Mexico - The rich and vibrant Latin music scene generates a lot of 'crossover' between artists and the production side of the industry in the Mexican rental world. Most people involved in companies started their industry careers playing in bands and many are still active musicians or are involved in artist management.

Sergio Serrano is one of those charismatic and multi-skilled people whose lighting and video rental company, LED Project is one of a number of businesses run alongside his role as production manager of Café Tacuba, one of Mexico's most famous and popular bands. He also works closely as a show producer with Radio station MVS staging around 100 events a year.

Sergio first decided that LED Project should invest in Robe equipment in 2013, shortly after the Point

India - When Professor CS Deshpande founded the Vidyalankar Dyanapeeth Trust and started coaching students in 1960, using just a single classroom in Dadar to do so, little did he know that it would grow into one of the finest engineering teaching establishments in India.

Now situated in Wadala (East), a central suburb of Mumbai, the campus of the Vidyalankar Institute of Technology stretches over 11 acres of land, and currently has around 7,000 students enjoying some of the best teaching and recreational facilities the country has to offer.

"At Vidyalankar, we understand the needs of the students, and we go that extra mile to make sure that we fulfil them," says Vishwas Deshpande, managing trustee of the Vidyalankar Dyanapeeth Trust. "God has been kind to us, so we must always do our best and provide the very best for them that we can," he adds.

With that

UK - Two revving and rocking CarFest family festivals in UK raise funds for BBC Children in Need, and the music stages are packed with SGM luminaires.

Inspired by BBC Radio 2 broadcaster Chris Evans, the last three festivals of cars, cake and music have raised more than £3.5m for disadvantaged children and young people across the UK; a figure which will grow significantly after this year's donations are included.

CarFest North was recently held in Cheshire31 July 31 to 2 August, while CarFest South is planned for this weekend in Hampshire.

For both occasions, LED lighting equipment from SGM is playing an important role for the headliners. The equipment package consists of 18 G-Spot moving heads, 20 SixPack blinders, 12 P-5 wash lights and 12 P-2 compact wash lights, 18 Q-7 flood blind strobes and 16 Q-2 W, offering 26,000 lumen cool white light.

Blackburn professiona

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UK - Chroma-Q Color Force 72 premium performance LED battens are adding colourful cyclorama lighting to an all-white, high gloss set and backdrop for British singer Paloma Faith's current UK tour.

Faith's 2015 live shows are in support of her third album, A Perfect Contradiction, which has become her most successful to date.

Set designer Joshua Grace worked with lighting designer Tony Austin, to create a "Motown, disco and 80s aesthetic stage with a touch of 1930s glamour". Nite Design's Phil White was lighting director and programmer for the tour, working alongside Tony Austin.

"The concept for the tour was an all-white set, and the Color Force 72s were used to up-light the white cyc backdrop," explains Phil. "Tony had already used Chroma-Q lighting products on previous Paloma Faith shows, and was looking for a batten with a powerful output a

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New Touring Series by Gravity – Every Scratch Has A Story

When the stage heats up, you need equipment that can keep up without compromise. The Gravity Touring Series has been specifically designed to meet the highest demands – for rental companies, professional musicians, concert organizers, and large event venues. Premium materials, exceptional durability, and impressive longevity make these products stand out. Whether on tour, in constant use, or under the toughest conditions: the Touring Series delivers maximum reliability and performance – every day, on every stage.
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UK - Lighting and visual rental specialist HSL has invested well over £2m in new lighting kit - primarily moving lights, LED fixtures and control to help service its busy summer season.

MD Simon Stuart stated, "We have a great diversity of shows out - from opera and the arts to concert and theatre touring to major sporting events - and wanted to ensure that all of them had the latest and most appropriate technology at their disposal."

He adds that this is just the first such announcement that HSL will be making in coming months as it continues to invest in the latest technology.

The addition of over 500 moving lights and 400 additional LED products brings HSL's current available moving light inventory to one of the largest in the UK, which also supports and includes all the top brands.

