UK - In The Night Garden Live! is a live-action stage production based on the popular BBC children's television series. Taking place in a purpose-built show dome, the production brings the show and its characters to life using full-size costumes, enchanting music, magical puppets and spectacular panoramic projections, allowing its young audience to enter the magical world of the Night Garden.

The show is currently visiting various sites across the UK and, for the sixth year running, WL is providing the lighting and power equipment.

In The Night Garden Live! consists of two shows featuring stories about the main characters of Igglepiggle and Makka Pakka. Andrew Fidgeon is production electrician on the show. He comments, "In The Night Garden Live! is a unique show. Not only are there four performances a day but every show takes place in a purpose-built s

USA - A procession of over two dozen bands performed on stage at the ninth annual Purple Hatters Ball in mid-June, but this three-day festival has never really been just about the music. Set in a pastoral region of north Florida, and offering sessions in yoga, healing arts and meditation, Purple Hatters is as much about raising consciousness as it is about pleasing the ear buds.

This year's event had an appropriately expansive lightshow, thanks in part to the addition of the Rogue R1 FX-B LED fixture from Chauvet Professional.

Lighting designer John Hollingshead used 12 of the new Rogue fixtures, supplied by The Design Oasis, to create big, sweeping, transformative looks on stage that belied the relatively small size of his rig. The five independently controlled 3-watt RGB LED moving heads in each Rogue fixture, along with some extremely fast pan and tilt movements, helped

South Africa - Event lighting and set designer Joshua Cutts of Visual Frontier has applied the "extra output and great gobo work" of Clay Paky Mythos fixtures to create a dramatic, broadcast-ready design for the Miss South Africa 2016 beauty pageant.

The event was staged at Carnival City in Gauteng and showcased in a two-hour live broadcast on South Africa's M-Net and Mzansi Magic channels. Alongside the competition, a line-up of South African acts entertained the live audience and thousands of viewers at home, including MTV Africa Music Award-winning group Mi Casa.

Cutts worked alongside Centurion-based technical supplier and event production house Dream Sets to deliver the sparkling production for the second consecutive year. He positioned 16 Mythos across multiple arches which framed the main stage.

"The Mythos were used on the main arch because of their punchier ou

Georgia - The Black Sea Arena in Georgia officially opened its doors on 10 July 2016, with a special opening show. A broad array of Prolyte products was used to install this modern event facility.

The ultra-modern venue, designed by German architects Drei Architekten, is located close to the shores of the Black Sea, its stunning architecture has some nice twists; the open auditorium can be closed within minutes when rain comes up, by means of 168 rotating, translucent facade lamellas, that protect the audience from sun, wind and rain, but once opened allow full view on the beautiful landscape between Great and Small Caucasus.

The auditorium has a capacity of 10,000 seats circular grand-stands. Visitor lounges, VIP areas, four cinemas, auxiliary areas and technical rooms are arranged below these. The auditorium, with a stage width of 36m., is designed to accommodate the lar

USA - Country superstar Kenny Chesney is taking two Midas PRO X digital mixing consoles on the road as part of his 2016 Spread the Love Tour, including 14 major stadiums. The consoles will provide sound mixing for the band's entire monitor system, and also utilize four DL431 Mic Splitters and two DL451 Stage Boxes. Morris is the production company for the much anticipated Spread the Love Tour.

"Morris has been a longtime supporter of Midas, so when they introduced the PRO X, upgrading seven of our Midas consoles was a natural choice for us," said Morris CEO, Danny Rosenbalm. "As we aim to provide our clients with the best technology available, the increased channel count and upgraded Neutron DSP make the MIDAS PRO X console update a solid investment for our company."

Audio engineer and designer, Bryan 'Opie' Baxley commented, "I've been mixing on Midas PRO Series consoles

France - About 1,300 health professionals from more than 30 countries gathered together on April 13-14, 2016 in the Lyon Convention Centre for the eleventh Biovision forum, the World Life Science Forum.

The forum was organized by la Fondation pour l'Université de Lyon to debate today's health problems. Eurosono, a company offering high-end technical services for events as well as for permanent installations, was brought in to create the backdrop of the amphitheatre.

