UK - The Knight of Illumination Awards (KOI) Theatre judging panel has announced its eagerly anticipated shortlist for this year's ceremony, which will take place at London's glamorous Troxy club on Sunday 4 October.

Organised by the ALD, STLD, The Fifth Estate Ltd and Clay Paky and now in its eighth year, the KOI Awards is a celebration of the creative talents of international lighting and digital content designers working in the UK across TV, theatre and concert touring and events.

The theatre shortlist is the first to be revealed, after a panel of senior critics from national newspapers deliberated over the finest lighting and video work from the categories of Dance, Musicals, Opera and Plays. The shortlist is as follows:

Dance - Lucy Carter for Woolf Works, Royal Ballet, Howard Harrison for Edward Scissorhands, Theatre Royal, Plymouth, Sadler's Wells

Australia - Rockhampton's Pilbeam Theatre, in Queensland, is a thriving 1000-seat lyric that sees a wide variety of productions on its stage. Concerts, musicals and corporate events are regular fixtures, and with a thriving community arts scene, often quickly produced and tightly turned around. Ashley Salta, the theatre's technical supervisor, often employs projected media effects on their in-house produced productions to save budget, space, time and effort.

"We produce a lot of musical theatre," explained Ashley. "We often project video content like rain, clouds or other moving textures onto the set or cloth to bring the stage to life. It also means we can avoid creating a piece of set with that imagery on it. Until recently, we'd been using QLab, but that meant someone had to operate it separately, and we had to load in content for each new show. So I was lookin

Spain - The third edition of La Voz Espana, the Spanish version of the popular TV singing contest was won by an ecstatic Antonio José, coached by singer songwriter Antonio Orozco. The series generated a massive amount of excitement and record viewing figures - and was lit for the first time by TV LD Iñaki Irastorza who used Robe's BMFL Spots and Pointes in his design.

The series was recorded and broadcast - on the Telecino TB channel - from the Mediaset Picasso Studios in Villaviciosa de Odón in Madrid and produced by Boomerang TV, who invited Iñaki, one of Spain's leading TV lighting specialists to add his own distinctive creative flair.

Iñaki was one of the visitors who saw the BMFL Spot for the first time at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, and was impressed with the light output, so he specified it for this show.

There were three different phases

UK - Bristol's Love Saves The Day festival moved to the new, expanded location of Eastville Park this year dramatically increasing its capacity from the previous city centre site, a move that allowed 27,000 music and fans to enjoy a superlative line-up and weekend of music and entertainment graced with the blazing sunshine beneath blue skies.

Locally based lighting and visual specialist Fineline was once again at the forefront of providing some of the high production values for which this event is renowned - delivering lighting, video and rigging for the three main stages.

Fineline MD Rob Sangwell commented, "We were excited to be involved again after supplying lighting and video to the main stage last year. It's great to see the festival move forward and it was a huge pleasure collaborating with production manager Tom Paine and everyone from organisers Team Love."

Canada - A KV2 Audio ESR215 system was used at the recent AES Conference on Sound Reinforcement held at McGill University in Montreal.

Just two ESR215's were used for the event providing crystal clear reproduction of the speeches and discussions at McGills Theatre facility.

Prior to the closing ceremonies a concert was held with a band of local jazz musicians and mixed by the legendary George Massenburg who is a Professor at the Music Research Division of McGill University. George commented, "We simply don't realise what we are missing until we hear a system of this quality."

Six ESM26 stage monitors driven by ESP2000 amplifiers were used on for foldback by the band.

Numerous other accolades were received for the systems clarity throughout the conference. "This is the best sound we have had at an AES Conference in the last 25 years," said Peter Mapp, AE

USA - The popular Beachbody health and fitness brand held its most important coach event of the year 16-19 July in Nashville and Elation gear was there in force on what is, perhaps surprisingly, production company Visions Lighting's biggest job of the year.

"For us it's bigger than EDC, Coachella or any of the other festivals we do throughout the year," states Todd Roberts, president of Southern California-based Visions Lighting, who has been involved with Team Beachbody Coach Summit since its inception. "It started in a small ballroom and has grown every year. Last year there were 8,000 attendees and this year there were 20,000 so it's growing exponentially."

Beachbody markets some of the U.S.'s most popular health and fitness solutions including DVDs and health and fitness products with a well-known presence across print and digital media. Team Beachbody

UK - Produced by Gods and Monsters Theatre, London's Free Open Air Theatre Season presents a free, action-packed programme that aims to introduce new audiences - irrespective of age, education, financial circumstances, physical ability or ethnicity - to theatre.

