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Lighting

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USA - Elation Professional has announced the winners of its 2008 Elation Education Experience Award (E3) for young lighting designers who focus on the House of Worship (HOW) market.

Josh Johnston of Sheffield, Alabama; Frank Meyer of Scottsdale, Arizona; and Yoshihito Takahashi of Brooklyn, New York were selected because of their dedication and talent in the field of lighting design. They will be attending the upcoming Worship Facilities Conference & Expo (WFX) in Houston for a hands-on education in House of Worship Lighting.

Josh Johnston was nominated by Lane Sutherland, general manager of Sutherland Sight & Sound, where Johnston currently works in light sales. Sutherland says: "Josh has a great desire to learn how to put together light systems. He takes the extra time and effort to make each show better than the last."

Frank Meyer was nominated by Thomas Casem,

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Ireland - Specialist installation company Northern Light has fitted sound, lighting and communication systems at the new opera house in Wexford, south-east Ireland.

Built on the slightly extended footprint of its predecessor, the initial scheme for the new Wexford Opera House was developed by architects and building service engineers from the Office of Public Works (OPW), acoustic consultant Arup Acoustics and theatre consultant Carr & Angier. In 2005, the design team was completed through competitive tendering, with the appointment of Arup Consulting Engineers, Nolan Ryan QS and Keith Williams Architects.

Colin Cuthbert, Northern Light's managing director, said: "I was delighted that Northern Light was selected for the technical installation in this €33m (£25.6m) new build venue. Professionally, the project demonstrates the team's expertise and abilities extremely

City Theatrical - Banner - July 2025

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UK - The historic old church of St John, Smith Square, situated near Westminster Abbey in London, is one of the UK's latest venues to benefit from Robert Juliat lighting equipment.

Now a long-standing and well-respected classical music venue, St John's, Smith Square plays host to a varied programme of classical music throughout its concert season, ranging from choirs and symphony orchestras to solo instrumental recitals.

However, the existing fixed lighting grid and its rig of 25-year old CCT Starlet 1.2K fresnels - installed as state of the art in the early 80s - has long been due an upgrade to accommodate the increasing demands put upon them by the expanding remit of performances.

It was August 2002 when Roger Hennigan, technical sales manager of Robert Juliat's exclusive UK dealer, White Light, first met with Lighting Designer Mark Henderson to discuss the redesigning of

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UK - Entec Sound & Light supplied lighting and sound equipment with technicians for leading hair brand Toni & Guy's Mainstage 2008 Awards show staged at London Olympia Grand Hall.

Entec was working for JLP Events headed by Guy Kersey who handled all the technical production for end client, ESA Live.

The show was divided into two sections. The first saw the presentation of a series of Toni & Guy Achievers Awards, and the second part was a highly theatrical catwalk show, designed to illustrate the trends in creative hair design. Special guest appearances by LA based band Iglu & Hartly and hip-hop dance troupe Frank2louise also upped the excitement of the evening.

Entec pulled-in fashion lighting design impresario Simon Tutchener as lighting director. The rig had to light a double tiered set at the stage end, flanked by two sweeping staircases, with a revolve entrance in

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USA - Barco debuted a number of new High End Systems lighting and control products at LDI in Las Vegas.

Making its worldwide debut were the Showbeam automated wash luminaire, and the Showgun 2.5 automated luminaire. Also making its first appearance was the DMX Processor 8000 for Wholehog software.

Showbeam features a jointly developed Philips MSR 2500-watt lamp source that produces 140,000 lumens of light output. A smooth field, soft edge illumination is produced with a new radial lenticular homogenizing lens system that provides the fixture with a special look on stage. The dedicated soft edge light has user changeable fixed colours, a variable CTO and a full CMY colour mixing system. The soft edge profile can be rapidly zoomed from 12 to 32 degrees.

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USA - City Theatrical announced its first eight SHoW DMX technology partners at the Lighting Dimensions International (LDI) show in Las Vegas.

CTI's OEM partners have committed to using SHoW DMX technology inside their products and many examples of their work were seen around the show floor at LDI, including wireless dimmers, wireless distributed dimming, wireless DMX transmitters and receivers, wireless lighting controllers, and wireless remote circuit breaker panels.

