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Wilminktheater and Muziekcentrum Enschede upgrade with Robe

The Muziekcentrum is one of three entertainment venues operating on the same site in Enschede in the eastern Netherlands, and recently, the old house orchestral lighting has been replaced with sixteen Robe T1 Profiles and sixteen T1 PC moving lights, all delivered by Robe’s Benelux distributor, Controllux.

Wilminktheater is the theatre space in the same complex. Head of lighting Paul de Vries has been there since 2008, when it first opened, and he collaborates closely with Robin Bijker, head of technical for the Muziekcentrum. The Wilminktheater has a capacity of 1,000, and the Muziekcentrum concert hall building can accommodate 1,800 people standing and 800 seated.

These latest lights - which boosted the existing Robe products on the site - were purchased primarily to provide special orchestra lighting for the concert hall space. The Phion - Orkest van Gelderland en Overijssel is one of the symphony orchestras regularly using the Muziekcentrum for rehearsals, concerts, and choral recitals, and this was the first orchestral venue in the Netherlands to use moving LED lights for this specific purpose.

Before the T1s arrived, the orchestra was lit with a series of aging MultiPARs which had been in place for around twenty years. The fact that the T1s have a host of multipurpose features was a bonus for the pop concerts that are also staged in the venue, but “suitable for orchestra” was the first criterion.

Previously, when concerts were staged in the Muziekcentrum, de Vries and the crew would purloin lights - including their existing Robe products - from the Theatre venue’s lighting rig for the evening. That included the Theatre’s own Robe T1 Profiles, which were installed in 2018, CycBar 15s, which arrived in 2021 and LEDBeam 350s purchased in 2023. The Muziekcentrum also already had some Robe moving lights in situ, in the form of sixteen T2 Profiles that were added in 2023 for front lighting, together with another eight T2s that are part of the theatre house rig.

Previously, the orchestra’s musicians were not convinced about LED sources, says de Vries. “Like many in theatre, they initially thought outputs were low and the CRI was simply not hitting the mark”, he explains. “But of course, LED technology has advanced massively in the last five years, so when we showed them the T1 output and the CRI, they were impressed.”

The Wilminktheater en Muziekcentrum Enschede in-house team light all the orchestral shows themselves, and their lighting rigs are used by the vast majority of the incoming “received” shows in all venues. Additionally, they also stage their own productions for which all technical elements are delivered in-house by a technical team of fourteen, covering all departments and disciplines.

Activities across the three venues on this site and two more in Enschede city centre - that are also administered and run by the Wilminktheater Muziekcentrum Enschede organisation - account for around 670 diverse shows and events annually.

(Photos: Louise Stickland/Paul Clarke)

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