USA - Robe made six of its new BMFL Spots available to lighting designer Preston Hoffman for the 2014 Warren Haynes Christmas Jam. The annual event, this year staged at the U.S. Cellular Centre in Asheville, North Carolina, featured Billy and the Kids, The Revivalists, Jason Isbell, Vince Gill, The Hard Working Americans and Haynes' own band, Gov't Mule.

Now in its 26th year, the high-profile music event, which began in a small club in 1988, has become a major charity fundraiser. Since 2008, the proceeds have gone to Habitat for Humanity, an international non government, not-for-profi

UK - Since Soccer AM first aired in 1995 it has developed a cult following with features such as Crossbar Challenge, Away Days, Taxi and Third Eyes plus the Soccerettes.

Despite the longevity of the show, it has always remained relaxed, spontaneous and funny which is a credit to the team and the presenters Helen Chamberlain and Max Rushden.

Behind the scenes you just sense that there is a group of colleagues that can call themselves friends and know how to have a laugh together. This is made all the more obvious with their annual Dance Off.<

Russia - Russian rock band DDT have embarked on their world tour, Pellucid, with lighting designer Andrejs Dubkovs choosing the ever-popular Clay Paky Sharpy and Sharpy Wash 330 as a winning combination of "power, reliability and budget-saving" for his emotive design.

Dubkovs, of show design house Lumen Art Divison, specified the fixtures from Novosibirsk-based Elkraft for the Russian leg of the tour, with leading production company Orion supplying the units for the international dates.

"The Clay Paky Sharpy and Sharpy Wash 330 are ideal for this tour," says Dubk

Russia - SGM's P-5 wash lights demonstrated their applicability as waterproof luminaires at the recent International Festival of Light in Moscow. Fountain specialist Aqua-Show was tasked with installing two lines of fountains and creating a 3D world of water for laser projection. They needed to illuminate the fountains with water reaching heights up to 30m, and for that they selected the powerful RGBW P-5.

Water show lighting designer and design engineer of the fountain system, Korzakov Anton, explains, "This is our first experience in using LED light for creating a wash effect o

UK - Illuminate Design has been keeping warm during the winter months with their busiest winter period ever, smashing previous records.

The Colchester based company worked on a wide variety of events and productions as well as continually providing a high level of day-to-day support to their regular, loyal customers.

Tilbury Docks was the location for a number of Christmas parties and Illuminate Design were tasked to provide a winter lighting theme. The bespoke design included Pulsar Chroma Floods plus ETC Source 4 profiles to light the ceiling and walls within the space. The tempor

The Netherlands - Avolites is heading to Amsterdam's Integrated Systems Europe tradeshow this February to exhibit its range of control consoles and servers and unveil the new features of its Ai V8 software.

The Avolites team will be on stand 8-K300 at ISE. Also exhibiting Avolites' range of products will be Avolites' new Dutch dealer, Improve, which will be on stand 8-L395.

Running on Avolites' range of Ai media servers, the new V8 software includes the new Autoblend feature, distinctly setting Ai apart from the competition by allowing blending of large projection surfaces using mul

UK - Lighting hire and technical event production specialists Blue Parrot have taken delivery of 12 new Martin Quantum Profiles to add to their hire stock based in Edinburgh. Blue Parrot's head of hires Dave Morris explains, "We have had a great experience with our Martin MAC Aura and 101 LED fixtures over the last few years. They are incredibly reliable and superb lights to use. It therefore makes absolute sense for us to invest in the Quantum Profile and continue to offer the very latest and best equipment to our production and dry hire customers."

The Quantum Profiles are

Sweden - LumenRadio has appointed Sofia Rösberg as purchase & supply chain manager.

Having a Masters Degree in retail, transport and supply chain management, Rösberg brings extensive experience during her positions at SCA Packaging, Din Sko and Intersport. In 2013, Rösberg was appointed CEO at Selector Solutions, a consultancy firm that has helped hundreds of companies improve their supply chain and to optimize purchasing.