The newly announced partners include: Applied Technology (USA), Easily LED (UK) , Electronics Diversified Inc. (EDI) (USA), Johnson Systems (Canada), Lex Products (USA) , LynTec (USA), LSC (Australia) and Zero 88 (UK).

(Jim Evans)

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USA - Element Labs has appointed Marc Van Eekeren as vice-president of worldwide sales. The appointment forms part of Element Labs' continued growth and consolidation strategy.

Van Eekeren brings to Element Labs over 25 years international experience in key commercial roles in both Europe and North America. Prior to joining Element Labs, Van Eekeren spent a substantial part of his career at Barco's Media & Entertainment division, which he joined in 2001, in effect witnessing the emergence of LED technology as a commercially viable large-screen display solution.

Barbara Nelson, CEO for Element Labs, welcomed the addition of Van Eekeren stating: "Element Labs is currently dramatically expanding its reach and scale, building on its longstanding reputation in the entertainment industry to pursue the international fixed installation market. We're targetting this market very ag

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UK - Bandit Lites is currently supplying full lighting production for the Queen & Paul Rodgers tour, which features a lighting design by Baz Halpin.

The rig features over 100 moving lights from Coemar, Martin, Clay Paky, Syncrolite and Vari*Lite, a 49-way Kinesys automation system and some specially fabricated custom trussing commissioned by Bandit. Baz Halpin and lighting director, Trent O'Connor used Bandit's MSD pre-programming suite for one week prior to rehearsals. There were two weeks of production rehearsals at Elstree Studios prior to the first show.

Seven variable length raked 'finger' trusses run upstage/downstage forming an architectural 'roof' over the main performance area. All of the truss moves on Kinesys motors and the centre three have hinge-down sections at the front. Bandit purchased the Lo Pro trussing & custom hinges from Total Solutions with some modifica

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USA Elation Professional has introduced the ELED Fresnel, a modern-day version of the white Fresnel stage light that's powered by LEDs.

Instead of the traditional halogen lamp, the ELED Fresnel utilises a 50W, 6,000k white LED module as its light source. This module, comprised of a cluster of white LEDs, emits a high output that's equivalent to a 500W halogen lamp. Yet because of the amazing energy efficiency of LEDs, the ELED Fresnel draws a total of only 75W of power, allowing theatres and productions to save on their energy bills.

"An LED-powered Fresnel is an idea whose time has definitely come, and it's something our customers have been asking for," said Eric Loader, director of sales for Elation Professional. "There will always be a huge demand in the theatrical market for a basic Fresnel to use as a white light or to put your own custom colour filter on.

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UK - Stage Electrics has announced the addition of Safex-Flamejett to its portfolio of hire and sales products.

This device produces large flame effects without on stage propane bottles. It produces safe, effective and impressive bright tongues of flame and fireballs up to 4m and is practically smokeless, says the company. Unlike the majority of fire-effect devices the Safex-Flamejett works with an aerosol containing the propellant / fuel mixture.

The 380g aerosol contains enough propellant to produce large numbers of flames and fireballs, ensuring that only a small amount of flammable substance is on stage. For professional use the device is equipped with DMX 512 connections. To operate, three channels are necessary: an arming channel, a firing channel and a flame duration channel. It is equipped with pre-selectable effect programmes and can produce rhythmic tongues of flames

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USA - American DJ's new Tri Phase LED moonflower earned the Crystal Disc Award from DJzone at the recent LDI Show in Las Vegas. The product was chosen over all other lighting products at the show that were designed for mobile entertainers.

Part of American DJ's new Tri-LED line of effects, the Tri Phase features three-in-one Tri-Color LED Technology that combines three different colored LEDs (red, green, and blue) into a single 10W LED source, to produce a spectrum of colour possibilities. This creates more vibrant and even toned mixed colours in spotlights, while allowing moonflower effects to produce beams in more colours than just red, blue and green, says the company.

"Our team devoted a great deal of energy and ideas to this project to create a product that opened new creative opportunities for entertainers," said Scott Davies, general manager of the American D

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Switzerland - With the SUV Q5 the German car manufacturer Audi has launched its second model in the "Q" range. To give this new car suitable impact, high-profile shows were staged, including one that was recently held in Zurich. Lighting designer Christian Crego and Dirk Stirnimann, responsible for lighting, video, design and realisation, used a grandMA system for the AMAG Q5 Preview Event.

