UK - MHA Lighting has been recognised for its outstanding performance by scooping two awards at the recent Energy Innovation Awards 2011.

The Manchester company collected both the Existing Performance Improvement award and best of the best Energy Innovation Grand Prix award. The Grand Prix Award is given to the company judges believed to have shown the greatest overall innovation.

MHA Lighting impressed the judges with "its unique use of LEDs for low level lighting, which use 70-80% less electricity than conventional lamps". MHA's patented LED technology shines light sideways into an encapsulation and reflects outwards to avoid direct contact with eyes. Further features include zero maintenance, safe close proximity applications, no flicker, their application for workplaces such as hospitals, and significant annual savings.

The awards ceremony was held at the Hilto

Kazakhstan - Wireless Solution Sweden and Kvant Ltd. of Bratislava, Slovakia recently played a part in the Opening Ceremonies of the 7th Asian Winter Games in Astana, Kazakhstan at Astana Arena. The Games began on 30 January 2011 and continued in Astana and sister city Almaty through 6 February 2011. This was the first time that Kazakhstan hosted such a large event since its independence from the Soviet Union. The event hosted 26 nations that competed in 69 events in 11 sports.

For the Opening Ceremonies, Kvant provided a spectacular laser show using 34 8W output green lasers and 34 Flashbacks, with effects update on Flashback via LiveQuick. Martin Vozar created the design.

Shelly Li, sales manager for Wireless Solution said, "Kvant did a beautiful laser display for the Asian Olympics. I spoke with them during testing and they were very pleased with the stability of the W

USA - Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Bruno Mars is taking grandMA2 and on the road for his international tour in support of his debut album, Doo-Wops & Hooligans. According to lighting designer/operator Cory FitzGerald, almost two trucks full of lights are accompanying Mars.

"We have two grandMA2 full-size running the latest version software - the first time we've taken the grandMA2 on tour," says Fitzgerald. "We're using overhead and double-hung diagonal trusses and have a pretty well-rounded lighting inventory."

FitzGerald has been "working with grandMA for a while" and has teamed with A.C.T "to tweak and get it perfect. It's been a good process - grandMA2 is different from grandMA, and I'm very pleased with it and like where it's going. The macros make things go much faster, I have three times as many playbacks for more flexibilit

UK - Rental company White Light has recently added 50 Martin Professional MAC III series fixtures to their extensive inventory of Martin Professional lighting gear. The new purchase includes both MAC III Profile and MAC III Performance fixtures, Martin's leading 1500 watt, high-output profile moving heads.

Hire & Technical Director at White Light, Dave Isherwood, comments, "The MAC III has a great feature set that includes superior optics and excellent colour mixing and is amazingly quiet considering its high level of intensity. We're thrilled to have them as part of our inventory and have already had them out on key local events."

(Jim Evans)

Italy / Germany - LDR's Fabiano Besio announced during Showtech in Berlin that he has renewed the exclusive distribution for Germany with LTH.

"We have been dealing with LTH for more than 10 years and every time I'm pleased to renew our distribution agreement," says Besio. "Every year is a new challenge ,with new targets and the LTH team is always ahead my expectations.

"After having consolidated our position as one of the leading theatre manufacturers ," continues Besio, " we have decided to focus our attention on the architectural market and as a consequence of our common effort more than 200 pieces of 150W CDM discharge Cyclorama , LDR Rima 150w, have been used for lighting the stands of the Siemes group of companies in all the most important exhibitions around Germany . A special thanks should go to Motion Light (LTH agent) for assisting LTH.&

World - With a production valued at over US$25m, Kylie's Aphrodite-Les Folies Tour 2011 features over 1m moving parts, including 30 high impact water jets, rain curtains, fountains and nearly 600 light sources. The bespoke stage, alone costing over $10m, is one of the most technically advanced, complex and precision stage ever created for an arena tour.

Lighting for the show, designed by Nick Whitehouse with Steven Douglas touring as lighting director, relies heavily on Vari*Lite fixtures - 84 x VL3500 Wash, 84 x VL3000 Spot, four VL3500 FX and 30 x VL500.

"With the variety of lenses that we are using - both internal and clear external - we can get everything from two VL3500 Wash fixtures covering the whole stage to really narrow pin spots," remarked Steven Douglas. "The colours are also so rich. It's pretty much the same with the VL 3000 which both Nick

UK - SGM's latest LED lighting effect has made its world debut in the iconic Playboy Club London.

