Montréal International Fireworks Competition Reports

I met with Michael Lutz, co-designer of the show (his uncle Joe Rozzi is the other co-designer), Maria-Grazia Gerbaudo (Panzera’s Chief Sales Officer), Franceso Armigliato (Panzera’s Chief Technology Officer) and Paul Csukassy (designer of the soundtrack and Montreal International Fireworks Competition Technical Director) for what turns out to be my 100th interview since following the competition.

Michael was in the slightly unusual position this year in designing an in-competition display as well as this usual closing show with the usual collaboration between Rozzi and Panzera SRL. Rozzi are both customers and collaborators, being the main importer of Panzera products in the United States as well as providing collaboration with Panzera in terms of putting on large-scale displays. Indeed, this has been a big year for Michael and both companies as they competed in Cannes, Montreal and, of course, designed this closing show. Michael did tell me the design for this show was done before his in-competition display and he had the talents of his uncle, Joe Rozzi, to work on the design. The two split the work pretty much 50/50 and so it will be interesting to contrast their styles.

Michael said he had no input into the soundtrack, but this is usually the case for most of his customers who commission a display. He gets the soundtrack and then has to design the display to fit. For this year’s tribute to Metallica, he said it was a joy as he loves the band and they were the first concert he attended. He said that both he and his son have “Master of Puppets” as their favourite Metallica track. On the technical side, the display was designed using Finale3D and will be approximately 5000 cues with all ramps being used except for the top control room, ramp 4. 95% of the products used are from Panzera and the remaining 5% are various cakes and slices. There will be plenty of large shells with 300mm, multiple 250mm and 200mm shells. No special effects or structures, just classic display design.

Maria-Grazia said that there have been lots of changes at the Panzera factory over the past couple of years, with new shell-wrapping machines and other automation, but one of the biggest changes has been to eliminate the use of all plastics in shells and design a new range of one-shots that produce zero debris. These are made of plastic that can be recycled, but the shots themselves produce nothing that isn’t consumed by the device itself. Francesco stressed that the company has worked hard to eliminate the use of perchlorates in 90% of their products, this being important for certain clients that shoot large numbers of displays in sensitive sites with water features. Despite the changes in the chemistry, Francesco and Maria believe their colours have never been brighter nor more vivid than now and we should expect to see a lot of these in the display, including their range of ghost shells and “Medusa Polyps”. Maria said that Panzera is doing well, exporting six 40′ containers per year from Italy now, though with an increase in the numbers of one-shots versus shells in the product mix. And, of course, Rozzi are a key customer for the North American market.

Last, but not least, Paul explained how he crafted the Tribute to Metallica soundtrack. He said he was quite a large fan of the band in the 1980s and 1990s, but lost some interest from the 2000s onwards, until the release of their latest album, 72 Seasons. He said he spent a lot of time going through all of their repertoire, first selecting the opening and closing tracks, and then working to build a soundtrack with good dynamics in between these flanks. The length of some of the songs makes this difficult and he sought to find tracks that would blend well together when woven together, with perhaps a common note or chord. Some songs were too long to use even a full verse or chorus, so he included important elements such as a guitar solo etc. As in previous years, the mixing was done at Studio Piccolo.

I met with Johan Holländer who is representing Finland for the first time with his company Joho Pyro. Johan said he had founded the company around 2003, selling consumer fireworks (like many pyros, he had had a fascination with all things pyrotechnic since childhood) and then obtained his professional licence around the same time so he could also do displays. His company is based in the region of Åland, which is an island in archipelago between Finland and Sweden.

Since then, his company has competed in many different competitions in Europe, garnering the Bronze and Silver prize at Pyronale in Berlin, as well as the public prize plus competing in Cannes and winning the Vestale d’Argent as well as the Prix du Public. After this, Johan was contacted and told he would be ready to compete in Montreal. He said he has read every report and article on this website and used this information as a reference for what works or doesn’t work in the competition, referring to your author as The Maestro! He further commented that this website serves as an invaluable reference for everyone in the industry who wants to compete at the greatest fireworks competition there is. Previous competition shows in Cannes and DaNang were not as complex as this show, the most complex he’s ever worked on. Johan said he was humble but would also be going for Gold. With such a complex show, he brought a large crew in order to be able to complete the setup in time and said he had avoided design elements that would be too time-consuming (so the display is eschewing ramp 4, for example).

