USA - The Bay Area-based band Primus is touring North America with a Meyer Sound LYON linear sound reinforcement system to deliver its quirky, bass-driven brand of alternative rock. Described by FOH engineer Jason Mills as a "really fast" system with plenty of punch, the LYON configuration is provided byPro Media/UltraSound of Martinez, California.

"LYON is a very snappy box," says Mills, who works triple duty as FOH engineer, production manager, and system tech. "It's responsive, punchy and clear. The fans have noticed, too - I'm getting more compliments after shows than ever before."

The full system for the tour includes 24 LYON-M main and 4 LYON-W wide-coverage line array loudspeakers, 12 700-HP subwoofers, and four UPJ-1P loudspeakers as front fills. Two CQ-2 and four MSL-4 loudspeakers are deployed as needed for corner front and out fill, whi

Azerbaijan - Audiences were left enthralled and entranced by two dazzling opening and closing ceremonies staged in the National Stadium in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the first European Games - which saw Belgian based engineering specialist WIcreations involved in making some key elements of these innovative shows come alive.

WIcreations was approached directly by California based production company FiveCurrents who produced the Ceremonies. WI's team was led by Yves Vervloet and worked closely with FiveCurrents' senior technical director Nick Eltis.

The Heist-op-den-Berg based company was tasked with helping create some major visual moments, including the magic (flying) carpet during the opening ceremony, and design and construction of three performer stages for the closing ceremony, complete with a Temple of Fire rising up from beneath the largest one.

"It was a fantastic ev

Canada - Robe BMFL Spots and Blades were an integral element of the lighting scheme designed by Pierre Marleau of Orange Frog Productions Inc. for the Grandstand concert stage at the 2015 Calgary Exhibition & Stampede, arguably the world's most famous rodeo, exhibition and festival held annually in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Pierre, based in the same city, has been a lighting professional for over 25 years, starting his career in the world of theatre and musicals, with which he has toured worldwide. He's been lighting the Stampede's Grandstand Show for the last 19 years which sees a line-up of international artists play in front of 20,000 people nightly for 10 days plus a preview evening.

The lighting equipment was supplied in collaboration with BML Blackbird of Secuacus, New Jersey and Stagelite from Winnipeg, Canada working a joint venture initiative project, managed by VP of

South Africa - Showgroup used four Robe BMFLs for Rocking the Koppies, an intimate event hosted on a farm in Potchefstroom. Control was on an Avolites Tiger Touch II. "This was a private function for a fiftieth birthday party and included performances by Prime Circle, Just Jinjer and Mean Mr Mustard," said Andries Liebenberg from Showgroup, lighting designer at the celebration.

Showgroup was the technical supplier and incorporated a Prolyte Roof Structure used for the stage, 16 Robe Robin 300s and four Robe BMFLs. Other lighting included six Martin MAC 600s, 30 Stage Color 48, 24 Longman LED Cans, 20 Longman Colourme 11, stage battens, 12 Parcans and six Source 4 Profiles.

"The BMFL is an amazing light," said Andries. He has since hired the units regularly from MJ Event Gear, usually four at a time, even incorporating them into smaller indoor shows.<

USA - Often, the owners of a club will select a name for their establishment, because it sounds good - or sells more beverages - but in the case of Passion, the multi-level mega club at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino, there is real heat behind the bright moniker. The 15,000sq.ft club pulsates with passion from 10pm to 6 am Fridays and Saturdays, with non-stop simultaneous performances at its three DJ booths and the visual treats served up by 184 pixel mapped ÉPIX Strip 2.0 linear fixtures and other products from Chauvet Professional.

Opened on 1 December, 2004, Passion quickly established itself as a serious player in South Florida's buzzing club scene, making waves by booking talent like Lady Gaga and DJ Pauly D, as well as international EDM stars such as Dash Berlin and Latin sensations like Grammy-nominated Farruko. Still the club's owners have never been ones to rest o

Canada - The famed annual Calgary Stampede just concluded another successful season attracting over one million visitors to the 10-day event. A combination rodeo-exhibition-festival, the largest fair in Canada also featured a nightly Grandstand Show, which was illuminated by Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures.