"I've been familiar with MA products for a long time and have always relied on them for any show. The reliability and operation are second to none. You simply have to love your 'Granny'," says Stirnimann. For this reason he built up a system consisting of a grandMA full-size, a laptop with the grandMA onPC software as backup and two MA 2Port Nodes for local DMX-distribution.

"It was my intention to have an open stage. Therefore I chose triangular trusses which were

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UK - Stagecraft Ltd, the Salisbury-based lighting, sound and AV hire and sales company, went into liquidation on 17 October 2008, LSI Online has learned. Lisa Tapper, the former accounts manager of Stagecraft Ltd, reports that she and other key staff members have bought the assets of the company and are reforming as Stagecraft Technical Services Ltd as of today, 30 October 2008.

The new company directors are Lisa Tapper, Mike Naish (formerly Stagecraft Ltd production manager), Kevin Hughes (former projects manager) and Simon Sketchley, who has joined the company from AJS Theatre Lighting and Stage Supplies, where he was general manager.

Tapper reports that eight key members of staff have been retained as part of the new operation, while a further eight have lost their jobs.

Tapper was also confirmed that all forward orders on Stagecraft Ltd's books will be honoured by the ne

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Australia - When the city fathers of Adelaide wanted to enliven their city precinct by night, they conducted a design competition to see what might be offered. Local design firm Fusion came up with a proposal to permanently wrap an eight-story car park building with a moving, illuminated canvas.

Fusion's concept was not for yet another giant video screen suitable for watching football, motor racing or music videos. According to designer Damien Mair: "The vision for the Lantern was to create an experience that would capture the imagination of the city and add beauty to people's lives."

Wrapping more than a thousand square metres of display around a car park building that relies entirely on natural ventilation to clear away the exhaust fumes from its occupants, calls for an unusual screen format. Mair's solution was to construct the display from 754 individual anodized

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UK - White Light and the Arcola Theatre supplied low-energy lighting and more to the 2008 Latitude Festival. Having established that a fuel cell and low-energy lighting could be used to great effect in a London fringe theatre, the Arcola team sought to demonstrate that the same approach could be taken in a non-blacked-out tent in daylight in the middle of summer.

In association with London Hydrogen Partnership, Logan Energy and BOC, Arcola powered the festival's Theatre Arena tent using a 5kW Gencore fuel cell. White Light then worked with the Arcola team to provide lighting capable of maximising the available power, the rig including ETC Source Fours fitted with lamps between 375 and 750W, Source Fours fitted with CDM lamps and Chroma-Q Color Blocks which use LED technology.

White Light also worked to maximise the event's overall eco-footprint by re-using equipment rather tha

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South Africa - Dan Riley has joined South African professional lighting sales specialist DWR Distribution's expanding sales team.

Riley's responsibilities in DWR will include handling Vari*Lite sales. DWR has just taken on the exclusive SA distributorship in an expansion of its portfolio of premium brands.

He will also look after ADB and general lamp and day-to-day sales. He's worked with ADB products since the early 1980s and looks forward to continuing the association.

(Jim Evans)

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UK - GE Consumer & Industrial has announced a call for entries for the 26th Annual GE Edison Award competition. Through the competition, GE recognises excellence and quality in professional lighting designs that employ the significant use of GE light sources (lamps and/or LEDs).

The GE Edison Award competition is open to professional designers, architects, engineers and consultants. Entries are judged on the following criteria: functional excellence; architectural compatibility; effective use of state-of-the-art lighting products and techniques; appropriate colour, form and texture revelation; energy effectiveness and cost effectiveness.

Projects scoring the highest number of points will qualify to receive Awards of Merit or Awards of Excellence. The GE Edison Award Winner is selected from among the Awards of Excellence.

The Award for Excellence in Environmental Design gives

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UK - Affliction Entertainment has burst into the mixed martial arts scene with an edgy and rock influenced style. To create the look and feel for the inaugural event Affliction Banned - Innovative Show Design (ISD) devised a lighting concept that would enhance and reflect the Affliction clothing brand.

