Canada - Justin Timberlake kicked off his 20/20 Experience world tour in Montreal a grandMA2 full-size was a key player. True to its name, the tour is "an experience rather than a show," says lighting designer Nick Whitehouse. "It's very visual with lots of projection and lighting and a lot of new technology. We got pretty creative with everything and had fun putting it all together."

The tour is in support of Timberlake's third studio album. The singer will play dates in North America, Europe, Australia and South America.

Whitehouse programmed the tour on

UK - Le Maitre has launched a new range of Comets - Tracer Comets, which are much faster and brighter than conventional comets.

They project a single star to a specified height of 20ft, 30ft or 40ft and leave the image of a coloured streak. Tracer Comets can be shot on various angles with no noticeable variation in direction. They are available in several colours, with and without tail.

(Jim Evans)

USA - The Cambridge University American Stage Tour (CAST) is the largest and most prestigious international touring theatre show from Cambridge University, now in its fourteenth year. Each year, a company of Cambridge's most talented directors, producers, actors and technicians bring one of Shakespeare's plays to Ivy League universities, high schools and professional theatres across the east coast of America. Le Maitre was delighted to provide an MVS Hazer for the tour.

This year CAST attempted to present a highly stylized and timeless version of Measure for Measure. Faced with

UK - Lighting specialists, Utopium, transformed Bristol Zoo's award winning gardens into a festive winter wonderland for its Enchanted Christmas 2013, 18-20 December.

Working with the zoo's events team for the first time, Utopium created an immersive visual spectacle illuminating the rich collection of plants and trees. In the Herbaceous Border Utopium produced a truly magical experience installing a lightshow, which was controlled remotely and featured an array of festive-themed lighting that was timecoded to music.

To create this stunning display, Utopium used mainly LED lights in

USA - In the last few years, ETC has entered new markets, introduced dozens of products, surpassed three million Source Four luminaire sales and gained new customers worldwide. To keep the pace of this steady growth, ETC is expanding its office in New York City and opening a new factory in Wisconsin.

"Our New York office is in the heart of the theatre district," says ETC CEO Fred Foster, "and we want to get the most out of the location. We're using it to support the local community, by opening our doors to lighting professionals to drop in and experiment with new produc

France - Puy du Fou has used a large number of Clay Paky fixtures to light its flagship live show - Cinéscénie. Principal lighting designer, Koert Vermuelen, deployed Clay Paky's Alpha Beam 1500s and Sharpys to create the sensational light show, which ran throughout the season.

This year, the historical theme park celebrates its 25th anniversary and Cinéscénie heads up a programme of live productions at the cultural attraction, which first opened in the heart of the Vendée region of Western France in 1989.

This summer, the show, which

South Africa - Robe moving lights were right at the hub of the lighting action for the 2013 Crown Gospel Awards, staged at the Durban International Conference Centre (ICC), South Africa, and broadcast - live for the first time - by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), recognizing the best of South Africa's vibrant gospel music scene.

Lighting was designed by Ryan Dunbar from the Durban branch of Gearhouse South Africa, the country's largest technical production rental facility. It was his first time lighting the event for which he was also the set designer, and in anothe

UK - Rounding off a successful 20 month world tour with a headlining show at London's O2 Arena can be both exhilarating and stressful; for Two Door Cinema Club's show designer Squib it was more of the former and less of the latter, thanks to some shrewd choices.

"With a single show at the Blackpool Empress Ballroom as a warm up, the O2 presented me with all sorts of questions. This was the first time I'd done a show on this scale, certainly with video, and it was nice to have someone to turn to and say, what do you think about doing this?" Squib is nothing if not modest abou

USA - PLASA Focus: Nashville 2014 is set for success with organizer PLASA Events confirming new exhibitors and seminar speakers. The event is taking place on 18-19 February 2014, at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium.

