| Publisher Jacqueline Tien and editorial director David Barbour traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark, for the May 12th Eurovision Song Contest to root for the host home team, Denmark's Rollo & King. (The previous year's winner hosts the next year's event.) Tanel Padar, Dave Benton, & 2XL from Estonia came in first with Denmark a close second. The Eurovision corporate sponsorship list included: Martin, Sennheiser, and Sony, among others. In addition to Martin, other Eurovision suppliers included Vari-Lite, Chainmaster, Midas, DNB speakers, Barco, and Space Cannon. Stay tuned to Lighting Dimensions' July issue for a full report. See you in Estonia in 2002.  Above, Frank Paulsen, director for Seelite, and lighting designer Lars Nissen backstage at the Parken Sport & Entertainment Stadium in Copenhagen. Nissen programmed over 2,000 cues for this year's concert.  Left, Jorgen Ramskov, executive director for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. Ramskov and his team worked tirelessly for several months on the largest Eurovision event in its 50-year history: 38,000 seats in Parken Stadium and 100 million TV viewers across Europe. Below left, David Barbour interviewing (from left to right): Jens Ole Christensen, production supervisor for SeeLite--Martin's new rental partner in Copenhagen; Larry Beck, PR coordinator for Martin; and Brian Friborg, director of Martin Denmark and his son, Matthew. Brian took his family to one of the 3 tech rehearsal performances that were held prior to the Saturday evening official event. The ticket/visitor tally came to 80,000 over the course of two days.   One of the show's interesting challenges was maintaining the soccer (football) grass: 
 The permanent Coca-Cola sign was not part of the official event and had to be covered up.  One of the light rigs being hoisted up. A record 700+ moving lights were specified.  And, finally, the winning team from Estonia. |
Advertisement
One of the largest truss structures pictured here was designed to replicate the "Eurovision" logo and moved after each song as the following four pix illustrate.