Eurosono provided a 59ft tensioned-curved screen that suited the semi-circle room in order to allow all the attendees to see the whole screen. For the panoramic presentation, the agency created a Soft Edge Blending through three Christie HD 14K projectors.

Alexandre Jeannerod, the Eurosono manager states, "We had a double challenge as far as the display because our client wanted to either switch betw

UK - Every year, the UK office of Yamaha Music Europe sponsors MK17 Music In The Park, a one day, family-orientated live music festival which raises funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. This year's event took place on Saturday 9 July, with Yamaha providing a complete sound reinforcement system and technical staff.

This was the seventh year of the MK17 festival, which takes place in Newton Longville, a few miles from Yamaha UK's Milton Keynes headquarters. The event features acts from the surrounding counties and this year the organisers were very pleased with the 1000-strong audience (close to the permitted limit) and raising £2,500 in donations for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, twice the 2015 total.

Yamaha sponsored the event's Acoustic Stage, providing a complete audio system which included a TF3 mixing console with Tio1608-D i/o rack, an active PA system comprising t

Europe - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) has supplied a range of ProLights LED fixtures to rental company Lite Alternative, for the European leg of Coldplay's A Head Full of Dreams stadium tour - the Brit rockers' seventh series of concerts, launched to support their seventh chart-topping studio album.

Kicking off in Nice, France, on 24 May, the tour continued throughout Europe and featured, as Coldplay's legions of fans have come to expect, only the highest production values - state-of-the-art lighting, pyrotechnics and Xylobands for the audience (wristbands featuring flashing lights that synchronise with the music).

When designing the concept for the tour, lighting designer, Paul Normandale, came back to an old challenge: "I needed an IP-rated wash fixture - as well as a blinder - that would be reliable and crew friendly," explains Paul. "Often in stadium situati

USA - Flatirons Church, located in Boulder, Colorado, recently invested in a new Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW) Redline system to accommodate the growing needs of their church. They required a solution for the times when attendance to the popular church exceeds seating in the sanctuary - often by as many as 1,000 worshippers. By deploying Redline in the lobby, everyone in attendance has the same worship experience. It also provides them with a system to use for outside events, which are a common occurrence at Flatirons.

"When I showed leadership that we could spend X amount of money every time we rent a system or we could just purchase Redline and solve the problem, it was a huge win," explains Bryce Boynton, audio director for Flatirons Church. "It's a very substantial system that sounds great and can easily produce 100 dB for any event. When we put it up in the lobby? It sound

USA - The OCA Alliance, the AV industry alliance promoting awareness and adoption of Open Control Architecture (the Audio Engineering Society AES70 standard), has announced the membership of three new member companies. 1602 Group, Archwave, and TOA Corporation have all joined the alliance following its exhibiting at InfoComm16, where it featured a powerful live demonstration of AES70 interoperability on its booth.

Citing the opportunity "to contribute to a more open and efficient transfer of control data between products", Duncan Crundwell, 1602 Group Systems Architect and director, stated, "1602 Group is excited to be part of the OCA Alliance. Starting out in the late 1960's controlling musical instruments we were, as part of Solid State Logic, a founding member of the MIDI specification and have experience in working together with other organizations to improve the end user

Europe - French electropop band, AIR, have embarked on their summer festival season equipped with a dLive digital mixing system to manage FOH. Specified by FOH engineer, Dave McDonald, and supplied by Belgian PA company, Four Ears Audio, the system comprises an S5000 Control Surface with DM48 MixRack.

The tour marks the first time that McDonald has toured with the new dLive system having been an avid iLive user for many years with acts such as Adele, Florence & The Machine and Frank Ocean.

"The first thing I noticed was the build quality - it's a sturdy beast - and the two touchscreens have a really classy feel, like something Apple would design," McDonald commented.

AIR's festival gigs span Europe and include Montreux Jazz festival in Switzerland and Primavera festival in Spain.

"On the Air tour, we are using 14 vintage keyboards on stage, some mono and some stere

Germany - The Bluetone festival 2016 opted for the new stands from Gravity, an Adam Hall Group brand. The Sportfreunde Stiller, Seiler und Speer, Anastacia were among the artists that attracted over 18,000 visitors to Straubing,

On all six days of the festival, which was founded in 1987, the stands provided solid stability for the artists' performances - and additionally added stylish highlights to the stage. Tobias Lange, Bluetone production manager and managing director of PM Systemhaus, says, "We had already opted for Gravity stands for the Gregory Porter tour as well as the Jazz Baltica festival. They immediately convinced us with their handling and stability."

