Montréal International Fireworks Competition Reports

I met with Yanick Roy, president of  Royal Pyrotechnie, thrice winner of the Gold Jupiter in 2003, 2009 and 2014 (jointly with Fireworks Spectaculars), winner of the soundtrack Jupiter in 2009, and the designer of this out-of-competition opening show for the 37th edition of the Montréal International Fireworks Competition.

Yanick is the most awarded designer in Canada and his last appearance in Montréal was for the opening show in 2018. A lot has happened since then, including the pandemic, war in Europe and the attendant inflation crisis as well as numerous supply chain issues that also affected the price and availability of products from China especially. Royal had acquired Quebec-based FAE in 2018 and had one of their best years ever in 2019. 2020 was a different story. Suddenly there were no more shows. Yanick had the idea, together with three or four colleagues, to put their efforts towards making portable hand sanitization stations. He said that this really helped sustain the company through the worst early days of the pandemic. Then, in 2021, they had the idea of doing special covid-safe shows where they would choose several secret sites (as many as five or six) in a town or city and then these would be only “announced” a few minutes before the show by the firing of warning shots. Of course, the residents of the town knew there would be fireworks, just not where. The first place they did this was Granby, in the Eastern Townships area of Quebec. It was a great success so they replicated the idea in other locales such as Cowansville, Gatineau and other cities. One of the challenges of these shows was getting enough crew due to the multiple simultaneous sites.

Last year, 2022, proved to be one of Royal Pyrotechnie’s best years ever. They made it through the pandemic, but everything is not like it was. Shipping costs increased across the board as did product prices, no matter whether they were imported from Europe or Asia. A big challenge now is getting enough staff as the pandemic changed the outlook of what a lot of people do for a living. Now, in 2023, a new threat has appeared. Previously, there were two main reasons a show might be cancelled – an order from SOPFEU (the forest fire prevention agency) or the forecast of bad weather. Now there’s a third and much more unpredictable threat: unhealthy air quality due to the vast numbers of forest fires. The issues isn’t the fireworks adds to the smoke – the amount produced in a typical display is minuscule anyway (plus it only is present for a few tens of minutes) – the problem is that the public health agencies can shut down outside events due to the unhealthy air quality. Due to the nature of such large events as the fireworks competition, it’s impossible to reschedule them as the police and all the other public agencies involved are scheduled months in advance. Yanick told me that around the St-Jean Baptiste holiday of June 24th he had displays cancelled or postponed for all three reasons. One that was rescheduled due to rain was cancelled the next day due to bad air quality. At the time of writing this report, this threat is looming for this opening display. Montreal had terrible air quality on Sunday but is currently good again – but the wind directions are fickle and it can change in a short time. A final decision will be made 24 hours in advance. Let’s hope the forecast remains favourable. Other issues that are starting to surface are due to the media overplaying the impact fireworks have on the environment. Almost all large festivals across the world incorporate fireworks, but the impact of the attendees themselves massively dwarves any impact the fireworks themselves have. Unfortunately, this fact is often missing in the discussion. At the recent International Symposium on Fireworks, held in Malta this past April, there was much discussion on having UNESCO declare fireworks and “intangible cultural heritage” and so rightly protect them like any other piece of heritage.

So the display! Like Yanick’s previous opening display in 2018, the theme was selected by the organizers as well as a list of pieces of music to choose from. As the theme is “A Tribute to Boy and Girl Bands”, multiple pieces for many different groups were on the list. Yanick said it was a fun challenge to come up with the final montage that would be captivating for the audience without a repetitive feel. He enlisted the help of producer Carl Müren of Productions Point A to help with the mixing as well as adding some extra oomph from him playing percussion! The final soundtrack has twenty three segments! In terms of pyrotechnic design, the display will not be using the floating pontoons of ramp 5 as Yanick felt they didn’t add enough for this kind of out-of-competition display for the setup time that would be involved. The script was carefully designed to optimize the number of firing modules required as this is Royal’s busiest season and they did many displays last weekend with many more for the upcoming Canada Day celebrations this coming weekend. The cue count is a little bit over 2500 – so there’s actually more than the display in 2018. Yanick said they have lots of exciting new one-shot and slice-cake products this time as well as some new shell types. Fans of large shells will not be disappointed as there are many in the 200 and 250mm calibre being used! Let’s hope the weather cooperates and we have a warm and healthy evening for the inaugural display of the 2023 competition!