Pierre Marleau of Orange Frog Productions Inc was the lighting and production designer for the grandstand show, a role he's fulfilled for the last 19 years. "It's an old-style review, a big outdoor mega-spectacle," he says. "It's got acrobats, circus acts, video, pyro, fireworks. It's one of the more complex projects we do." He obtained the Sharpy fixtures from a new joint venture between BML Blackbird of Secaucus, NJ and Stage Lite Manitoba Ltd. in Winnipeg, which combines a 30-year reputation for serving clients in the northeastern US with a professional team

Mexico - Mexican rock band Maná has earned four Grammy Awards, seven Latin Grammy Awards, five MTV Video Music Awards Latin America, six Premios Juventud awards, fourteen Billboard Latin Music Awards and fifteen Premios Lo Nuestro awards. The band's sound is inspired by Pop Rock, Latin Pop, Calypso, Reggae and Ska music genres. Recently the band started its new world tour 'Cama Incendiada' with a lighting design by Alain Corthout.

The tour used a grandMA2 full-size and a grandMA2 light consoles, two MA NPU (Network Processing Units) and eight MA 8Port Nodes for lighting control of over 200 Clay Paky moving lights.

"Versatility, robustness and reliability are the main reasons I'm using a grandMA2", explained lighting programmer and operator Menga Cruz. "Versatility is needed because of the various ways in which we work with the system on shows. We have two users

UK - Flashlight Ltd, a leading UK supplier of lighting equipment to the broadcast, motion picture and theatre industries, has announced the opening of a London sales office and warehouse, headed up by sales executive Gordon Smith.

The new location will also provide showroom and demonstration facilities. Due to the rapid expansion of their southern client base and operations, the company feels the new location will better serve the demands of local rental and sales clients.

The new location will provide sales and support for the company's expanding range of leading lighting products - stocking the brands the company has become renowned for supplying, such as ARRI, Manfrotto and KinoFlo. The company will still have its headquarters at the existing location in Manchester.

Flashlight directors Andy Dodd and Rob Williamson commented: "We're delighted to open a London office;

USA - Lighting gaffer Matt Ardine is shooting a pharmaceutical industry commercial at DC Studios, a few blocks from Los Angeles' Skid Row. The camera tracks down a drab hospital corridor whose 'windows' are lit by eight ETC Source Four LED Series 2 Lustr luminaires behind diffusion scrims.

Staring at the monitor, cinematographer Larkin Seiple calls for level changes barely visible to the human eye. Bringing a fixture down to 4% output, Ardine explains, "If I were using incandescents, I would start seeing colour shift at around 26% and my crew would be spending time putting in NDA or full blue to compensate for the tungsten effect."

On a set with skylights, windows, fluorescents and practical table lamps, setting the perfect colour temperature can be challenging. "We started out trying to shoot at 3200K, but now we have settled on 4400K. With the Lustrs, I can di

UAE - Dubai-based production supplier Protec supplied HQ Creative with lighting, video and rigging for the opening ceremony of the Nad Al Sheba Sports Tournament 2015, held at NAS Sports Complex on 21 June.

The event was created using two d3 4X4 Pro servers which created the mask, blend and warp for the custom made screens as well as integrating the use of primarily Clay Paky lighting fixtures which included 24 Clay Paky Mythos and 14 Clay Paky K10 B-eye, working together alongside eight Sharpys, seven Sharpy Wash 330s and eight Super Sharpys.

The venue had to function as a sports arena post show, so the design had to take this into account, staying out of the way of overhead house lighting as not to form shadows for the TV sports broadcast and not interfere with the games being played below. The rig needed to be light weight but still pack a punch for such a dynamic and fast

UK - When lighting designer Owen Pritchard-Smith from Spirit Design was tasked with the light setting for Nobel Biocare's stand at EuroPerio 2015 in ExCeL London, he met a challenge that led him to test out many different fixtures on the market.

The design and production of the exhibition stand was carried out by Andreas Messerli AG. As part of their stand design, three light boxes were hung from the ceiling. With open top, the boxes were on all other sides covered with white fabric. They were to be lit from above with enough light to travel through the fabric to create an up-lit bar environment underneath.

Owen Pritchard-Smith explains: "With only a metre or so between the truss and the fabric, I needed to find a fixture with a very wide beam angle, and little or no hot spot. It also needed to be bright enough to fight against the general lighting in ExCeL and the MSR PA

USA - PLASA has announced that Steve Terry will receive its highest honour, the Eva Swan Award, which recognizes exceptional long-term commitment to the association. The award will be presented at PLASA's Annual General Meeting on Thursday, 22 October, from 2:30pm-4:30pm at the Westgate Las Vegas Casino and Resort.

Steve, vice president of research and development at Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC), has made a significant impact on the Association during his many years of service with the Technical Standards Program, the Entertainment Technician Certification Program, the ESTA Board of Directors and the PLASA Governing Body.

