USA - The founders Pennsylvania's Sight & Sound Theatres, Glen and Shirley Eshelman have always pushed the technological envelope. As the nation's largest Christian theatre, Sight & Sound creates spectacular live events drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the country to the magnificent 2,000-seat venue.
One of the latest additions to the theatre's extensive portfolio of professional live sound gear is the InnovaSON Sy80 digital mixing console which has been installed in the Millennium Theatre, the anchor of the Sight & Sound theatre complex, sporting three stages and more than 85 loudspeakers. The theatre produces elaborate stage events, which can include live animals, animatronic figures, life-size props and even helicopters that fly in. The sheer number of microphones, combined with the vast number of scenes and settings meant the mixing and recall capabilities of the Sy80 were ideal for the venue.
Gary Parke, audio operations supervisor at Sight & Sound Theatres, says the new Sy80 console is not only making the job of the sound engineers easier, but improving the quality of the presentations as well. "The primary reason we bought the console was to increase the amount of microphones needed for our expanding shows," Parke says. In addition, the console's operational features have increased its value to the point where the theatre can hardly imagine ever working without it. "Its open architecture makes it very easy on the operator," he says. "You have tremendous flexibility in routing mics to certain faders for certain
UK - Arena Structures supplied over 23,000sq.m of temporary structures to this year's John Smith's Aintree Grand National, with sister companies Arena Seating supplying 1,250 grandstand seats around the course, and Arena Events managing corporate hospitality packages. Arena Structures first became involved with the event 10 years ago, and projects director Ron Smith still oversees one of the largest temporary structures installations seen at any sporting event.
Arena Structures installed a number of structures at Aintree including The Aldaniti Pavilion, The Sky Pavilion, The Red Square Vodka Mood Bar, The Cottage Pavilion and The Aintree Pavilion. Each pavilion was individually designed and built to cater for different needs such as varying hospitality arrangements, preferred situation along the course and each companies individual tastes and corporate identity. The Aldaniti Pavilion, which overlooked the finish line and The Sky Pavilion, were both triple-decker structures, as was The Cottage Pavilion, which also included a separate John Smith's Hospitality Area. The Red Square Vodka Mood Bar was a single floor structure designed specifically for the client with a contemporary striking red throughout the inside to compliment their branding and corporate image. Although smaller than the others this spacious hospitality structure was the most stunning on the site.Arena Events was the only outside company to have its own hospitality facility at Aintree with the racecourse themselves providing all of the other hospitality packages at the event. The company was responsi
UK - Adlib Audio has completed a stylish sound installation, blending art, science, acoustics and aesthetics at Panacea in John Dalton Street, Manchester.
Panacea is the brainchild of one of the City's smartest young local party people and entrepreneurs, Joe Akka. Superlative acoustics was seen as absolutely crucial to creating Panacea's essential atmosphere. Akka contacted Adlib Audio's Andy Dockerty via recommendations from Kennedy Street Enterprises, and asked him to design an appropriate system - keeping the speakers as invisible as possible.
Dockerty - renowned for his attention to detail and quality and Dave Fletcher, who produced all the cabinet work, designed, specified and built a tailor-made system for Panacea. This involved embedding four speakers into each of Panacea's structural pillars with a minimal extrusion to ensure the preservation and integrity of the interior design.
Dockerty collaborated closely with designer Bernard Carroll throughout. Adlib had previously worked with him on the Mosquito Club in Liverpool and so a good dialogue existed between the two as well as a mutual respect for what their departments needed to achieve.
Initially, ADLIB supplied several samples of paintwork for the speaker grills to ensure an exact colour match and no degradation of the audio. Minute details included no bagding on the speaker grills, and even white foam behind them. Each of the four speakers had to be literally manufactured inside each pillar. Carroll insisted there was no angle at all on the protruding parts of the speakers, which made focussing th
UK - Energy giant BP has operated on a 13-hectare site at Sunbury for the past 80 years, but at the start of the new millennium plans were put in place to re-develop this into a brand new Business Park. The Park integrates BP's business, commercial and technology activities and is the base for some 3,000 staff.
Part of this integration involved relocating some of the resources from offices in central London and recognized the need for a series of 11 meeting rooms to be equipped with multimedia and videoconferencing support. Located in Building B - where some of the company's Gas, Power and Renewables businesses are located - each would be differently configured but with a standard template and control. Given the number of staff on site the rooms could expect little down time.
