UK / USA - As part of its ongoing merger activities and in response to the end of year departure of Ruth Rossington, executive director in Europe, PLASA has taken the opportunity to restructure its management team to ensure it continues to move the organisation forward while progressing a wide range of projects of benefit to members.

With effect from 1 October 2011, a new company structure will be put in place which sees CEO Matthew Griffiths heading up the association, whilst also temporarily overseeing the Events divisions in the UK and North America. Finance director Shane McGreevy becomes chief operating officer (COO) with responsibilities expanding beyond finance and core services into operational administration and personnel.

Lori Rubinstein, current executive director in North America, becomes the new director of membership, skills, standards & technical overseeing thes

USA - PLASA has announced the finalists for the fourth annual Rock Our World Awards, to be presented at the PLASA Cocktail & Awards Reception at LDI 2011. The PLASA Rock Our World Awards were created to honour groundbreaking achievement by its members and to acknowledge the genius of both the creator of the technology and the designer or integrator who applies it in a real world environment.

The finalists for the fourth annual Rock Our World Awards are:

83rd Annual Academy Awards - Green Hippo, PRG, TMB

ALEXA Digital Camera System - ARRI

coolux Widget Designer 3.0 PRO - Coolux GmbH

DataGate Mk2 - ENTTEC

Disney World of Color - A.C.T Lighting, Fisher Technical Services, MA Lighting, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Creative Entertainment

EverGrip Molded Motor Control Cables - Lex Products Corp

Garsington Opera - Unusual Rigging Ltd (UK)

USA - More than 25 years in the making, Dallas' AT&T Performing Arts Centre is a cultural nexus in the city's revitalised downtown arts district. The area is home to a number of different entertainment venues, from the Dallas Symphony's Meyerson Auditorium and the intimate Wyly Theatre to the Winspear Opera House and the open-air Annette Strauss Square, making it a busy hub of activity on any given evening.

The 2,200-seat Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House, created by architect Foster & Partners, with theatre design by Theatre Projects Consultants and acoustician Sound Space Design, is home to the Dallas Opera, and an anchor in the new arts district. The Winspear's sound system, designed by Martin Van Dijk of Toronto-based Engineering Harmonics, is centred around left/right arrays of 12 Renkus-Heinz STLA/9R RHAON empowered loudspeakers that retract into the ceiling when not in

Lebanon - Popular open-air nightclub Skybar features a Turbosound-based sound system. Louay Agha of Lebanon-based Thunder Electronics explains his original 2008 system design, "With Skybar being open to the elements I specified Turbosound's TCS-C series of weather-resistant loudspeakers, whose qualities are vitally important."

The system has seen an upgrade this year with the addition of eight TCX-12 two-way loudspeakers and six B-18 subwoofers from the Compact series, powered by Turbosound's latest DSP-based amplifier: the RACKDP-50, which delivers an impressive 1250 watts at 2 ohms from each of its four output channels.

"Skybar opens at 8pm each evening and functions as a chill-out lounge with food and background music," says Agha. "Then at midnight it fires up as a nightclub, with DJ sets and occasional live performances. So the loudspeakers need to

UK - A.C. Special Projects (ACSP) will attend PLASA 2011 (Stand 1-D32, Hall 1) to showcase and discuss examples of the many performance lighting, audio and AV system installations provided by the company.

ACSP design, supply and install lighting, sound and AV systems - as well as track and curtains, intercom and show relay. The company's previous installations range from a basic six circuit lighting bar, with a dimmer pack and lighting desk, to full blown theatre systems.

Working alongside designers and architects or directly for the performance venue, the company's fully qualified team of engineers will provide a first class finished system installation, on time and on budget.

ACSP has access to over 200 quality brands, including popular performance ranges from Chroma-Q, Jands, Spotlight, ETC, Philips Selecon, Pulsar, Sennheiser, Shure, Soundcraft, Allen & Heath, JBL, Andol

UK - Marquee Installations has completed the installation of sound systems and AV infrastructure for the new G Live venue in Guildford, including the FOH Martin Audio W8LM Mini Line Array system.

Replacing the old Civic Hall, which closed in 2004, the G Live venue provides a flexible performance hall, which accommodates 1,000 in all-seat or 1,700 in seated/standing modes. The venue also incorporates a flexible-use 100-seat studio space, substantial foyers, café and bars, kitchens to provide for banqueting, seminar and meeting rooms, dressing rooms plus green room and offices.

