Italy - From humble beginnings in a then almost unknown club in Ibiza in 1999, the Circo Loco super-club has quickly grown to become a global brand. Young - and young at heart - people flock to DC10 and other clubs on the island to dance to some of the best DJs in the world, under one of the world's best club-lighting rigs. In July, Italian promoters Andrea and Antonio took the event back to their homeland, with an all-night event at the Stadio Dei Marmi arena in Rome, with lighting controlled by ETC's new Cobalt desk.

Many of ETC's staff also work as freelance lighting operators and designers, so it was no surprise that when Daniele Peroni, ETC's Rome-based field project coordinator, was asked to look after the lighting for the night. He jumped at the chance to see how the Cobalt desk would perform. The job required keeping thousands of clubbers entertained, using 140 fixtures

Ireland - In late June a capacity crowd of 18,000 gathered at Musgrave Park in Cork as the multi-national vocal supergroup performed their 2013 album A Musical Affair: The Greatest Songs Of Broadway Live. Joined for the night by The City of Cork Symphony Orchestra, who also performed a full programme of popular music, the five-hour event featured several well-known Irish acts in support.

Formed in 2004, Il Divo have sold over 26m albums, their global popularity being at least partially attributable to their ability to record in Spanish, English, Italian, French and even Latin. They have collaborated with numerous other major artists, most notably Barbra Streisand with whom they have toured extensively.

Full production (including audio, lighting, video and staging) for the event was provided by Dublin-based EQ Events, a long-term Outline owner who have used their Butterf

USA - In order to keep the ETCP examinations fresh and current, the subject matter experts have written new questions for the Entertainment Electrician examination. ETCP is set to launch these questions 15 October 2014.

To gather the statistical data necessary to properly score the exam, it is essential that as many entertainment electricians as possible are tested from 15 October through15 December. To further this initiative, the test administration fee of $675 for groups of 10 or more will be waived during this time. Candidate application fees will still apply and score reports will be delayed. Having your candidates test between these dates is an enormous help to the growth of the programme.

ETCP will send a proctor to you, but space must be provided by your organization. You can find a list of testing requirements by < href="http://etcp.plasa.org/onsiteexams_2014EE_P

UK - Originating from the USA, Electric Daisy Carnival made its second trip to the UK this July, transforming Milton Keynes's outdoor National Bowl into a 28m pixel entertainment spectacle.

Aside from the music, the video production delivered a spectacular environment with LED screens surrounding all 360 degrees of the national bowl and with weird and wonderful performers and the combination of LED light displays, pyrotechnics and lasers, it was clear that Electric Fly wanted to make the event just as visually appealing as the music itself.

Musically, this year's EDC delivered a diverse line up of producers. Avicii's 80 minute headline set brought the show to a close and as the sky became pitch black, the Electric Daisy Carnival came into its prime.

The epic showdown of pixels started with Electric Fly, and the Uber-creative team of Nick Jevons & Philip Winward of Electric F

Russia - The nightlife culture changed dramatically in the Russian capital of Moscow with the grandiose opening of Space Moscow, a huge entertainment venue and nightclub designed to match the style of the original Space Club in Ibiza, Spain. To create a mesmerizing experience, Vitally Perepelin, lighting designer for Space Moscow, deployed over 70 Martin Professional lighting fixtures, fog machines, and lighting consoles.

The Space Ibiza club is a long-time active user of Martin lighting solutions, so when the franchise was brought to Moscow it was natural to continue using Martin equipment. Perepelin's design features 22 MAC Aura LED wash lights, 12 MAC Viper Profiles, 12 compact MAC 101 fixtures, 16 RUSH MH3 Beams, 12 Atomic 3000 DMX strobes, M6 controller, ZR-44 Hi-Mass fog machine and the Jem 365 Ready hazer.

"I personally insisted on using Martin equipment," sai

USA - LumenRadio has confirmed the appointment of A.C. Lighting as exclusive distributor of the CRMX product portfolio in North America. The full LumenRadio product portfolio is now available to the extensive A.C. Lighting customer base.

A.C. Lighting represents some of the industry's leading brands of stage, studio and event lighting, accessories and consumables. With distribution in North America, the company is able to supply a wide-range of world class products including Jands, Chroma-Q, Prolyte and ArKaos, to meet the specific needs of the live entertainment, corporate A/V, worship, theatre and architectural markets.

