Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

Projects

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USA - Country star Walker Hayes is out on his first headlining tour with a lighting package supplied by Bandit Lites. The singer released his third album Country Stuff in January 2022 to widespread acclaim before taking to the road on the Glad You’re Here tour. For this inaugural outing, Seth Jackson and Nate Alves of Darkroom Creative sought to design a production that would not break the budget but hold its own in the arenas.
“Scale is something I feel we do very well here at Darkroom,” explained Alves. “It is one thing to build something that looks good when hung as designed, it is another to be able to grow and condense with the room and fill that upstage space effectively and responsibly. The rig looks bigger than it is, and as such, we can really squeeze this show into some tight spaces. This is where our equipment choices really helped us.”

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UK - Birmingham’s Resorts World Arena hosted the first Tropic skincare in-person ‘Glammies’ event to be staged since the pandemic. Attended by 4,200 Tropic ‘Glambassadors’, product launches were combined with aspirational and motivational speeches, recognition segments and an evening gala Awards, plus full entertainment including live music from the 20-piece Symphonic Ibiza orchestra.
Central Presentations Ltd (CPL) supplied a full production package – lighting, audio, video, screens, rigging and staging – working for producers, Pandora Events. Two days of build and two days of rehearsals preceded the one-day event, with CPLs team of around 40 led by Lee Gruszeckyj.
CPL created the production design from initial sketches to full supply and delivery. Being the first Glammies post-Covid, it was all about creating a big spectacle with lots of vibrance and
Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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Germany - Whether football at the Bundesliga level, corporate conferences, or cultural events: the Kia Metropol Arena in Nuremberg, opened in 2021, has impressed visitors with its flexibility, space, and unmatched visibility for over 4,000 spectators across four stands.
Thanks to cost-effective solutions planned and implemented by Bosch, the arena is highly secure – while at the same time providing crystal-clear sound for all its events. The building makes the most of IoT, connectivity and digital solutions: In addition to the latest IP technologies for video surveillance, intrusion and fire protection, the arena also hosts an integrated solution for public address and voice alarm, which completely dispenses with analogue transmission paths.
With its quality sound, quick voice alarming, and crystal-clear speech for emergencies, the easy-to-use sound system and voice

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France - The Théâtre du Châtelet, an arts and cultural landmark venue in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, designed by Jean-Antoine-Gabriel Davioud and completed in 1862, re-opened to the public in 2019 after several years of extensive renovation work. The theatre has recently re-opened again post pandemic.
Forty Robe T1 Profile moving lights are now part of the lighting rig at the 2500-capacity theatre which has regained its youthful appearance with a complete backstage electrical and scenographic re-fit that has seen ageing sound and lighting equipment replaced by modern technology meeting the venue’s contemporary requirements.
Initially, 36 x T1 Profiles were supplied to the venue by Robe France to replace the old non-automatic projectors in front of and above the stage. There was an urgent need for lighting that would improve the whole experience for audience

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USA - To ensure wide coverage and balanced sound quality at the 2022 Global Citizen Festival, Firehouse Productions deployed JBL Professional VTX Series line array systems.
Founded in 2012 by Global Poverty Project’s Ryan Gall and Hugh Evans, Global Citizen Festival is an annual music festival with one humanitarian goal - to end poverty worldwide. Instead of selling tickets, the Global Citizen Festival’s model offers free tickets to the festival as a reward for “global citizens” who respond to calls for tangible actions in the fight against poverty. In the decade since its inception, global citizens have taken more than 30.4m actions resulting in $2.4bn being committed to help more than 1.15bn people living in poverty around the world.
The 2022 edition of Global Citizen Festival featured two events happening simultaneously on 24 September 24 in the United S

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USA - Canacopia is a one-day festival sponsored by Forty8 Live!, dedicated to the appreciation of adult canned beverages. Taking place on 10 September, non-stop musical performances were held throughout the day, culminating in a headline performance from Grammy winner, Zedd. Creative BackStage worked with Zedd’s team to build a rig for the mainstage, which featured 112 Chauvet Professional fixtures.
The dynamic lightshow supporting the headliner’s performance was designed by Zedd’s LD Steven Hernandez. John Garberson of Creative BackStage spent months working with Forty8 Live! and the Zedd team to bring the event to life.
Garberson had a clear vision in mind when putting together the rig - it had to be bright enough to create bold looks during daylight hours for opening acts, which included Evening Elephants and The Brook & The Buff, and intense enough to s