All have now been equipped by Pendax UK, and the largest - The Willow Room - utilizes two dnp 84in New Wide Angle rear projection screens, which challenged all the integration company's powers of design. Backtracking, BP's Steve Kerr, who was responsible for the procurement, stated: "It became obvious we needed to upgrade our meeting rooms to support a variety of collaboration activities. We decided to look at the meeting room space and add a variety of capabilities, divided between 41in TFT and 61in plasma displays."
But in the Willow Room they needed a more sophisticated solution. "We considered a plasma option but it wouldn't have been big enough; we could also have had two ceiling-mounted front projectors, but I was worried about the noise. Rear projection was one of the
UK - The Association of British Theatre Technicians will launch its annual Summer School 2005 at the A.C. Lighting North Trade Show being held at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds on 26 and 27 April.
ABTT Summer School 2005 will be held at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry. Four Awards are being offered this summer. In addition to its Bronze for Stage Technicians, this year sees the launch of a Silver Award for Stage Technicians, a Silver Award for Sound Technicians and a Silver Award for Stage Electricians. For the first time, these Awards will have full accreditation from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, making the ABTT Awards the first accredited courses for technical and production practitioners in theatre.
The Bronze Award is five intensive days taking the following subjects: Electrical Fundamentals, Portable Appliance Testing, Knots & Splicing, Manual handling and Introduction to Health and Safety and Counterweight Flying. This Award offers technicians sound foundations for safe working on a theatre stage.
The accredited Silver Award is designed for experienced technicians and offers courses in three specialist areas: Stage: including rigging, inspection and testing and covers LOLER requirements for the stage); Electrical: to include insulation inspection and testing for theatres, and covers IEE Regulations and Electricity at Work Act 1989 and Sound: communications and theatre sound engineering, use of sound equipment, playback devices, microphones, radio mics, processing etc.
For the final two days of the week all candi
UK - Taking less than four hours per line to install, the DGS steelband counterweight drive from Hall Stage promises "powered flying at highly affordable prices".
The first operational units - a DGS 250 & a DGS 500 - are working in the Milton Keynes Theatre and will be touring the UK and Europe over the next few months, supporting Hall Stages 2005 Exhibition schedule.
"Once installed, the venue saves the time and effort involved in loading and unloading counterweight cradles," says Hall Stage director Phil Wells.
DGS installations are designed to "massively reduce" the time taken on fit-ups and show rigging. A bar is available immediately as required and can be loaded and flown in minutes, without the need for re-weighting. "Although not currently illegal as such, various aspects of the tasks involved are definitely inhumane and the practice has already been outlawed in Holland," adds Simon Caldwell, Hall Stages' senior project manager.
"The last three years have been leading up to this launch", says Charles Haines, Hall Stage MD. "We came up with the simple concept back in 2001 and spent a year just looking for the key components. We soon realised that only one material was suitable - the patented ASM steel band - then signed a deal with ASM Steuerungstechnik in Germany, to develop the practical solution we now have."
(Jim Evans)
UK - Design practice KBA has been commissioned to create a luxury hotel on the site of a former Standard Life office in the centre of Edinburgh. The hotel is the brainchild of Montpeliers (Edinburgh), the award-winning style bar, hotel and restaurant operator.
The development, yet to be named, is located within an imposing five storey Georgian townhouse at the west end of Edinburgh's stylish shopping district. The building will offer 33 bedrooms, including deluxe suites, a restaurant, bars and private members lounge.
Kerr Blyth, managing director of KBA comments, "Montpeliers has long been a supporter of our integrated design approach. I am delighted that we have been commissioned to bring this landmark project to fruition, all the way through from developing the brief to the final product.
KBA celebrates its third birthday this year. Its portfolio of completed projects includes Opal Lounge, Edinburgh (MTV Style Bar 2004), Halo Bar, Edinburgh (Theme Magazine Best Interior Design shortlist 2003), Circus Café, Edinburgh, Attica Restaurant, London and Orocco Pier, South Queensferry. KBA says it is currently working on a number of significant leisure and residential projects in Scotland, the UK and Europe.
(Jim Evans)
UK - Lighting Effects Distribution provided project architects Satmoko Ball with a complete lighting set-up for new London West End nightclub Umbaba.