"We have followed the LumenRadio success with great interest and admiration over the years. We have always had great respect for the company's products and the market position they have achieved in a very short time," explains JF Canuel, managing di

UK - ITV Daytime has commissioned a new quiz format Gift Wrapped from 12 Yard Productions, presented by husband and wife team Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford. Each day, Eamonn and Ruth will invite three engaged couples onto the show, where they will have the opportunity to win their very own wedding list, culminating with a top prize of a dream holiday.

Gift Wrapped will see the betrothed couples have to work together across a series of quiz rounds in order to see off the opposition. Will they be the dream team they think they are?

The new series has been commissioned by ITV director of daytime, Helen Warner, and will be produced by ITV Studios-owned indie 12 Yard Productions.

LD Roger Williams has been appointed to light the show and Richard Martin Lighting (RML) were there ready to honour him with his very own dream lighting list! That list includes an array

USA - Every year, professional and aspiring classical musicians and technical personnel from around the world head to the mountains of Colorado for an eight-week summer intensive retreat at the Aspen Music Festival and School. As the country's premier classical music program, the festival presents more than 300 performances and music education events, including the Aspen Opera Theatre Centre (AOTC) programme at the historic Wheeler Opera House, where DPA Microphones had its chance to shine.

The AOTC relied on the d:dicate 4006C Omnidirectional, 4011A Cardioid and 4015C Wide Cardioid Microphones, as well as the d:vote 4099 Instrument Microphone 10-piece Classic Touring Kit for their pristine recording capabilities. Supplied by DPA, Inc. - the company's U.S. branch, these mics were used primarily to record and broadcast AOTC's Saturday morning opera master classes as well as its f

World - Lighting designer Rob Sinclair has turned to the bright beams of 40 VL3500 Wash FX luminaires, supplied by Upstaging, to hold their own amidst the vibrant and energetic onstage elements of the current Queen + Adam Lambert tour.

"I needed lights that were bright enough to illuminate people and cut through everything else on stage," explains Sinclair. "As it's Queen everything has to be over the top, starting huge and getting bigger, which is why I chose the powerful VL3500 Wash FX luminaires."

The VL3500 Wash FX is a super bright luminaire with an output that exceeds 70,000 lumens and features internal zoomable beam optics with either Fresnel or Buxom options.

The stage itself is in the shape of a giant 'Q', with the tail of the letter coming off as a B-stage. The VL3500 Wash FX luminaires were rigged on the front and side trusses and as part of th

USA - In recent years the high school dance has been transformed from a DJ with a few blinky lights to a full blow concert experience and in the Chicago area much of the credit can be given to event production company BOOM Entertainment and their vast inventory of Elation lighting gear. BOOM's High School Invasion Tour for example, now in its 14th season, turns homecoming, winter and prom dances into a concert-grade atmosphere.

BOOM Entertainment began creating amazing light show productions using Elation gear in 2001 and today has over 120 Elation lighting fixtures in their inventory. BOOM uses Razor Q7 and Design Wash Pro LED moving heads, CuePix Strip Tri and CuePix Panel LED blinders and strip lights, EPar Tri and Opti Quad Par colour changing lights, as well as Platinum Spot 5R discharge moving heads to convert gyms and other spaces into first-rate party venues. Purc

UK - An Allen & Heath iLive digital mixing system recently managed FOH on a tour marking the 40th anniversary of the release of Rick Wakeman's landmark concept album, Journey To The Centre Of The Earth.

Based on the novel by Jules Verne, which also had its 150th anniversary in 2014, the album is one of the rock era's landmark achievements selling 15m copies.

The 14-date tour comprised performances across the UK, including two dates at the Royal Albert Hall. Each show was a live presentation of the album, performed by Rick Wakeman and The New World Symphony Orchestra, accompanied by The English Chamber Choir and the English Rock Ensemble.

Long time FOH engineer, Ian Barfoot, specified an iLive modular system comprising twin iDR10 MixRacks and his preferred iLive-112 surface linked by a fibre optical link, along with a Lenovo tablet running iLive Editor control software

UK - David Atkinson Lighting Design (DALD) recently completed the lighting design for the new flagship Sky Store at Westfield, White City, London.

With the lighting playing such an important part in the overall concept for the store, DALD was bought into the project at a very early stage.

The Sky design team's brief to DALD was for the lighting to create a dynamic energy enhancing lighting scheme within an area of Westfield that has high ambient levels of natural and artificial light. The store consisted of the following areas of lighting:

The main structure consists of eight large fins, which appear like aerofoils on end, which support glass panels, and have a graduated printed dot manifestation applied to the glass. Set within the fins high output RGBA LED strips within a heat sink edge, illuminate the glass dot manifestation. The LED strips are controlled over a series of

South Korea - This year's Ultra Music Festival (UMF) Korea took place in Seoul, South Korea with more than 100,000 EDM fans and music lovers in attendance. The event, which took place at the Olympic Stadium Sports Complex, featured heart-thumping beats produced by the world's top DJs reinforced by Adamson Energia loudspeakers.