Steve's unparalleled contributions to the lighting industry include leading the team responsible for the development of the original USITT standard for DMX512 and the formation of the original ESTA Technical Standards Program. He was a founding member of

USA - Italian lighting manufacturer, Novalight, has introduced its latest moving light fixture - the NovaScope; now sold, supported, and serviced in North America by the entertainment equipment distribution company DNJ Pro.

Novalight's Nova-Scope is a weatherproof aerial effect light that can withstand all weather conditions. Using the HTI 2000W/D7/60 lamp combined with a different approach to reflector setup, the Nova-Scope provides a high output light, delivering stunning aerial effects.

This large scale effect light, while best suited for the largest entertainment environments, is still suitable for all forms of live performance, says the company.

The Novalight Nova-Scope can tolerate the harshest of production environments. The fixture boasts a seven option gobo wheel, a kaleido wheel effect, shutter, dimmer, and strobe effects, six colours, white, and CMY colour mixing,

USA - When frequent and heavy storms hit Texas recently, causing flooding and widespread damage across the Lone Star state, Omar Dawoud, promoter at live music venue, The Marc in San Marcos, felt he needed to do his part to help the community. So he organised Band Together Texas, booking headliner Blue October - with all proceeds going to the United Way of Hays County Flood Disaster Recovery Fund.

In order to provide relief as quickly as possible, the event came together in short order, and Dawoud called on Colorwave Lighting and other rental houses for gear. Colorwave Lighting owner Erik Johnson didn't hesitate to volunteer his equipment, made up of PR Lighting fixtures, for the charity event. "When Omar asked if we would want to be a part of this it was a no brainer," he stated.

The company provided an inventory to The Marc's house lighting designer Alex Soto, know

USA - Focus on the Family, one of the largest Christian ministries in the US, put out a request for bid to upgrade the lighting system in its Chapelteria, a 750-seat large multi-functional conference and event space at its headquarter campus in Colorado Springs. Focus on the Family's AV team had a set of lighting products in mind and worked with Ben Gleason of LVW Electronics, the local systems solutions provider that won the contract, to ensure their needs were met.

LVW reached out to Elation lighting who in turn put them in touch with Jay Cid of Professional Sound and Lighting Products, who was integral in determining the best Elation lighting products for the space. In response, a turn-key solution was created that provided Focus with an outstanding and cost effective lighting system.

Ken Toal, Focus on the Family's audio visual services manager, recently reflected on the p

USA - A small spec on the map in the western part of America's 46th most populous state is hardly the type of place where one would expect to encounter a traffic jam. However, anyone who journeys to little Sturgis, South Dakota (population 6,900) during the first week of August will find that every street has been turned into a virtual parking lot, not of cars, but of motorcycles.

From 3-9 August this year, Sturgis was transformed into America's eleventh biggest city, ahead of such stalwarts as San Francisco and Boston, as an estimated 1m bikers and friends descended on the town for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. At the centre of it all was a Sturgis landmark, The Knuckle Saloon, decked out for the occasion with a lightshow that featured close to 40 fixtures from Chauvet Professional supplied by Blue Seed Entertainment.

Erich Meitzner, the lighting director for the Casey Donahe

China - The first Infinity Summer Festival took place on 8 August in Shanghai, being the first interactive carnival themed music festival there. The festival was EDM oriented, with a lot of house and trance music.

The laser show was a central visual element of the event, so the organizers decided to go for high end laser gear from Swiss and German manufacturers. Ten SwissLas PM-10.000RGB lasers as well as six RTI PIKO RGB 18 were used to make this festival more than spectacular.

This whole laser setup had an overall laser power of more than 200W laser power and worked well with the video walls and conventional lighting, as the power was more than sufficient to cover the whole festival area.

Featured artists included Roger Shah, Dzeko & Torres, Alvaro, Genix and Ben Nicky.

(Jim Evans)

USA - Production Resource Group (PRG), the world's leading provider of entertainment and event technology solutions, today announced it will extend its branding in Germany and the UK to integrate the brand of the recently acquired XL Video Group. The integrated companies will be known as PRG XL Video for a transition period while the operations are being merged.

PRG will continue to use its brand name in all other countries across Europe and North America. XL Video teams in those territories will be immediately transitioned into the PRG family.

