UK - Contemporary UK folk band Bellowhead celebrated their 10th anniversary with two high profile shows at London's Royal Albert Hall and Manchester's Bridgewater Hall, for which lighting designer Emma Thompson created an eye-catching scheme which included Robe CycFX 8s, Pointes, LEDWash 600s and LEDBeam 100 moving lights - all from Robe's Robin range.

Emma has been working with the band for the last three and a half years. They tour regularly each year in autumn and spring and she is also a big fan of Robe products. The lighting design for these two special shows referenced that of the last tour but on a vastly expanded scale, with a big increase in the amount of kit used, most of which was supplied by Southampton based rental company, GLS.

"I've always used Robe fixtures in my Bellowhead shows," says Emma. "It's great technology, very solid and there is always

Australia - ArKaos PRO's Australian distributor, ULA Group, were once again a proud sponsor of 2014 BMW Bruce Lynton Charity Ball, a prestigious event hosted in May at the RACV Royal Pines Resort on Australia's Gold Coast. Working together with Jesse Radatti from Digital Lighting Solutions, the team delivered a spectacular production for the ball, which has become one of the Gold Coast's prime events.

Australia's famous Choirboys, supported by local group,The Accidents, were entertaining the crowds until late into the night. The evening's celebrations were crowned by a pixel mappable chandelier, installed as a centerpiece in the Grand Ball Room. This was controlled by ChamSys MQ 60 console through ArKaos PRO media server technology to create a festive atmosphere for the event.

Bruce Lynton Prestige Automotive Group dealer principal, Beric Lynton, explains that the event's sole

South Africa - When Canadian singer-songwriter Tamia came to South Africa on her three city tour, six Robe Pointes were used for the Johannesburg leg of the tour hosted at the Carnival City Big Top Arena. Magz Schoeman, head of lighting at Carnival City was the lighting designer for the show hosted on the 27-28 April.

Schoeman started her journey by getting her hands on Tamia's music. "Tamia's sound is very chilled and after the first song, I thought pink." With soft pastel colours in mind, Schoeman used six Robe Pointes, eight Robin 100LEDBeams, eight Robin 300s, four Robin 600s, six Robe MMX Spots, four Martin MAC 550 Profiles and 12 MAC 575 Krypons and six bars of 6 LED pars to create something special and a design which was complimented by the event organizer.

"The Pointes were great," said Schoeman. "It was the first time I used them and I love th

UK - SMG Europe, the largest operator of sports and entertainment venues in the United Kingdom and Europe, have selected amBX dynamic lighting control for the iconic Phones 4U Arena Manchester. amBX will enable flexible and dynamic control for the upgraded lighting in the Concourse area as part of a significant investment in the famous venue.

Neil Macdonald, chief executive of amBX said, "We are delighted to have the unique capabilities of amBX recognised by such a major operator in this way. In addition to managing all the operational lighting requirement, amBX Light-Scene Engine will also be providing a flexible and dynamic solution to enhance how lighting can be used to enhance the experience of the venue."

The amBX Light-Scene Engine is the latest lighting control offering built on amBX technology. The Light-Scene Engine has been designed to be easily integrated

Spain - A Marte Cabaret (A Mars Cabaret) is a full-on intergalactic party, action packed with humour, eroticism and fun - in a secret place that's full of mad characters and idiosyncrasies where humans can explore fantasies and crazy ideas without inhibitions.

Produced by Hoy No Me Puedo Levantar - responsible for the long running eponymous musical and numerous other shows along Gran Via Madrid's main theatrical artery AKA 'Spanish Broadway' - this show staged at the off Gran Via Rialto Theatre, and has been lit by award-winning lighting designer Felipe Ramos.

The overall theme of the show - inspired by some of the grand cabarets of Paris but with a definitely space age twist - gave him plenty of scope for imaginative lighting design - and he chose 12 Robe Pointes to be right at the core of the lighting rig.

A Marte Cabaret is his first collaboration with the producers, alth

Europe - Copious Clay Paky beam fixtures have been employed by lighting designer Jerry Appelt in his 'reach out and grab you' lighting design for Scooter's European tour 20 years of Hardcore.

Appelt's design is an eye-opener, with the German lighting designer rigging a mix of over 100 x Clay Paky Sharpys, 26 x Alpha Spot HPE 1500s and 12 x Alpha Beam 1500s supplied by PRG Hamburg, in strict configurations across huge fingers of truss that reach out across the audience.

