UK - Following Philips Entertainment's hugely successful exhibition at Frankfurt's Prolight+Sound 2013, its four premier brands - Showline, Vari-Lite, Selecon and Strand Lighting - will be exhibiting the latest in LED and luminaires alongside precision lighting control on stand N-C15 at PLASA Focus: Leeds.

Following its attention-grabbing world debut in Frankfurt, Philips Showline's SL NITRO 510 will be on show for the first time in the UK. An LED-based strobe, it delivers super-bright bursts of light and dynamic effects using over 1300 high-powered LEDs.

New from Philips Vari-Lite is the recently released Indy software for the VLX Wash luminaire allows for individual control of the fixture's seven 120W RGBW LED engines. This facilitates a multitude of stunning looks and original chases to be programmed on the face of the luminaire, further enhancing the creative possibilities

South Africa - Latest buzz on the musical theatre wires is that the newly opened Jersey Boys at the Teatro, Montecasino in Johannesburg is "absolutely unmissable". Fresh from its Singapore tour- where the show played to rapt audiences at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore - the show opened in South Africa on 3 April 2013 for a 10-week run.

A variety of rental companies from USA, Europe, Australia and South Africa quoted on technical supply for the production and the lighting equipment and staffing contract was awarded to South African theatre rental company, Gearhouse Splitbeam for the Asian and South African legs of the tour. The sound, LED, automation and rigging packages were all brought in from the USA.

Splitbeam's managing director, Alistair Kilbee took on the role of technical director and along with Splitbeam operators, Clement Makama, Simon Mashebane and

Sweden - Wireless Solution Sweden AB has announced that Imlight LL Company, with offices in Moscow and Kirov, has been named distributor for W-DMX products in Russia.

Imlight is a steadily growing manufacturer and distributor of professional sound, light and stage equipment with over 20 years' experience. Services include manufacturing of professional sound, light and electronic equipment, movable stage pavilions, aluminium truss constructions, stage mechanics and clothing of the stage; distribution of professional light and sound equipment; design, delivery, installation, commissioning, and technical support; and architectural illumination.

The partnership is a strategic move for Wireless Solution, having recently invested heavily in a new approval for Russia, being the first company outside Russia that has import approval to Russia as well as an import license, with Russia p

UK - The Avolites Media team has announced that it will be running a series of presentations on the company's multi-award winning Ai Media Server and Titan V7 software at PLASA Focus in Leeds on Tuesday 30 April and Wednesday 1 May 2013.

The sessions will provide an overview of the latest features of the Titan V7 and Ai Media Server as part of the Lighting and Video - the Integration, the Benefits, the Future presented by Avolites Media.

"We will be introducing the latest cool features, including 'AVTO MAP', making mapping tourable; 'wow factor' rotational mapping; and our totally unique 'canvas editor' feature, which brings 3D content editing tools into the Ai tool set," says Avolites Media's MD Steve Warren. "We believe that fabulous productions start with the best ingredients and Ai offers the industry's best, most efficient, high resolution codec and

USA - Axxis, Inc. of Louisville, Kentucky, has developed a versatile presentation and reveal set using Martin EC Series LED video panels as its main visual element. The set, made up of a curved LED wall turntable and LED columns, can be used for a variety of purposes, including product, speaker or band reveals and was inspired by the Axxis design team, led by Stewart Davis.

The system was conceived in early December as Stewart was flying back from a client visit in Tampa. "Their directive was to 'push the design envelope' and at 30,000ft, inspiration hit," explains Davis.

As the circle on a coffee-stained napkin morphed into a turntable, Stewart then imagined placing an LED wall on the turntable and curving it. "Then we thought, what if we flanked the turntable with more LED and put it on traveller track to have even more reveal and endless walk-on opportunities

UK - Busy UK technical production specialist and rental company Pearce Hire has invested in 36 of Robe's LEDWash 1200 fixtures which have been added to its hire stock.

It's the first Robe purchase for the Peterborough, Cambridgeshire based company that provides lighting, audio, power, rigging, staging and draping to numerous events embracing multiple sectors.

Pearce Hire project manager Dan Shelton explains: "We needed an LED moving wash light and tested and compared several brands . . . in the process discovering that Robe stood out above all of the rest in every aspect - brightness, beam spread, colours, speed, zoom, etc."

