UK - Philips Lighting reports that Peterborough's Key Theatre has replaced its existing tungsten Fresnels with 36 energy-efficient Philips Selecon RAMA LED Fresnel luminaires to save on power and breathe new life into the popular venue's lighting system.

The new fixtures were supplied and fitted by entertainment technical specialist Stage Electrics, with whom the Key Theatre has a long standing relationship. Stage Electrics' technical sales consultant Andy Elsegood recommended the RAMA LED Fresnels as a crisp, white LED solution for the theatre's range of stage lighting requirements.

"We specifically wanted LED Fresnels with a clear white light," explains the Key Theatre's technical manager Gary Linley. "The Philips Selecon RAMA LED Fresnel seemed to be the only luminaire on

Germany - In the North Rhine Westfalia region, Sound Linear has completed two very different sound reinforcement installations using Nexo's Geo M6 compact line array system. One indoor, one outdoor - one a house of worship, the other a volkstheater; the projects showcase the quality of the M6 for SPL coverage and speech intelligibility.

In the calm and elegant modern interior of Willebadessen's Baptist Church, a high-flying Geo M6 line array is almost invisible in its custom grey colours. The church approached Kalle Hogrefe of Sound Linear, the Paderborn-based installation and rental company, to design a system that would provide smooth and even SPLs to each of the 1500 seats in the sanctuary.

After spending a test weekend with Nexo Geo M620 full-range cabinets, pole-mounted for the evaluation, a favourable decision was made. Hogrefe used Nexo's NS-1 proprietary modelling

UK - Pro audio provider The Warehouse Sound Services Limited has been awarded certification to BS EN ISO 9001 and BS EN ISO 14001 for its Quality Management and Environmental Systems.

These internationally recognised standards are awarded to companies that demonstrate to its clients and customers that they are committed to delivering quality services and reducing its environmental impact while driving down costs, improving productivity and boosting customer satisfaction.

Derek Blair, director, of The Warehouse said, "This award is a reflection of the hard work and excellent performance of all our teams and a starting point in this continually improving process.

"Having certification is a positive step forward in positioning The Warehouse external markets as well as further assuring delivery of quality services to our existing customer base. For the Warehouse, it's real

UK - Hyundai's Football Heaven, in an upgraded Star Events' Orbit structure, was exactly that for expat Portugal fans. They took to the North London temporary venue on Sunday to see their team defy the odds and win the European Championships from favourites France.

A first event for Lewis Cubitt Square, the new civic space behind King's Cross station, production company Produce called on Star to design and deliver the structure, enveloping a 360° screen, to broadcast live coverage from 45 Euro 2016 matches. Forty five thousand tickets were available free via Ticketmaster over the course of the tournament.

The Orbit Flexidome's modular design brought the best out of the small site, its roof comfortably accommodating over 500m2 of projector screens, lighting and sound. In a major first, Star treated the whole building with a new acoustic barrier system, lowering the exte

USA - Jam bands expect their lighting designers to be ready to punt at the drop of a hat and come up with a fresh look for a new guitar riff that just pops up in the middle of a set. At the recent Domefest, however, funk rockers Pigeons Playing Ping Pong asked their LD Manny Newman to go a step further. The popular group, which started the annual three-day jam festival in 2010, wanted Manny to create a flexible punt-ready lightshow for an eclectic mix of over 20 bands.

Manny and lighting tech Danny Katz met this challenge with a lightshow that seemed to unfold effortlessly over an extended weekend of jam and funk music, serving up ever more opulent, colourful and free flowing looks. A big help in accomplishing this feat was provided by a powerful and flexible rig that featured a collection of Rogue fixtures from Chauvet Professional, supplied by 4Wall Entertainment.

"This

New Zealand - When the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo came to the Westpac Stadium in Wellington, New Zealand in February 2016, production supplier, MJF Lighting, decided the scale of the production warranted new followspots and invested in four Robert Juliat Merlin 2500W HMI followspots specifically for the spectacular show.

"There were no quality 2kW HMI followspots available in New Zealand to match this event, with all previous shows of this scale and high production standards having relied on units out of Australia," says MJF's CEO, Michael Farrand. "It was time for a change."

Farrand had previous experience with Robert Juliat followspots on the AC/DC tour, which UK-based Neg Earth had supplied with 4kW RJ Lancelot followspots. "I had the opportunity to talk to the touring tech, and find out first hand just how reliable the RJ product was," Farrand says. "Feedback from

Italy - CODA Audio recently engaged Decima as its distributor in Italy. Decima has a near 70-year history as a distributor and integrator on every scale. The relationship came about as a result of one of Decima's customers remarking on the quality of CODA system they had heard in action. Curious to find out more, Decima representatives approached CODA Audio and were invited to a system demonstration in Hannover.

Enzo Trovato CEO of Decima commented, "We were blown away by the power and clarity we experienced at the demo. In theatre installations audio is not necessarily something that is a regular feature of every job but we work on a variety of other fixed installations and we knew immediately that with CODA Audio systems at our disposal, this aspect of our offer could be expanded. Decima now has an experienced audio-specialist to take care of this side of the business. In ou

India - Cloud Electronics has announced Acoustic Arts as the exclusive distributor for India for the full range of Cloud products including audio mixers, zoners, multi-channel amplifiers, audio distribution systems and speakers, effective 1 July 2016.