Cara Satmoko and Adrian Ball, partners in the practice, were introduced to LED's Ian Kirby by Umbaba director Jeremy Hartley, and between them they have evolved a series of changing scenes and moods to highlight the West African theme of the adobe/earth-style architecture.
In total, the Kent-based distributors supplied three Alkalite Octopod 80's; 35 x Solar MR16 3W high-power Luxeon RGB lamps and eight metres of Coemar Linea flexible RGB Strip, along with four Geni Mojo Spinmaster 3Y barrel-effect scanners for the dancefloor. Control gear consists of a 256-channel Sirocco desk for the LED effects, working under Mode programmable control, and a Geni PC Brain for the dancefloor lighting.
The owners had wanted to achieve a slow colour-changing ambience - particularly in the niches and alcoves. "Because of the environment, we chose warmer colours such as red, yellow and orange," said Satmoko. "Used indirectly by bouncing the light off the walls, it proved to be really effective with the blacked out ceiling."
Satmoko Ball are reportedly delighted with the overall result. "We have achieved what we hoped for, and the use of the MR16's in the niches is particularly effective," added Satmoko.
Her company has also worked on other projects involving Jeremy Hartley, most notably the original Chinawhite in Piccadilly, as well as those in Istanbul and Ibiza plus the restaurant Taman Gan
UK - PLASA 2005, Europe's definitive exhibition for professionals and decision-makers within the entertainment, event, corporate, architectural and installation industries, takes place at London's Earls Court from Sunday September 11 to Wednesday September 14 2005.
This annual event attracts visitors from all over the world and is run by people from within the industry - and the 2005 show promises to deliver precisely what the market requires - information, ideas and a strong forum for doing real business.
Over 300 companies are committed to making PLASA 2005 a solutions-led event: between them they will roll out over 1,000 new products and services designed to push existing technical and creative possibilities a stage further.
Both show floors will be packed with new ideas in audio, lighting, AV, rigging, system integration, engineering and effects: visitors will get to see these products being professionally demonstrated, learn how they can be used and talk to the people behind them.
The Innovation Gallery will feature the best in new designs, and products nominated for the 2005 Awards for Innovation will be shown. Here, visitors will be able to see products that represent genuine advances for the industry or improve safety and technical practices.
An exchange of ideas has always been central to PLASA: developments from its core club, theatre, touring and events markets now regularly cross over into new areas, particularly the developing building and installation sectors. As a direct consequence, there is now a growing architectural AV area which p
UK - XS!TE is a new major events arena planned for Yorkshire, which will be one of the largest live music and conference venues in the region. Scheduled to open in May at the Xscape site at Glasshoughton, Leeds, XS!TE will offer potential capacity for over 2,000, and provide state-of-the-art facilities for exhibitions, conferences and entertainment spanning live music concerts, sport events, club and dance evenings, comedy, and religious conventions, as well as facilities for video shoots, fashion shows, product launches and top-line band rehearsal space.
Located at the Xscape site next to junction 32 of the M62, the new venue has excellent transport links including its own railway station, making it ideally placed within 45 minutes drive time for most of the Yorkshire region. It has over 1,500 free parking spaces, offers over 15,000sq.ft of space and, say its owners, meets a critical need for large indoor venue facilities for the region, currently served by the Sheffield Hallam FM Arena and the Harrogate Conference Centre. The new XS!TE venue complements the existing facilities at Xscape which offers event organisers the additional benefits of a real snow ski slope, ice wall, bowling alley, ski ride and numerous bars and restaurants.
The £2 million development has been spearheaded by new company Xspace, a joint venture owned by local businessmen Adrian Brooks, managing director of staging specialists LiteStructures, and Jason Fenning who has significant experience in the leisure and entertainment industry. The venue features innovative use of staging and flex
UK - Monday 7 March marked the culmination of eight years of planning, fundraising and building as The Junction in Cambridge opened three new facilities for the creation and presentation of new art as part of its £7.5 million Arts Council lottery funded redevelopment programme.
The three new facilities - a theatre, an education space and an art and new technology laboratory will help enable The Junction to realize its ambition of establishing a national centre of excellence for contemporary culture and entertainment.