The new moving lights are a combination of products from premium brands

Poland - Over a hundred Philips Entertainment Lighting products have been installed into the National Forum of Music (NFM), a new, state-of-the-art concert venue in the heart of Wroc?aw.

Dubbed the most advanced facility on Europe's cultural map, the NFM was conceived as a new home for the majority of Wroc?aw's initiatives, productions and artistic projects. Located in the city's Liberation Square, it is also the headquarters for numerous assemblies including the Wroc?aw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.

Philips distributor PS Teatre was responsible for the delivery and installation of the Philips lighting package, which included multi-featured luminaires from Vari-Lite, Selecon and product line Showline, with PS Teatre's Marek Gumi?ski in charge of the project.

"The Philips luminaires were chosen for the NFM as they are known worldwide for their reliability," says

USA - It seems only natural that the Ford F-Series has been a sponsor of Toby Keith tours. Like the country superstar, who's had 21 No. 1 hits in his storied career, the F-Series has enjoyed longstanding success. In fact, it's been the best-selling truck in America for 35 years running.

Production designers Seth Jackson and Elizabeth O'Keefe (TPI, St. Louis) drew on this connection when creating the lightshow for Keith's 2015 Good Times and Pick Up Lines tour. Playing off the buzz created by Ford's new all-aluminum F-150 truck, the LD came up with a sleek high-tech look for the tour, built around a series of pantographs illuminated by Legend 230SR Beams from Chauvet Professional.

"Since the tour was again sponsored by the Ford F-150 we took a cue from their playbook," said Jackson, who has worked with Keith for many years. "Ford was coming out with a new,

USA - Theatre Projects has welcomed Jim Niesel back as their newest project manager and theatre equipment/audio-video designer. Jim began his theatre consulting career at Theatre Projects back in 2001 before joining Arup in 2007, where he went on to take a leading role in the company's New York and Australasia theatre consulting practices.

While at Arup, Jim worked on a number of performance spaces including the Sydney Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera House. Now, back where he began, Jim is looking forward to the collaborative environment at Theatre Projects and having a part in the extraordinary performance spaces that they design.

"I came back for the opportunity to work in a smaller, more focused firm," Jim said. "When you're working in a firm with 300 people, you're not all going to be moving in the same direction. Each person has a different approach,

Austria - Multimedia specialists, Scenomedia's latest installation at Austria's famous Salzwelten salt mine experience includes the new Bronze Age Cinema located 400m below the Earth's surface in natural Dachstein limestone bedrock of the Hallstatt Mountain Salt Mines in Austria. Scenomedia installed AV Stumpfl show control, multimedia and screens as core technology throughout.

The Bronze Age Cinema was created in a specially blasted 1,000-cubic-meter cavern in the Rose Chamber of the experience. The eight-minute cinematic experience ends to reveal Europe's oldest wooden staircase, lovingly restored and documented over a 10-year period by Vienna's Natural History Museum. The Bronze Age Cinema seats up to 70 visitors for each performance and at the end of the presentation they can view prehistoric artefacts in custom made cases using LED lighting.

Inside the cavern and in front

Germany - Located in the centre of Hamburg, Planten un Blomen is the city's 45 hectare park, renowned for its lake with summer fountains. Each evening the fountains are illuminated in changing colours and perform a choreographed display set to music in a spectacular Wasserlichtkonzerte (water light concert).

With the sound system for their famous attraction seriously showing its age, the city authorities wanted a state-of-the-art system, with high quality audio reproduction in keeping with the status of the attraction. Rüdiger Peter of Ingenieurbüro Peter GmbH was awarded the contract for the implementation of a new system and Mediasystem GmbH was commissioned to handle the installation.

The challenge in designing the new sound system was that the loudspeakers are mounted in the lake, so they have to withstand wind, water, and all year round Hamburg weather. Additionally, be

UK - A central feature of Focusrite's RedNet audio-over-IP interface system is the high-quality remote-controlled microphone preamplifiers included in the RedNet 4 and MP8R models. New firmware releases from Yamaha and Focusrite now make it possible for RedNet mic preamplifiers to be remote-controlled from Yamaha CL and QL mixing consoles, allowing significant additional interoperability between the two systems.