With Montreal in mind for many many years, Johan has been stockpiling interesting products, ready for this display – he said some shells were up to 20 years old. These include products from Yung Feng and Zaragozana that are simply not available anymore. The display will use an absolute panoply of products from all over the world, including Europla and Ricasa (Spain), Panzera, Parente, Vaccalluzzo, Santa Chiara (Italy), Hamex (Slovenia), San Tai (Taiwan), Zink (Germany), Yung Feng (Taiwan) as well as JoHo’s own label Chinese products! Johan said he will be using many different special effects, including all kinds of whistles, howlers, screamers and hummers. Even more impressive, Johan said he will not use the same shell effect in more than one segment of the show. Ramp 5 will be used and this is not preventing the use of nautical shells and effects.

He said his design style is on the traditional side, trying to avoid appearing too robotic with too many one-shots (of which there are around 1700) and he avoids any cake larger than a single slice, saying their intensity is too unpredictable. Johan said the theme was tough and took months of work to whittle down around 50 tracks to the approximately 9 they are using. The soundtrack was mixed by Swedish crew-member Martin Igelström, who is a music producer for the The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. The theme is a twist on a rock-n-roll soundtrack with every song being a cover version. The theme is divided into three thematic parts with special effects in between each … and a few surprises along the way. Johan said it’s important for him to do a theme which will wow the audience as well as produce some tears along the way!

A final note on the technical side, the show will feature 5600 cues, fired using FireOne and for large shell aficionados will be a delight, with fifty large-calibre shells and a tally of 9 300mm shells – the largest such inventory in the competition this year. Johan said this is a “Can’t miss” show for the audience to come to La Ronde and I could feel the passion in his every word. Let’s hope the weather cooperates!

I met with Michael Lutz of Rozzi’s Famous Fireworks, competing for his second time in Montreal and the 7th for the company. Michael last competed in Montreal in 2015 and, since then, designed the opening show in 2017 as well as the closing shows in 2018, 2019 and 2022. For various somewhat complicated logistical reasons, Rozzi were only brought in as a competitor around the February/March timeframe, rather than the end of last year. This presented some challenges as Michael was also competing in the Gold Vestale year in Cannes – his show being fired just last weekend. However, Michael said the Cannes design had been completed before he embarked on the Montreal project. Back in 2015, Michael said it was the largest show he had ever designed but, on paper, this year’s show is even more complex.

Michael noted that, on a complex site like in Montreal, a lot of time can be lost if attention to detail and preparation is not attended to. He noted that he carefully designs his shows such that all the same type of product are in a given rack or all of the candles in a fan are in firing order. He said this extra preparation makes for a faster setup and easier checking and verification, noting that in his show in Cannes last week there were no visible errors at all. Speaking of Cannes, Rozzi were the first American team to ever compete and had won the Prix de Jury in 2019 which afforded their participation in this year’s Gold Vestale competition.

For the choice of theme for the display, Michael said that story-telling themes (such as the one he had used in 2015) take a lot of time to prepare and so the decision to use the Age of Rock as a theme was expedient due to the compressed timeline. That said, Michael said he’d been listening to a lot of rock-n-roll music over the past year or so and hence his headspace was already in the correct place to design the soundtrack, noting that it is musically broader than people might imagine as it includes tracks from the likes of Queen, Prince and Tina Turner. The finale piece will, in fact, be a tribute to the late artist. He noted that there will be pieces of music that everyone recognizes due to the fact that this type of music really has staying power. All of the music used has a lot of movement but with a variety of rhythm and pace, making it easier to design a soundtrack that is not just at a fixed tempo.

On the pyrotechnic side, great use will be made of the floating pontoons forming ramp 5 as well as a large presence on ramp 3 as there are a total of 3700 one-shots (all manufactured by Panzera) and a total of 6500 cues. Panzera is supplying the bulk of the products which will, of course, include their signature cylindrical shells (though this means there will be no 250mm nor 300mm shells). For most everything else, Foti’s Chinese brand, Ikon, will be used. Nautical shells and cakes will also be a feature of the display.

Michael said he’s really trying hard for a Jupiter and has put his heart into the display, despite the short timescale and noted that the soundtrack took him back to childhood with memories of listening to his father’s rock albums. He said he had recently bought a purple vinyl copy of a Prince album!