At the heart of the new development is Junction 2, a modern and uniquely versatile 220 capacity performance space. Affectionately nicknamed The Shed, the timber clad structure will house a growing programme of contemporary drama, dance, spoken word, comedy and world music. Inspired by Georgian courtyard theatre, the auditorium bridges the distance between audience and artist in an intimate and compact design.
The architectural design team, led by Plowman Brown Architects, worked to achieve an intimate auditorium with good sightlines, which could accommodate small-scale dance, which needs a disproportionately large performance area. Special funding was secured from Arts Council England East to fund the dance specification. As a result the auditorium has a fully sprung timber dance floor finished in natural oak boards.
One of the major concerns of the professional design team was to ensure that the new 220 capacity auditorium retained the intimacy of Cambridge Drama Centre, where most of The Junction's programme of drama was presented up to the en
UK - Following the release of Stardraw Control Beta 1 last month, software provider Stardraw.com has announced the public availability of Stardraw Control Beta 2 with immediate effect, prior to its formal launch scheduled for NSCA next month. A community of nearly 600 systems specialists was involved in the Beta 1 test phase and further participants in the Beta 2 test phase are similarly invited. Stardraw Control Beta 2 offers enhanced stability and applicability over the first Beta version, which was developed on the Microsoft.net v2 platform, which is itself still in the beta testing stage. As there is no firm release date for MS.net framework v2, Stardraw has released Stardraw Control Beta 2 on MS.net v1.1, the current release version. "It will be very easy to port everything back over to MS.net v2 when it is formally released later this year," commented Stardraw.com CEO David Snipp. "In the meantime, MS.net v1.1 has the advantage of being a shipping product and therefore stable and fully supported."
Other key differences include a greatly enhanced user interface that gives a whole new look and feel to the authoring environment, several new features and an improved library list structure that allows product selection by protocol, manufacturer and type. Marketing director Rob Robinson says: "Given that the support of any protocol is a key element of Stardraw Control, the ability to search under protocol is a huge time-saver and a far more flexible way of getting to the product you're looking for."
Stardraw Control generates stand
USA - The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) - the organization which awards the famous Oscars each year - plays a much wider role in the day-to-day workings of Hollywood. As a large organization holding many meetings and conferences, the Academy recently undertook an expansion and modernization of its main Los Angeles conference room, which includes the installation of Sennheiser' ME36 condenser microphone.
Los Angeles-based Offenhauser/Mekeel Architects oversaw the redesign of the AMPAS room, and Warner Constructors, the firm behind many of Disney's theme parks, spearheaded construction. To create the room's audio and video systems, and provide acoustic design, Offenhauser/Mekeel brought in Menlo Scientific Acoustics, who have brainstormed acoustical and presentation system designs for venues including the Getty Center and the Getty Villa Museums. Menlo principal Neil A. Shaw worked closely with the Academy and Offenhauser/Mekeel in the design, while Thomas Gregor Associates executed the AV concept.
The meeting room features state-of-the-art video and laptop equipment and is based around a 44-seat hand-crafted wooden conference table some 40ft in length. Creating a sonic environment on par with the room's aesthetics meant designing an AV system that was as efficient as it was invisible. Shaw explains: "One of our goals was to create a sound reinforcement system that had a natural sound while providing clear audio reinforcement. We wanted people around the table to be able to hear the sound from any point in the room in a natural manner,
USA - At the Las Vegas Hilton, High End Systems products have been installed at the new Barry Manilow Theatre - which opens on 24 February - for his year-long engagement, Barry Manilow: The Music and Passion. PRG Las Vegas is supplying the equipment, which includes six DL1 digital light fixtures, four Catalyst Pro media servers, 19 x.Spot and 24 Studio Color 575 moving lights, and control from a Wholehog 3 console.
LD Seth Jackson and set designer Jim Lenahan team up for the show. Says Jackson: "This is home for a year. Barry's done everything in his live shows, so this allows us to go somewhere different because now the limits of touring are off the table. It's a nice approach."
The DL1s will hang on the line sets over the main section of the stage on each side. "We're using them to do beam effects in the air, we're using them to light the band, we're using them backwards to light several legs of scrim that we're going to add imagery on to add depth from rear projection to scrim legs, and wherever else we come up with," Jackson explains.
Lenahan adds: "We're using DL1s more on scenery, not on screens as much. I like the idea of having layers of video, layers of lighting, and being able to see through some pieces of scenery, with video on them and see other pieces behind to give some depth - that's mostly what we're using DL1s to do."
