The Netherlands - It's been nearly a year since over 80 Robe lighting fixtures were supplied and installed at the charismatic Energiehuis, a former power station at the confluence of the Wantij and Beneden Merwede Rivers on the outskirts of Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

Energiehuis was transformed into a new multi-venue cultural centre by Jonkman Klinkhamer Architects - a stylish and cool integration of majestic civil engineering with contemporary industrial design and modern performance facilities offering the very highest production values.

The once thriving power station was closed in the 1970s and lay derelict and neglected before the three year regeneration plan commenced in 2010. The Energiehuis project was instigated and driven by Dordrecht Town Council and the performance elements developed in conjunction with theatre consultants, PB Theateradviseurs, who produced the te

UK - Antony Warren, promoter for the Whisky Sessions approached Illuminate Design to provide lighting, sound, staging and technical support for their marquee at the Isle of White Festival.

With limited power, Chauvet Colorado Par fixtures were chosen for their punchy colour from a small unit. Source 4 Lustrs were provided to illuminate the backdrop of the stage. Traditional festoon lighting was used to light the 360m2 marquee to give a rustic feel in line with the branding for the event.

With a varied mix of acts playing on stage, the sound needed to be flexible whilst taking into account the very strict sound levels on site. RCF (HD10A + Art905AS) powered speakers were provided for both the FOH PA as well as the on stage monitoring systems (HD10A). Various microphones and DIs were supplied to cater for both voice and instruments, with a Yamaha LS932 as the main mixing console

UK - The Eagles brought their History of the Eagles tour to London's O2 Arena in June in a worthy celebration of a lifetime of work. Performing classics and songs from their top-selling documentary, the concert is an exploration of one of the world's biggest-selling and culturally significant American bands.

Butch Allen, in collaboration with lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe and the band, designed the set and show. PRG provided lighting & rigging and worked alongside PRG Nocturne UK, who supplied video and a live camera package for the show.

Lighting director Dave Hill and his entourage of Stateside Lighting crew, led by Jason 'Atta Boy' Statler, crossed the Atlantic with production to reproduce the success of the North American run. Jason was joined by his team of professionals, including Russel Lyons, Greg Gore, Brian Monahan, Errol Reinhart, Matt Schnieder and UK

Italy - Italy - Vasco was back this summer, 2014, with seven sell-out concerts at stadiums. The tour consisted of three dates at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome and four at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in Milan. Vasco became the first artist ever to do three consecutive nights at the Stadio Olimpico, and set a new record total number of 21 performances at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza.

The show itself was fit for breaking records: an exceptional, extremely impressive production. Clay Paky's lights were a must for the stage. The new A.Leda B-EYE K20s stood out in particular among the 'special lights' in the lighting design. There were 38 on stage and 15 on the large external structure.

"In order to use these lights," Vasco's lighting designer Giovanni Pinna explained, "I got great support from Clay Paky, because we are not talking about traditional lights... we are talkin

UK - Respected production technician Andy 'Fraggle' Porter ensured the Pyramid Stage at this year's Glastonbury was a dazzling display of bright and frenzied strobe effects by rigging 33 Showline SL Nitro 510 luminaires in an arch array.

Heavy metal headliners Metallica were one of the many acts that took advantage of the SL Nitro 510 strobes, which were supplied to Glastonbury by Neg Earth. Throughout the weekend, the strobes exhibited their versatility and offered the various lighting designers endless creative possibilities as the plethora of acts performed.

"Last year we used the SL Nitro 510 strobes in combination with our standard strobes and they worked really well," says Fraggle. "They are also a fantastic energy saving solution - a whole bunch of conventional strobes all bumped together has a huge impact on the generator mains which can cause us issues

UK - It would be practically impossible to overstate the importance of the Everyman Theatre to the city of Liverpool. To list the names of those whose careers are synonymous with it, would be to compile a who's who of artistic giants, their ground-breaking work deeply embedded in the national psyche, their place at the top table of British cultural history assured.

In the early 1960s a group of artists, poets, writers and musicians who met at the then Hope Hall Cinema, decided that the building would make a good theatre and in 1964, the Everyman was born. Closed in 1975 for rebuilding, it reopened in 1977 and there followed 34 years that shaped the careers of Willy Russell, Alan Bleasdale, Julie Walters, Bernard Hill and Pete Postlethwaite to name a just a handful.