Hands Fireworks, is technically Canada’s oldest pyrotechnics company (founded in 1873 by William Hand) and last competed in Montreal at the inaugural competition in 1985. They returned for the 35th anniversary edition of the competition where they are performed the out-of-competition opening show. Finally, after 38 years, they’re back as full competitors.

It’s interesting to read what George Plimpton wrote in his seminal book “Fireworks” about Canadian fireworks in general and Hands in particular.

The structure of Hands is somewhat complicated now as there is a relationship between Hands, Lidu (Chinese manufacturer), and GFA (display operator). I met with Guillaume Chartier who has an equity interest in both Hands and GFA, as does Bob Deng, who also has a stake in Lidu. To make a complex story simple, Guillaume stated that Hands is an importer and distributer whilst GFA is a display operator, though Hands does do some displays in locales outside of the range of GFA. Hands’ manufacturing side (they used to have a factory in Papineauville in Quebec), became HFI and they still manufacture some speciality products, though their CEO, John Witherspoon, retired recently. Guillaume said he was proud to use some Canadian-made HFI products in his show and that we would “know which they are”.

Guillaume told me that the soundtrack was created through a brainstorming process – with everyone in the company contributing to a list of about 150-200 tracks. He said it was very important to him to fully represent the founders of Canada, so there are an equal number of songs in French and English as well as one in Inuktitut for a final sountrack of 14 pieces – all by Canadian artists. Simon David, a designer from GFA, also did the design of two of the songs and Guillaume left it as a challenge to the audience to work out which ones they are! Guillaume also noted that it was essential to include music from the First Nations for a fireworks show that represents Canada as they “are part of our history”.

The name of the theme is “150 years of Passion” but Guillaume emphasized that it’s really passions, plural. Guillaume listed several, but, of course, the most important one is his passion for fireworks, which he’s had as a child and subsequently he got his professional licence when he was 18 years old. Passion for music is important and he noted that co-designer Simon helped with this as he’s quite a bit younger than Guillaume. With his involvement in the importation of fireworks, Guillaume has spent quite a significant amount of time in China and he said his experience of watching displays in Asia has strongly influenced his design style. The design of the show took many months of his time, though he was working his daytime job at the same time. His aim is for the public to feel the same passions and emotions as he and the rest of the team had put into the display.

From a technical point of view, the majority of products are from Lidu in China, though there will be both Vicente Caballer and Igual from Spain as well as Mystical and Dancing Fireworks from China as well as the aforementioned Canadian-made HFI products. Full use will be made of all five ramps, with 17 positions on ramp 3, positions with 100mm mines on ramp 4 and five positions on ramp 5 to give greater depth. Guillaume had prepared special visual aids for the setup crew that are colour-coded to ensure everything is assembled and positioned correctly. There will be around 1200 one-shots and a total cue-count of around 4200. Guillaume said there were more than 40 large calibre shells (200mm and up) including three 300mm shells from Igual. The display is being fired using PyroDigital on ramps 1 and two and FireOne for the other three ramps. Finale3D was used for the show design and visualization. I was also happy to hear there will be large nautical shells and that the test went well without causing any issues with ramp 5.

I met with Cliff Hooge, founder of HC Pyrotechnics (HC being Cliff’s initials reversed) and representing Belgium for his company’s first time in Montreal. Belgium has only participated once in Montreal, in 2002 with the company Hendrickx & Lefeber Fireworks. This was one of the oldest fireworks companies in the world, being founded in the 18th Century. Cliff started to work for them around 1997 when he was a 15 year old student – his job being to help clear-up after displays. Around 2009, Cliff started HC Pyrotechnics and essentially managed Hendrickx for two years. Hendrickx had partnered with Panzera and both companies had collaborated on the manufacture of certain civilian pyrotechnic devices. Following the Enschede disaster in the Netherlands in 2000, it became impossible to maintain a manufacturing facility in Belgium as the permits required to continue operation became impossible to obtain due to residential areas having encroached on land close to the factory. In 2020, Guy Hendrickx passed away leaving no more Hendrickx involvement in HC. Guy had been a mentor to Cliff in many aspects of the business.