The hall acoustics and sound systems designs for G Live were specified by electro-acoustic consultants Peter Mapp + Associates. The main hall has been designed to be an acoustically dry space with an Acoustic Control Systems (ACS) system, supplied by RK Sound Engineering, giving the ability to alte

UK - The Sage Gateshead has installed a Midas PRO9 live performance system at front of house in its main auditorium.

"We first came across the Midas PRO series almost three years ago, when we used a PRO 6 on a large surround sound opera, Skellig," says The Sage Gateshead's head of technical operations, Chris Durant. "It was obvious that this was a product that would more than meet our needs when we needed to upgrade, and would reinforce our reputation as one of the best sounding music venues in the world."

"Our demands range from small school concerts to large conferences and orchestral events to world class amplified artists," says Durant. "The various I/O boxes available as part of the Midas digital system means that we've been able to come up with solutions for all of these, as well as applications that were previously impossible. We found

Croatia - L-Acoustics' Croatian distributor Dicroic has installed a 12XTi coaxial system into the Hotel Lone, an exclusive new resort on the waterfront of Lone Bay, situated in the protected Monte Mulini forest, Rovinj.

Part of the Croatian Maistra chain of hotels and resorts, Hotel Lone is Croatia's first five-star design hotel, providing a year-round leisure and business destination. Dicroic has installed an L-Acoustics system into the hotel's multi-purpose conference hall, designed to host a range of conferences as well as theatrical and concert events, as well as into the hotel's jazz club.

The 600-capacity congress hall has been installed with L-Acoustics 12XTis as a left/right system, with two 108Ps as delays and two ground stacked SB18i subwoofers, all powered by LA4 amplified controllers. Designed to provide complete and balanced coverage for the main auditorium, the s

USA - Theatre Projects has opened their first office on the west coast. They've been working on the west coast for 30 years and "are thrilled to now have a permanent home in Los Angeles".

Some of their more visible west coast projects include the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Kodak Theatre. But their west coast work represents their practice as a whole, including regional theatres, university work, small-scale projects, performing arts centres, and renovations. Find out more about Theatre Projects' work on the west coast attheatreprojects.com.

Theatre Projects designs and plans performance spaces of every size and complexity and offers a broad range of services from auditorium and theatre equipment design to operations and business planning.

The new office is at 453 S. Spring Street, Suite 1230, Los Angeles, California 90013, T 213 375-3688.

(Jim Evans)

Finland - The Kylpylähotelli Levitunturi spa - hotel boasts 220 guest rooms spread across 10 hotel buildings, a generous selection of restaurants, cafes, and clubs, plus a world-class spa and bowling facilities. It also features a new sound reinforcement system drawn from the catalogue of D.A.S. Audio.

Jyti Ålander is the sales director for Espoo, Finland-based Electro Waves Oy, a leading Finnish company with expertise in the fields of sound systems, lighting, and water technology. A provider of innovative AV solutions, Electro Waves, in a cooperative effort with some partner companies, played an integral role in the deployment of the lavish Aqua Theatres for Royal Caribbean International's flagship vessels Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas. As the designer of the new sound system at Kylpylähotelli Levitunturi, he discussed the challenges of the project and the decisio

USA - The bird calls, primate howls and other noises coming from the Philips Park Zoo in Aurora, Illinois, are balanced with a new audio system that delivers news, exhibit information, and background music to some 200,000 visitors each year.

Chicago-based systems integration firm AST (Advanced Systems & Technologies) installed a 70-volt system with eight weatherproof Technomad advanced audio loudspeakers to provide intelligible voice and high-quality musical reproduction throughout all seven acres of the zoo. Seven Technomad Vernal loudspeakers discreetly cover the grounds, providing audio to visitors nearby the animal exhibits. One Technomad Vienna loudspeaker provides long-distance audio projection to patrons at the main entrance gate and visitor centre.

The compact Vernal and Vienna loudspeakers, mounted on various building eves, light poles, and fences, are part of a custo

UK - With preliminary visitor figures of over 12,000, showing a marginal increase over 2010 and strong international engagement from across the world, organisers PLASA Events are "delighted" with the positive feedback to this year's PLASA 2011, which has just closed its doors at Earls Court after a vibrant four days.

This year's event sets the scene for a strong return to Earls Court in 2012. Events Manager Sophie Atkinson commented: "Exhibitors have been enthusing about the high quality of visitors and the rate of sales enquiries, and with hundreds of new products being launched, there has been a great return on investment for them. We expect to see many back here at Earls Court next year."