The venue, featuring contemporary casino, The Dining Room restaurant, bars and cocktail lounge has been reopened on two floors in Mayfair's Old Park Lane - 30 years after it closed - and now joins the portfolio of London Clubs International in a partnership with Playboy Enterprises International.

It is in The Cottontail Lounge, where the legendary playboy bunnies administer table service to their premium weekend guests, that two 5m diameter SGM LED ceiling starbursts, each comprising 866 tiny 34mm white LED balls, change the atmosphere by dramatically colour washing the venue through the spectrum of the rainbow. This is accompanied by a vertical SGM LED curtain at the rear, the reflection of which adds further depth and dimension to the space.

In total just under 2500 balls have

Slovenia - KSL Studio, Robert Juliat's Slovenian distributor, has supplied 40 Robert Juliat 614SX 1200W tungsten profile spots to the National Theatre Nova Gorica in Slovenia, where they will be the main workhorses for the theatre's varied programme.

One of the youngest professional theatres in Slovenia, the National Theatre Nova Gorica has a repertoire of contemporary and classical plays and stages a total of six premieres per season, in addition to theatre and dance summer workshops.

"We proposed the Robert Juliat profiles to the theatre which was looking to update its stock of front of house profiles," says KSL's general manager, Bostjan Konic. "The technical staff tried them on site and agreed that they were the best product on offer."

All of the theatre's front of house profile spots have now been replaced by the Robert Juliat zoom fixtures.

"

UK - The Royal Ballet recently staged Romeo and Juliet for an audience of 12,000 - not at their home venue at Covent Garden, but at London's vast O2 arena. The bold spatial experiment was a great success. And behind the scenes of the complex production was an ETC Eos lighting control system.

The Royal Opera House bought Eos desks for their house performances in 2008, but needed additional desks to take the Royal Ballet company to The O2. While PRG (Production Resource Group) was called in to provide lighting and rigging rental equipment, they needed additional desks to supplement their stocks, which were out on long term productions. So they went direct to ETC in London, who were more than happy to help out for the week long run of rehearsals and shows.

Following several days of testing and demonstrations PRG provided a lighting specification based upon a lighting desig

India - This year, Martin Professional showcased products at the PALM Expo for the first time. Held from 2-4 June at the Bombay Exhibition Centre in suburban Mumbai, the exhibition, now in its eleventh year, is an important step in increasing Martin Professional visibility in the region, says the company.

Abhishek Guha, Martin's country manager in India, commented on the show, "Clients were extremely happy to get their first look at the Martin Professional line of lighting and video displays. The Martin booth featured a simple design that was optimal for showing the individual performance and effect of each product very nicely. We stayed busy and were very happy with the response."

Key products on display included the LC Series of LED panels, MAC 101, MAC 350 Entour, MAC 250 Beam, MAC III Performance, MAC 301 Wash, M1 lighting console, Maxedia media server, Ether2DMX

Conference Cancelled - The In The City music conference, set up by the late music impresario Tony Wilson in Manchester almost two decades ago, will not go ahead this year. The event was founded by the Factory Records supremo and partner Yvette Livesey as a music industry symposium and a platform for the best new bands. Oasis and Coldplay are among the acts that got exposure there while unsigned. Ms Livesey told the BBC she was taking a year off to get married and start a family, but pledged it would return in 2012.

Reunion Blues - Paul Simon has told Sky News he hopes to be re-united on stage with Art Garfunkel for a final farewell tour. The singer said he would "like to sing with him one last time and maybe do 10 or 15 shows and then say goodbye". However, the reunion may not happen immediately as Garfunkel has been suffering from vocal chord pare

UK - PixelRange has expanded its range of intelligent and fully programmable LED luminaires to include a batten fixture, SmartLine 6. The "powerful yet aesthetically slimline" batten can be stacked either horizontally or vertically with no change to the pitch of the CREE MCE high intensity quad LEDs in any direction.

Measuring a slender 6ft by 50mm, the SmartLine 6 LED wash fixture assures instantaneous colour mixing across its length, via the 36 high intensity Quad emitters - each of which provides red, blue, green or white sources. SmartLine is fitted with a 20 degree beam angle as standard, though other light-shaping diffusing lenses are available to vary the output beam, says the company.

SmartLine is manufactured in heavy duty, machined billet with an external heatsink and a clear polycarbonate lens cover. Durability and longevity are assured. The unit is cool r

USA - Clay Paky lighting has featured prominently at the world's largest festival of electronic music held in Miami, Florida.