The ground floor of the Olympic arena was converted into the nation's largest outdoor club for the two day event. Electronic music was delivered by a number of big-name DJs including Steve Angelo, Above & Beyond, Steve Aoki and Paul Van Dyk. Empire of the Sun, Infected Mushroom, Far East Movement and M.I.A. were a few of the bands that performed live.

Blue Noise and AMG Korea (Alpha Sound), two prominent South Korean sound companies, provided Adamson sound systems deployed at the Live and Main stages. Sun Kim, technical support manager for Sound Solution

Germany - As in recent years, sound engineer Carsten Kümmel handled classical production duties at the 2014 Thurn & Taxis Classic Festival (Schlossfestspiele) in Regensburg. Among the performances he mixed were Guiseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, Operas in Bavarian and the gala performance of star soprano Angela Gheorghiu and the Symphonic Orchestra from Hof/Germany - all on a Lawo mc²56 console.

The most testing production for Kümmel was Rigoletto, where more than 60 microphones were in use. As previously, he took a two-level approach to the console setup - one level was used for inputs and outputs that did not change during the festival (including feeds to the stage manager, the interval bell and communication with the stage) with a second level dedicated to the various performances. These included, for example, the levels of singers' mics, the band and orchestra.

Sweden - As one of the largest arenas in the Nordic region, Sweden's Ullevi Stadium recently completed a renovation that increased its capacity from 54,000 to 75,000 people featuring 43,000 seats with another 32,000 in standing room. Located in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, the outdoor arena was inaugurated in 1958 when the country hosted one of the world's most prestigious soccer competitions.

However, as the stadium has aged it has undergone a series of renovations, the first in 1985 when the stadium's iconic concrete pillars on either side of the main entrance were reinforced. Further renovations in 2004 brought Swedish lighting design firm Kreative Teknik AB on board to light the pillars and recently the company retrofitted their original design with six Martin Professional Exterior 400 light fixtures.

Each pillar features three Exterior 400 fixtures mounted over 200ft a

Belgium - The Benelux countries are rapidly making a name for themselves as a hotbed of musicals produced on a giant scale. As Soldaat van Oranje continues to wow Dutch audiences in a former aircraft hangar, a new production, 14-18, is now doing the same in a similarly vast Belgian venue - De Nekkerhal in Mechelen.

The production brings the grim reality of Flanders fields to life with a high level of intensity and immediacy for the audience, a spectacle helped greatly by Sennheiser's flagship Digital 9000 wireless microphone system.

Set in Western Flanders during the Great War, 14-18 traces the fortunes of three young soldiers caught up in one of the most ruthless and bloody struggles in European history.

This latest production from global entertainment company Studio 100, Frank Van Laecke, Dirk Brossé and Allard Blom takes place in a venue measur

USA - With nine studio albums, 26 singles on the Billboard charts, and five number one hits, Gary Allan is one of country music's hottest stars on tour today. On the 2014 Set You Free tour, Allan and his design team are maintaining that same tradition with lighting designer Brandon Quisberg using Showline SL NITRO 510 luminaires from Philips Entertainment, provided by Elite Multimedia, to achieve a wide variety of powerful and dynamic looks.

"This is my first tour with Gary Allan and we wanted a big show with a big feel," says Quisberg. "We needed a rock show that was very in-your-face and we wanted to do a lot of strobing. The audience needs to feel the music and that's where the Showline SL NITRO 510 luminaires really help us out. With the SL NITRO 510 you are not handcuffed to what most other strobes in the market are limited to and you have a wid

USA - "This feels like a perfect night in Louisville where anything can happen." Beck may have been speaking on the last night of the Forecastle Festival, where he closed out the three day musical bonanza, but the sentiment could have applied to the entire weekend, where 75,000 gathered to enjoy music, arts and Kentucky bourbon.

Bandit Lites worked with AC Entertainment and the festival's production manager, Richard Wold of Lambda Productions, to provide the lighting rig for two stages and the DJ tent.

