 75ft diameter domed super high-resolution projection screen (designed by Salt Lake City-based Evans and Sutherland Digital Theaters Group) raised 40ft above the floor, which necessitated powerful and clear audio. The design of the area presented acoustical challenges, all of which were met with a custom system featuring EAW AX Series Loudspeakers and some architectural solutions. The system was designed by Indianapolis, IN-based firm Bowen Technovation.

Because of the v

UK - Speed is a dangerous imperative where rigging is concerned, yet there is an ever-growing demand for fast efficient turnover of productions. Echo Arena Liverpool, part of Arena and Convention Centre Liverpool (ACC Liverpool), the most recent addition to the UK's circuit of large-scale indoor events venues, has addressed this demand head on.

"The rigging grid system installed over the stage, and repeated above the centre of the arena floor, is second to none in terms of sheer utility and speed of operation," says David Bond of Star Events Group. "It has the reduction of Working at Height hours at its core."

The grid system was installed and is operated on behalf of the Echo Arena by Star Events Group; the control and hoist system used to move it comes from Lift Turn Move (LTM), a specialist entertainment rigging hardware supplier based close by in the Wi

UK - When the Bird College in Sidcup, a leading training centre for dance and theatre performance, needed to adapt one of their dance studios to allow it to be easily transformed into a performance space and back, it was to entertainment lighting supplier White Light that they turned.

"The college required us to provide a versatile rig that would allow the space to be transformed from a dance studio into a theatre space and back again" notes Matt Stridgen, White Light's projects co-ordinator responsible for the Bird College installation. "This required the installation of a new lighting grid and lighting infrastructure together with tracking and drapes to allow the space itself to be varied."

The new installation is based around an 8m by 7.5m internally-wired lighting grid featuring 20 15A sockets as well as a DMX outlet for control of automated lighting or

UK - A.C. Audio has recently supplied a sound and control system to Blackpool Pleasure Beach for their latest outdoor display, the Spectacular Dancing Water Show. The new high energy, interactive water display is situated at the heart of the beach complex, providing various theatrical showers of shooting fountains over 100ft high. It is choreographed to a wide repertoire of music including classical, pop and even rugby anthems.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach approached A.C. to specify and supply a powerful, durable sound system for the water show. The system needed to be able to withstand both the wet environment and high ambient noise levels emanating from the surrounding restaurant district. Knowing KV2 Audio had previously manufactured loudspeakers to such high levels of durability, A.C. Audio sales manager Peter Butler turned to KV2 with the brief.

"The reliability o

UK - Wonderworks has created a ghostly hologram within the new £1m permanent exhibition, Uncovering Origins, at Charles Darwin's Down House In Kent. Forming part of the bicentennial celebrations of the great scientist's birth, it was created in conjunction with Paradigm AV.

Wonderworks was contracted by design consultancy, Designmap, who created the exhibition for English Heritage. The Darwin hologram is set in faithful recreation of his cabin on the Beagle. MDM Props (Designmap's build partner on the project) realised the cabin interior. Having partnered Wonderworks many times in the past, Paradigm AV was brought in to work on the elaborate fabrication.

It was at Down House that Darwin lived with his devoted family for 40 years, and it was here that he researched and wrote his most famous and seminal work, On the Origin of Species.

The new exhibition cha

USA Full Sail University has invested in 13 Audient ASP8024 desks in its Recording Arts department. 12 24-channel Audient consoles have been installed in what is known as the Analogue Mix Lab and the thirteenth is set up in the lecture room.

Greg Griffith, sound foundations course director at Full Sail University, reports, "Each station, including the one in the lecture room has a full patchbay, is loaded with time-based and dynamics processors and a hard disk based multi-track, enabling class demonstrations to be shown on the same equipment that the students will use in the lab."

Eric Abraham, console department chair at Full Sail University, says, "The ASP8024 consoles are being used in the Sound Foundations course, which is the first course in which the students get to deal with a true inline recording console. The students learn signal flow and the recording

USA - North Davis Church of Christ in Arlington recently replaced its loudspeaker system with three Renkus-Heinz Iconyx digitally steerable arrays in a configuration designed to complement the church's new video screens as the first stage of a complete sanctuary renovation.