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USA - Since her first Grammy Awards performance, Lorde has entrusted FOH mixing engineer Philip J. Harvey for her live audio needs. Currently, Harvey is wrapping up his work for the singer’s Solar Power 2022 Tour across the US, where a high-quality, comfortable and accurate audio solution was of utmost importance.
Pulling from his experience as a self-taught audio tech working in clubs and on the road with bands such as Medeski Martin & Wood, Mumford and Sons and My Bloody Valentine, as well as Jack White’s The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and Dead Weather, Harvey knew what brand would check all the boxes. He worked with audio provider Clair Global to select a number of instrument and vocal mics from DPA Microphones.
“With the recent addition of the new 4055 Kick Drum Microphone, the entire drum set is DPA,” Harvey explains. “We also have a 2011C Twin Di

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South Africa - The Saturday Showdown is South Africa’s newest and hottest prime-time TV sports games show. Lighting designer Ryan Lombard was delighted to be asked onboard and he seized the opportunity to use Robe moving lights, including MegaPointes which were a new investment for rental specialist and lighting supplier, Blond Productions.
The show, recorded at Urban Brew Studio 10 in Johannesburg, and produced by Red Pepper Productions for broadcaster Mzansi Magic, is a hi-energy action-packed sport-themed entertainment game show with big prize money.
Ryan took Michael Gill’s set design as the show’s visual blueprint as he started to think about lighting. The two have worked collaboratively on several recent TV projects and enjoy a great synergy and creative language.
Ryan assessed the Showdown environment which included a ‘studio’ area where

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USA - After 122 shows over four years, rock band Kansas wrapped up the Point of Know Return Anniversary Tour. With fans still clamouring for the show to carry on, the band embarked on a tour celebrating their classic hits with a lighting system designed by Scott Pearson and provided by Bandit Lites.
With nine gold albums, three multi-platinum albums and six decades of touring, Kansas is one of the more formidable rock bands consistently touring.
“During COVID-19, I personally have become very close to several members of the Kansas entourage, especially Phillip Ehart and JR Rees,” said Bandit Lites chair, Michael T. Strickland. “We bonded in the early days and have stayed in constant communication for over two years. There is not a finer, more talented organization that Kansas. Their involvement and work on COVID-19 relief was second to none and we all ow

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South Africa - Jazz as Heritage was the theme of this year’s jazz festival held in Johannesburg in partnership with UJ Arts & Culture, The Wits School of Arts’ Cultural Policy and Management and The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts on 2 and 3 September. DWR Distribution was a sponsor of the event which was hosted at UJ and featured a line-up including old-school jazz and diga dancers to performances by Zoë Modiga, Abbey Cindi and Muneyi, workshops and a panel discussion.
“The jazz at UJ concert is a biennial event,” explains Thato Maroga, production manager at UJ Arts & Culture. “We are inspired by the reality that jazz music is a multi-generational cultural experience. Here people from all walks of life and cultural and racial backgrounds can gather in one space and enjoy it. This year’s programme was truly a representati

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UK - The 2022 Commonwealth Games Opening and Closing Ceremonies, took place at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium in August, Celebrating the rich history, culture and identity of the city and the West Midlands, Unusual played a key role as the contracted rigging supplier.
Working for Gary Beestone, Unusual’s job was to provide all the rigging and install all the lighting for the spectacles. Sam Carter, Unusual’s lead rigger on the project explained: “It’s been a couple of months now since the opening ceremony and the feedback we’ve had ever since has been unreal! We had our work cut out – it was a mammoth event with a modest budget, but the result was two fantastic ceremonies.”
Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium is a relatively new venue, with the west stand just recently built and the north and south stands set up as temporary structures. Big towers were ere

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UK - The recent Boisdale Music Awards provided a prestigious showcase for the restaurant group’s Canary Wharf venue in London’s Docklands.
Hosted by Boisdale Patron of Music Jools Holland, this event saw gongs awarded in 14 categories including a Lifetime Achievement Award for Black Sabbath guitarist and founding member Tony Iommi.
Performers on the night enjoyed the use of a newly installed Nexo sound system, a further example of Boisdale’s commitment to excellence in its nightly staging of live music performances.
“We’ve had nothing but positive comments from visiting artists and sound engineers since installing the Nexo system” says Boisdale commercial and marketing director Adam Priestley. “It’s important that performers and audience alike experience the very best live sound, and that’s exactly what they get with Nexo.”
Nexo L15 subs