28 PixelPar 44s featured on the immense lighting rig as truss warmers. ISD's lighting designer, Justin Garrone states: "For warming truss we primarily use PixelPars or PixelArcs. I like these fixtures because of their low profile, which allows us to fit them into tight spaces. Also, a nice feature of the PixelRange products - is the ability to spec a fixture that either has the brain attached or a brain that rides separately."

The Affliction Banned show featured distinguishable looks for each fighter - created using different colours and lighting effects,

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UK - Projected Image Digital has moved to new, larger premises in Chiswick, west London which includes a permanent training and demonstration facility. The new HQ is just 5 minutes from the previous one at 58 B Wellesley Road, London W4 4AD. All phone numbers and emails remain unchanged<

The move was necessitated by PID's proactive programme of hands-on product support and training, which reached the level where it needed its own dedicated space.

"We are now doing regular Catalyst and WholeHog training," states PID MD David March. He adds that the 1000sq.ft demo area is also ideal for them to stage product mock-ups and testing for clients and upcoming projects.

(Jim Evans)

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Opera News: Plans by the Royal Opera House to establish a northern base at Manchester's Palace Theatre are to be examined by the Arts Council. The proposal from the London-based company was discussed with Culture Secretary Andy Burnham. It was decided that an independent evaluation of the scheme, to open a new opera, ballet and lyric theatre venue at the Palace, would start immediately. Mr Burnham said the review was the "positive next step". The Arts Council said the evaluation would look at plans to expand opera and dance provision, develop new audiences and provide more training and skills development to the sector.

Live News: Big-name bands like Take That and Oasis are leading a boom in gig ticket sales, with UK stadium shows selling in record time despite the credit crunch. Take That sold 700,000 tickets for their 2009 tour, a week after 500,000 tickets to see Oasis were

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UK - When London's Royal Opera House re-opened its doors at the end of 1999 after a three-year refurbishment programme, the performances were, for the most part, lit with conventional luminaires. Since then, as automated fixtures have become quieter, the Royal Opera House has added them to their stock, along with multimedia devices, to enable them to meet their challenging schedules.

The control desk, however, is a 10-year old ETC Obsession which Nick Ware, senior lighting manager at the Royal Opera House, admits is long past its sell-by date: "No IT equipment would be expected to have this kind of shelf life and the Obsession can no longer cope with the kind of demands we want to place on it."

ETC dealer White Light, a long standing supplier to the Royal Opera House, is replacing the main auditorium's Obsessions with three ETC Eos 8K systems. The next generation of

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Isle of Man - Impact Products (Europe) Ltd recently supplied Chauvet Lighting's COLORado LED series had its RGB mixing capability put to the test when Event Lighting Services used them to light up the landmark Falcon Cliff overlooking the promenade in Douglas, Isle of Man in support of the Breast Cancer Care charity's official "In the Pink Day".

For the third successive year, the island was renamed the Isle of Woman for a weekend of fund-raising activities commencing Friday 24th October. In support of the event ELS were once again delighted to accept a request from professional services firm Maitland & Co, whose offices are housed in the former hotel, to donate their services by illuminating the building totally in pink for three nights.

ELS used four of Chauvet's Colorado 1 9-channel wash lights and two COLORado 3 12-channel bank systems. Both ideal for outdoor use

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UK - Rental company Lite Alternative has purchased four Novalight Nova Flower fixtures from UK distributor Lightfactor Sales, which are in action on the UK and European legs of Coldplay's Viva La Vida world tour.

The Nova Flowers - a high powered fully programmable 'flower effect' with DMX controllable pan, tilt, colour shutter - are positioned upstage of the band, and used sparingly, but for some spectacular back lighting effects and aerial impact.

Mark "Sparky" Risk initially lighting directed the first legs of the tour (now taken over by Fraser Elisha), and he comments, "They create nice big aerial beams and because they move and change colour, are proving extremely dynamic."

Coldplay are currently touring the US with lighting provided by Illinois based Upstaging, who have also purchased four Nova Flowers. They hit the UK in December.

(Jim Eva

  1. Grahamstown theatre upgrades its Congo
  2. Elation Introduces ELED colour wall wash
  3. Lee Evans gives it large on Lighthouse
  4. Airbus handover projected via Barco
  5. Philips Lighting Day in Llanelli
  6. Robert Juliat at Milwaukee Summerfest
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