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France - Nexo’s home market of France has been quick to sign up for the new mid-size line array launched by the company at the ISE and PLS tradeshows earlier this year. Geo M10 inventory has been ordered by several leading French rental companies, and is already earmarked for an important installation project.
Créative Studio in Guadeloupe is the company that has taken delivery of the first 000001-registered module. Well-known pro-audio figure Franck Bessol runs this rental company, which has ordered M10 line array modules and MSubs.
Frederic Guinand’s company MK Plus from Lyon has placed its order for Geo M10 and MSubs inventory. In Besançon, Espace Concept has augmented its own purchase order for Geo M10 modules, adding a number of 45°N-12 line monitors. Blackline in Angoulême has recently taken delivery of Nexo’s STM Series modular line array and now adds

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Italy - Amodio and Luzzati’s renowned production of ballet classic The Nutcracker made its debut at Teatro Comunale in Modena in November 2016, before touring to other key Italian cities for 10 weeks. It was produced by Daniele Cipriani Entertainment and lit by Marco Policastro using Robe DL4S Profiles and the new Spiider LED wash beams.
This production – which had been originally staged by the company AterBalletto in the 1980s and 1990s – was again choreographed by Amedeo Amodio (then AterBalletto’s director) and featured eye-catching set designs by Oscar-nominated Italian designer, painter, animator and illustrator, Emanuele Luzzati.
It was also acclaimed for its highly imaginative shadow work which featured prominently in this show. This was devised for the original production by the artists of the Teatro Gioco Vita.
“Nothing has essentially

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Europe - Philips Lighting has announced that VL6000 Beam and VL4000 BeamWash fixtures from its Philips Vari-Lite rock and roll lighting product line have been selected by production designer LeRoy Bennett and lighting designer Cory FitzGerald to add punch to Bruno Mars' 24K Magic world tour.
"We chose the Philips Vari-Lite VL6000 Beam because there isn't a light out there like it," said Bennett. "It's a very raw Philips Platinum lamp, which delivers this really cool, large column of light. It's a texture that doesn't exist anywhere else, which makes the fixture really special. It's almost like having the old Vari-Lite VL4 on steroids! Not only that, the big, retro-style aperture fits in with the whole nineties feel of the show and keeps everything clean, bold and strong - the type of look that comes out well on a phone camera. Like a lot of young artists now, it's really imp

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USA - The Boardwalk, a new development in a 90-acre multi-use commercial complex in Granite Park, Plano, Texas has added 29,000sq.ft of restaurant, patio, and office space, with dramatic decorative lighting featuring nearly 1,000ft of FloppyFlex LED neon.
“FloppyFlex is a winner in our book; it’s extremely bright, versatile, and reliable,” says Jeff Mabray of Hossley Lighting. “We’re using the large dome, 4000 Kelvin white, with four distinct programs on an automated timeclock. The looks include center-out sweeps and streams, black-on-white effects, and more, all auto-selected randomly. The FloppyFlex was easy to install and is performing well.”
Mabray continues, “This project was new construction with the lighting designed from the outset, making installation a little easier than with most retrofits. The terrific design is by Erin Moody of Studio e Light

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UK - LED screen, drapes and special FX specialist S+H Technical Support supplied a full Pea-light starcloth wrap as specified by designer Patrick Doherty for the new Bigheads TV series, a Primal Media production for ITV, recorded in the George Lucas 2 studio at Elstree in Hertfordshire, UK.
The show, presented by Jason Manford, follows in the footsteps of popular series Its A Knock Out, a slightly bonkers comedy games show first broadcast in 1966 which ran until the 1990s, and legendary puppet show, Spitting Image, known for its razor sharp wit and political satire.
Patrick wanted a neat and interesting finish to the studio, so decided on the more modern application of a vintage starcloth effect.
S+H “were brilliant” he comments. The Devon based company has supplied soft goods including starcloths, pea-light drapes and special FX for many

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USA - Ultra is long established as a leading electronic music festival. The production that backs the performances is just as impressive with three of the festival’s classic stages - the Carl Cox Megastructure, Main Stage and Worldwide/Midpark Stage - hosting Elation lighting fixtures this year.
The 2017 edition of the spring equinox music celebration ran from 24-26 March with over 165,000 revellers making their way to Bayfront Park in Miami. Both the popular Carl Cox Megastructure and Worldwide/Midpark Stage Stage featured Elation gear with production design by SJ Lighting and structure and production by AG Production Services.
SJ Lighting owner Steve Lieberman created the lighting design for a festival which, now in its 19th year, seemingly ran like a well-oiled machine. “In my 18-year history of working on Ultra and 10+ years as LD for the Carl Cox Megastructu