Visitors also relished being first to get their hands on some of the industry's hottest new products. Over 500 products were launched at the show, including major new d

UK - With preliminary visitor figures of over 12,000, showing a marginal increase over 2010 and strong international engagement from across the world, organisers PLASA Events are "delighted" with the positive feedback to this year's PLASA 2011, which last week closed its doors at Earls Court after a vibrant four days.

This year's event sets the scene for a strong return to Earls Court in 2012. Events manager Sophie Atkinson commented: "Exhibitors have been enthusing about the high quality of visitors and the rate of sales enquiries, and with hundreds of new products being launched, there has been a great return on investment for them. We expect to see many back here at Earls Court next year."

Visitors also relished being first to get their hands on some of the industry's hottest new products. Over 500 products were launched at the show, including major new

World - PLASA members worldwide have begun voting in the Association's yearly elections, which commenced this week.

The month-long ballot, in which over 1,000 members participate, will decide places on PLASA's European and North American Regional Boards, together with a single seat on its over-arching Governing Body.

The two Regional Boards are still a relatively new concept for PLASA, having been formally launched at the start of 2011. Their role is to represent the interests of members affiliated to those regions, ensuring that PLASA offers strong on the ground support to members.

Both the North American and European Regional Boards are looking to fill a number of places for 2012. Following the death of the European Chair Rob Lingfield earlier this year, Ed Pagett of Panalux, who served as Vice Chair, is standing for the position of Chair. A number of representative positi

Australia - Genazzano FCJ College, located in Kew, Melbourne, recently unveiled their new Madeline Centre for Music and Performing Arts.

The Madeleine Centre is a fully functioning performing arts venue, incorporating a series of classrooms, drama rooms, a gallery space and the impressive Montagner Auditorium. The 456 seat auditorium and the accompanying rooms are already heavily used each day, playing host to drama and theatre studies, music classes, band rehearsals, meetings, assemblies, seminars, concerts, recitals and theatre productions.

Lightmoves were contracted to supply and install the theatrical lighting, sound and lighting control packages for the new artistic hub. For the PA, Lightmoves turned JBL.

The main auditorium features a high ceiling, curved walls and minimal space in which to mount a speaker system. A JBL VRX line array was chosen, given its small footpr

UK - Audio Light Systems has recently completed work at the Theatre Royal Newcastle on the restoration project.

The ambitious development required the technical infrastructure to be replaced in the main auditorium and surrounding spaces. Audio Light Systems working to a Charcoal Blue specification completed the five-month build with the usual high standards required for this level of work.

Over 20 miles of cable, over 100 new panels were used and more than 3,500 man hours were taken during the short build period. The Audio Light Systems project engineer Dennis Martin used his extensive experience to make sure the project programme ran as smoothly as possible.

"The auditorium has been fully refurbished and it was a priority that newly installed facilities be discrete, if not invisible. This was a challenge, but the end result was outstanding. Doughty panels and IWB's wer

The Netherlands - The Dutch Maritime Museum - Het Scheepvaartmuseum - has reopened following major renovation. The museum consists of several themed exhibitions, object exhibitions and interactive exhibits. Rapenburg Plaza made an important contribution to the interior layout of the Museum.

Rapenburg Plaza is responsible for the complete media and lighting control, the major part of the audio-visual installations and also the entire technical content, including the lighting & sound design for the Voyage at Sea - an impressive maritime experience. A Richmond Sound Design SoundMan-Server Virtual Sound System with 96 track playback and 48 input and output channels handles all the sound content and effects as well as all audio from the video sources in this attraction.

The Voyage at Sea is a 20-minute show divided over five rooms in which the public is taken on a jou

UK - Newcastle's Theatre Royal reopened its doors to the public on Monday 12 September following an extensive £5m restoration project. The complex renovation drew on the theatrical expertise of UK theatre consultants, Charcoalblue.

Charcoalblue began work on the refurbishment project in September 2009. Managing director of the company Andy Hayles explains, "The scope of the restoration for this Grade I listed theatre was particularly ambitious, and included complete internal redecoration, new seating, new and refurbished pit lifts, new lighting positions and extensive rewiring. Charcoalblue was responsible for the design of all the technical systems and their integration within the historic fabric of the building, as well as advising on sightlines and seating layouts."

