It was back in the autumn of 2000 that a pre-production model of Yamaha’s PM1D digital mixing console quietly made its way out of the Brixton offices of sound rental company Orbital and headed to London EC1.
You can forget everything you know about sound installations with a clear conscience. An acoustic engineer from the renowned Wroclaw University of Technology and a sound engineer from the equally reputed audio company M.Ostrowski are breaking new ground with the installation of a new PA system in the Wroclaw opera house: a system that has about as much in common with conventional PA systems as the Starship Enterprise has with the first flying machines.
The destruction of the old Price circus left a gap in Madrid and in Spain until last Christmas when a new
combined circus and theatre house, equipped with the latest state of the art audio facilities opened in the city.
This new venue marks Madrid out as being one of the few capital cities in the world to have such a dedicated
multi-functional cultural building boasting one of the biggest stage enclosures in Europe.
Spring 2007 has seen London’s internationally acclaimed Young Vic theatre reopening after a major three year redevelopment project. Integral to the rebuilding of the theatre premises has been a radical overhaul of the backstage and technical facilities, which includes a Yamaha M7CL-48 installed as the main front of house console.
Breathtaking artistry is part and parcel of everyday life at the four GOP-Varieté theatres in Germany. While one artist performs an unbelievable balancing act by executing a one-handed hand stand on an enormous, rapidly rotating steel cube, the body of another hangs suspended five metres up - her only support a metal pole extending vertically into the cyclorama that she somehow manages to hold on to with her feet. And all the time she's smiling, just as if she were enjoying a relaxing cup of tea with her best friend.
Situated in the heart of Sweden’s capital, Stockholm Stadsteatern (City Theatre) is a major centre for the country’s performing arts.
The statistics of Stadsteatern make impressive reading. The complex has eight separate performance spaces - seven in-house and another a short distance away. It puts on around 40 performances per week to a yearly audience of half a million. It also stages an average of 35 new productions per year and employs over a dozen full-time sound engineers, plus several multi-skilled engineers who work with the sound department.
Eight months of painstaking renovation successfully completed!
The renovation of the Victoria Hall in the Swiss city of Geneva has taken almost 9 months. The hall, which was built between 1891 and 1894 by Geneva-based architect John Camoletti, was renovated at a cost of around six million Euros. The Hall's name can be traced backed to Sir Daniel Barton, who as the British Consul at the time dedicated this magnificent concert hall, which is still famed for its excellent acoustics, to Queen Victoria (1819-1901). Even today, the British classics label Decca still uses the hall for concert recordings because of its fantastic acoustic properties.
The West Midlands town of Tamworth has recently gained a brand new music venue, thanks to a local businessman who bought the long-closed Palace Cinema and invested £1 million in giving the venue a major refit.
Designed in the 1960s and constructed in the 1970s, the Barbican Centre was opened on 3 March 1982 by Her Majesty the Queen who described it as 'one of the wonders of the modern world'. Owned, funded and managed by the Corporation of London, the third largest sponsor of the arts in the UK, it was built as 'the City's gift to the nation' at an historical capital cost of £161million, equivalent to almost £400 million today.