Having used Catalyst on tours with Tom Petty and Sarah McLachlan, Lenahan is comfortable with the media server. Mode Studios is helping with content. "None of the screens are standar
UK - Birmingham-based AV installation company Argus Services is creating something of a benchmark for sound reinforcement systems among the leading football clubs in the UK, having recently installed Martin Audio's AM Stadium Series loudspeakers cabinets at three Premier Division clubs.
The latest to install the specially-designed weather-proofed cabinets is West Bromwich Albion FC. Argus has added seven AM15 cabinets to the main stand at West Brom's Hawthorns stadium. Jerry Matthews of Argus explains that "it's a deep tiered stand, and, although there was already a single row of speakers at the front, the further you went up the rows, the less you could hear. We've had to mount a row of Martin Audio AM15s about 25ft up the stand, just about where the directors sit!" All the AM15's have been suspended on custom-built brackets. "These enable us to do everything from the roof; once the speakers are in place, about 40ft above the crowd, we don't need to gain access from below."
Argus has equipped Walsall FC and Birmingham City FC with Martin Audio AM Stadium systems, and is currently working with Aston Villa FC on the first phase of an upgrade at Villa Park. Once again, the AM Series loudspeakers feature prominently, with 10 AM15s being installed into the first of the stands to be refurbished. "We've tried other makes of cabinets, but the Martin Audio boxes just deliver what they say they're going to deliver," says Jerry Matthews.
The AM Series includes 10", 12" and 15" full-range cabinets, which can also be supplied
UK - The Sage Gateshead, the stunning new £70m home for live music in the North of England, is at the heart of the regeneration of Tyneside. Funded by the largest Arts Lottery grant outside London, The Sage Gateshead is the first building for the performing arts to be designed by Foster and Partners and aims to be an inclusive, open-for-everyone music venue. It includes two concert halls, the Northern Rock Foundation Hall for rehearsal and performance and a 25 room Music Education Centre designed to pioneer a fresh approach to musical discovery. Theatre Projects Consultants (TPC) was responsible for the technical design, working with acousticians Arup Acoustics.
Hall One, with a capacity of 1650, is the largest of the two concert halls and uses retractable acoustic curtains, as does Northern Rock Foundation Hall, whereas the unusual design of Hall Two called for acoustic banners. The fabric of choice for acoustic drapes and banners is wool serge which, constructed as a flat woven fabric, felts during the wet finishing process and so closes the natural air gaps created during the weaving. J & C Joel was selected to supply the fabric and manufacture a total of 153 drapes, which weighed in at an impressive 6.5 tons, for all performance and rehearsal spaces at The Sage Gateshead.
In Hall One, the curtains when deployed cover some 90% of the walls of the auditorium and the challenge for Theatre Projects Consultants was to find a way of storing them, in the minimum amount of space, behind the auditorium walls and so isolating their acoustic properties when not requ
UK - When Umbaba opened to a select clientele recently, it completed a trio of exclusive London West End venues equipped from the ground up with ATC transparent reference monitors. Overseen by acoustician Nick Whitaker, the Umbaba system came about as a development of the PA they had designed and installed at Aura and Chinawhite. The guiding influence had been Freddie Moss, who has a strong financial stake in both Aura and Chinawhite, and was introduced to the ATC sound by Whitaker himself.
ATC's method is to use recording studio quality loudspeakers in slightly greater numbers to give enhanced sound performance and extended listening comfort. "The major advantage in the greatly reduced distortion over a PA-type system," says ATC's R&D engineer, Ben Lilly. "Distortion is the major cause of listener fatigue and discomfort."
"We wanted hi-fi quality but with an element of coarseness. What ATC have done brilliantly is establish a balance between the two," continues Hartley. "When you leave the club you do so without any ringing in your ears. The rumble from the subs through the banquette seating is particularly popular with our customers.
As at Chinawhite, the Umbaba system format is for flown, full-range, active 3-way cabs - with passive subs installed into the club's seating areas. "This has allowed us to maximize the useable floor space, optimize the audio quality in the critical midrange and give excellent coverage," continues Lilly. The flown three-way active cabs are a development of ATC's SCM150ASL active stud
UK - Software provider Stardraw.com will formally launch its latest application, Stardraw Control, at NSCA 2005. Previewed at PLASA in London, the application has already generated a huge amount of excitement amongst manufacturers and systems specialists who have welcomed Stardraw's new approach to solving the problem of controlling heterogeneous systems.