Apart from that, he explains, the decision to go with Robe was also in response to an ever-increasing amount of specs now requesting the brand. He reckons that the LEDWash 1200 is 'rider friendly' for the majority of Pearce Hire's production pr

USA - As the reigning CMA and ACM Female Vocalist of the Year award-winner Miranda Lambert's Locked and Reloaded Tour set out across North America, it was her fourth headlining tour to date and her largest ever produced. So when the production meetings began, lighting designer Chris Lisle was asked to create a dynamic design to complement the fiery personality of one of the hottest acts in Country Music today. To accomplish this, Lisle turned to tour vendor Bandit Lites who supplied him with 45 high-powered VL3000 Spot luminaires from Philips Vari-Lite.

"I started working with Miranda in 2005 and the show has definitely grown over all the previous tours which has allowed me to have a great toy box with more lighting tools at my disposal," began Lisle. "Creatively my main goal is to always compliment her performance with the visuals and she is a very active

UK - If you are a technician, teacher or student and interested in obtaining new or improving on your existing skills then the 2013 technical training courses provided by Stage Electrics may be suitable for you.

Stage Electrics has been successfully delivering training for a wide range of technical entertainment disciplines nationwide for over 10 years.

New courses include Getting to Grips with Sound- a one day course aimed at professionals within the education sector providing an understanding of the fundamentals of sound and audio reproduction. In addition training topics include courses and workshops on lighting design, moving lights, pyrotechnic safety awareness and working at height (ladders and tallescopes) and accredited PASMA training.

Bespoke and individually tailored informal courses held at the customers venue, particularly on stage lighting, form an essent

Norway - There are seminal moments in every band's career and 9 March was one for Norwegian hip hop and rap band Karpe Diem. Playing to a packed house at Oslo's Spektrum Arena, Karpe Diem delivered a memorable show beneath a large Martin rig that included some of Martin's newest lighting solutions.

Playing before their largest audience to date, the show was universally acclaimed as a huge success for the band, and was also a benchmark for lighting designer Sebastian Ekeberg, who has been with Karpe Diem for the last four years.

"This was one of the largest and most important events I've been involved in so when I designed the show it was important for me to use equipment I knew in advance," Ekeberg stated, who turned to a large Martin rig that included some 225 MAC moving heads. "I've had great experience with the MAC range in the past so they were an obvious ch

Canada - CAST Software's lighting design suite, wysiwyg Perform, is a crucial component of the bespoke system used to illuminate Medieval sets on HBO's big-budget TV show, Game of Thrones, it has emerged.

wysiwyg has been used to create lighting designs for the epic fantasy series since 2011 and the start of filming for Season Two, which saw Belfast-based Key Console Systems take over lighting duties using a specially adapted rig put together by company director, Keith Shanks. At the request of production executives, who had been impressed by his work on the first season of the show, Shanks designed a new lighting system, which saw the introduction of wysiwyg and ChamSys MagicQ consoles to the Game of Thrones set.

Prior to this, Shanks owned a stage lighting rental company, which he subsequently sold to launch Key Console Systems, with HBO as one of its first cli

South Africa - Robe once again was right at the heart of the action in South Africa when specified for filming of the newest South African TV talent show series, Clash of the Choirs.

The Endemol SA produced talent show presented by Bonang Matheba was broadcast on DSTv channel Mzansi Magic and had massive impact in a country with a fantastically rich musical culture of choir music and performance.

Seven amateur choirs from different provinces were mentored by celebrity musicians and are competing for a prize of 500,000 ZAR, 250,000 of which goes to the winning choir and 250,000 to a charity of their choice.

The first series' rounds were recorded at the new Soweto Theatre, Nr Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, and the final will be battled out by the top three choirs in April.

Lighting for the series was designed by Peter Reick from Blond Productions. The rig included ov

UK - PLASA Focus will see the UK launch of the LEDHead Mini-Map miniature LED screen. The Mini-Map will be the first of the LEDHead range to be manufactured in the UK.

The LEDHead range has been expanded to include two pixelmap products for stage, corporate and entertainment lighting use, the Mini-Map miniature LED screen and the 3D-Pixeltube.

The Mini-Map measures 150mm x 150mm with 36x 5050 tricolour pixels. It can be used individually or in clusters to produce video and graphic effects. The Mini-Map has a steel casing, PowerCon and XLR5 connectors and is designed for touring and installation use. The PixelTube is a 3-dimensional lighting system designed to give spectacular lighting effects when the LED tubes are hung above a stage or from the ceiling in entertainment venues. Both products use DMX512 control to allow compatibility with the many DMX512 pixelmapping systems no

Germany - PR Lighting has reported an excellent response to the suite of new products, premiered on the stand of their German distributor, Focon Showtechnic at this year's Prolight+Sound Show in Frankfurt.