The PM Systemhaus team was responsible for the production of the Bluetone festival together with local rental company StereoMike. "The musicians' feedback regarding the stands was excellent," says StereoMike hea

USA - When internationally acclaimed virtuoso acoustic/electric cellist, recording artist and composer Tina Guo needs to amplify her acoustic cello, she relies on the d:vote 4099C Instrument Microphone for Cello from DPA Microphones.

Guo began studying the cello at the age of 7 under the instruction of her father, Lu-Yan Guo. Guo continued her professional cello studies with Eleonore Schoenfeld at the the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music on full scholarship. As a classical solo cellist, Guo has appeared as a guest artist with the San Diego Symphony, the State of Mexico National Symphony, the Thessaloniki State Symphony in Greece, the Petrobras Symphony in Brazil, and the Vancouver Island Symphony in British Columbia.

Known for her distinctive sound and mastery in a wide range of genres in film, television and game scores, Guo first used DPA's d:

France - More than 15,000 delegates from 94 countries descended upon the French Riviera recently for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, a celebration of innovation across the multiple industries that featured speakers such as Daniel Ek, CEO and founder of Spotify, and movie director Martin Campbell. Lending an appropriately uplifting visual backdrop to the proceeds was a vibrant lighting display from BigFish SRL Ltd. that featured a collection of fixtures from Chauvet Professional.

BigFish specified 18 Ovation E-910FC colour rendering RGBA-Lime fixtures for the event's three stages (Lions Innovations, Lions Health and Lions education) that hosted speakers, demonstrations and panel discussions. The company also hung 24 Nexus 4x4 COB LED panels above the audience and the conference's exhibition area. The Nexus units were used as house lights as well as creati

World - Justin Bieber is enjoying the commercial success of his fourth studio album, Purpose, the campaign for which currently includes an extensive world tour.

Lighting for the tour has been designed by Cory FitzGerald with the rig including Robe Pointes plus two BMFL Spots which are being utilized as rear follow spots.

It's Cory's first work for Bieber. When he came on-board, the production design created by production manager Chris Gratton and creative director Nick DeMoura was already evolving, together with video content produced by Michael Figge of Possible.

Fifty-six Robe Pointes are rigged on the upstage trusses and under the downstage flying catwalks, which are used for many scenes and effects, primarily as the high-powered beam lights for which they are renowned.

"They are great fixtures," he states, "fast, punchy and with lots of tools under the h

China - Hong Kong's leading recording facility for many years; Avon Recording Studios, was taken over by popular singing star Hins Cheung when the original owners called it a day. Hins is a well-known and successful artist who is intensely passionate about vintage analogue recording equipment. Under his management the studio has been refitted by Mode Engineering's Peter Higgs with classic analogue equipment supplied by Funky Junk and using cabling and wiring assemblies from London based VDC Trading.

Higgs explains, "I was initially introduced to Hins in 2010 via Funky Junk who have supplied equipment, provided advice and support and been instrumental in the successful outcome of Avon Studios' refit. In 2015 Hins asked me to decommission the two studio recording rooms at Avon to clear the way in preparation for a completely new installation comprising an exciting and eclectic r

UK - Event technologist FIX8Group has been busy developing FIX8Studio: a fully supported visualisation and training space at the company's Stockport headquarters, which gives visiting production companies, studios and creatives direct access to the latest digital content control and interactive resources.

Although the studio has been used internally by the group for some time, it came into full existence as a rentable space late last year, in response to increased demand from theatre, corporate, music, TV studios and arena shows which have complicated and large scale digital content requirements.

As production director John Montague says, "We offer advice, modelling, digital content management and animation creation that exists on the cutting edge of this new world - but also one which can draw on the global experience of FIX8Group as a whole."

FIX8Studio works with th

Germany - When award-winning German pop and R&B singer, Sarah Connor, started gearing up last Autumn for her Muttersprache tour in the DACH countries, experienced LD and production designer, Bertil Mark, was entrusted with lighting design duties.