The 13th Ultra Music Festival drew well over 100,000 techno fans to Miami's Bicentennial Park in late March, expanding to a three-day format for the first time. The event, which has developed a huge following among techno and electronic music fans, featured more than 300 DJs and numerous bands performing on six stages. Headliners on the main stage included The Chemical Brothers, Duran Duran and Tiësto.

Other stages included the Live Stage, Carl Cox & Friends, UMF Korea, Root Society and the Heineken Dome.

Steve Lieberman from SJ Lighting Inc. was the lighting designer for the main stage and festival at large. He selected an array of Clay Paky fixtures, supplied by AG Light and Sound Inc., and worked alongside Patrick Dierson to program the Carl Cox A

USA - Xantech has expanded its line of IR products with the introduction of the new CIRP (Projector IR Control), CIRS (Conference Room/Classroom Control) and CIRV (Large Venue IR Control) kits. The announcement was made by Rick Seegull, Xantech director of business development.

Developed with direct input from leading contractors and system integrators, Xantech's new IR systems are specifically designed to address typical challenges facing installers today, including IR operation with plasma or LCD TV's; interference from CFL (compact fluorescent lighting) and sunlight; and distance limitations within a single kit. These kits are specifically geared for use in classrooms, conference rooms and houses of worship and engineered for the utmost in reliability, says the company.

Two of the systems come with an amplified connecting block, which allows the connection of Xantech IR rec

UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET)'s lighting division has supplied over 30 new GLP Impression Spot One LED fixtures to London rental company Colour Sound Experiment. These were delivered for the start of their mega busy summer festival season, which included lighting several stages at last weekend's Glastonbury 2011.

Recently shown at PLASA Focus by AC-ET (the exclusive UK and Ireland distributor for GLP) the latest addition to the r Impression LED range is a high powered, fully featured, moving head spot fixture which uses a potent 400 Watt RGB LED chipset for the lightsource.

This latest sale marks Colour Sound's third major investment via AC-ET in fixtures from the GLP Impression range, boosting its inventory to now include the Spot One, 120 RZ Zoom and original Impression 90 LED fixtures.

The company's Haydn Cruickshank explains that with clients' numerous fes

UK - Black Light reports that, thanks to investment in new stock, it can now provide an even better service to both its hire and events customers. At the same time, the company's latest hire price list can now be downloaded from its website.

Among the new items in stock are products such as the Tiger Touch and Powercubes, both from Avolites. The Tiger Touch is a lightweight and powerful lighting controller. Powercubes are a complete dimming, mains and data distribution solution in one box.

"When you look at all the new products we have added to our stock it shows that we are committed to providing our customers with the hire technology they need at the right price," says Calder Sibbald, Black Light's events manager.

Among Black Light's other new hire stock are Strand 3 Packs. These provide 5KW dimming and complement the company's 5KW lantern stock. Black Light has

Italy The Wind Music Awards 2011 - featuring the major stars of Italian music, were held in the evenings of 27, 28 and 29 May in the Arena di Verona.

The director of photography Carlo Valagussa, along with F&P Group production, placed a long line of Coemar Infinity ACL S on the stage to create background lighting effects.

The Infinity ACL S were chosen for their power and have a high light output which is equal to that of a 1200 W projector, with low power consumption (300W). Equipped with a rotating and indexable 'aerial effect' and a beam ranging from 1.7° to 6°, they are also suitable for backlighting effects and strobe, wood light, moon flower effects.

(Jim Evans)

UK - London's latest new musical offering, the new show Betty Blue Eyes, is using lighting documentation tools FocusTrack andSpotTrack to accurately record every part of the production lighting.

Based on the film A Private Function, and starring a remarkable pig called Betty, Betty Blue Eyes is produced byCameron Mackintosh, directed by Richard Eyre with musical staging by Stephen Mear and designs by Tim Hatley. The show's lighting is by Neil Austin, Tony and Drama Desk-award winner last year for Red on Broadway, and Olivier-award winner this year for The White Guard at the National Theatre.

Left with little room for lighting by the scenery, Austin designed a versatile rig based around a core of moving lights: 11 Vari-LiteVL3500Q framing spotlights, 24 ETC Revolution tungsten framing spots,13 VL2500 Wash washlights, and 10 DHA Digital Light C

Australia - Lighting designer Dave Jackson of Phaseshift Productions specified over 40 Robe moving lights - including 24 of the new Robin 600 LEDWash 'wonder lights' for the 11th Annual Bruce Lynton BMW Charity Ball - a major event on Australia's Gold Coast social calendar.