"The concept behind the design was not to worry too much about the stage and really play out to the audience," explains Appelt. "We built four vertical columns upstage upon which we rigged the Clay Paky beam fixtures. These columns then lead out into four 'fingers' of curved truss heavily rigged with Sharpys. The fingers are designed to reach out above the audience creating an all encompass

UK - Nick Gray of London-based live performance design practice Renegade created an inventive lighting and visuals scheme for the highly acclaimed Atomic Bomb tour by a new international super-group led by David Byrne to honour the work of obscure Nigerian funk musician William Onyeabor.

Onyeabor's distinctive rhythmic, funkadelic, spacey synthesiser-orientated grooves were composed in the 1970s and 1980s when he was a prolific composer / performer, highly original and forward thinking. Since then he has gained a cult following amidst musicians and music aficionados.

An anthology of his old work Who is William Onyeabor? was released by David Byrne's Luaka Bop record label last year, and this was recently followed by a live concert tour to bring the Onyeabor experience to an inquisitive public.

Gray was approached directly by Luaka Bop who had seen his lighting

USA - Professional comedians often use an ellipsoidal, a few house lights and not much else for their performances. Not so with Gabriel Iglesias whose current Unity Through Laughter tour has him travelling across the US with an Elation lighting rig of spots, washes, strips, strobes, PARs and more, including the new Elation Satura Spot LED Pro moving head.

Supplied by Sacramento Production & Lighting, the Elation lighting package was chosen for several reasons including durability and price point, a major consideration these days for the touring market, according to Dion Cook, Sacramento Production & Lighting's CEO.

Dion explains the concept behind the show. "The concept for the past five years has been to give the audience more than just a run-of-the-mill comedy show with a guy in front of a curtain," he says. "And by that I mean it needed to be an experi

South Korea - French lantern manufacturer, Robert Juliat, has been enjoying increasing success in Korea with long-term distribution partner, C&C Lightway.

C&C Lightway has worked with Robert Juliat for over 20 years, promoting the brand in a strongly competitive market.

"We are up against strong competition from long-established, premium-brand Japanese manufacturers, particularly for conventional fixtures like Fresnels and ellipsoidals," says C&C Lightway's Hwan-Soo Chung. "However, we have worked to raise awareness of Robert Juliat's great reputation to the same level it experiences in the followspot market where we have enjoyed a good market share for several years."

C&C Lightway, which has established long-term working relationships with all of its clients, has recently supplied Robert Juliat lanterns and followspots to Seogwipo Culture & Arts Centre,

UK - Software provider Stardraw.com has just announced a major upgrade to their award-winning design and documentation software, Stardraw Design 7, which will be publically unveiled at InfoComm 2014 in Las Vegas this June.

Stardraw Design 7.1 is the evolution of Stardraw.com's seventh-generation application for AV systems integrators. A powerful, fully integrated project design and documentation system with access to 70,000 symbols from over 700 of the industry's leading manufacturers, Stardraw Design 7.1 includes a host of important new features, all based on requests and feedback from Stardraw users in more than 80 countries worldwide, as well as a number of bug fixes and enhancements to existing functionality.

Amongst the most requested of features is Cable Bridges, a drawing mode that shows where cables cross without intersecting. The mode can be toggled and is parameter-d

Denmark - TV lighting designer extraordinaire Kasper Lange was 'blown away' by the power of the Clay Paky fixtures used in his highly efficacious lighting design for TV event of the year, Eurovision.

Denmark based Lange worked with Eurovision's creative director Per Zachariassen to create a huge, structural lighting design that complemented the show's titanic 'diamond' stage. Lange crafted a clean, architectural lighting look that allowed the angular stage to 'open and close' creating a dynamic mix of open and intimate lighting looks.

"The brief for the show can be summed up in two words - big and simple," explains Lange. "The contest was open to almost 40 different nations and each nation's set needed a different lighting look. The challenge for us was to make each song look unique but also to introduce an organic flow throughout the show and not create a 'mash

UK - A new workhorse is gaining popularity behind the scenes on the West End. ETC's Eos Titanium (Ti) lighting control system has been taking over the programming duties on a growing number of London's top shows, with more lighting professionals choosing the power and flexibility that the desk offers. Two of those professionals - Vicky Brennan and Andi Davis - share their experience with Ti and why they trust it on even the biggest shows.

Vicky Brennan recently programmed the lighting for Stephen Ward: The Musical at the Aldwych Theatre on a Ti desk. The show's set was complicated and required custom circular lighting trusses for the lighting fixtures. That created a challenge for the lighting team, who had to devise a plan to number the rig so the lighting designer, programmer, production electricians and show crew could all understand it.