Running since 2003, the season has simply grown each year and is once again taking place in Central London's The Scoop from 5-30 August. Having worked closely with Gods and Monsters Theatre on previous projects, White Light is not only providing the lighting equipment but also sponsoring the occasion; helping to make theatre accessible to a whole new generation of theatre-goers.

Gods and Monsters Theatre is an organisation dedicated to producing shows that share the myths and legends of the recent and distant past and bring these to a modern-day audience. It is the only company that hosts a free season of classical the

South Africa - No fewer than 26 community theatre groups will strut their stuff at this year's Hello Community Theatre Arts Festival.

The Festival was launched last year by TUT's Department of Entertainment Technology, in partnership with the City of Tshwane and DWR Distribution, to expand the boundaries of theatre by interacting with local and emerging artists. The festival is a community theatre development programme where students of the Department and community theatre groups exchange knowledge and skills.

Interactive sessions, workshops and masterclasses will be held in Mamelodi's Beer Hall and at the Breytenbach Theatre in Sunnyside. The festival will open in the Mamelodi West Community Hall (19 - 22 August) with a final run at the Breytenbach Theatre (26 - 29 August). It will showcase a variety of interactive art installations and performances from participating communi

Finland - On 10 September 2015, during the Helsinki Design Week, the Silo 468 light art structure will house a gathering of minds from the world of architecture, design and lighting. Thinkers at world class level will join Lighting Design Collective (LDC) in challenging and debating the current role of light, natural, artificial, digital, responsive and participatory in the architecture and in built environment.

The social, cultural and design role of lighting is facing major crossroads and departure points at this moment in history, from applicative history to digital futures. For example, the importance of natural and artificial light to the quality of life and the health of individuals are gaining recognition worldwide, reverting priorities that seemed to be consolidated for more than a century. At this stage, the evolution towards the next generation of artificial light and

South Africa - The main stage for the 2015 Innibos arts festival - one of the largest Afrikaans events in South Africa drawing over 107,000 people over five days - staged at Hoërskool Bergvlam in Nelspruit, was lit for the eighth year by Pretoria, based LD Johan Ferriera. This year he chose to work with nearly 150 Robe moving lights, supplied to the event by Johannesburg based MGG, one of the country's leading technical production specialists.

Johan was also responsible for the set and visuals design, which allowed him to deliver a coherent and harmonious 'bigger picture' designed for a diversity of artists appearing over the four days - typically with 15 - 20 acts onstage per day - plus a large gospel show on the Sunday.

He worked alongside the festival's creative team, with the starting point for the stage lighting design being the biggest night of the festival - Saturday.<

Thailand - As well as its beaches, Patong resort on Phuket (Thailand's largest island), is also famous for its bustling nightlife, with hundreds of restaurants and venues of all types.

One of the most recent additions is the Illuzion Nightclub, a new-build venue offering the South East Asian market a combination of interactive Las Vegas-style shows and a disco with four resident DJs and international guest jocks.

The venue features two huge balconies running round the dancefloor, three VIP areas, a VIP room and six bars.

To meet the requirements of the club's varied entertainment formats, the management required a top grade flexible audio system and selected products by Italian manufacturer Outline throughout.

Voghera-based installer Skeldon puts its team's wide experience in various entertainment fields at the disposal of clients worldwide and worked on the Illuzion proje

Australia - Market-leading manufacturer Avid turned heads at the ProLight+Sound exhibition in Frankfurt in April with the release of their new flagship live audio mixing console, the S6L.

At the head of the pack in Australia, Novatech Creative Event Technology have now announced their investment in the S6L platform. For their first order, Novatech

have chosen the largest and most powerful of the two sizes available; an S6L-32D control surface, E6L-192 processing engine and Stage64 I/O rack expanded with additional AES/EBU I/O.

This combination will provide engineers with 192 mix channels to mix into 96 busses, plus Left/Centre/Right, two monitor busses and a 24x24 matrix. The E6L-192 processing engine will allow engineers to shape their sound with up to 200 plug-ins running at 96 kHz. The control surface provides intuitive and extensive control via 32+2 faders and four 12&qu

USA - Christmas is almost certainly not the first thing that comes to mind for the large number of people who are enjoying summer evenings on the elegantly appointed deck of Howard Beach's Vetro Restaurant and Lounge. Yet it was an unexpected Yuletide meeting that resulted in the rich, warm and continuously changing lighting display that washes this rooftop area and is as much a part of its captivating charm as its warm ocean breezes and stunning seaside vistas.