The church's congregation has grown continually since its foundation on a vacant lot in 1907, but a capella vocal music continues to be a strong part of its tradition. Minister of Music and Worship D. J. Bulls, a prominent arranger whose choral and worship arrangements are sung in churches across the country, directs the praise teams and the Celebration Choir, and also coordinates media for worship assemblies.

Taipale Media Systems (TMS) designed the new systems. Principal consultant Curt Taipale, who measured the highly reverberant room, says: "This is a 1000 seat, 220 degree-wide fan-shaped auditoriu

UK - In order to keep up with the demands of the international business community, seeking ever more sophisticated AV facilities within their premium four- and five-star hotels, the Radisson Edwardian Group is developing extended and technically advanced conference spaces, with provision to show HD content to large groups, and host video-conferencing forums.

Over the past few years its project technical team, including IT director Iype Abraham and technical services manager, Scott Bradley, have been working with integrators, Visual Systems Sales Ltd (part of Myriad Audio Visual Group), to evolve the concept for their principle theatres, and this includes a pristine audio signal path, delivered by the BSS Soundweb London digital processing.

As a result, the master scheme created for the five-star May Fair Hotel, is now being rolled out, and this month Visual Systems project con

USA - Located on the campus of Oral Roberts University, Tulsa's Mabee Centre is a special events arena that, in addition to serving as the home of the Golden Eagles men's and women's basketball teams, plays host to a broad range of cultural events. With the capacity to seat upwards of 11,300 people in its sports arena layout, the Mabee Centre's 105,000sq.ft floor plan includes two tiers of seats surrounding the regulation basketball court.

Tulsa, Oklahoma-based design/build firm Sounds From Heaven (SFH) Productions, LLC, was contracted to perform the facility upgrade. After extensive evaluation, a sizeable collection of loudspeakers from the D.A.S. Audio Aero catalogue was installed. The purchase included 20 Aero 38A medium format, powered three-way line array modules, 16 Aero CA-28A powered two-way, compact array modules, and eight Aero LX-218A powered subwoofers. The new equip

The Netherlands - The concert hall of the ArtEZ conservatory in the Dutch city Arnhem has been supplied with a new Sound Projects DreamLine sound system. The installation was provided by the Arnhem-based Live Music.

ArtEZ originated in 2002 through a merger of the Art Universities of Arnhem, Enschede and Zwolle. The ArtEZ conservatory, with more than 900 students and 260 teachers is one of the larger Dutch conservatories. ArtEZ has worked with Live Music as contractor for years and had chosen Sound Projects systems as reinforcement for different auditoria.

The new DreamLines are being flown and the additional subs are concealed under the stage so the concert hall appears to be more open. Live Music MD Bart Smits comments: "The slim DreamLines give more than enough coverage/dispersion and SPL. And with the additional two SP2-15 subs that are being built in the stage, you g

UK - PEL Music & Media has been awarded the contract to design, install and commission new sound systems into McDonald's' biggest UK franchisee's restaurants.

Franchisee Pru Naik has 24 McDonald's restaurants, mainly around West London and Berkshire. His McDonald's feature stylish dark bamboo and cream colour schemes, flowers on the tables, free wi-fi in every restaurant and now a new sound system.

Brand & communications manager Rico Pieri investigated the sound options and found Bose to be both quick to respond and helpful. Bose put Pieri in touch with one of its leading Bose Pro-Partners, PEL Music & Media, for the system design and installation.

PEL was asked to design and install a system initially for McDonald's London Victoria restaurant which was the first to be kitted out as part of the high spec refurb. The existing sound system hadn't been changed since 1999, but t

USA - The Healing Place Church, listed as one of "America's Most Innovative Churches" (Outreach magazine, Jan/Feb 2008), is a multi-purpose facility that includes a live worship space as well as a complete suite of production spaces for video and audio recording and broadcast. Through the use of extensive technical infrastructure, the production spaces can serve worship in the main sanctuary, or be configured to operate completely independently.