In 2011, the Everyman closed its doors again for a £28m redevelopment, funded for the most part by Arts Cou

UK - For the 18th year running, July saw Sennheiser attend the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA) annual graduation ceremony, to reward students for their outstanding performance in initiatives that the company sponsors.

Taking place on 31 July and attended by both LIPA co-founders Sir Paul McCartney and Mark Featherstone-Witty, Sennheiser CEO Dr Andreas Sennheiser and the company's president of global sales Paul Whiting were present to hand out awards to this year's crop of Sennheiser-sponsored students.

2011 Sennheiser Scholarship winner Tomos Pierce graduated from LIPA, having enjoyed the considerable benefit of Sennheiser's support, experience and financial help during his time at the Institute.

"The application process for the Sennheiser Scholarship is designed to ensure that we support an outstanding student, who will go on to great things in the profes

UK - This summer's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow were preceded by Live at Edinburgh Castle, a 2.5-hour multi-act concert, televised live on the BBC from this location that dominates the Edinburgh skyline. The line-up for the event was extensive and included Culture Club, OneRepublic, Kaiser Chiefs, Motown legend Smokey Robinson, Jessie J, Paloma Faith and Il Divo. Various acts were backed by a 12-piece house band and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. To keep up with the fast-paced nature of the high-profile event, two SSL Live consoles were provided by Britannia Row Productions.

Though the event was headed by Brit Row project manager Lez Dwight, with Stefan Krista managing the inputs and cross-patch from scores of 12-way sub-snakes, Nahuel Gutierrez operated one SSL Live for the 75-member orchestra, generating group stems for FOH, monitors, BBC broadcast and 16 persona

USA - Carlos Santana and Buddy Guy have garnered 16 Grammy Awards between them, and for one magical night this summer, the two guitar virtuosos performed on stage at The Greenwich Town Party under the light of 22 Legend 230SR Beams from Chauvet Professional.

An intensely bright moving yoke fixture powered by a 230-watt Osram Sirius lamp, the Legend 230SR Beam anchored a muscular lighting rig installed by JDI Productions of Johnston, Rhode Island. "We used over 140 fixtures on the stage, covering the performers and reaching out into the audience," said LD and lighting crew chief Derek Iorfida. "This was a dynamic series of performances, not just by the two iconic headliners but all the artists on the programme, and we wanted to match the intensity of the music with an overwhelmingly powerful lighting display."

Iorfida singled out the Legend 230SR Beam, which

UK - 2014's Farnborough International Airshow saw the installation of a QSC Q-Sys networked audio management system to control the PA/VA systems at the biennial event, which took place in Hampshire in late July.

This year's show, as always, showcased the latest in aviation and airborne defence technology alongside displays of period aircraft and aerial acrobatic prowess, to the usual mixture of aviation industry experts, defence procurement mandarins, and the aircraft-loving general public.

As far as audio systems were concerned, however, it was all change; after the last show in 2012, Show Hire - one of Europe's leading event communications companies - were appointed for the first time to install and manage the on-site PA and audio systems.

The Airshow site at Farnborough is very large, covering approximately 2000 acres. From a PA perspective, it comprises several different

UK - Arcstream AV, specialist provider of interactive technologies and special effects for events and permanent installations, has supplied an interactive floor to the new reception area at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The reception area has been done out in a seascape theme, so Arcstream created an interactive floor that looks like a rock pool. It's a fun idea that lets children play and looks good too.

The company has also provided an interactive floor and touchscreen table to Step by Step School for autistic children. Both feature Snowflake ABC software so that the children can learn while having lots of fun.

Neil Dickinson, managing director of Arcstream AV comments: "We have masses of experience in creating interactive floors for all kinds of uses from corporate events to education. They're incredibly absorbing and the content creation experts at Arcstream can dev

USA / UK - Peavey Electronics Corporation has announced that it is "redefining itself in consideration of the evolving and increasingly competitive market". In order to remain effective, the company says, it is restructuring its international operations - a process that will include the closure of its UK distribution facility.

Founded by Hartley Peavey in 1965, Peavey has multiple US factories throughout Mississippi and Alabama in addition to distribution facilities in the US, Europe and Asia.