HC Fireworks is well known for organizing the annual Knokke Heist fireworks competition, held every year on the beach of the Belgian resort town. Cliff said his company designs and fires the closing show each year and he had tested some ideas for his potential Montreal display at last year’s closing – where the audience had reacted favourably. Since starting HC, Cliff has taken his company though many competitions in Europe, including Monaco, Hannover, Szczecin and Courchevel where the company won the 1st prize this year. Cliff had visited Montreal once in 2010 to see the Surex display and was contacted by the organizers afterwards – they found out how young he was and said he needed to win a few competitions first, which, as the above list attests, he did!

HC is very closely associated with Hamex of Slovenia where they provide display design and firing logistics whilst Hamex manufactures items specifically for the displays. However, following a terrible accident earlier this year, Cliff said Hamex were unable to manufacture some of the things he would have liked. Aleš Ham was injured in the accident and is on the way to making a full recovery – his son Domen is on the HC crew in Montreal. Cliff said Hamex are very closely involved with HC and the majority of the shells in the display will be from their stock. Other manufacturers include Luso (Portugal), Ricasa (Spain), Giuliani, Parente and Scapato (Italy) as well as various Chinese manufactures for cakes and some shells. There will be 8″, 10″ and 12″ shells in the display too. The ramp 5 pontoons will be in use but not ramp 4. Cliff said there will be some surprises but didn’t elaborate further. You have to be there on the night to see!

Cliff used Finale3D for the design and said he was one of the first users of this program, starting around 2010. For the theme, he said he had picked legendary artists where 70% of the audience would know each song, so everyone should know something and will be able to sing along. For the sound design, he said he was using an approach (after researching on this blog) whereby there would be no break between songs and had tried to do use some unique approaches in the pyrotechnical design. The show will be shot using the fireTEK wireless firing system (designed in Romania) and will have approximately 4,000 cues shot from 80 64-shot modules.

I met with Fernando Macedo, patriarch and CEO of Macedos Pirotecnia, together with Diogo Vasconcelos, who designed the show and the soundtrack. Macedos had last competed in Montreal in 2017 with a display also designed by Diogo, that had garnered them the Bronze Jupiter. [Your author was part of the team from Jubilee Fireworks of the UK that won the Gold Jupiter that same year].

Diogo said that the team had learned a lot from their Bronze-winning display and intended to put that knowledge to good effect for this year’s display. Since then, the company has competed in many festivals and competitions in places such as Brno, Czech Republic, Hannover, Germany as well as in Monaco and Spain.

Fernando said the company had a difficult two years during the first part of the pandemic and are still having issues with manufacturing due to supply chain constraints as well as a shortage of workers for their factories in Portugal. Fernando said that about 30-35% of the products used in this week’s display are from their factories, with the balance coming from Italy and Spain (including products from Ricasa) as well as from China. He said that he would have liked to send more Macedos products but anything specially made for Montreal would not be certified for transport (so would not even make it onto the boat, even though it would be allowed into Canada under the special rules for fireworks competitions). He further said it is much harder now with the amount of paperwork required than it was in 2017, though the company were able to ship 1.1G products, though the largest calibre shells used will be 200mm (which are packaged specially as 1.3G).

Diogo said the design of the display was essentially their first one done completely with Finale3D. He said they had made quite a few video calls to Drew Espenshade, Finale3D representative in the US, in order to best work with the effects the program has included which didn’t necessarily match Macedo’s own products directly. Diogo also noted that they had been working on the design of the display from the moment they were notified in December 2022 right up until the container left the port and that they were still doing a few minor tweaks on site.

From a technical point of view, the display is being fired using 125 32-cue FireOne modules for a total cue count of just over 3500 but Diogo noted that there would be a lot more effects than cues. This time, they will be using five pontoons forming ramp 5 as well as a special surprise on the top of ramp 4. No further details of this were given! Maximum calibre of shells will be 200mm and some of these will contain special Portuguese-style effects that were difficult to describe but involved special kind of scintillations. I had made a similar comment in 2017 too!

The theme of the display is entitled “Tune In” and represents a day listening to the radio – with different times of day having different feelings and energy levels. Diogo said the music was mixed in-house by the Macedos production team and is a much more complex soundtrack (with around 23 tracks) and has a mix of all sorts of genres including many Portuguese styles including Fado. Diogo noting that he was particularly looking forward to the Lusitana Paixão track and also mentioned a special tribute to Queen as it’s the 25th anniversary of Freddy Mercury’s death. The finale will be full of adrenaline too – with plenty of noise, in pure Portuguese style.