Created with a collection of LED fixtures from Iluminarc, Vetro's lighting design can be traced back to December 2014, when John (Gonzo) Gonzalez, lighting director of MSNBC's Morning Joe Show, attended the Christmas celebration at Brooklyn's Saint Joseph's Co-Cathedral. It was there he met Steven Retas, who was lighting the church's façade with holiday-themed colours and gobos. The two men struck up a friendship and Go

UK - The latest lighting company to be knocking on the door of Ambersphere Solutions to purchase a number of Ayrton MagicBlade-Rs is TSL Lighting.

TSL director Martin Locket explains, "Although our market is quite diverse, we see the MagicBlades as initially being particularly attractive to our concert touring and a lot of the younger lighting designers. That said, as soon as we took delivery of the fixtures, they went out on three back-to-back rentals: Firstly, a European tour by a band called Crystal Fighters, specified by LD Michael Straun. This was followed directly by a corporate event in London for Microsoft for their Windows-10 launch, with LD Liam Griffiths. Then they were shipped directly to the third consecutive project, a Christian Festival called Newday. So we are pretty confident they will attract interest across our whole client base."

Based convenientl

Australia - Concert and corporate productions are a major force in the Western Australian production industry. With service offerings spanning lighting, AV, LED screens, rigging, and staging, CCP's gear and operators can be found at festivals, concerts, major conferences, theatre shows, symphony concerts and slick corporate gigs. CCP need lighting that can be everything to everyone, and have found their go-to fixture in the SolaSpot Pro 1500 from High End Systems, recently adding a dozen to their arsenal.

"We needed a viable replacement for our Martin MAC 2000 profiles," said Sean McKernan, CCP's general manager. "Reducing our lamp overheads was very important to us, and having an LED source saves us considerable money over a year. We did the sums, and over a fixture's working life of 50,000 hours, lamp costs are around $18,000 per unit."

The SolaSpot's 400

USA - Santa Monica Pier hosts one of LA's favourite summer concert series, the Twilight Concert Series, as well as a host of other events. This year, the pier boasts a new stage with its overhead structure a remarkable work of art illuminated using Elation Professional SixPar 300IP colour changers.

The custom stage is the creation of design and technology integration company Stereobot, a building components firm that does many of the displays for Coachella and other events. Live event production company Pacific Coast Entertainment collaborated with Stereobot on the lighting design for the stage and art piece.

The one-of-a-kind structure with sweeping cantilevered spans envelops the stage and reaches to a height of 36ft. The open structure creates a three-dimensional experience that allows for visibility from all sides and is something that can be admired even when not in actio

USA - Billed as "The Nation's most spectacular college soccer facility", Dr. Mark and Cindy Lynn Stadium at the University of Louisville features seating for more than 5,300 soccer fans, a 15,500sq.ft training centre, a large video scoreboard and an audio system with Community R Series and W Series loudspeakers.

Designed by consultant Tom Lorenzen of dBA Acoustics in Louisville, the audio system provides clear announcements and high-fidelity music to fans in four separate seating areas and to players and officials on the field.

Lorenzen said the university's goals were excellent audio with even coverage throughout the various seating areas and on the field. To meet these goals, he used a combination of designs. Fourteen Community W Series WX- 1594 loudspeakers, distributed along the underside of the canopy, provide sound for the stadium's 2,300-seat covered grandstan

Europe - Currently on the road until the end of October, the Mark Knopfler & Band tour brings all-time Dire Straits and Knopfler classics such as Sultans of Swing and Brothers in Arms to packed arenas throughout Europe and North America.

Not wanting to create a show any less than impressive for the multi-million-selling singer-songwriter - who also ranks 44th on Rolling Stone's 100 greatest guitarists of all time, lighting designer Mark Henderson incorporated 22 Chauvet Professional Nexus Aw 7x7 panels within the lighting show to stunning theatrical effect.

Henderson - an award-winning theatre lighting director - has worked on countless theatrical productions in London's West End, New York and Las Vegas. When he was asked to LD Kate Bush's 22-date sell-out comeback residency at London's Hammersmith Apollo, a new opportunity was presented to him to apply his theat

UK - Wireless LED specialist and manufacturer Core Lighting celebrates the sale of its 4000th ColourPoint wireless LED uplighter as the demand continues for lightweight, long lasting, high output, shadowless wireless LED units that can be quickly deployed in numerous locations at all types of corporate and private events.