Yamaha's CL/QL version 3.1 firmware update, released this week, adds specific support for RedNet 4 and RedNet MP8R preamps. A firmware update to the RedNet units, also available immediately, is also required to enable the facility.

"RedNet units integrate into any Dante-based audio-over-IP network and have been steadily making a name for themselves with major broadcasting and live sound companies around the world," says RedNet product manager Will Hoult. &quo

UK - Set deep in the rolling hills of Leicestershire, in the heart of rural England, Noisily Festival of Electronic Music and Arts is veiled by one of the most beautiful wooded valleys in the country. The festival is totally contained among the trees, creating a safe haven where hedonism and escapism can flourish and thrive, which is exactly what happened over the second week of July 2015. The fourth Noisily Festival spanned a range of musical genres through a Funktion-One set-up from Bassline Productions and Audio Feed.

Noisily Festival 2015 saw 3,000 revellers descend on Coney Woods in Leicestershire. Across four stages and a smattering of smaller venues, performances from artists like Stefan Bodzin, Grouch, Loud, Outsiders, James Monro, Whyt Noyz and Victor Ruiz laid down the soundtrack to a weekend of underground electronic music. The line-up was complemented by immersive so

UK - Rigging Team are once again supporting the Technical Theatre Awards and for the second year running we are proud sponsors of The "Rigging Team" Award for Outstanding Achievement in Automation.

This award is to highlight an individual within any role of the Automation Department. The individuals nominated for this award are people that have made an outstanding contribution and effort to a show/event or in general over the years. This person should be renowned for their dedication and effort to this discipline and respected among the technical theatre community. The nominees for 2015 are David Greatex, The Twins FX, Richard Willcox and Musa Halimeh.

"We are delighted to be sponsoring the award again this year." says Rigging Team director, Adam Searle. "Everyone behind the scenes works tirelessly to realise the ideas of the 'creatives' and in the pas

UK - Clay Paky Mythos, Sharpy, Alpha Spot HPE 300 and Sharpy Wash 330 fixtures are performing crucial lighting roles during season two filming of music show Sky Arts Sessions, allowing Sky TV lighting designer Richard Bowles to create fresh and dynamic looks for the varying acts in each episode.

"All the discharge lighting is Clay Paky exclusive this season," says Bowles. "The fixtures are performing perfectly on camera, whilst also impressing everyone in the studio. In fact many of the guest artists have been overheard commenting on how good the lighting looks."

Filming so far has seen performances from the likes of Django Django, Gaz Coombes from Supergrass and The Vaccines, with not only each act requiring significantly different lighting looks but also each of their tracks. Supplied by Richard Martin Lighting (RML), Bowles chose the 12 Mythos, ei

USA - PLASA is producing a special event at LDI2015 on 22 October called Demystifying the Sales Channel: Explaining the Relationship Between Dealers, Reps and Manufacturers.

Every day dealers, manufacturers, specifiers and end-users need to work through this channel to acquire products in systems integration and theatrical systems. Often times this channel is overwhelming and confusing. Our panel of experts will break down the pieces and explain how the system can successfully work together for all participants in the channel.

The panel is made up of industry veterans from all points in the channel. Bill Groener, general manager of systems at 4Wall Entertainment will serve as moderator. Dealers will be represented by Bill Price, director of systems at Barbizon Lighting Company and Paul Vincent, founder and president of Vincent Lighting Systems. Brian Coddington, control

UK - The judging panel of the Knight of Illumination Awards 2015 Concert Touring and Events category has announced its shortlisted designers for the prestigious ceremony this autumn.

The Awards recognise and celebrate the achievements of lighting and, as of last year, video designers working on shows in the UK.

The Concert Touring and Events judging panel, who were joined this year by new recruits Financial Times arts pages journalist David Cheal and editor of live event technology publication Total Production International Kelly Murray, deliberated over what they described as an 'incredibly high standard' of entries this year before reaching a decision.