Stardraw Control generates standalone, customized control programs that can manage any type of addressable equipment from any manufacturer over any communications infrastructure. Instead of being locked into closed architectures wherever system control, monitoring or signal routing has been required, Stardraw Control offers systems integrators an open, software-based, unified control framework that can manage the entire system with a single application, regardless of system complexity.
Stardraw Control is fast, powerful, flexible and easy to use; with a drag-drop interface and intuitive design environment, installers are able to configure systems and control them without having to write a single line of code. Utilization of Microsoft.net technology means that control programs are portable and can run on any Windows-enabled device, from PC to PDA, or Mac, Linux and more. Importantly, Stardraw Control can communicate with and control any device using any protocol. Since support of particular protocols can offer access to tens of thousands of products, Stardraw Control is almost infinitely flexible and scaleable. Protocols currently supported include IP, RS232, DMX, IR, EtherSound, CobraNET, infra-red, UDP, SNM
USA - Fur, in Washington DC, is a new multi-level entertainment establishment that's been drawing record crowds since it's opening late last year. Fur features a sophisticated décor, including the trademark mink-covered walls, but more importantly, it's the state-of-the-art EAW Avalon sound system that keeps the devoted patrons coming back for more.
Designed by John Fiorito, owner of OHM Productions and installed by his associate Jeff Darby, the EAW Avalon system was conceived during the renovation stage of the classic 1890s building. "Because we entered the renovation stage early, we were able to design the floor plan around the Avalon system itself," explained Fiorito. "As a result, Fur's Avalon system is cleverly integrated into all areas of the club whilst not detracting from the meticulous décor."
The main floor, which hosts the stage and dance floor, is surrounded with an impressive array of EAW Avalon boxes including six Avalon DC1 full-range cabinets, 24 Avalon DCS2 subwoofers, as well as six Avalon DCT2 and two Avalon DCT1 supertweeter arrays. Carefully configured for optimum performance, two Avalon DC1s and three Avalon DCS2 subwoofers are built into the upstage wall. An additional two Avalon DC1s are flown on opposite ends of the dance floor front and rear, while two more Avalon DC1s are flown on each side of the dance floor. To ensure plenty of high-end, each Avalon DC1 has a single Avalon DCT2 supertweeter and two Avalon DCT1 supertweeters attached.
At the front of the room, the stage was built to a custom height in order t
Italy - In Venice, leading Italian PA rental company Audio Uno has flown Nexo GEO S speaker arrays in one of the most exquisite architectural settings in the world. The historic Gran Teatro La Fenice de Venezia, which dates back to 1792, has been completely restored to its original glory following a devastating fire in 1996. Audio Uno was called upon to provide a premier-quality sound reinforcement system for the first major event to take place in the Gran Teatro since its renovation and re-opening. The Premio Campiello is Italy's top competition for writers, and this was the first occasion the prestigious awards ceremony had been held in the Fenice.
For the 2500-capacity theatre, Audio Uno supplied a GEO S tangent-array system which was configured in left and right arrays of eight GEO S830 cabinets each side. Two CD12 sub-bass bins were included on each side of the stage, and the system which, powered by LabGruppen, was mixed from a DM2000 Yamaha digital mixer. PS10s were used for downfill.
One of the distinguishing features of the Gran Teatro La Fenice is its five tiers of boxes, known as 'pepiano', with no fewer than 35 boxes in each tier. Audio Uno's engineers report that the Nexo GEO S arrays delivered even and pleasing coverage to those boxes closest to the stage as well as those at the back of the theatre auditorium.
(Lee Baldock)
UK - For the past three years, those in the north east of England have witnessed a giant concrete, metal and glass construction rising in Gateshead, on the south bank of the River Tyne. Now The Sage Gateshead - a brand new £70m home for musical education and entertainment - is open for business.
Gateshead Council is extraordinarily keen for the arts to be inclusive, encouraging as many people as possible to be involved. The purpose behind The Sage is to mix education and inspiration, combining state-of-the-art facilities for hands-on learning and performance spaces.
Beneath the metal and glass outer shell there are six separate buildings, which contain four main performance venues, a 26-room music education centre, ExploreMusic (a high-tech hands-on education facility run by Gateshead Libraries), a shop/box office, five front of house bars, a café and brasserie.