When Core's ColourPoint first hit the market in 2013, it made a big impact because at only 4 Kgs, it was a quarter of the weight and considerably more cost effective than its competitors - all attributes offered without any compromise on the quality or light output..

The first ColourPoint fixtures were sold through UK distributor White Light to busy south London based event production company, Presentation Rentals - now known as PR Live. The most recent sale - including the actual 4000th fixture itself - was to AV and lighting consultants DCLX.

The ColourPo

Canada - As Rush prepared to launch their latest tour, longtime tour lighting designer Howard Ungerleider of Production Design International Toronto was once again charged with creating the lighting spectacle that would be seen by the multitude of sold-out houses.

After a collaborative process with the production team, Ungerleider turned to Solotech to provide him with the innovative lighting technology to best accentuate the R40 Live tour which included VL4000 BeamWash, VL4000 Spot, VL3500 Wash FX and VL3500 Spot luminaires from Philips Vari-Lite.

"Our designs always begin with a full production team collaboration and brainstorming session," began Ungerleider. "For this particular tour, an evolution concept was conceived about going back in time and deconstructing Rush from their earliest beginnings to present day. With our concept in mind we then turned to Sol

USA - Christmas came in July for the UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) Royce Hall tech team, when a recent shipment of ETC Source Four LED Series 2 Lustr arrays was delivered, tested and stencilled with the Royce emblem. A compelling demo of the technology last autumn by ETC's outreach and training specialist Tom Littrell was enough to prompt an order for 18 Series 2 light engines, nine Source Four LED CYC adapters and nine Source Four LED Fresnels.

"What wowed us in the demo was the colour rendition on the Hawaiian shirt," says associate master electrician Anthony Gutierrez. "The lime green frequency is in the middle of the human spectrum and fills in colour gaps you didn't even know were there."

Jessica Wodinsky has been the master electrician at Royce Hall for 30 years and can chronicle the evolving technology - "When I came here in 198

Russia - In the hands of rental company JamTech, the Nexo STM Modular Line Array systems are having a busy summer in Russia.

STM was used as main PA for both the Main and the Second Stage at the massive Fruit Vibrations 2015. This two-day EDM festival featured over 30 headline acts, including Steve Aoki, Aly & Fila, Ummet Ozcan, BT, James Zabiela, The Chainsmokers, Brennan Heart, and Tony Junior.

Held in the Muzeon Art Park, in the centre of Moscow, this Globalclubbing event is the largest EDM festival in Russia, and draws thousands of fans from all across the country and the CIS states.

For the main stage, JamTech supplied a 11-a-side STM design, using nine STM M46 plus nine STM B112 with two STM M28 down-fill cabinets in each array 24x STM S118 subbass were used, together with extra RS18 subs. Another 12x M46 Main cabinets were used for out-fill.

Over on the B Stage, Jam

UK - Lighting rental specialist HSL supplied stage lighting, sub-rigging and trussing, architectural and site-wide practical and decorative illumination, electrics, power distribution, and full public address announcement PA - for the 2015 Opera Holland Park festival season in west London.

The three-month performance run included five cutting edge opera productions staged in the tensile structure erected by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC) in its picturesque park, with the historical ruin of Holland House as an atmospheric backdrop.

HSL has been involved as a technical production supplier for the event for the last 12 years, in which time the lighting requirements and expectations have changed radically. What was once primarily a generic rig onstage now features nearly 90 moving lights with another 200 light sources supplied by HSL to light the surrounding and

UK - For AC/DC's Rock or Bust tour, set designer Ray Winkler joined forces with lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe to seamlessly translate the distinct AC/DC sound into a grungy buffalo horned 'Mad Max' style stage, complemented by metallic, two colour classic rock and roll lighting primarily delivered by over 60 of the new Philips Vari-Lite VL4000 BeamWash luminaires.

"AC/DC has always demanded bold, bright, spectacular - yet uncomplicated - lighting and I think this time we gave it to them in spades," explains Woodroffe. "We were looking for powerful, bright lights that would work particularly well with no colour. We also wanted some more delicate effects, some tight beams and some hard edge source points. We chose a variety of fixtures including the new Vari-Lite VL4000 BeamWash and the VL3500 washes, which in combination gave us most of what we needed, in var

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