The Concert Touring and Events shortlist is as follows:

Arena - Jamie Thompson for The Script, LeRoy Bennett for Lady Gaga and Rob Sinclair for Kylie Minogue

Club - Liam Tully for James Bay, S

UK - 31st August is the last day that visitors can pre-register for free entry to PLASA Show 2015, the UK's premier business event for the live entertainment technology industry. International pre-registrations are at their highest level since the show moved to ExCel in 2013, with registrations coming from over 90 countries so far. Visitors who haven't already registered are urged to take advantage of the last few days of the free registration period.

PLASA Show 2015 takes place at London's ExCel from 4th - 6th October. From 1st September to 3rd October visitors can pre-register for £10, meaning doing so before the end of the free period can make a significant saving. On site entry will cost £25.

"The show will feature over 300 brands, covering all production di

USA - Veteran Australian LD Francesco Calvi recently put GLP's impression X4 S LED moving heads to the ultimate test - chasing a team of all-action daredevil bike riders known as Nitro Circus.

Founded by ringleader and athlete Travis Pastrana, the Sydney based Nitro Circus Live tour features more than 40 of the world's best action sports athletes performing daring and record-breaking tricks in freestyle motocross, BMX and skateboarding, aided by stunts and accessories involving water coolers, rocking horses, a lazy boy couch and more. The lighting has to be equal to the challenge of placing this into a rock 'n' roll, stadium context.

Brought in by production manager, Brendan Maher, with whom he had worked previously Calvi was hardly fazed.

Although these events follow a typical rock concert model, with build-up day, and the infrastructure built and ready for rehearsals by 3p

Germany - Last weekend, the Lanxess Arena in Cologne, Germany's largest indoor arena became home to the world's biggest and most-watched Counter-Strike: Global Offensive event. With over 11,000 visitors flocking to arena each day and millions more tuning in online, it was a fitting way to celebrate ESL's first standalone CS:GO event.

Over 27m unique viewers watched the tournament on Twitch for almost 34m hours (nearly 3,879 years!) between them, and at its peak the event was being followed on-line by over 1.3m concurrent viewers - an increase of more than 30% on the last ESL One Counter-Strike event five months previously and a new record for both ESL and the game itself.

ARAM was responsible for set design and technical production, including rental of latest video , lighting technology and camera jib's.

The equipment list included CP Mythos, Sharpy, GM2, Fourlight LED light

UK - Seven years after its inaugural event at Henley-on-Thames, the Rewind Festival has mushroomed into three events - with Rewind North (in Cheshire) and Rewind Scotland in Perth further celebrating the sounds of the Eighties (and the glamorous attire that accompanies it).

Providing the PA system from the very beginning has been Capital Sound. But while the sites to the north have been problem free in terms of sound propagation, the Henley location at Temple Island Meadows, Remenham Farm, has always been noise sensitive, and until 2013 elicited complaints from the local gentry.

2013 proved to be the watershed year, when acoustics consultants Vanguardia were brought in by the promoter, Impresario Festivals' David Heartfield, and suggested a guaranteed means of curing the problem was to deploy Martin Audio's award winning MLA Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array solution.

Capital

Singapore - Alfonso Zarate Takano is the new Clay Paky area manager for the Asia Pacific region (APAC), comprising all countries in the Far East, South Asia and Oceania. He will report operationally to sales manager Alberico D'Amato, and is based at the OSRAM offices in Singapore.

"The markets in Asia and Oceania are growing fast and the appointment of Alfonso Zarate Takano is a strategic move to ensure a constant fixed local presence," said Alberico D'Amato. "It will now be easier for Clay Paky to visit customers in the region and provide top-class timely technical and commercial support."

Alfonso Zarate Takano was born in Peru, but has lived for many years in Japan and in Singapore and speaks English, Spanish and Japanese. He has excellent technical experience in the industry, having worked for important manufacturers of stage and architecture lighting, a

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