Interestingly, the six buildings are physically separated from each another to prevent noise transfer, but audio spill is encouraged between the music education centre (situated on the lower level) and the main concourse. There are also several areas in the concourse with concealed patch points, allowing them to be transformed into extra performance spaces. The comprehensive audio, video and communications infrastructure uses over 50km of cable, supplied by Canford Audio.
Of the four primary performance spaces, Halls One and Two are the highest-spec'd. Design was by a combination of Arup Acoustics and Theatre Projects Consultants (TPC), working in conjunction with overall architects Foster and Partn
Germany - In early December, TV station Kabel 1 presented a major evening show, running through the '100 best films of all time', including classic blockbusters like Alien, Das Boot, E.T., Platoon, Schindlers List, Spider Man and Lord of the Rings. More than 350 Pulsar ChromaPanels were used in the set design, supplied by Procon and installed by Schall & Shein Design, Münich. They were used to create the matching atmosphere for the show in Bavaria Studios, Unterföhring. The set and design for the ChromaPanels was originally designed by Florian Wieder for the Pro7 production Geniale Erfinder-der Wissenspreis.
Daniel from Schall & Schein commented: "LED lights have high efficiency, their effects are produced through RGB colour mixing, they radiate homogeneous light and are absolutely lightweight. The whole design of the set was designed so the LEDs could be controlled in colours via RGB as well as single parts of the stage, which were designed to be controlled like a matrix, which is the reason behind choosing Pulsar's ChromaPanels."
(Lee Baldock)
UK - London's glamorous Thai-theme restaurant and club, the Sugar Hut, has opened a large sister venue in Brentwood, Essex. Housed in a lavishly renovated Grade I listed building, the Sugar Hut Village features a high-quality but completely invisible dancefloor and clubroom sound system from ElectroVoice.
Following the success of the original Sugar Hut in Fulham, London, owners Chris George, Gary Smith and Frazer Donaldson have taken on a 15th century coaching inn in the heart of Brentwood village. With its unique galleried courtyard playing an important role at the heart of the venue, the old hotel is now home to six different themed clubrooms, bars and restaurants. As a whole, the Sugar Hut Village holds nearly 900 people, dispersed through the Karma Bar, the Krug Suite, the Gallery Bar, the main restaurant, and other areas.
Having worked on the Sugar Hut in London and its sister venue, the KBar in Chelsea, local audio installation company Cosmic Electronics was called in to provide the all-important sound and lighting systems. "Volume just wasn't the issue at the Sugar Hut," explains Mark Damon of Cosmic. "This is not a disco, it's a very upmarket club, so the brief called for very precise, very high-quality audio. Nor did they want to see the actual speakers, so all the cabinets have been hidden behind drapes or concealed in decorative cabinets."
Cosmic's choice of equipment was the EViD 'designer' speaker from ElectroVoice, supplied by Shuttlesound, which provided the power needed on the dance floor, as well as low-key background music
UK - Autograph Sales Ltd, the UK's leading professional audio distributor, has supplied and installed a range of loudspeakers cabinets from EM Acoustics for England's groundbreaking Eden Project, Cornwall. The system was initially supplied for A Time of Gifts, a season of events that celebrated Christmas and other global festivals, all of which share many common themes. The events take place in the Warm Temperate Biome, and include the long awaited official Eden Project soundtrack First Breath. The soundtrack, which utilises the newly installed EM Acoustics system, is accompanied by a live performance three times a week - alongside a projected film journey.
Due to the size of the Biome, Mike Mann, Autograph Sales' project consultant, together with Lucy Gaskell, Eden Project's consulting technical manager, selected the 13 cabinets from EM Acoustics. EMS-81s, an EMS-121 and I-8 mini subs have been employed, the latter for its incredible low frequency response, which compliments Jim Carey's newly composed soundtrack. MC2 T-Series amplifiers provide power for the system. The speakers are all hidden in and around the foliage, making them blend harmoniously into the natural surroundings. Mann comments, 'I've thoroughly enjoyed working on this venture, The Eden Project, the technical team and the exhibit itself are all inspiring. I look forward to seeing what's next in store for their EM Acoustics system, in this magical corner of Cornwall.'
(Lee Baldock)