Acoustic Arts was founded in 1999 and specialises in providing state of the art, innovative and integrated AV solutions to more than one hundred and fifty systems integrators and dealers across India, providing design, project management and turnkey solutions including the provision of EASE (Enhanced Acoustic Simulator for Engineers) modelling and simulation.

Sidharth Chhibber, director for Acoustic Arts commented, "The heritage and reliability of Cloud products sits nicely with Acoustic Arts' longevity in the Indian market. We pride ourselves on providing excellent value, the latest technologies and delivering projects ahead

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Council Concern - Arts Council England has admitted it is "hugely concerned" about the future of artists' free movement within the EU following the Brexit vote last month. National director of communication Mags Patten said the council was "really, really worried" about the issue following the UK's vote to leave the EU, and confirmed ACE was preparing to lobby the government in favour of free movement. Speaking at a London Writers' Week event about the state of the theatre industry, Patten said ACE was uncertain whether UK arts organisations would still have access to European culture funds. She stated, "The other area which really really worries us is freedom of movement. It's a huge concern to us that that is clearly not guaranteed at the moment...We have to be open, we have to be international in our outlook, and the free exchange of artists and ideas is absolutely critical to

Germany - Lawo raised eyebrows and drew plenty of attention in Las Vegas with the introduction of RELAY Virtual Radio Mixer software at NAB 2016. So much attention in fact, that RELAY won a Best Of Show award for introducing broadcasters to the advantages of virtualizing radio studio technology.

RELAY is virtual mixing software that's designed to make maximum use of today's powerful laptop and desktop PCs. Taking advantage of computer virtualization technology adapted from the IT industry enables RELAY users to pack an entire studio's worth of broadcast gear onto a single PC.

"You should have seen engineers' eyes light up when they saw RELAY," comments Lawo Radio marketing specialist Clark Novak. "The moment they realized that not just mixing, but other hardware like audio processors, phone systems, codecs and more could be replaced with software that all runs on a single

UK - Panasonic has created a virtual museum in order to showcase its technology for the museum and heritage sector, entirely in the cloud.

The museum has four distinct zones, each highlighting how audiovisual technology can be integrated to create engaging, modern exhibits.

Panasonic product experts guide visitors through the museum and provide an insight into how Panasonic products and solutions can enhance the museum environment, creating an engaging visitor journey and, importantly, helping generate additional revenue. They will also be on hand, live, to answer any questions visitors may have.

'Experiential projection' combines laser projection, edge blending and ultra short throw lenses to demonstrate how large scale, high brightness, high resolution panorama projections can be created within the museum environment.

The 'informative display' zone looks at how d

USA - Here Come the Mummies, an eight-piece funk band from Nashville is touring the US beneath a lighting rig of Elation Professional effect lights.

Lighting designer/director and programmer Thom Roberts has been working with the band for the past three years and is out on their current LoveFest tour, which runs until the end of October.

The band has been playing dates across the US since February, mostly weekends and mostly in large clubs and theatres with a few festivals and casinos on the schedule. Augmenting house or local lighting systems at each gig is an Elation lighting floor package of Rayzor Q7 LED moving heads, Sniper 2R multi-effect lights, Cuepix Blinder WW2 white light LED blinders, and Protron 3K strobes.

"The role of the Elation gear is to bring the 'wow factor'," says Roberts. "But there are specific features on every fixture we have that are important

Germany - The Milla club in the heart on Munich is a destination for upcoming bands from around the world. The club - which offers space for an audience of up to 250 persons - offers its musical guests state-of-the-art lighting and sound technology. Now, stands from Adam Hall Group's brand Gravity are also ensuring a secure position for microphones and keyboards on stage. Additionally, the stands, which recently received iF Design and Red Dot Awards and are currently nominated for a German Design Award, also provide visual stimuli in the stage set-up.

"There are times when we have a different band here each day of the week, and not all of them bring their own equipment," says Peter Sp

China - UK-based 7thSense Design has united once more with its reseller and integrator partner for China, Wincomn, to create a new and visually stunning series of experiences at the Nanchang Wanda Cultural Tourism City in the capital of China's Jiangxi Province.

The brand new Wanda Cultural Tourism City includes an indoor theme park (Nanchang Wanda Park), shopping mall with an indoor ocean park (Nanchang Wanda Ocean Park), entertainment attractions, hotels and dining districts. The attraction is quite literally the size of a city at 200-hectares and Chinese conglomerate Wanda are behind it all.

7thSense supplied uncompressed, high frame rate and extreme resolution media serving technologies to three experiences inside the Nanchang Wanda Park; The Flyover Jiangxi Flying Ride Theatre, VASE (the Flying Theatre pre-show) and the 12-metre fulldome auditorium at the Nanchang Wan

USA - At Eastern Kentucky University, home of the Colonels, the list of special spots now includes a most unlikely edifice - the pedestrian bridge (aka Pedway) that crosses Lancaster Boulevard to join two sections of the sprawling 675-acre campus.