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The Netherlands - Indie rock stalwarts Kensington have been widely praised by critics for bringing layers of added dimensions to their music without sacrificing any of its immediate power to engage emotionally. For six days this September, the quartet from Utrecht were supported by a light and video show that reflected the multi-faceted appeal of their songs.
The intricate and tightly coordinated show turned the 17,000-capacity Ziggo Dome into an immersive 3D galaxy of images that flowed in perfect harmony to the music being produced on stage. At the centre of it all was a massive 800m² ‘tree’ made of blow-through and solid LED panels that worked cohesively with intense, fast-moving displays of light.
Like the entire production, the mesmerizing video-and-light combination was the product of intense collaboration, as well as some seamless integration between two Ch

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Denmark - Lighting designer Sune Verdier used Astera Titan Tubes and AX3 LightDrops as practical and imaginative tools and vital components of his striking lighting scheme for a revival of the popular Danish musical, Elsk Mig i Nat (Love Me Tonight), which was produced by the One and Only Musical Teater company.
The show features a full-tilt string of Danish chart-topping hits from the 1980s, and first premiered in 2009.
This completely new production of the show was directed by Tomas Agerholm with scenography by Benjamin La Cour. It launched at the Scandic Falconer venue in Copenhagen and then played at the Music Theatre Holstebro and at Vejle Music Theatre over three months. Sune – known for his design style and flair – has worked with Tomas and Benjamin on other projects, and they asked him onboard to light this show.
It was a fun show that

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Canada –With a seating capacity of 2,000, Light Presbyterian Church in the Canadian city of Mississauga is a Gospel-centred church that serves a multi-ethnic and multi-generational community.
The audio environment in the wide, fan-shaped chapel is far from perfect. The stage is not the most acoustically friendly environment, suffering from plenty of reflections, and a second-floor glass balcony railing adds further acoustic energy back into the sanctuary. This combination meant that the congregation was finding it hard to hear and fully understand services.
To solve these challenges, Light Presbyterian Church turned to Abe Son from Benabe ProSound. Having worked with the church on various AV upgrades for a number of years, he knew the challenges the venue presented and had a solution to solve the problem – TW AUDiO’s VERA20i.
“We needed to design an L-R

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USA - Jon Pardi’s Ain’t Always The Cowboy tour features a towering lighting rig, industrial influenced riser, and scenic design.
Chris Reade, KYVA’s lighting designer, credits Jay Ballinger, the company’s set designer with turning their client’s vision into reality. “Jay and Jon really came together on this,” said Reade. “The idea was to project strength through masculine steel beams and rugged structural elements.”
Reade designed a potent Elite Multimedia supplied lighting rig that featured 190 Chauvet Professional fixtures to accentuate and enlarge the evocative set design. “The lighting architecture is boxy to be consistent with the set; and there are some angles that make it feel larger overall,” he said. “Jay's overall concept changed within our process, but we wanted to have a “wall of light” within the set. We have contrast bet

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Columbia - German lighting designer Dennis Feichtner was delighted that the Robe moving lights specified on his production lighting plot were available at each show on a recent Latin American tour with black metal gurus, Emperor.
The band, spearheaded the Norwegian inspired second wave of the genre in the 1990s, and now reform occasionally for special performances and festivals playing hits from their three seminal albums of that era. These are always sold out. A loyal cult following of dedicated fans worldwide are renowned for their enthusiasm and nowhere was that more evident than in Latin America.
Dennis enjoys the theatrical and dramatic potential of black metal was very excited to land in the LD ‘hot seat’ for Emperor earlier in 2021.
The Latam shows were the first gigs of the year for the band, the first time Emperor had played the territory outside of

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USA - Rapper and singer Jelly Roll is out on the road performing with a lighting system from Bandit Lites. The Southern hip hop country rock breakout artist recently hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart, leading as the top emerging act in the US for the first time thanks to his new album, Ballads of the Broken. The Son of a Sinner singer has been touring with Shinedown on their Planet Zero World Tour.
As Jelly Roll’s sound crosses multiple music genres, his team called upon lighting director Nate Cromwell to program a show that wouldn’t resemble a traditional hip hop, country or rock show, but instead showcase a performance that is as unique and dynamic as he is.
“They also didn’t want him, or the message to get lost in all of the visual noise that can be achieved these days,” said Cromwell, “therefore my approach was to try to

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Poland - Established for over 50 years, the renowned Musical Theatre in Poznań, west Poland, has premiered a remarkable number of hit shows across the decades, many of which were written especially for the theatre and proceeded to become celebrated productions performed across the country.
With an audience capacity of approximately 400, the specialist venue prides itself on production values, and with a new high-profile play coming to the theatre, the venue made the timely decision to upgrade its long-serving DiGiCo console from an SD5 to a dedicated theatre model, the SD7T.
Among recent productions was Irena, a newly authored play that explores the story of Polish woman, Irena Sendler, who saved over 2,000 Jewish children from the holocaust during World War II. The English-language libretto was written by Polish-born US-based journalist, Piotr Piwowarczyk, an