Ti's Magic Sheets function wa

Production Issues - Jennifer Lopez has pulled out of performing the official World Cup song at the tournament's opening ceremony in Brazil, Fifa has announced. Officials said the singer could not attend Thursday's show because of unspecified "production issues". Lopez was due to perform alongside rapper Pitbull and Brazilian singer Claudia Leitte, with whom she has recorded the song We Are One (Ole Ola). Pitball and Leitte will go ahead and perform accompanied by drummers Olodum.

"For production issues, Jennifer Lopez, one of the artists of the official song We Are One, will not be able to perform at the Fifa World Cup opening ceremony," said a statement. The 25-minute ceremony in Sao Paulo will feature 600 artists, including acrobatic gymnasts, trampolinists, martial arts-style performers and stilt walkers.

Fringe Matters - The Edinbur

UK - Emmy Award nominee and go-to lighting designer for the music industry, Patrick Dierson, specified new Showline SL Nitro 510C strobe luminaires as part of his dramatic concept lighting for Brit rapper Tinie Tempah's UK Demonstration tour.

Dierson, who worked alongside ARE Productions show producer Antony Randall and creative director Ted Lovett, and designer/programmer Davy Sherwin, created a multi-layered design, which carved up the stage with constantly moving, bold, sweeping looks that swung from the intimate to the epic. To achieve this diverse and exciting concept, the show designers turned to the cutting-edge SL Nitro 510C, which adds RGB & W LED capabilities to the original SL Nitro 510 luminaire, delivering intense bursts of coloured and white light and dynamic effects.

Inspired by the artwork of Tempah's latest album Demonstration, Dierson says, &quo

Denmark - Tiësto, arguably the greatest DJ of the decade, recently headlined the exclusive EDM Copenhagen electronic festival, presented by Arive on the terrace of the luxurious Stay Apartment Hotel in the Danish capital. Meanwhile, SGM's G-Spot, the world's first IP65-rated LED moving head, created its own spotlight as the headline lighting fixture.

For this nine-hour event (running from afternoon to midnight), packed with a strong lineup of DJs and live acts, production manager and show designer Christian Byriel from CeeBRIGHTER had some specific venue challenges to overcome. "Though being challenged with large window façades, an unusual location and an outdoor venue from daylight to dusk, I feel I achieved my vision and maintained the aesthetic look required by the customer," he says. It became apparent to him that the G-Spot was to play a large role in his achiev

China - PR Lighting emulated its successful model of last year at the recent 2014 PALM Expo, held at the New China International Exhibition Center (NCIEC) in Beijing.

They presented a three-sided open booth - measuring the same size (270 sq.m) and occupying in the same location as last year. PR Lighting's trademark purple logo was easily visible as the main colour as visitors arrived at the exhibition hall and sat proudly above a special products display platform containing a large '30' - denoting the company's landmark birthday - making it both elegant and hospitable.

Although visitor levels were down by almost 16% from last year - a symptom of the world economic recession - competition in the lighting and sound sector has intensified, with more and more Chinese manufacturers fighting for market share by creating more innovative and cost effective products.

Now one of the C

USA - ABC-TV's musical drama Nashville features a number of performances in every episode. The final episodes performance got the full star treatment with Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures.

The series, which just finished its second season, shoots in and around Nashville with many of the musical performances staged in a purpose-built studio in town. Sometimes the musical sequences are shot on location; the recent two-part season finale featured performances at Fort Campbell, the US Army base on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, and at Nashville's LP Field.

"The storyline included performing for the troops at Fort Campbell and involved a mobile stage on the tarmac with Apache helicopters flying over the stage," says lighting director Steve Fallon, who works with DP Michael Lohmann on the lighting design for these segments. "Then we had the star of the show in the gra

USA - Jesus Culture, which began as a youth group at a church in northern California, has become a global movement that includes conferences, events, campus ministries, and worship curriculums dedicated to "demonstrating the love and power of God".

To commemorate its recent relocation from Redding, California, where it was based for 18 years, to Sacramento, the Jesus Culture band recorded Unstoppable Love, a live album and DVD, at Sacramento's prestigious Memorial Auditorium. With the help of Martin Professional lighting console and fixtures, lighting designer Robby Kurtz was able to both successfully represent the Jesus Culture movement and showcase the importance of its relocation. California-based rental house DPS Inc., provided the lighting production equipment.