"I'm absolutely thrilled to be joining the LumenRadio team. The true power of LumenRadio's Supply Chain lies in its flexibility and the added value th

China - Absen Optoelectronics, a global manufacturer of high quality LED displays, has announced that it has acquired LED display company and solution provider VISS Lighting Co., Ltd, with the purchase of 60% stake in the Shenzhen based company, for a total of RMB24m (EUR 3.3m).

Absen has essentially purchased a 50% and 10% stake respectively from co-owners Zhong Zaibo and Zhang Wenxia. Upon completion of the acquisition, Absen will hold 60% of VISS Lighting's equity, while Zhong Zaibo will hold the remaining 40% share. By virtue of shareholding, VISS Lighting will become a subsidiary

UK - Buckinghamshire-based Dry Hire Lighting have become one of the first hire companies in the UK to invest in a quantity of the new Chroma-Q Color One 100 premium performance, homogenised output LED Par fixture.

Dry Hire Lighting carry an extensive inventory of technology equipment from leading manufacturers, and pride themselves on providing customers with access to the very latest high-performance lighting solutions.

Dry Hire Lighting's Rob Merrilees invested in the Color One 100 fixtures following a demo at PLASA London 2014, and a further onsite test at the company's headquart

UK - Yes Events has turned to Elation Professional's new Sniper multi-effect light and Elation PAR, beam and LED lights to create Enchanted Woodland, an Illuminated walk through Syon Park near London.

Syon Park, which surrounds 500-year-old Syon House in Brentford, England, contains over four hundred species of tree and has been a horticultural woodland for almost 600 years. With Enchanted Woodland, a visit to Syon Park in winter has visitors seeing the arboretum in a whole new light.

Using 1000 separate light fixtures and over 15km of cable, the Yes Events installation team, headed

UK - White Light recently partnered with the National Gallery to host a special educational session for event professionals from venues in the Unique Venues of London group. White Light is an approved supplier across many of London's premier events venues including Unique Venues of London spaces. The morning event, hosted in the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing Theatre, was designed to help attendees broaden their knowledge of the technical aspects of event production.

More than 80 professionals attended the event, which featured a seminar, workshop, and Q&A session with White Light'

USA - Apollo Design Technology has announced the appointment of Nick Picciuto as chief financial officer. In this role, Picciuto will direct the financial activities of the company including strategic planning, profit improvement initiatives, financial reporting, budgeting, forecasting, and banking/debt management.

Prior to joining Apollo Design Technology, Picciuto worked as a CFO at InterStar Fleet Services and Duro Designer Company. His career spans over 30 years in the finance field.

"Nick is a great fit. He is able to jump between the details and the big picture. Nick brin

USA - Coheed and Cambria, the American progressive metal band whose innovative concept albums tell the sci-fi story of The Amory Wars, has wrapped a concert tour that included a complement of Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE K20s and Sharpys.

Coheed and Cambria recently toured with the band Thank You Scientist, playing 25 dates across the US and in Toronto. Coheed and Cambria's setlist followed In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, their 11-year old second album, which has recently been remastered and rereleased. Clearwing Productions supplied the lighting package for the tour, which in

Israel - The Hanukkah holiday is celebrated in a diversity of ways, one of which is the annual Festigal performance show which brings the glamour and glitz of leading celebrities to the stage for an all-action music and dance extravaganza targeted at eight - 14 year olds. It's one of the best attended and most popular performance phenomena in Israel.

This year, Festigal's lighting designer Ronen Najar - who has lit the show for the past eight years - spec'd 24 of Robe's new BMFL Spot fixtures to be the centrepiece. The BMFLs were part of a delivery of 60 units purchased by high profil

South Africa - A sunken fashion ramp created a striking effect at the annual Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Joburg presented by African Fashion International and held at Melrose Arch in October/November 2014. Dream Sets supplied the technical and built the set, a seamless platform from which cutting edge South African designers could show off their latest creations.