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Romania - A large array of Claypaky fixtures illuminated the eighth edition of Flowers of the Soul: Remember Florian Pittis, a two-day tribute concert held in Bucharest last June honouring the Romanian stage and television actor, folk singer, writer and director who died in 2007.
“It can be tricky to create something for an already installed simple stage, but with the help of Claypaky fixtures we managed to design a friendly folk music festival in the heart of the city,” reports lighting designer Bogdan Gradisteanu from Marbo Trade, a Bucharest-based production and rental company and Claypaky distributor.
For the rig, he used a selection of Claypaky Sharpy, Mythos 2, HY B-EYE K15, Scenius Profile, Mini-B and Stormy CC fixtures. “We chose them for their versatility to accommodate all the different performances during the festival,” Gradisteanu explains.

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World - Michael Bublé’s ongoing Higher Tour could best be described as an intimate party on a grand scale. It’s a full-tilt production in every respect, replete with a massive four-tier stage set to accommodate a full orchestra and backup singers – augmented on occasion by strings and a 10-piece choir – plus extensive lighting effects and four giant video screens.
For audio support, Bublé is again carrying a ‘dual hybrid’ Meyer Sound reinforcement system, comprising both main stage arrays plus massive centre-hung arrays which function as an over-specified delay system when Bublé is on the main stage and as an in-the-round system when he occupies the B-stage. This time, however, the tour has slimmed down its audio footprint by replacing most former Leo Family and all M Series systems with 76 new Panther large-format linear line array loudspeakers.

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USA - The metal bar structure that runs across the front of the stage on KoRn’s current tour suggests images of incarceration, and the loss of freedom it brings. This serves as a foil for the metal band from the instant they kick off their show and blow that suggestion out of the water with a ferocious rendition of Rotting In Vain.
Reflecting the spirit of KoRn and their music is a potent, rapid-fire 20-universe light and video show run by Thomas ‘Church’ Christmann on his ChamSys MagicQ MQ500, that features blinding back lighting, a blow-through video wall, bold color palettes, and big, often theatrical, looks.
“I’ve been told I have a very aggressive, but still theatrical, way to do my shows,” said Christmann, who has been working for KoRn since 2016. “This is a perfect way to work with KoRn. My goal is to support the show without distracting fro

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The Netherlands - Held between 19-21 August 2022 at Evenemententerrein Walibi Holland in Biddinghuizen, Lowlands Festival is the largest and multi-day festival in The Netherlands. Themed as “A Campingflight to Lowlands Paradise”, the festival is spread out over a natural area which includes its famous campsite and a variety of stages offering a wide variety of bands, DJs, speakers and theatre. Headliners for 2022 included the Arctic Monkeys, Stromae, Sam Fender, Amelie Lens and Tash Sultana, and attracted over 65,000 visitors.
The festival’s technical supplier, Ampco Flashlight Rental, catered for the audio and lighting for all stages with Ayrton taking a prominent place on each stage. “Every type of Ayrton fixture was present from Mistral to Huracán,” says Ampco Flashlight Rental’s account manager, Mathijs de Vries.
Of the main stages and venues, the Alp

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Finland - Rapper Pyhimys staged a three-hour performance at Helsinki’s Ice Hall in September, designed to celebrate his 20 years of industry success. Key to the show was categorised themes recalling milestone career moments, with cleverly created graphics taking the audience on a journey through time. At the core of the visuals was a Hippotizer Boreal+ Media Server, expertly programmed and operated by the team at Visual45.
A focus of the stage design was a large, semi-transparent upstage LED screen made up of ROE Vanish8 panels, with two samller IMAG screens stage left and right, consisting of ROE MC9. The back screen was raised to reveal Pyhimys and his musicians, before being lowered down into place to display graphics created by Visual45 and driven through the Boreal+. The IMAG screens were used mainly for live feed.
“We were asked to design Pyhimys’s concert
  1. MLA keeps Riot Festival under audio control
  2. Robe rocks at the 2022 Video Music Awards
  3. Cadar Falls church turns to L-Acoustics L-ISA
  4. ELP lights BBC Morning Live show with Elation
  5. Skive Cultural Centre invests in Robe
  6. Yamaha opens latest PA demo space in Glasgow
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Astera - Large MPU - June 2025
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