The latest exhibitors to sign up include AC Lighting, Apollo Design Technology, Doug Fleenor Design, ETC, LSC America, Philips Entertainment Lighting, Show Sage and Link. They will share the show floor with other industry leaders including; Aeson, ETC, Bandit Lites, Group One, Chauvet Professional, Lightronics, Elation Professional, Creative Stage Lighting, and Applied E

Sweden - Wireless Solution Sweden's award-winning W-DMX technology is now available in the new moving head range of products by PR Lighting, adding to an already widely adopted array of fixtures featuring Wireless DMX capabilities.

W-DMX comes standard in the XRLED line, which includes the 300-W Spot, 500 Spot, 1200 Spot, 1037 (already in mass production), 1061 and XR 800 Spot. In addition, W-DMX is OEM installed in the PR Lighting LED Series of automated 'double headed' fixtures, including the ARC LED 3216M and the outdoor waterproof rated ARC LED 3216 and ARC LED 3108. With the addi

USA - Elite Multimedia Productions (EMP), a Nashville-based professional sound, lighting and video company, recently completed the major acquisition of live production equipment from TMB to accommodate the company's expected growth in 2014.

With a number of large acts already on board for the 2014 year, including American Country Music's 2013 Entertainer of the Year Luke Bryan, EMP purchased five ProPower Lighting Distros, 20 ProPlex Data Distribution splitters, and miles of ProPlex cable outfitted with Neutrik's Ethercon connectors to handle the increased workload.

"Since movi

Russia - Luc Lafortune held a lecture of great cultural interest, called Art and Poetry in Stage Lighting, on 5 December 2013 in Saint Petersburg. This exclusive event was held on the modern 'New Stage' in the Alexandrinsky Theatre by the theatre's managerial staff itself, with the cooperation of TDM Stage Equipment and Clay Paky. The event media partners were the Evening Petersburg newspaper, the main Russian media and state television.

Lafortune is considered one of the most creative lighting designers of the last 30 years. He is the author of several prestigious light

Uruguay - Uruguayan rock and ska band La Vela Puerca played two shows at the Teatro de Verano Ramón Collazo Theatre in Montevideo, with lighting directed by Sebastián Cybulski using Robe Robin LEDWash 600 and ColorSpot 1200E moving lights.

For this show, called Uno para todos, Sebastián worked with Gastón Aladefh as assistant LD, adapting an original design from a live performance DVD shoot in Buenos Aires ... and this time adding the Robe fixtures.

The 16 x ColorSpot 1200E ATs and 16 x Robin LEDWash 600s were rigged on two back trusses and all the lighting equipment for

USA - Illumination at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, is an interactive holiday light experience where trees become a dynamic living canvas. Created by visual design group Lightswitch and hailed for its creative use of lighting, including Elation LED PAR lights, Illumination is a whole new way to experience the Arboretum in winter and has proved a magnificent way to draw more visitors there in winter months.

A non-profit outdoor museum where over 4,100 different species of trees and other plants are highlighted in special landscaped area

USA - Building on the outstanding reception enjoyed by its Nexus COB RGB LED display panels, Chauvet Professional has added two new models to the series: the Nexus 2x2, a square-shaped panel configured with two rows of two COB LED cells; and the Nexus 4x1, a linear unit with one row of four COB LED cells.

The two product additions join the original, larger Nexus 4x4 panel (four rows of four LED cells), which soared to industry pre-eminence after receiving the Parnelli Award for Indispensable Technology in the Lighting Category at the 2013 LDI Show and, immediately following, appearing

USA - Rod Stewart is performing his Las Vegas Caesar's Palace residency show The Hits under the powerful reach of Clay Paky's Alpha Spot QWO 800s and Alpha Wash 1500s.

Stewart's long-time lighting designer Mark Payne - who has worked with Rod for the past 20 years - specified the Clay Paky fixtures from the Caesar's Palace technical department for star's Live the Life tour earlier this year and was so impressed with their capabilities that he requested them again for the Las Vegas show.