According to international sales director, Ernie Armas, feedback to all three new products couldn't have been more positive.

Pascal Vieregge at Focon confirmed that the PR Lighting booth had been one of the real eye-catchers - an inviting area with friendly faces and 72 XLED 336's, designed as sunstripes, dominating the backwall.

"At the same time beams appeared to come out of the heavens, crossing each other like an alien invasion - projected by the innovative PR Lighting XR-200, XR-300 and PR-5000 Beam. The booth design, by Focon's Jens Ottenhus, in combination with Gunnar Loose's intelligent programming, brought an enthusiastic response from the customers."

Brazil - The 2013 Brazilian Lollapalooza Festival staged at São Paulo's Jockey Club featured a selection of Robe moving lights on the main two stages, Cidade Jardim and Butantã.

These were integral to the respective lighting rigs used to illuminate a truly stellar line up of international and local artists, enjoyed by around 60,000 people a day who flocked to see the action across the event's four performance stages.

The Butantã stage lighting rig included 27 x Robe ColorSpot 2500E ATs and 10 Robin 600 LEDWashes, while on the Cidade Jardim stage were 34 x ColorSpot 2500E ATs, 19 x ColorWash 2500E ATs and 10 Robin 600 LEDWashes. Additional units were located above the side IMAG screens on both stages.

The principal lighting contractor was São Paulo based LPL Professional Lighting.

LPL director and LD Caio Bertti states, "We chose Robe moving lights because of the g

USA - City Theatrical is inviting visitors to explore its new website (www.citytheatrical.com). The new website has been designed to provide the ultimate user-friendly experience with improved navigation and functionality throughout, allowing customers to access detailed product information and videos with the option to share information across all major social networking sites.

The new site includes extensive product information to help customers understand City Theatrical's complete range of products for theatrical and architectural lighting. Technical data, videos, and case studies work together to provide a detailed overview of City Theatrical's capabilities over a wide range of sectors, including custom manufacturing.

The new website means that customers can now benefit from richer online content that is easier to navigate and share with others, says the company. All of t

Sweden - Södra Teatern (Southern Theatre) located in Stockholm's lively and creative Söder district, is one of Sweden's best known privately run theatres and the oldest such venue in Stockholm, established in 1859.

A Robe LEDWash installation is another facility that can be offered in addition to its seven stages, two restaurants, outdoor terrace and fabulous panoramic views across the city.

The theatre's action-packed programme of events focuses on live music and performance and stages up to 1000 events over an average year.

The newest Robe fixtures in the house are six LEDWash 600s and four LEDWash 300s, which were specified by Head of Lighting Lars Ekdahl, as part of a general lighting upgrade.

The first Robe fixtures in the venue were ColorSpot and ColorWash 575E ATs, purchased ten years ago - and still working well today - so they already knew from experience that t

Mexico - Wireless Solution Sweden AB and RED Lighting, W-DMX distributor in Mexico, recently transformed the exclusive Grupo Vidanta resort, Santuario into a stunning light display.

Grupo Vidanta is one of the leading South American hotel chains, with several resorts including Grand Luxxe, Grand Bliss, Grand Mayan and Mayan Palace. Grupo Vidanta approached RED Lighting to manage the installations for all the chain's new hotels.

Santuario is a luxury hotel and entertainment resort, complete with a large lounge, bars, discotheques, theatre and live entertainment. For these areas, RED Lighting installed 200 of their own brand Quadro 10 and Quadro 24 fixed projectors. The fixtures chosen have an IP65 protection rating, which permits outdoor use - essential for a facility like Santuario with open air sections.

Several Classe S700 moving head projectors are used as well, each with

UK - Highlite International (Stand N-E7) will this year be launching a whole range of new products at PLASA Focus, of the back of a very successful Pro Light & Sound Show, Frankfurt.

Highlite International will be showing the New Range of LED Theatre Luminaires, The Performer Range, Including the Performer 1000 Led Fresnel (with manual focus) Performer 2000 Led Fresnel (with on-board dmx focus), Performer 600 Led Profile (with a 24 degree beam), Performer 5000 LED theatre flood (with wide electric zoom & adjustable colour temperatures).

The Showtec Expression 1800 Battery Uplighter (now with Q4 led chip RGBW & lithium battery making it much lighter at only 5.5kg in weight). The Showtec XS-6 Led Centrepiece, which incorporates six 10w led dichroic colours and nine metal gobos' in each moving head, big room filler).