The event was held at RACV Royal Pines Resort, the look and feel of which was boosted for the occasion by the illumination of the building's massive main foyer by six Anolis ArcPad Xtremes, positioned inside, on the mezzanine above the main foyer, covering an area of about 600 square metres, and creating a special festive atmosphere. All lighting equipment was supplied by Phaseshift Productions.

The night began with a spectacular fireworks display to welcome over 600 guests including special invitees, naturalist Terri Irwin and Senator Mark Furner.

The 24 Robin 600 LEDWash fixtures were lighting the main

UK - The Components Co has released the first glimpse of the Smart-e compact wireless LED fixture, measuring just 154 x 115 x 104mm and weighing in at a mere 1.2kg. It is billed as the first wireless LED product to scale down the size without compromising the performance, the whole unit is only round the size and weight of a standard bag of sugar.

The lithium polymer battery drives three groups of Luxeon Rebel RGB+W emitters using the latest Quad Lens form Carclo Optics, lasting up to eight hours on full output and in excess of 12 hours on colour scroll. The unit has two power modes to further increase battery life with output selected via the digital LCD address interface to either 350mA or 600mA.

The fixture supports W-DMX and has a 5pin XLR DMX output to supply other DMX fixtures that you may wish to rig in its vicinity. With the head detached the Smart-e can be used as a b

UK - The ABTT Lighting Product of the Year Award went to ArcSystem, GDS's new LED house-light system. The award was presented to Richard Cuthbert, director of engineering for GDS. The judges were impressed by the wireless dimming performance of ArcSystem, a bespoke fitting manufactured for new build and retrofit existing tungsten lighting in auditoria and front of house locations.

ArcSystem from GDS is a new concept that provides a low energy future proofing solution for auditoria house lighting, says the company. ArcSystem is a LED based, fully dimmable unit with a warm white tungsten colour output. The system is designed to emulate a filament fitting in its dimming response and is one of the first LED products to be dimmed to zero without snapping.

Richard Cuthbert commented, "We are honoured to receive this recognition from ABTT. The R&D department continually strive t

UK - Manchester based lighting rental company DBN supplied the city's new Parklife live music festival for the second year running - this time co-ordinating equipment for all four stages within the main arena. DBN was working for their regular client, Ear To The Ground, who also production manage regular, locally based dance party phenomena, Warehouse Project.

Parklife was again staged in PlattFields Park Manchester, and this year, the main headliners were Two Door Cinema Club on Saturday and Chase & Status on Sunday, plus an impressive array of others including Mark Ronson (DJ set), Annie Mac, Kelis, Katie B and numerous others.

The project was managed for DBN by Nick Walton, who also created a production design for all the stages with which DBN was involved, based around accommodating the specific requirements of headliners and visiting LDs.

Both headline bands on the Main

UK - This year's ABTT Show saw Philips Entertainment Lighting (PEL) showcase a raft of lighting solutions from its flagship brands Philips Selecon, Philips Strand Lighting and Philips Vari-lite.

The Philips Entertainment team was out in force at the Royal Horticultural Halls to demonstrate the latest developments in LED and intelligent luminaires alongside its dimming, control and distribution solutions.

The Show opened hot on the heels of recent news that Philips Vari-lite has realigned European product distribution, parts, and support services. Since June, Philips Vari-Lite has assumed direct control of its relationships with its dealers, previously taken care of by European Master distributor PRG Distribution. Philips Vari-lite will now provide its dealers with goods and service direct from its HQ in Dallas, Texas.

David March, previously with PRG Distribution and now dir

Isreal / West Bank - Philips Vari-Lite is proud to announce that effective immediately Protouch Ltd. will take control of the distribution and service of Vari-Lite automated luminaires in Israel and the West Bank. Protouch will direct their Vari-Lite luminaire sales and service operations from their home office in Petah Tikva.

"We are very excited to be working with Protouch as our authorised dealer for Israel and the West Bank," said Bob Schacherl, Philips Vari-Lite vice president of sales and marketing. "I am confident they will bring a renewed focus and energy to the sales and support of Vari-Lite luminaires."

"Protouch is very honoured to now be an authorised dealer for Philips Vari-Lite," stated David Melloul, Protouch import manager. "Vari-Lite luminaires are known throughout the world for their unmatched quality and performance. At Pro

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