Louisville-based lighting company Lumenation transformed the utilitarian glass, concrete and aluminium structure into a beautiful reflection of school spirit and campus pride with help from some colour-changing fixtures from the Iluminarc division of Chauvet Lighting.

"The Pedway has become one of the favourite sites on campus since we added coloured light to it," said Lumenation's Alex Moore, who served as the manager of the project. "It really stands out from your average run-of-the-mill pedestrian bridge." Indeed, the colourful pedestrian bridge has become so iconic at EKU that the school has used it as the subject of a campus

UK / Malllorca - Aurora Lighting hire has once again been cast away to work with lighting designer Gurdip Mahal, adding some illumination to the latest season of Love Island for ITV2.

Liaising closely with LD Gurdip Mahal, Aurora project manager Joe Marter dealt with lighting lists and logistics to create and despatch a full location package to the island set - including an extensive selection of automated and fixed light sources along with location power and all relevant distribution and control equipment.

The project also required the team to create a variety of bespoke electronic installations and LED set pieces that were integrated throughout the islanders home environment.

Commenting on the project, Gurdip said, "I'd just like to thank Aurora for their support on Love Island. Being so far away from home it was great to have reliable equipment and the

USA - When Meytal Cohen, the drummer for and founding member of the heavy metal band Meytal, set out on her US tour, she wanted to go big and provide fans with superior audio quality at each venue. In order to achieve the huge sound she was looking for, Cohen turned to DPA Microphones' d:vote 4099D Instrument Microphones to amplify her drum set.

In 2009 at the age of 20, Cohen moved to Los Angeles and studied percussion at the Los Angeles Music Academy. That year, Cohen and some friends recorded a metal violin cover on video of System of a Down's Toxicity, which she then posted on YouTube. A few months later, the video had three million views and Cohen decided she was going to shoot and post 100 more drum covers to see what happened next. Five years later she has more than 120 videos, 140m views and 900,000 subscribers on YouTube, and more than 1.4m likes on Facebook.

Germany - When he is on stage, Sascha Grammel makes his puppets dance in the true sense of the word. His new show debuted earlier this year, and has now been produced for TV at the Theater am Marientor in Duisburg. It has been recorded on DVD too. For the lighting, P2 Veranstaltungstechnik relied largely on Lightpower, Clay Paky's distributor for Germany.

P2 Veranstaltungstechnik provided 16 Clay Paky B-EYE K10 Easy units, 54 Clay Paky B-EYE K20s, one grandMA2 light and two grandMA2 full-size lighting desks, two MA plus MK2 Video Processing Units (VPUs), and two MA Network Processing Units (NPUs).

P2 Veranstaltungstechnik's CEO, Ralf Thiemann, explained, "We have dealt with Sascha Grammel's shows for more than six years. In this project, we had to transform the tour production into something suitable for the TV, at the same time considering the requirements imposed by choo

UK - Stage Electrics has rebranded its Hire & Events division. The new SLX brand has been inspired by the expertise and experience of 35 years in the industry. Focusing all its energy in hire and events the former Stage Electrics team of technical and creative staff continue to provide solutions to its theatre, broadcast and event customers.

Operating from a new facility, located just down the road from its previous Bristol premises, SLX has committed to continue its investment programme with several million pounds invested in hire equipment, technology and infrastructure in the last year alone.

The new warehouse provides pre-show and production facilities whilst a dedicated fleet continues to deliver to our customers throughout the UK and Europe.

The former Stage Electrics branches in London and Exeter are now operating as part of SLX.

Trevor Smallwood, executive

The Netherlands - Three hundred and sixty Robe moving lights caught the action at the Philips Stadion in Eindhoven for four sold out concerts by Dutch singer, songwriter and superstar Guus Meeuwis, part of an eye-catching lighting spectacular designed by Marco Driessen from creative lighting and visual design practice, The Art of Light.

Meeuwis plays multiple shows at the 34,000 stadium around about the same time each year. It is home to the Philips Sport Vereniging (PSV) football team of which he's a keen supporter, and there is a completely unique look and feel to the stage year-on-year, originated by set designer Ronald van den Bersselaar of BEEO.

This year's theme featured a carnival-esque appearance based on the famous orange flag for Netherlands which was recreated using a combination of scenic and LED elements.

Marco has worked with the artist for 16 years and,

UK / USA - Including 105 arena shows, multiple nights in virtually every venue (including six at Madison Square Garden, London's O2 and the Los Angeles Staples Centre) and every show sold out far in advance - Adele's Live 2016 tour is big on both numbers and positive critical reviews. Those reviews have all focused on Adele's voice. The production intentionally lacks dancers and hi-tech special effects to ensure the attention of every audience member is solely on Adele and her voice. In order to achieve that focus, sound provider Black Box Music provided an L-Acoustics K2 system.

The show design dictated that audio equipment stay invisible, yet provide powerful, clear sound and, above all, be unfailingly reliable. As Front of House engineer Dave Bracey notes, "It's a classy show and, even more than usual, nothing is allowed to go wrong.

"Designing the system was a challeng

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