"Part of our decision to acquire XL Video was the premier value of its brand in many of our markets," said Jeremiah J. Harris, PRG's Chairman and CEO. "We recognize that the XL Video name and logo are synonymous with outstanding quality, customer service, and technical expertise in some of our territories, equal to that o

Canada - Toronto-based contemporary dance company, Ballet Creole, marked its 25th anniversary with many events and performances, including their annual spring season at Harbourfront Centre's Fleck Dance Theatre. A.C.T Lighting, Inc., the exclusive distributor of Clay Paky fixtures in North America, helped lighting designer Brad Trenaman obtain a complement of Alpha Spot QWO 800s, which were not yet available from local rental houses. Trenaman also deployed Clay Paky A.leda Wash K10 and K20 fixtures during the season.

Ballet Creole's spring season featured world premieres of Agua Como Vida, Myth of Atlantis and Reflekson. It also included a remount of the company's very first piece, Fete.

"The theme for this year's season was water," says Trenaman, who has been with the company for just over half of its 25 years. "So I wanted a fixture

Israel - High profile Israeli rental company KolOr Eli - based in Ceasaria and owned by Linda and Eli Avitan - are delighted with their investment in Robe BMFL Spots, 14 of which were supplied by Robe's Israeli distributor, Danor Theatre & Studio Systems.

The BMFLs were the company's first Robe purchase. However via Danor Rental, they have regularly used different Robe products over the last two years, all of which helped in making the decision to choose BMFLs when seeking a powerful and versatile multi-purpose light source.

KolOr Eli was founded as a lighting and sound specialist in 1988 by Linda and Eli and with business booming, a few years later became a limited company. By this time they had a well-established client base and were looking after the technical requirements of several major artists including vocalist Shlomi Shabat, band Caveret and singer Gidi Gov.

"W

UK - Colour Sound Experiment has provided lighting kit to LD Alan King for his illumination of the castle at the antithetical theme park wonderland of Dismaland, a temporary, pop-up art intervention that turns the safety of simulacrum on its head - at the site of Tropicana, a derelict seafront lido in Weston Super Mare, UK . The experience is curated by graffiti artist and provocateur, Banksy.

The mangled, rusting, mean, grimy steelwork of the castle is a sinister visual centrepiece for the dystopian experiment, and has been constructed by art collective Block 9, known for their detailed, raw, edgy urban environments created at festivals and music events.

Alan regularly lights Block 9's scenic spaces, so they invited him to add some special hard treatment to their version of the sacred saccharinity of Anaheim's Sleeping Beauty Castle.

In keeping with the mean overall spirit

South Africa - Established in 2010 by Brian Chigwendere, rental company Puredeal is making waves in the entertainment industry and have taken ownership of a new Avolites Tiger Touch II to keep up with demand.

"We started off with an Avolites Titan One," says Chigwendere. He started the company after working at Gearhouse South Africa for eight years. "When I left I had a month's salary and my garage from which I operated," he says.

Hard work and good service has seen Puredeal grow in reputation and earlier this year saw Kgomotso Malbye join the team. "We were the first black rental company to do work at Vodaworld," commented Kgomotso Malbye.

The Avolites Tiger Touch II was purchased from Schalk Botha at DWR Distribution.

(Jim Evans)

Denmark - Martin Professional reports that the JEM ZR45 is now shipping. The JEM ZR45 is a high-end fog machine designed to deliver "superior and uninterrupted performance in demanding professional applications". With its enhanced and powerful 2,000 W heat exchanger, the JEM ZR45 produces an exceptional peak output suitable for major venues and stages in both install and rental markets.

The rugged yet weight-optimized JEM ZR45 also features variable output control for more subtle effects and is fully up-to-date with digital remote DMX and RDM.

The entire JEM ZR range is compatible with a wide range of JEM Pro fog fluids. As machines designed and built to last, the JEM ZRs will continue to perform with great output and low consumption.

"We have put a lot of effort into the new JEM ZR series with the goal of being able to quickly deliver a full family of profess

UK - Elation Professional's new Emotion moving head digital luminaire will have its European debut October 4-6 at the PLASA show in London where a number of other top innovations will also be on display at Elation Stand A40, including the world premiere of the newest Satura Series luminaire, the Satura Profile.

The Emotion attracted a lot of attention at the InfoComm show in North America in June with its next generation technology and accessible price tag and now it's European lighting professionals' turn to get a closer look at the compact yet powerful moving head digital luminaire. Another highlight will be the first showing worldwide of the Satura Profile, a powerful new LED-based color-changing moving head with 440W LED engine, framing system, zoom and more.

Also showing at the ExCel exhibition centre will be Elation's powerful Platinum FLX hybrid moving head, a multi-fun

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