Dubbed by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the "Coolest Festivals," the Forecastle Festival is in its twelfth year and takes place in downtown Louisville's scenic 85-acre Waterfront Park on the Ohio river. This year's line-up included festival favourites Outkast, Jack White, Beck, Spoon, The Replacements, Ray LaMontagne, Nickel Creek and Jason Isbell i

USA - Twenty-two Robe Robin Pointes enhance the set for country music star Chris Young's US tour in support of award-winning country singer / songwriter Dierks Bentley.

Bandit Lites are supplying the lighting equipment to production designer Chris Lisle, and the Pointes were specified as they could cut through and stand out from the video-orientated set.

Lisle has used Robe's Robin LED fixtures on random shows and one offs before, but this is the first time he has specified them for a tour.

"I had been hearing great things about the Pointe," commended Lisle, "And then had a chance to see them in action at LDI last year. For Chris's show this year we wanted a good beam light with more gobo and beam effect options than other 'beam' fixtures."

Chris Young's musical style mixes "new traditionalism with polished Music City production" and his caree

UK - Eve supplied more than 7,500 Trakway panels to the two V Festivals last weekend, together with a pedestrian footbridge, barriers, anti-climb fence panels and other kit.

At Hylands Park, Chelmsford, Eve put 750 hybrid box panels together for the biggest pad it's built, under the Virgin Media Stage platform, and used a new clamp attachment to drop Trakway into place for the MTV Stage, slashing the installation time.

Festival manager, Simon Forshaw, comments, "Eve gets the job done with a remarkable amount of pace and it's very accommodating in terms of last minute changes to configurations. which is essential on a festival site."

Numbers were marginally down at Hylands Park, but headliner Justin Timberlake's set won acclaim at both sites, as did The Killers and a support cast including Ed Sheeran, Paulo Nutini, Lily Allen and Example.

(Jim Evans)

USA - Sound designer Tim O'Heir has chosen a Meyer Sound system built around M'elodie line array loudspeakers to reinforce the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of the musical comedy Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The production entertains audiences with a high energy that Time Out New York says "makes Broadway rock harder than it ever has before".

"The M'elodie centre array is working out perfectly for the vocals," says O'Heir. "It's a rock concert sound, but we also needed great intelligibility along with vocal punch, because the lyrics carry the story line. On both counts, the M'elodies deliver every time."

The main Meyer Sound system is anchored by dual front-hangs of eight-each M2D line array loudspeakers flanking a center hang of 11 M'elodie loudspeakers, while a cardioid array of three flown 600-HP subwoofers provides low end. T

Denmark - Sune Snellman Jakobsen is a live mix engineer stationed in Copenhagen whose credits include world tours with The Raveonettes, Mew, Mercury Rev from NY, Kashmir from Denmark, and, most recently, Trentem°ller.

An avid Metric Halo user, Jakobsen owns a ULN-8 interface and a LIO-8 interface and regularly uses their SpectraFoo sound analysis software to set up shows and to help identify and solve problems while mixing. His interfaces carry Metric Halo's optional +DSP, which allows him to run their powerful plug-ins on critical live channels (including the whole mix!).

"As a FOH engineer, I think it's important to embrace the sonic ideals of the artist," Jakobsen says. "I don't see any point in applying my own favorite flavor if it doesn't appeal to the artist. Along those lines, it's critical to build a relationship of trust so the artist feels I have a

USA - The 137th Audio Engineering Society Convention (9-12 October, 2014, at the Los Angeles Convention Centre in downtown Los Angeles) will feature a High Resolution Audio (HRA) programme Friday, 10 October.

The direct result of a collaborative effort between the Audio Engineering Society (AES) and DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group, the HRA programme will include a number of panels and sessions that address the current and future direction of HRA from various perspectives, including content creation, digital distribution, licensing of hi-res music files, archiving, subscription models, marketing/promotion of hi-res music, compatibility of playback devices and more.

These panels and sessions will feature some of the brightest minds in the business as they discuss some of the most current and controversial issues concerning the rapid adoption of high-resolution audio across

Australia - DPA Microphones' d:facto Vocal Microphone provided significant vocal improvements to the live broadcast of Australia's The Voice, ensuring an even more enjoyable experience for TV viewers. In similar fashion to other TV singing/talent shows, The Voice Australia relied on wireless microphone technology to ensure that contestants could move freely about the stage. DPA's award-winning d:facto fitted the bill for the show's finale.

The decision to try the DPA d:facto Vocal Mics on the show was on suggestion from Australian rental company JPJ Audio. "JPJ's Brad Adamson told me he had DPA d:factos and we were keen to try them on a couple of TV shows we were working on," explains John Simpson, senior audio director of The Voice Australia. "DPA has a great reputation for high-quality mics and this interested me because I hadn't been happy

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