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USA - Eric Clapton is performing a limited series of concerts in New York, Los Angeles, London and Tokyo.
The concerts represent a return to the stage for Clapton, who announced his retirement from touring over one year ago. Providing an appropriately evocative look for the opening show at Madison Square Garden on 19 March was an engaging light and video design by the artist’s long-time designer Dave Maxwell. A collection of 39 Chauvet Professional Nexus panels played a key role in bringing Maxwell’s vision to life.
Like all the gear in the MSG rig, the Nexus panels were supplied by Upstaging, Inc. Maxwell flew the RGB panels on winding curves of truss over a 56’ wide by 12’ tall letterbox formation of 10mm video wall. The Nexus panels anchored the look on stage and unified the seven sections of video wall for the live audience and cameras.
“We position

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Europe - Green Hippo has confirmed its appointment as an official Technical Event Supplier for the Eurovision Song Contest 2017. This year’s show, to be held in Kiev next month, will see Green Hippo’s video playback equipment help deliver the 62nd contest to a TV audience of more than 200m.
Green Hippo, Digigobos / Beacon Gobo Group, FIX8 Group and Trust Rental will supply 16 Hippotizer Media Servers, bringing the Hippotizer line’s renowned technical qualities - think pace, power, reliability, and real-time ease of use – to the Kiev set. This year’s agreement builds on Green Hippo’s flawless performance at Eurovision 2016, where the company’s Hippotizer Boreal and Karst Media Servers helped propel the Stockholm spectacular to a record 204m viewers.
James Roth, head of sales & marketing for Green Hippo says, “As technical event supplier, worki

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UK - Hotly-tipped British metal outfit The Raven Age have recently completed a European tour with Anthrax, during which the band relied on an Allen & Heath Qu-SB digital mixer at the heart of an ultra-compact, flexible in-ear monitoring solution.
Portable enough to be carried under one arm, Qu-SB nonetheless features 18 inputs, 14 outputs and a suite of acclaimed effects emulations and dynamic processing. The band’s Qu-SB is complemented with an AR84 AudioRack (with eight inputs and four outputs), allowing connection to the Qu-SB via Allen & Heath’s dSNAKE protocol over Cat 5.
The Raven Age bassist Matt Cox reports, “We invested in the Qu-SB to use in place of a traditional monitor console for our in-ear systems. We needed something that would be easy to transport – we have ours in a small flightcase that also contains wireless receivers, mic splitters

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USA - DWP LIVE has become the first US company to invest in AV Stumpfl® 8K RAW servers. Since its founding in 2007, the Nashville based company has established itself as a world-class video projection specialist, providing end-to-end event production solutions, including AV, lighting, technical direction, production management, scenic and environmental design, and venue coordination.
With their latest investment, DWP LIVE has once again underlined their status as a trend-setting early adopter.
AV Stumpfl 8K RAW servers are currently the only media servers capable of handling four simultaneous streams of uncompressed 4K content @60fps. The RAW servers are also able to handle 8K video files and can be used for 120fps playout scenarios or setups that require the ability to process a 12-bit colour depth.
DWP LIVE founder and president, Danny Whetstone explains the e

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Denmark - Alfa Audio has just installed the first ever Alfa Ecoustics electronic acoustic enhancement system into Fredericia’s latest live venue, Tøjhuset (the Armoury). Using 30 x EM Acoustics EMS-51 loudspeakers, a tc electronic “brain”, and DPA microphones, Tøjhuset represents the first formal deployment of the Alfa Ecoustics system conceived by Alfa Audio’s Lars Frederiksen.
Frederiksen explained that the system was required to put some reverb back into the venue as it had recently been converted from a dedicated classical music venue into a live music venue for all genres. The acoustics were deliberately dampened to suit the purposes of rock club, which meant, of course, that the acoustics were no longer suited to classical music. Since the city council has no plans to build a new classical concert hall and there are no other venues suitable for classical musi

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UK - Since 2013, an array of country music’s biggest stars have been visiting the UK and Ireland as part of C2C: Country to Country, a festival of country music devised by AEG (The O2) and SJM Concerts in collaboration with the Country Music Association.
The show began at The O2 in London, and has since added shows in Glasgow and Dublin, as well as visiting Scandinavia in 2015 and 2016. Show and lighting designer, Mike Oates and his partner Ryan Hopkins have worked with the festival since it began. For the 2017 festival at The O2 they created a sophisticated design featuring shaped video screens, curved trusses, and a bright versatile lighting package.
Mike comments: “The design comes together after a series of meetings with Ross Hanley from SJM Concerts. Ross has ideas of what they would like to include in the design and look of the event, and we then go away and

