De Goudse Schouwburg (Gouda Schouwburg) is a busy municipal theatre and hub of the arts community in the city of Gouda in the Netherlands – also world famous for its cheese! As part of a recent major technical upgrade on lighting, it has taken delivery of a substantial quantity of over 200 Robe LED luminaires, including 94 T11 Profiles, 40 x ParFect 150s and 32 iBar 15s, the latter specifically for cyc lighting, plus 34 T1 Profiles, 20 T2 Profiles, 24 LEDBeam 150s and 32 LEDBeam 350s. The new lights have transformed the venue into an all-LED house for stage lighting, and the project was d ..read more

The deepest emotions tend to live in that area between light and darkness, where nebulous boundaries give them endless space to expand and shrink, twist and turn in infinite directions. By devising such a space on stage for Tom Odell’s Black Friday Tour, Joe Beardsmore created the ideal visual setting for music that one critic aptly described as “a raw emotional masterpiece.” Busking his show on a ChamSys MagicQ 250M Stadium console, Joe Beardsmore of Phosphor, moved seamlessly in sync with the Brit Award winning singer-songwriter and his seven-piece band, blending shadows and brightness, silh ..read more

Máté Lukacsovics and Ale Geszler from Budapest, Hungary-based lighting design studio Highlight Studios created an eye-popping design for a high-profile one-off concert by Hungarian artist and pop-rock band Valmar at the 12,500-capacity Budapest Arena  which was completely sold out. It was the band’s largest concert to date, and the brief was to create a memorable lighting design that met the occasion and thrilled everyone involved, from the artist and his production team to his enthusiastic and ever-growing fanbase. Máté and Ale utilised over 150 Robe moving lights – a combination of iFOR ..read more

Throughout February 2024, German Rap artist, Luciano, worked his way across Germany, Switzerland and Austria on his Seductive tour. One of the first German-speaking rappers in the UK Drill style, Luciano was Germany’s most streamed artist on Spotify in 2022, and deserves nothing but the best for his music and outstanding live shows. 80 Ayrton Cobra fixtures were duly supplied by TDA CLAIR GmbH for this year’s tour and they proved to be a brilliant success for the show. Cobra is Ayrton’s first IP65 laser-sourced fixture. Designed for rendering a D65 white point that allows perfect colour reprod ..read more

Lighting designer Mikael Kratt was super happy to be among the first visiting creatives to use the Royal Danish Opera’s new Robe FORTE moving lights in a recent production at the Copenhagen Opera House. This was for Som I Himlen (As It Is in Heaven) a lively and heart-warming musical adaptation directed by Edward af Sillén of a 2004 Swedish movie telling the story of a famous conductor who returns to his small Swedish hometown in the North of the country to retire … and is asked to help with mentoring the school choir. It was Mikael’s first time using FORTES, 80 of which arrived at the Copenha ..read more

Looking to create a modern spin on a classic “wall of light” look for the latest tour of multiplatinum pop music group the Jonas Brothers, lighting designer Alex Reardon looked to VL5LED Wash and VL3600 Profile IP luminaires from Vari-Lite, the originators of the modern moving head light fixture and Signify (Euronext: LIGHT) entertainment lighting brand. The design includes 108 VL5LEDs and 145 VL3600s from Solotech. One unique issue for the design was the 360-degree seating environment. “The biggest challenge was the dichotomy between needing a suitably scaled wall of lights and the fact that ..read more

Renowned trance music festival Transmission transposed to the Gelredome in Arnhem in The Netherlands for the first time, presenting its newest “Elysium” show concept at the end of 2023 and keeping the winning international production and supply teams that have helped make the event such a success in its native Czech Republic and globally. Organisers United Music turned to their long-term lighting, audio and LED screen supplier, Ministry Rentals to supply the production kit – every bit of the kit came from Banska Bystrica in Slovakia – and lighting designer Bas Kempers to create an eye-catching ..read more

Aarhus Musikhuset has recently invested in Robe PAINTE moving lights and TX1 PosiProfiles for three of its halls. The Rhythmic Hall (Rytmisk Sal) also known as the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall has 8 x PAINTES, the Small Hall (Lille Sal) has 7 x TX1, with another 8 x TX1s – four with gobos – for the1,172-capacity Symphonic Hall (Symfonisk Sal). The lights were specified by the Musikhuset’s head of lighting Henrik Hambro and his crew, and delivered by Robe’s Danish distributor, Light Partner. The venue is a cultural and entertainment beacon at the heart of Denmark’s lively second city and stages over 1400 ..read more

Harpa – Iceland’s premier concert hall and conference centre, located in capital city Reykjavik – has invested in 48 x new Robe FORTE moving lights which will be utilised in their 1600-capacity Grand Hall, home of the Icelandic Opera and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. The striking Harpa building was designed by the Hanning Larsen Architects from Denmark in conjunction with Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson – well known for creating sculptured and large-scale installation art using elements like light, water, and air temperature – and opened in 2011.The structure comprises a steel f ..read more

Lighting designer Andy Webb didn’t have any hesitation about which additional production lighting he wanted on the rig for two high-profile UK 2023-24 pantomime seasons… and that was Robe! Panto is a quintessentially British performance genre that combines super-quick wit, slapstick comedy, double entendres, magic, fantasy and usually a bit of politics tossed together with the musical hits of the year in a trippy mash as action-packed as it is often absurd… but usually the narrative ends happily! “We like happy endings,” commented Andy, which is why he specified Robe for these two key shows fo ..read more