The Sanctuary's main sound system will consist of three arrays of 14 Outline Butterfly C.D.H. 483 elements each, powered by Outline T7 amplifiers. Low-frequency reinforcement is provided by 10 Outline Subtech 218 SP subwoofers. For delays, six arrays of six mini-COM.P.A.S.S. self-powered line array loudspeakers and two C.D.L. 1815 cardioid subwoofers (full-range and subwoofer loudspeakers suspended together on a custom r

UK - The CSS installation team has had a busy winter, completing lighting and sound installation at Newent Community School, St Edwards School, University of Gloucestershire's University Chapel and Barnwood Park Arts College.

Newent School wanted to upgrade the dimmer capability to 24 channel, and digital patching unit. A new 63Amp 3-phase mains and a Strand Wall rack 24 to distribute to seven lighting bars, along with four Robe 250AT moving heads was provided.

An extensive sound, lighting and video installation at St Edward's Senior School in Cheltenham. covers two interconnecting drama studios both of which can operate independently, or in conjunction with each other. The equipment included Selecon lanterns, Strand 6-pack dimmer, Zero88 Jester desks, Electro-voice SxA100+, Allen and Heath Mix Wizard desks and BSS FCS-966 graphics and radio microphones. A Christie Digital LX4

UK - Nestling against the dramatic backdrop of the Cornish coast, almost at Britain's most southerly point, lies the Minack Theatre - a gloriously visual outdoor performance venue. Northern Light has recently completed the upgrade of the venue's house lighting, which included cabling infrastructure, fixture renewal and DMX distribution.

Chris Watts, who had overall responsibility for project management on behalf of Northern Light, said: "It truly has been a joy to work on such an exceptional venue. An open air theatre presents its own unique challenges, particularly in terms of Mother Nature. The bulk of the installation took place in January during extremely inclement weather, but we stood up to the wind and rain and finished the job on time and on budget. The only other real issue was the distraction provided by the beautiful scenery."

New Blues System LED fittings

China - Lying at the Western end of China's Great Wall, Jia Yu Guan has been a strategic transport nexus since the days of the Silk Road. This historic city, placed at one of the major crossroads of civilisation has added a grand new theatre to its already bustling streets.

It's a measure of the astonishing speed with which complex projects can be completed that the Jia Yu Guan Grand Theatre opened just sixteen months after builders first cut turf. An ambitious project by any measure, the fact that this prestigious arts venue was completed during the final year of China's massive construction project for the 2008 Olympics makes it all the more laudable. Jiuquan Iron & Steel (Group) Co, Ltd chose to install a d&b audiotechnik PA system in the venue.

"The main theatre seats just under one thousand two hundred people," explained Daniel Chan from the Hong Kong office of

Australia - The Capitol Theatre Tamworth, New South Wales, is a 402-seat purpose-built proscenium arch theatre, located in the new Centrepoint Shopping Complex in the town. The Theatre shares its foyer and bar facilities with Forum6 cinemas.

Theatre consultant Richard Stuart was engaged to plan and oversee the fit-out of the theatre. He explains: "Originally the theatre was going to be a large cinema but halfway through construction they developed the idea of making the largest cinema a live theatre. Consequently the building design was put on hold for a while whilst the theatre design evolved. As the developer started to think about theatre equipment and machinery, I was brought in as Theatre Consultant for the project although the building structure was well and truly locked in design-wise."

The main issue to be addressed was turning a large rectangular box cinema

UK - The £15.3m regeneration of The Crucible Theatre passed a milestone recently as the completion of Phase 1 of the project was marked by a series of preview test events from 21 March to 4 April. Theatre consultants Theatreplan LLP have been providing specialist planning and technical design expertise throughout the project.

Phase 1 of the comprehensive refurbishment programme included a new roof, new exterior cladding, additional reinforcement for the building's foundations and redevelopment of the front of house areas. Theatreplan's team of Clive Odom, John Whitaker, Peter Ruthven Hall, Charles Wass and Mathew Smethurst-Evans were tasked with bringing the auditorium in line with modern disability access standards, and to replace the flying, lighting and sound systems. Previously, the team had completed the stage refurbishment with an ingenious modular solution in time f

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