"We first played a theatre tour and really liked the intimate feel," he said. "So when we moved up to arenas this year I tried to 'resize' the show to maintain an intimate setting for her and her band."

Helping him achieve this was a combination of GLP's X4 (Tunable White) LED fixtures and 32 of the new X4 Bar 20 battens. With the Muttersprache album having gone platinum, the shows were performed entirely live, with no computer based backing tracks. Thus Bertil decided to create a visually slow moving vibe to pick out the music accents, with a combination video/lighting set where the video walls acted more as a scenic digit

USA - Jim Ebdon has been the Front of House Engineer for Maroon 5 since the early stages of the band's rise to the top rung of the global pop-rock scene.

The most recent tour of US and Europe finishes in July before a new round starts in Texas in September. Accompanying Ebdon throughout this is his new choice of console - the SSL L500 Plus.

On hearing a direct comparison between the L500 and other consoles at a festival, Ebdon was inspired to give the L500 a go. "I'm not choosing a console because it looks pretty or because there is a ton of stuff on it that I'm probably never going to use. I'm choosing a console because of how it sounds, which is the most important thing."

In particular, Ebdon has been impressed with the onboard processing. "The onboard compressors sound great, the gates work really well, the effects are very good. The delay is amazing. I think the en

Australia - After a short hiatus, Australia's most popular all-night dance music festival, Midnight Mafia, was back with a bang this year at the Showground event space in Sydney's Olympic Park, hosting some of Australia's most popular DJs including The Enforcers and The Ace of Spades.

With the Midnight Mafia organisers promising to deliver "the biggest event to date", the pressure was certainly on LD Arian Yegenah to come up with an entertaining visual concept to delight the expectant 7,000 partygoers. To award the 5,400sq.m space with an added visual dimension, Chamelion touring systems Australia acquired 14 x Chauvet Professional Vesuvio RGBA fixtures from Australian distributor Showtools to provide Yegenah with illuminated fog effects to fill the impressive event space.

Yegenah placed two Vesuvio RGBA fixtures on each of the seven moving truss arms suspended from the ra

The Netherlands - Marco Hartendorf, technical manager of Haarlemhe Philharmonie, the Netherlands, and his crew have taken delivery of their first Robe moving - 10 new DL4X Spots.

Silence and the LED lightsource were both keys when it came to deciding which luminaires to invest in for this latest purchase, and although competitor products had been used in their concert and recital venues before, they were too noisy for this type of performance explained Marco.

He and the lighting team of four work across the Philharmonie concert hall in Haarlemhe Philharmonie's two main venues - De Kleine Zaal capacity 412 and The Great Hall, with 1220 sets, and also the Stadschouwburg (City Hall) which is about 2k away, still in the city centre.

What is now the Philharmonie re-opened in 2005 after extensive renovations incorporating the original building and its performance spaces dati

UK - Opening in 1997, Shakespeare's Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan Playhouse in London which housed all of Shakespeare's original works. Today, the theatre is dedicated to exploring Shakespeare's work through both performance and education.

Similar to the original productions, daytime performances within the venue have always used natural daylight, whilst evening shows use a broad wash of tungsten floodlighting. Now, for the first time ever, the venue is installing a theatrical lighting rig and has approached WL to provide the equipment.

The rig has been installed as part of Emma Rice's first season as artistic director. The lighting designer is Malcolm Rippeth, who is also lighting two of the shows in the opening season.

He comments, "The Globe has always been a space for experimentation which is reflected by the introduction of theatri

Turkey - Community Professional Loudspeakers has announced the appointment of Atempo as its distributor for Turkey. Atempo has been established for over 30 years and is one of the leading distributors of professional audio and lighting in Turkey, with a portfolio of brands that includes Shure, DiGiCo, Robe and ETC.

With expanding international demand for its outdoor, distributed and engineered product families, Community has appointed Atempo for the strong synergy it offers in key vertical market sectors.

Volkan Konuralp, Atempo's Istanbul regional director, commented, "We have always known the great brand reputation and product reliability of Community products, especially for outdoor applications such as sports facilities which is a large market in Turkey. The horn-loaded, IP rated systems will also help us to develop a strong presence in the expanding mosque market in T

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