Showtec will be showing some of the new COB (chip on Board) r

UK - ETC is getting ready to show a range of new and updated products at this year's PLASA Focus in Leeds.

The newly released Eos v2.0 software, which introduces a new Magic Sheet function, will be available for demonstration. Designed to make programming even easier with Eos-line control desks, Magic Sheets allow users to set up customised, interactive live/blind displays organise and work with channels in ETC's traditional tombstone view or via channel symbols.

Eos v2.0 software is released simultaneously with the latest addition to the Eos control desk line, the Eos Titanium, which was first seen at Prolight + Sound in April and which uses new hardware and features to make designing and programming even easier.

Also on the stand and available for demonstration will be the new 50W ETC Source Four Mini; and Source Four LED Studio HD.

At 23cm long and weighing just 740g, t

UK - Visual Productions will be attending PLASA Focus in Leeds next week. Although regular attendees to PLASA Focus this is the first time that Visual Productions take their own stand, RA-A15.

Following on from the successful launch of two new products at Prolight+Sound, Visual Productions now bring these direct to the UK market: CueluxPro software lighting control and the B-Station, networked button interface. These two new products really complement and enhance the current Visual Productions product line.

CueluxPro is an advanced and scalable software lighting control application. The software is designed to control medium to large lighting installations, for both architectural and live entertainment situations. CueluxPro works in combination with the CueCore and IoCore as its DMX and IO interfaces and with the new B-Station user-interface.

As with the popular Cuelux softw

Germany - Intelligent LED lighting manufacturer, Chroma-Q unveiled their new Inspire LED house light at this year's Prolight + Sound exhibition in Frankfurt.

The new Chroma-Q Inspire LED house light is a powerful multi-purpose creative lighting tool that utilises some of the innovative core technologies found in the popular Chroma-Q Color Force range. Providing a choice of beautiful whites, soft pastels and bold saturates, the Inspire incorporates industry standard DMX-512 control, fully homogenised colour mixing, a high CRI of 90, a powerful 4,000 hot lumens output and an adjustable CCT.

Featuring a compact, energy-efficient LED design, the Inspire house light has an incredibly low power consumption of 110W - which will show you a significant return on your investment with its high energy efficiency.

The Inspire's custom optical design provides a smooth, uniform output, mat

Juno Awards - Carly Rae Jepsen has won three Junos at the annual Canadian music awards, including album of the year, pop album of the year and single of the year for her hit Call Me Maybe. The 27-year-old's album Kiss beat Justin Bieber and Celine Dion. Bieber took home his fourth Juno in the fan choice category with Mumford & Sons winning best international album. k.d. Lang was inducted into the Canadian music hall of fame. Leonard Cohen, who started his music career in the 1960s, won two Junos for songwriter of the year for the album Old Ideas and artist of the year.

Opera Awards - Tenor Jonas Kaufmann has won best male singer and the readers' award at the inaugural International Opera awards. Known as the "new king of tenors", Kaufmann debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2006. The reader's award was voted for by readers of

UK - TV Lighting specialists Aurora Lighting Hire, based in Greenford, has announced that Samantha Wiseman (formally Dean) has recently joined their team.

Samantha has been appointed as Business Coordinator and commented: "I am very excited to join Aurora in their rapidly growing business and happy to be back in the lighting industry. I have had time out getting married and becoming a mum and now my boys are at school, I felt ready to get back into work and was thrilled when this opportunity came up."

She started her career at Brilliant Stages just out of college and then moved onto Vari Lite/VLPS for many years and has nearly 10 years' experience working in the lighting industry.

Nick Edwards, Managing Director added: "I am delighting to welcome Samantha to Aurora. We have known each other for many years working together at VLPS/PRG. Samantha has a lot of kno

Germany - SGM used Frankfurt's Prolight+Sound to demonstrate the growth it has experienced since coming under Peter Johansen's ownership just over a year ago.

The booth was permanently packed with visitors wanting to be among the first to witness the global launch of the new IP65-rated G-Spot, and make sure it lived up to its claim of superior optics and weather-resistant body. A constant stream of water splashing across the chassis left no-one in any doubt.

But equally important, SGM has built up a family of loyal and highly-motivated resellers during the intervening period and the company CEO was able to welcome partners from across the world to a pre-show dinner, awards presentation and distributor conference, so they were primed for action when the curtains were raised on the opening day.

Once again, Peter Johansen, made sure everybody got what they came for - with a bol

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