The works, which restored the original 1901 designs by theatre architect Frank Matcham in the

UK - David Atkinson Lighting Design (DALD) has recently completed the lighting design for the Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990s exhibition at the V&A, London.

This is the first in-depth exhibition of art, design and architecture of the 1970s and 1980s, examining one of the most contentious phenomena in recent art and design history: Postmodernism. It shows how postmodernism evolved from a provocative architectural movement in the early 1970s and rapidly went on to influence all areas of popular culture including art, film, music, graphics and fashion.

The exhibition, designed by architects Carmody Groarke & APFEL (A Practice for Everyday Life), briefed DALD that the lighting design should be bold and dynamic, with good tonal contrast.

The installation is set out in three of the main temporary gallery spaces. The first gallery opening section also introduc

UK - The newly completed Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff - Wales' national music and drama conservatoire - opens to a new intake of students this month. Won by BFLS in international competition in 2007, the scheme comprises 450?seat chamber recital hall (the Dora Stoutzker Hall), a 180?seat theatre (the Richard Burton Theatre), four rehearsal studios, an exhibition gallery (the Linbury Gallery) as well as generous foyer areas, a terrace overlooking Bute Park and a new Café Bar.

The £22.5m project is funded by a grant from the Welsh Government, loan finance and £4m of philanthropic donations. The scheme has been designed to be BREEAM 'excellent'. The new buildings are situated within the Grade I listed Bute Park. Directly across the road from the new building is Cathays Park, the civic centre of Cardiff, consisting of a number of important liste

UK - Adlib's specialist installations division has completed the UK's first live music venue installation with an L-Acoustics KARAi system at the newly refurbished 1000 capacity Leeds University venue, Stylus.

Stylus is located in the basement building complex beneath the famous Leeds Uni Refectory, a gig renowned for hosting some landmark live performances in its day.

Adlib has a history of involvement in various capacities with Leeds University Students' Union (LUSU), who run all the venues on campus, and were one of the companies asked to propose a new sound design and system for Stylus, which was compiled by Adlib's Roger Kirby and John Hughes. Although the project funding process was initiated before his arrival in Leeds, the installation was co-ordinated for the Union by technical manager, Ryan Esson.

The new system - with six KARAis a side - is flown above Stylus's ex

USA - A new International Green Theatre Alliance (IGTA) has been launched at this year's LDI show in Orlando, Florida. The IGTA formalises the growing partnership between Julie's Bicycle (UK), which works on environmental sustainability across the creative industries in the UK, and the Broadway Green Alliance (USA), which works with the US theatre community and its patrons to adopt environmentally preferable practices.

The Alliance's first project is a new website www.igtalliance.com which will go live in December 2011 and provide an entry point for international practitioners seeking information and resources on environmentally sustainable best practice in the arts. The website will introduce the extensive sustainability programmes of alliance members and direct users to international resources and support networks.

Alliance members will be working together on a range of proj

Australia - European LED manufacturer Anolis has engineered and produced a custom lighting solution for a major new installation in the impressive foyer space of The Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA)'s award winning theatre complex in Kensington, Sydney.

A new energy efficient lighting scheme has been installed, replacing 28 recessed 500W PAR 56 halogen fittings with the new Anolis ArcSource 48 MultiChip (MC) fixture, specially designed by Anolis for this project.

The Anolis ArcSource 48 MC consists of twelve 10W Cree MCE RGBW LED chips, which enable full and seamless RGB colour mixing plus an excellent selection of 'real' whites in a variety of colour temperatures.

NIDA's lighting supervisor Adrian Wright explains that top of their brief for the new lighting was to make a significant reduction in electricity consumption across NIDA's public areas. They al

UK - Sound Division was recently commissioned to install a background music system in the well known Hix restaurant in Brewer Street, Soho, London.

Hix is the third restaurant in the expanding chain of high-end eateries from chef and entrepreneur Mark Hix. Set in the heart of Soho it boasts an award winning restaurant on the ground floor and the celebrated Mark's in the basement, with its apothecary bar and an eccentric cocktail list.

Sound Division were asked to return to Hix to re-commission the music system that they had installed for the previous restaurant that traded on the site. In addition they were asked to upgrade the speaker system in Marks Bar, the basement bar lounge, to create a more vibrant atmosphere for the guests.

Having previously installed discreet JBL ceiling speakers in Marks Bar, a set of black JBL Control 25AV cabinet speakers were now specified and w

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