The Week in Lighting & Sound

Record Receipts - London's West End has reported its 11th consecutive year of record box office takings, measuring gross sales of more than £623m in 2014. Figures published by the Society of London Theatre also show increased attendance at London's major commercial and subsidised venues during 2014. However, some of the increase is due to the fact that the year was recorded as a 53-week period, rather than the usual 52.According to SOLT, 14.7m people attended the 52 London theatres in full SOLT membership in 2014, a 1.0% increase on 2013. Gross box office revenue was up 7% on 2013, rising from £585.5m to £623.6m. This is a 29% increase on the last 53-week year, which was in 2008, and an 82% increase on the 53-week period before that, in 2004.SOLT claims that the increase in revenue can be attributed to an improved seat capacity achieved across the year, which is an increase from 72.7% in 2013 to 73.1% in 2014. However, the average attendance per performance actually fell in 2014, down to 777 from 791. This could have been due to the extended dark periods of two large theatres - the Palladium and Dominion were dark for 29 and 15 weeks respectively.Grammy Awards - Sam Smith won four Grammy Awards, including the prizes for record and song of the year and best new artist. Smith was rewarded for being the only solo artist to sell more than a million albums in both the UK and US in 2014. Pharrell Williams, Beyonce and Rosanne Cash won three awards each. Beck won two, including best album. Madonna, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Kanye West and Sir Paul McCartney were among those performing at the Los Angeles ceremony.Legging It - The Broadway hit musical Kinky Boots is coming to London's West End. Based on the film of the same name, it tells the true story of a Northampton shoe factory which turns around its fortunes by catering to drag queens. It won best musical and best original score for its writer - pop star Cyndi Lauper - at the 2013 Tony Awards. The London production will be staged at the Adelphi Theatre, which recently announced the closure of Gemma Arterton musical Made In Dagenham.On Cyprus Avenue - Van Morrison is to celebrate his 70th birthday by playing a concert in the street immortalised in one of his best-loved songs. The promoters, East Belfast Partnership, said the singer will perform at Cyprus Avenue on 31 August. The song Cyprus Avenue featured on the landmark 1968 Astral Weeks album. Morrison says of the road, "It wasn't far from where I was brought up and it was a very different scene. To me, it was a very mystical place. It was a whole avenue lined with trees and I found it a place where I could think."Vivaldi Discovery - The newly-discovered earliest known work by Italian baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi was premiered at a concert on Monday in Florence, at the city's Uffizi art museum. The new Vivaldi discovery is an instrumental work that has been dated to between 1700 and 1703. It was performed by the baroque ensemble Modo Antiquo, under the baton of Federico Maria Sardelli, the conductor and musicologist who unearthed this composition. "This is a very important discovery which is set to thrill the world of music," Maestro Sardelli told the BBC. Very little is known about Vivaldi's youth, other than the fact that he studied to become a priest - "by calling, not out of self interest" according to Sardelli - and that he almost certainly learnt to play music from his father Giovan Battista, who was a famous violinist.As You Like It - The Royal Shakespeare Company's Other Place theatre will reopen in 2016, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. The company has also announced a five-year partnership with the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute. Originally built in 1973 as a home for the RSC's developmental and new work, the Other Place closed in 2006 to make way for the temporary Courtyard The

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