Kurtz deployed 32 of Martin's MAC Viper Profile moving head luminaires and 26 Martin Atomic 300

UK - Since Soccer AM first started in 1995 it has developed a cult following, with generations of fans spending their Saturday morning in front of the TV to tune into features such as 'Can He Kick It', 'Big Tackle', 'Fan of the Week', 'Third Eye'....not to mention the Soccerettes!

In addition to the weekly TV show hosted by Helen Chamberlain and Max Rushden, every year Soccer AM also host a live event with music and special guests. This year it included performances from Soul II Soul and rapper Tinchy Strider.

Long term LD Malcolm Reed designed the show which was supported by Richard Martin Lighting (RML).

Malcolm always sees this show as an opportunity to use the latest products available and this year was no different. The rig included Sharpys, Nexus 4x4s, Jarag-L's and RML's most recent purchase the Clay Pay A.leda B-EYE K20.

The high performance wash ligh

UK - At ABTT this week, LDR and UK partner Zero 88 (part of Eaton's Cooper Controls) will introduce the Astro LED followspot to the UK.

Designed for professionals, Astro offers a state-of-the art flat, clean beam. The double condenser optics system delivers outstandingly high resolution for both A/B size steel and film transparency gobos.

LED dimming is fast and accurate with 512 step resolution controlled from a single DMX/RDM or from a local control knob positioned on the rear panel of the unit.

Fabiano Besio commented , "The followspot is a real step forward in this market field and the positive comments from the market reinforce our decision to not make any compromise in quality ."

Available in warm white at 3200K or cool white at 5600K, Astro has been designed for all applications and is particularly attractive where power supply is limited and where running

France - In the Bohemian Marais District, in the centre of bustling Paris, a new tech hub opened in the final months of 2013. The Silicon Sentier aims to provide a digital ecosystem to help aid and accelerate tech innovation in small and upcoming companies.

Media and tech designers Blow Factory offered the Sentier the idea of providing some interactive fun and excitement, using Light Emissions creative LED video display system. Blow Factory owner Paula Guastella had worked with Light Emissions previously in London, and knew that the Art system could provide the brightness and pure video speed needed.

Blow Factory's Paula Guastella explains, "We wanted to surprise people entering the lobby. As they walk past this large glass wall with colourful moving images, they spot their own 'body shadow' shown on the screen. They stop, turn around and wave and have a little dance!&quo

UK - Entertainment lighting specialist White Light has supplied lighting solutions and support for Barry Manilow's 2014 UK Arena Tour. The singer visited arena and stadium venues throughout the UK including Manchester's Phones 4U Arena and London's O2 and Wembley Arenas.

Lester Cobrin, head of concert touring for White Light, worked closely with tour manager Sacha Bambadji, production manager Peter Edmonds, and lighting designer Seth Jackson to determine the tour's equipment list and support requirements. This was the first time Jackson toured with White Light. "I've known Lester for years but had never worked with White Light before," he said. "When we started discussing the tour with Pete Edmonds, he suggested White Light and we didn't look back. It's been a great experience."

The show's staging was designed with grandeur in mind as several layers of red

Spain - The 2014 Cadena Dial Awards was staged by leading Spanish Radio Station Cadena Dial and produced by Planet Events at the Auditorio Miguel Delibes in Valladolid to celebrate the most successful Spanish language performing artists and bands from the year.

The lighting design was created by Juanjo Beloqui who specified 30 x Robe Robin Pointes and 30 x Robe Robin LEDBeam 100s - among other moving lights and generic fixtures - but the Robes were a major part of his show. Beloqui has lit the event six times since 2007 and is also the Director of Photography. Each year he ensures that there is a new look and a fresh aesthetic approach.

This year he collaborated closely with set designer Paco Redondo on developing the style and presentation for the event which was broadcast live on privately owned Spanish TV channel Divinity, part of the Mediaset empire.

The Robe Pointes and

Estonia - Eesti Laul, the Estonian qualifying competition where the winner gets to represent Estonia in the prestigious Eurovision Song Contest was this year using LumenRadio's wireless CRMX Nova products to control the spectacular lighting rig.

Under the lights of a massive lighting rig containing over 80 x Robe moving heads, the 10 finalists performed in front a large audience at Tallinn's Nokia Concert Hall.

LumenRadio's Estonian distributor E&T, provided a CRMX system containing one dual universe transmitter and multiple single universe receivers. E&T's General Manager Olev Luhaäär explains, "It is really eye-opening to see how many moving lights that can be controlled with only one transmitter unit. When you plan a show of this size that involves a lot of fixtures, wireless lighting control is absolutely necessary."

Luhaäär continues, "The CRMX system

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