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UK - Bigger, bolder and brighter than ever, Series 9 of the cult classic Robot Warsbrought together 40 teams of amateur robot enthusiasts all ready to battle it out on the arena floor.
Supporting lighting designer Gurdip Mahal and gaffer James Tinsley, Aurora once again deployed an eclectic range of equipment to help illuminate some of the show’s most intensely fought battles to date.
Filmed in front of a live studio audience at the production’s custom built Glasgow home, the lighting rig featured over 200 automated heads, including Martin MAC Aura, GLP X4 XL plus Clay Paky Mythos, synched to deliver the intense colour and movement, highlighting the action taking place in the ring whilst also providing vibrant washes throughout the arena.
Aurora also supplied a healthy number of products from their growing inventory of LED solutions, in particular, a c

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Europe - The Weeknd embarked on the first phase of his Starboy Legend of the Fall world tour in February. The Canadian musician kicked off the 46 date tour in Sweden and will stop off in some of Europe's biggest cities. The tour supports his latest studio album Starboy which sees the singer collaborate with the likes of Daft Punk, Lana Del Rey and Kendrick Lamar.
The tour's production manager Robert DeCeglio brought rigging company THiNC Worldwide on board to handle the rigging elements of the tour. Head rigger Chris Wilson specified the BroadWeigh system which consists of 46 active BW-S325 load cells. He explained: “A significant portion of the Starboy tour system is suspended over the audience with a dynamic load. We knew very early that having the load cells and monitoring the loads daily was going to be very important to maintain the safety of the audience, band

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Denmark - Ronja Rövardotter (Ronia the Robber’s Daughter) is a classic Swedish children’s tale by Astrid Lindgren. A recent touring musical version in Denmark by Heltemus Productions featured a new and fresh lighting design by Sune Verdier of b-ql.dk who specified 14 of Robe’s DL7S Profiles, 24 x LEDWash 600+ fixtures and 12 x CycFX 8.
Sune’s work encompasses music, festivals, concert touring and theatre. One of the reasons his creativity was sought for this show was his experience in crossing over and blending techniques from lighting these different genres and performance disciplines.
The tour started with a three-month run at Lyngby Kulturhus Theatre in Copenhagen, then took a seven-month break before embarking on the next leg playing two weeks at the Docken venue, also in Copenhagen, followed by the three week national tour.
The touring segmen

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UK - After 14 years, Strictly Come Dancing has become something of a British institution, with millions tuning in every Saturday evening to watch celebrities compete in a televised ballroom dance competition to the backdrop of big band and Latin music. For the latest series of the long-running television show, the show’s lighting designer was once again tasked with creating rejuvenated looks in the studio on a tight budget. To this end, Mark Kenyon added 80 Chauvet Professional COLORdash Accent Quad and eight Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures with spectacular results.
“For the latest series of Strictly, the challenge was to create a completely fresh look on set with barely any budget,” commented Kenyon. “The introduction of the Chauvet Professional COLORdash Accent Quad and Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures allowed me to introduce entirely new spatial dimensions and looks to

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UK - Lighting designer Jeff Maker (Pierce The Veil, The Dresden Dolls) used Elation Professional’s ACL 360 Bar moving head batten on American pop punk band All Time Low’s successful 2016 UK tour and this year added Elation’s Protron 3K Color LED strobe to the rig for the band’s Last Young Renegade tour.
All Time Low enjoys a growing fan base in the UK, where they played dates through March with additional shows on mainland Europe in April. Zig Zag Lighting, based in Leeds, UK, supplied the Elation fixtures for the tour.
“I was going for a versatile design that would be able to convey both bright, fast-paced, vibrate visuals as well as a darker, colour saturated, visceral mood for the new songs,” commented Maker, who has worked with the band for the past eight years. “The last time I was with All Time Low in the UK/Ireland was in February of 2016. We did