I met with Dmytro Kuchugura, Tetiana Kuchuhura, Natalia Kuchugura and Nina Kravets – representing the Ukrainian company Dance of Fire, competing in Montreal for their first time.

In many ways, this was not a normal interview as this is the first time a team from a country that’s actively at war has been invited to participate. The war actually started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea (which had been part of Ukraine since 1995) but really intensified with the invasion of Ukraine itself in 2022. As can be imagined, the logistics of a fireworks company completely changes in such circumstances, let alone the authorizations required to even attend. Flights from Ukraine to Canada are not available so the team had to drive to Poland and then get to Vienna where they took a flight to Montreal.

The company itself, Dance of Fire, was founded by the Matriarch of the Kuchugura family, Tetiana in 2001 after buying consumer fireworks for her 17 year old daughter’s birthday party. The company expanded to include professional fireworks and organizing both traditional and pyromusical displays. They attended the 10th International Symposium on Fireworks in 2007 which was held in Montreal and asked if they could compete, citing a competition they had participated in in Crimea. They were told their information had been recorded and they would be contacted.

In the mean time, Dance of Fire competed in many festivals and competitions in both the European Union as well as Ukraine and Crimea, though the latter stopped after the annexation. Prior to this, they were producing large stadium shows of up to an hour of fireworks at various locations in Ukraine with audiences up to 12,000. Dmytro told me they had come up with this concept and it was very popular, with such themes as “Around the world in 60 minutes” or various tributes to Eurovision (Ukraine won 3 times and came second 3 times as well – their most recent win was in 2022.

As for Canada, they participated in GlobalFest in Calgary in 2018 as well as in Timmins in 2017 where they took second prize. Several participations at the Malta International Fireworks festival together with festivals in France, Germany and finally in 2019, in the UK, they won 1st Prize at the Blackpool Pyromusical World Championship. With all these competitions under their belt, together with some prizes, they were set to compete in Montreal. Competing in Europe post 2017 had become more difficult, too, as all products had to be authorized with a CE sticker for use in the European Union. Dance of Fire were importing directly from China, but not products that had the right stickers, nor for any others from the non-EU Eastern European former soviet states. So this made things more complicated, but Dance of Fire had forged strong bonds with Macedos of Portugal (who produce a huge New Year’s Eve show in Madeira every year) and even participated in a festival in Funchal. This bond would prove useful for Montreal.

Then the pandemic hit, followed by the invasion of Ukraine. Complicated times, but the bonds Dance of Fire had made during their participation in European festivals and competitions meant that they had a means to import fireworks from Europe to Canada for their participation in Montreal. Indeed, Andre Macedo is part of their crew. Dance of Fire’s arsenal, therefore, includes products from China, Portugal, Spain and Italy with Macedos providing the largest non-Chinese content, together with Parente of Italy and various companies from Spain in smaller amounts.

The designer of the show, Tatjana Burdiak, unfortunately is not in Montreal, but she used Finale3D for the work and Dmytro told me they are firing with FireOne and using around 3700 cues with “14,000 effects”. They will be using all five ramps, with 9 floating positions on the pontoons of ramp 5, a small setup on ramp 4 (on top of the control building) as well as 9 main positions on ramp 3 with 5 supporting positions as well as five positions on ramp 2s and 1. This will be their biggest show outside of their special stadiu shows, but it is to my understanding that the logistical challenges of the ongoing war mean that it will probably be smaller than other competing shows, at least in terms of the amount of product. That said, Eric Tucker famously was able to use product judiciously so as to make a show look big and well-designed enough to win the Gold Jupiter four times in Montreal.

The soundtrack was designed and mixed by the company’s founder, Tetiana, and features a mix of popular Ukrainian and Canadian pieces. Indeed, one of the Ukrainian pieces is from the 2022 Eurovision win “Stefania” by the Kalush Orchestra.

Following the stresses of last week with a first-ever show cancellation due to smoke and smog from the ongoing forest fires, this week looks to be hot and humid, but with good air quality. A go/no-go decision is imminent but Dmytro is optimistic as he said he commanded todays heavy lunchtime rains to clear the air. When asked about what this show represents, he said the people of Ukraine want to sincerely thank the people of Canada for their support in the ongoing war and invite them to enjoy a spectacle of Ukrainian and Canadian music. He said he had met many Ukrainians on the streets of Montreal at the Jazz festival and they’re all extremely excited and proud that their compatriots are representing their beloved homeland.