With several large video screens onstage and one of the largest LED screens in North Ameri

Spain - Robe moving lights continue to be involved in some of the highest profile international music awards shows, the latest being the 2013 Premios 40 Principales event, where lighting designer Juanjo Beloqui specified 30 Robin Pointes and 30 LEDBeam 100s for the show staged at the Palacio de Los Deportes in Madrid and attended by 15,000 enthusiastic music fans.

Los 40 Principals is Spain's most important and influential music station, and its annual Premios (awards) recognise some of the very best contemporary music in Spain across 15 different categories. The show featured a numbe

USA / UK - City Theatrical will host a free webinar on Tuesday, 7 January 2014 (11:00a.m. EST, 4:00 p.m. GMT) entitled Using Specialized Antennas With Wireless DMX at www.citytheatrical.com.

This is the fifth City Theatrical webinar on the subject of wireless DMX and will teach lighting users how antennas work, as well as how using specialized antennas such as panels and yagis can improve the fidelity of wireless DMX broadcasts by overcoming some of the most typical problems faced by lighting technicians, including long broa

USA - The Carolina Opry Christmas Special, The Christmas Show of the South, at the Calvin Gilmore Theatre in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, has brought the spirit of Christmas to life with music, comedy and dance for over 27 years. Adding a fresh visual element to the stage, and helping to transform the theater into a winter wonderland, is a large backdrop LED video screen made up of Elation Professional EZ6 LED video panels supplied by Elation dealer JR Lighting Design, Inc.

JR Lighting Design president Jason Reberski discussed LED video product options with The Carolina Opry's

USA - Elation Professional recently challenged students and young lighting designers in the US to create a stage or club lighting design using its Capture Polar design software. Winners of the "Designing Vision Contest" were announced on December 20th with Patrick Boozer awarded the top prize, an Elation-sponsored trip for two to InfoComm 2014 in Las Vegas plus Capture Polar Extended Software (a $4,000 value).

Second place went to Mike Berger, who won Capture Polar Basic Software, with third place going to Joason Tollefson, who takes home a Capture Polar Solo Software packag

The Netherlands - Marc Kocks has taken up the position of director at Sales-All in Bemmel, the Netherlands. Kocks, who previously spent over 20 years with the Ampco Flashlight group's sales companies, where he was managing director of TM Audio and Lightco, will be responsible driving Sales-All forward, as well as business development for Sales-All and Fairlight.

His initial goals are to open new markets, expand Sales-All's presence in the Benelux region, its product portfolio, set up an international network for second-hand sales and establish a European working network for private la

Singapore - Fashion TV venues are hyped all over the planet with Singapore recently celebrating the opening of the first Fashion TV Club in late October. German company auxweg.com designed the club and technically equipped it with a state-of-the-art sound and lighting package from ADJ Group that includes Elation Professional lighting fixtures and LED video panels.

The global fashion network teamed with investors from the US and Germany and placed the chic night spot in Clarke Quay at the heart of Singapore nightlife. A complete renovation of a previous club, Elation Platinum Beam 5R E

Austria - Elation Professional EU has announced the hiring of Karl Lager as the company's new sales representative for Austria. Karl, who starts in the new position this month, is tasked with using his extensive industry knowledge and customer network to build a strong Elation dealership structure in Austria.

Karl comes to Elation from industry trading company Licht-Lager, which he founded along with two partners in 2003. Born into a theatrical family that worked in Vienna's Burgtheater, the Austrian National Theatre, where he gathered a wealth of technical and sales knowledge, his ye

USA - Bandit Lites recently wrapped up another Warren Hayne's Xmas Jam with a two day event that kicked off 13 December and featured performances from Gregg Allman, Widespread Panic, Michael Franti, OAR, Gov't Mule, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.

Preston Hoffman, who has designed the lighting for the event for three years now, was tasked by producer Joe Dindas to create something spectacular for the 25th anniversary.

"The idea behind the show was to do something that we had never done and that would push the show over the top," explained Hoffman. "This is always

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