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UK - CUK Audio has been appointed as the exclusive UK and Eire distributor for the range of Arthur Holm upmarket boardroom technologies.
Based in Barcelona with offices in Madrid and Paris, Arthur Holm combines Scandinavian design traditions with Mediterranean flair to produce a range of elegant, highly engineered meeting space solutions including motorized retractable screens and microphones, customizable motorized housings to conceal video conference cameras, signal sharing solutions and more.
CUK Audio MD, Stuart Thomson comments, “Arthur Holm solutions bring unparalleled elegance and simplicity to the boardroom or indeed any interactive meeting space. They are a well-established company who have earned themselves an enviable reputation as the market leader in technology-driven meeting experiences.”
Arthur Holm’s Montse Romero who is responsible for inte

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Israel - Sincopa lightvision is to represent BlackTrax real-time motion tracking system for large-scale theatrical, dance, music projects in Israel. The company will provide support to projects, technical advice, and consultancy.
Amos Bokobza, general manager at Sincopa comments: “We’ve been looking at tracking for a long time now as we need a system that can calibrate and track lights, performers, and stage elements as fast as possible. We’re so excited to be the first to bring BlackTrax to Israel. We’ve been using wysiwyg lighting design and previsualization software for projects for a number of years so it’s a natural progression to take on BlackTrax.
“With BlackTrax, Sincopa lightvision will turn our client’s ambitions into reality in the most mind blowing, amazing way possible.”
Sincopa’s recent projects included Justin Timberlake and the R

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UK - The latest edition of Shure Audio Institute’s Audio Networking Mastered seminar, held at London’s ExCel Centre, proved its most popular yet, with a record number of leading integrators, consultants, and engineers attending the free one-day event.
Audio Networking Mastered covered all aspects of networking, from a history of digital audio networks to the future interoperability offered by standards such as AES67, ensuring attendees left with a comprehensive understanding of the standards commonly used in today’s audio transport protocols. Delegates were also able to get hands-on with a range of products, including Q-Sys from QSC and Shure Microflex networked microphone solutions.
Audio Networking Mastered is the latest in a series of industry-leading educational events from Shure Audio Institute held across the UK and Ireland, and the sessions continue to gro

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World Fringe Day - Edinburgh Festival Fringe is uniting with other international arts festivals to launch World Fringe Day in July. The event, which will take place on 11 July, is supported by £100,000 from the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo70 fund. It will bring together more 200 different fringe festivals from around the world, according to its organisers.
The aim is to reflect on the collective power and worldwide reach of the fringe movement. Participants and audiences are invited to take part on the day "by sharing their love for all things fringe" on social media. Shona McCarthy, chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said: "This is an incredible opportunity for fringe organisers, venues, participants and audiences to take part in a truly international celebration of creativity that will transcend national boundaries, demons

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UK - Between the 15th - 19th August 2017, four very brave employees from Crewsaders will attempt to swim the English Channel to raise funds for Backup.
Kieren Stephens, Matt Tector, Jon Selwyn and Will Nutbeen will swim in a relay with each one of them taking one hour long stints in the water. The 21 mile wide channel is the busiest shipping lane in the world, but the team will also have to contend with very cold water, shoals of jellyfish and diesel fumes from the pilot vessel that will accompany them.
The team have collectively worked in the events industry for close to 40 years, and decided that it was time to give something back to the industry they love. They are currently undergoing a rigorous training regime to build strength, endurance, long distance swimming techniques and tolerance to the cold.
To find out more and to sponsor the team,

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UK - An Adamson S10 line array system supplied by pro audio specialists, The Warehouse Sound Services, hit all the right notes during a sell-out run of the 1980s musical, Chess, at Edinburgh's Festival Theatre last month.
Students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) achieved critical acclaim after staging the West End and Broadway hit show in both Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The Warehouse, alongside the RCS’s sound designer, Calum Paterson and lecturer in sound, Gavin Jenkinson, developed a complex sound design for the show.
The Edinburgh run was the first time the musical theatre show had transferred from the Conservatoire’s New Athenaeum Theatre to the professional stage. It also allowed music and production students to transfer their skills to the professional stage for the first time.
Professor Andrew Panton, artistic director of musica

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UK Event design and technical production company Maestra Group has made some substantial new investments at its London branch for lighting, audio and video ahead of a busy summer season. This follows a round of recent purchases by Maestra Dubai.
Keeping true to its core values to work with only premium brands in both Europe and the Middle East, the new kit includes; Robe, ETC, Avolites, Prolyte, ChamSys control, d&b audio, Christie, Sony and Analog Way.
Maestra London’s MD Justin Hammond expressed, “After an exceptional first year of trading, it was time for new equipment in all departments, particularly lighting due to the demands of both UK based projects as well as lots of international work.”
All the new kit has been specified and selected to ensure that Maestra London clients continue to benefit from the latest and most appropriate technologies for
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