The company's statement says: "While prices from China lowered the cost of the products in the marketplace, Peavey has continually examined its operating structure and made adjustments to compete with the lower cost structure of its competitors . . . The UK facility was originally set up as a manufacturing plant for large items to minimize international shipping expense

World - Lighting designers can enter their own Imagination into the wysiwyg Lighting Design Video Challenge by CAST Software - a challenge open to all current wysiwyg R33 users and members and to those who become so before the deadline of 26 September 2014.

"As in previous years, we're looking to discover the next lighting design talent through pre-visualization, but this year's participants will be challenged by having a 'budget' just like they would in a real world project. This 'budget' will be represented by an equipment limitation list," explains, Igor Silva, marketing manager at CAST Group.

"Entrants can be pros or amateurs - all you need to do is be a registered wysiwyg member, follow the equipment limitation list and guidelines, create a two-minute video of your lighting design using wysiwyg version R33 then post it to your YouTube account and share it o

USA - UK motion control specialist Kinesys is opening a new operation - Kinesys USA Inc, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and headed up by industry veteran David Martin.

Kinesys products have surged in popularity in the US over the last two years, and the move is part of the company's planned medium-term expansion strategy to optimise sales, technical support and after-sales service for all Kinesys owners and users, both existing and potential, the company says. "It also sends a strong message that the brand is very serious about consolidating the level of support for its US clients and enhancing its presence in the Americas," they say. Kinesys USA will also serve as a commercial hub for business in Canada, Central and South America.

David Martin will co-ordinate the technical sales and support in all these regions and work in close collaboration with the relevant d

UK - Hosted in Glasgow, the recent 2014 Commonwealth Games featured 4,947 competitors from 71 nations and 261 events - all broadcast to an estimated global television audience of 1.5 billion.

Since first being included in the Manchester 2002 Games, table tennis has invited fierce competition. Sharing the Scotstoun Arena with the competition's squash events, the table tennis matches took place in two 2,500 seat 'show courts', and a further eight match courts. The broadcast of these matches was in the hands of Arena Television, with Audio Guarantee Engineer David Harnett taking charge of the company's OB14 mobile - and its Lawo digital mixing and routing systems.

Harnett joined Arena TV around three years ago having previously worked on Lawo consoles, which he regards as 'very intuitive'. OB14, meanwhile, has come to sports broadcasting from use on Arena TV's music events.

The

The Netherlands - Hedon, a well-known live music venue in Zwolle, the Netherlands, has recently had a full Robe moving light rig installed into its new building which features an 850 capacity main hall plus an equality active small room that can accommodate 200 people.

The venue, partly owned by a cultural event and community activity organisation called Travers, has been a local landmark for the last 15 years, showcasing an eclectic and vibrant mix of international and home-grown talent - anything from comedy to music of all types - with a hectic schedule of 25-30 shows every month, and sometimes as many as 50.

Hedon's head of technical Martijn Deenan started working there four years ago as well as continuing his very active freelance career, and he oversaw all the technical aspects of the venue throughout the refurbishment project. Meanwhile, his other work keeps him up-to-d

Digital Theatre - An immersive interaction between live theatre and online gaming to be produced by National Theatre Wales has won the first £20,000 Space Prize for digital innovation in theatre. The new biennial award, a collaboration between BBC Writersroom and The Space - a website for showcasing digital arts - was announced in Edinburgh at Northern Stage's Think Big event at the company's King's Hall fringe venue.

NTW will use the money to create Border Games, a piece of live, immersive theatre, alongside a simultaneous online version available on The Space that will allow a second audience to interact with the live experience. John McGrath, NTW artistic director, said that digital theatre had been a key part of the company since it was formed in 2009. "Some of our best work has grown out of the interactions of site specific and digital theatre. The

Australia - Wizard Projects, supported by the engineering team from Technical Audio Group (TAG) have installed a large 140-element Martin Audio OmniLine system into St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney. The system needed to be commissioned in time for the visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as part of their Australia and New Zealand tour.

St. Andrew's is the oldest cathedral in Australia - and one of the city's finest cathedral examples of Gothic Revival architecture - however such beautiful architecture comes at an acoustic cost with challenging reverberation times making clarity and evenness of coverage across the congregation a constant issue.

Having struggled with a sound system that failed to deliver clear speech intelligibility and live music reproduction, with the Royal appointment imminent, the church's decision to install a new system reached emergency status.