While stress levels are up on an event like this - there are 12 different shows with each stylists wanting their own look - it's old hat for Mauritz Jacobs from Dream Sets. With a desire to please, his calming nature has kept

Belgium - Luc Peumans of Painting With Light lit the high profile Belgian TV Music Industry Awards (MIA)s event for the first time last year ... and producers VRT (Vlaamse Radio en Televisieomroeporganisatie) Belgium were so impressed with his work, that this year Luc was invited back to create a full production design - incorporating lighting, set and video / visuals.

The event - honouring the very best of Flemish musical talent and success from 2014 - is the most watched music TV show in the country (broadcast on Channel Eén - One) and a massive talking point on the country's

Canada - Calgary's Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts has taken delivery of eight Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE K10 Easy fixtures for its Jack Singer Concert Hall, an 1,800-seat venue which is one of the most beautiful and acoustically acclaimed venues in North America

Located in the heart of Calgary's downtown Cultural District, Epcor Centre is a six-level complex occupying a full city block. It is one of the three largest performing arts centres in Canada and the largest in Western Canada.

The Centre's head electrician, Kris Ladd, discovered the B-EYE K10 Easy in a demo video taped at

UK - At the PLASA Awards 2014, the judges said, "The Mythos hybrid automated light works as a hard-edge spot, a beam light, or a wash light with a range of effects. It has excellent colours, incredible brightness, terrific optics, and a small housing. It's also very energy efficient and it has a patented and innovative cooling system. In the Clay Paky tradition, it's a real winner."

Since those auspicious words in October, Ambersphere Solutions have been busy fulfilling orders and shipping Mythos units to numerous clients across the UK. Its hybrid versatility and wide range

Moldova - Elation Professional's new Platinum SBX hybrid moving head showed both its brain and brawn at the King of Kings Eagles Series and King of Kings World Grand Prix kickboxing tournaments held 20 December at Manej Sports Arena in Chisinau, Moldova.

Broadcast live on FightBox HD and Eurosport HD respectively, Elation dealer Eventica Grup SRL, a regular staging and technical contractor of KOK tournaments, turned to the Platinum SBX for its multifunctionality as well as its power and dynamism.

King of Kings events are some of the most popular kickboxing events in the world. Inten

UK - Holo-Gauze, 3D display solution for hologram effects, is set to feature as part of the new series of Gadget Man for Channel 4 after wowing the show's producers, who were "hugely impressed" with its effectiveness, both on-set and on-camera. The ingenious, highly transparent metallic gauze was used to create a giant, revolving holographic vase of flowers during filming of a 'Date Night' episode. The show is expected to air sometime in the Spring.

Holo-Gauze is claimed to be the only gauze able to work with 3D polarised projection systems which use a minimum of two

France - Every year, Mairie de Paris (Paris City Hall) turns the square in front of the building into an ice rink for the citizens of Paris to enjoy ice skating during the winter. This year technical audiovisual specialist, Novelty Group, decided to add enhancements to the traditional Christmas animation on the ice rink, and after conducting stringent testing on the SGM G-Spot LED moving head, placing it under a shower for three days, they were convinced by the IP-rating of the luminaire.

Supported by Sonoss, SGM's local partner, this year's festive installation went very smoothly. &q

Poland - The National Theatre in Warsaw is one of the most important theatrical venues in Poland, dating back to the 18th century. So when the theatre decided to upgrade the old stage management system, Green-Go was the intercom system of choice chosen to create a party line network communication system.

Piotr Jankiewicz who is director of design and integration at Konsbud Audio, the company contracted to install the new system said, "The stage management system covers four stages located in two buildings which are separated by a street, under which is a mini stage located in the

Germany - A few months ago, the walls of St Margaret's church in Munich, Germany, reverberated with "eternal light," or Lux Aeterna. Organised by Christian Bischof, organist and choir director for St Margaret's, the November event featured music from Claude Debussy, Morten Lauridsen, and Gabriel Fauré, and was accompanied by a modern light show controlled by ETC's Congo Kid lighting desk.

Prior to the event's official conceptualisation, Bischof contacted lighting designer Ludwig Hacker to discuss the look of the lighting. Says Hacker: "He wanted to make a special

Latest Issue. . .