PLASA Media, sponsor of the PLASA Awards, has announced the shortlist of nominees for this year’s prestigious Gottelier Award, and the winner will be formally announced at this year’s PLASA Show in London.

Named in honour of the late Tony Gottelier, the industry innovator and commentator who passed away in 2006, the Gottelier Award is for the industry’s product developers who have made significant and sustained contributions to the advancement of entertainment, presentation or installation technology – whether in audio, lighting, rigging, staging, or any other related field.

Following the news of the death of Pasquale “Paky’ Quadri, founder of Clay Paky, PLASA Media in agreement with Quadri’s fellow nominees, has decided to cancel the voting process and award this year’s Gottelier trophy posthumously to Quadri. The award aims to celebrate the contribution of “the people behind the products’. There can be no doubt that Quadri’s award is richly deserved, or that he commanded, and continues to command, the respect and admiration of his peers, states PLASA Media.

Pasquale Quadri

For over 30 years, Italian manufacturer Clay Paky has been a leading force in the manufacture of entertainment lighting fixtures, all the while under the auspices of company founder, Quadri. Once a leader in the discotheque lighting market with its series of iconic lighting effects including the world-famous Golden Scan, the company has more recently reinvented its market presence with the introduction of the highly acclaimed and multi-award winning Alpha Series of moving head luminaires, and more recently still, the extremely popular Sharpy fixture.

Quadri’s fellow nominees were;

Richard Belliveau

As one of the co-founders of Texas-based lighting manufacturer High End Systems, and still leading the company’s product developments today, Belliveau has been behind a long line of successful products from the company, from the Color Pro, the Dataflash strobe and the F-100 Fog Generator, through to the Intellabeam and Cyberlight moving mirror luminaires, and moving head fixtures including the Studio Command, the Showgun and the most recent innovation, Shapeshifter. Belliveau is listed as the inventor on 100 US patents, issued or pending.

David Cunningham

An early pioneer of computer lighting systems, Cunningham developed a number of landmark products for Strand during the 1970s and 1980s, including the Multi-Q memory lighting system, the Micro-Q console, the Lightpalette and the CD80 dimming system. After leaving Strand, he set up his own development company, Entertec, and developed the Source Four profile – including its revolutionary 575W HPL lamp. He then entered into a hugely successful partnership with ETC, with whom he went on to develop other products including the successful Sensor dimmer.

Dr. Christian Heil

Heil founded L-Acoustics in 1984, and the introduction of the V-DOSC line array system in the mid-1990s led to a fundamental shift in the live sound market, and line array systems proliferated for the next decade and a half. Still, Heil and L-Acoustics continue to refine the line array concept: the KIVA ultra-compact system came to market in 2008; the K1 system – seen as the long-awaited successor to the ground-breaking V-DOSC – debuted in 2009; the KARA modular line source system followed in 2010; and the K2 system earlier this year.