Ross

Russia - In celebration of the 2014 World Cup final game, the three towers of Vorobievy Gory, an iconic residential complex in Moscow that faces the German Embassy, were lit during the match with the colours of Germany and Argentina's national flags. With only a single day to light the towers, lighting designer Sergey Babaliants of Moscow-based BaSinstall was brought in to programme the tower's existing system, which includes 198 Martin Professional Exterior 200 fixtures.

Installed in 2006, the exterior lighting for each of the three towers features 30 Exterior 200s for the 'crown', located on the roof level and 36 Exterior 200s for the 'gallery', located three floors below the crown. The design is controlled via LightJockey placed on the second level below the middle tower, while the left and right towers were connected through wireless DMX signal via an omnidirectional antenna

Austria - Every summer, the Theater im Hof, in Enns, Upper Austria, produces a classical production, such as Faust, Cyrano de Bergerac and pieces by Shakespeare. This year, the company will present The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) by Long, Singer and Winfield, which contains all 38 stage works and 154 sonnets all in one. The ambitious show was programmed with the help of ETC Eos software on the new ETC Nomad controller.

After years of using a large riding hall, this year's production will be staged in the basement of the Ennsegg Castle. With little space to spare for front of house control positions and a hectic production schedule, technical director and lighting designer Ueli Riegg found the new PC based Nomad controller to be the solution.

Thanks to the new screen management in Eos v2.2 software, including a simple to use onscreen co

World - One Direction embarked on their worldwide Where We Are tour this spring, performing in some of the biggest stadiums around the globe to millions of screaming fans. For shows of this size and scope, lighting designer Paul Normandale turned to the powerful versatility of the Vari-Lite VL3500 Wash FX luminaires, supplied by Lite Alternative.

Having designed shows for some of today's biggest concert touring artists including Arctic Monkeys and Coldplay, Normandale is used to making a huge impact with his designs, which often feature the VL3500 Wash FX at their core. "The VL3500 Wash FX luminaire has long been a favourite of mine," says Normandale. "Because of this, it has formed the basis of many of my designs over the last few years."

Normandale's design for One Direction needed to pack a huge punch in order to stand up to the extensive onstage

Australia - Sydney's Rockdale Town Hall has recently undertaken a major refurbishment, designed to reinvigorate the City's regional arts and cultural hub.

The works provided fresh life to the historic complex and provided the City with a state of the art venue that can accommodate a varied array of events from musical concerts and variety shows to business, community and social events.

The auditorium's beautiful Art Deco detailing has been lovingly restored, and is now accompanied sensitively by a new PA and communications system from The P.A. People. It was imperative that the historical and architectural values of the venue were as important as the necessity for a modern multi-function auditorium.

Cabling was run as the renovation team opened up the floors and roof spaces, building in infrastructure to serve modern needs without disturbing a classic look.

So as not to in

UK - Last month saw Ivor Novello award-winning producer/songwriter Steve Booker's new Cake Studios open its doors following the installation of a 48-channel SSL Duality equipped control room to complement the existing writing facilities already on site.

Technical installation was handled by Langdale Technical Consulting who have a long standing working relationship with VDC and the studio marked the 100th Control Room installation on their part, almost all of which have been complemented by Van Damme cable. Langdale's Bill Ward commented that since the introduction of Van Damme in 1987 they have been using the cable almost exclusively due to it unrivalled sonic excellence and proven long term durability.

The studio was wired throughout with Van Damme blue series studio grade cable and along with the Duality console the spec list included a huge 96 channel Pro Tools rig and a h

The Netherlands - Front-of-house engineer Sjoerd Terpstra relied on DPA Microphones to capture the sound of the Kyteman Orchestra's recent concerts at the Utrecht Tivoli in Holland. The six concerts, which took the form of elaborate jam sessions, were all multitrack recorded for subsequent mixing and broadcast on the internet using the company's d:vote 4099 Instrument, d:dicate 2011A Recording and d:screet 4061 Miniature Microphones.

Terpstra, who has been working with Kyteman for the last five years, says he chose DPA Microphones for this project because he knew their mics were capable of delivering studio quality from the live stage. The microphones were supplied by Amptec, DPA's distributor in the Netherlands.

"Our aim was to create a library of completely original Kyteman material," explains Terpstra. "There are approximately 18 musicians in the orchestra an

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