I met with Michael Lutz, designer for Rozzi’s Famous Fireworks together with Paul Csukassy, Technical Director of the competition and the designer of the soundtrack for this special out-of-competition closing show as well as Maria-Grazia Gerbaudo, Panzera’s Export Director.

As with other shows this year, originally this Tribute to Genesis display had been planned for the 2020 season. Paul Csukassy had started working on the soundtrack in December 2019 and had finished it by February 2020, doing the final mixing at Studio Piccolo as usual. The 2020 season was cancelled and there was hope this display would be fired in 2021, but that wasn’t to be the case so Michael started work on it in spring of this year.

Thanks to the reverberations caused by the ongoing pandemic, it was not trivial for Rozzi to receive their containers of products as normal, Michael noting that everything they required for their usual 4th July rush was not received in time. Fortunately, the container of Panzera products, used in this display did arrive, but with a greatly increase costs compared to pre-pandemic times.

Michael said he’s a Genesis fan but without the deep knowledge of the band that Paul has. He normally formulates the overall design of a display before completing the soundtrack so these special closing shows where the soundtrack is already design represent a different way of working. He said that the music of Genesis is more symphonic than the usual rock-and-roll so this presented its own challenges when he designed this show, though he did enjoy doing it immensely. Of course, the show is also the chance for Panzera to showcase their new products – and the evolution to more environmentally friendly formulae and packing is an ongoing effort in the company. Maria-Grazia explained that they have three chemists working on new formulations and that now their products are 90% perchlorate-free. Also, they have moved to producing one-shots that are low smoke (due to using sulphur-free blackpowder) and that produce no waste on-site. In the past, one-shots would typically leave a lot of paper or plastic residues on-site after firing. For shells, now more than 90% of their products use only cardboard in their construction.

On the technical side, the display will use all the ramps – Michael particularly enjoying using ramp 5 and will feature around 4800 cues and over 5500 products. Michael said there will be a lot of 150mm shells and there will be around 10 300mm, and quite a few in the 200mm and 250mm calibre. Of course, Panzera are renowned for their cylinder shells and many of these are in the 150mm calibre but are much larger than a 300mm spherical shell. There will be some special ghost-effect shells used in the display with four colours as well as a special type of star-headed timed-salute shell called a truenetti.

Paul talked about his choice of bands for the closing show soundtrack and said he liked to go for groups that are essentially timeless and appeal to all generations. These have included the likes of Elton John, Madonna, Pink Floyd, and U2. For this soundtrack, there are twenty pieces, but some of the segments are quite short. He said that most of the montage was done before going to the studio, but they helped make the transitions perfect with the correct alignment of beats from the corresponding measures of the pieces. Paul said some of the links between pieces are as short as twenty seconds to give a flavour but without becoming too epic in sound. He said that he avoided discussing with Michael what the pyrotechnic realization will be as he wants it to be a surprise on the night. Paul was actually in a band in the 1980s and his musical focus was evident in the way he designed the sound track.

I met with Mark Kelsall, owner and director of Pyrotex Firworx, competing for their first time in Montreal.

Mark said he’d been interested in fireworks all his life and ended up founding Pyrotex in 1999, but whilst working another full-time job. He said he spent all his savings on the company and was also a DJ and semi-professional boxer as well. Eventually the company got a break when they competed at the UK fireworks competition in Southport. He quipped that he said to his then girlfriend that he’d give her the baby she wanted if he won (fully thinking his team would not win). Now his son is 10 years old, going on 11! Pyrotex work the same competition the next year but things didn’t really take off for them until Mark’s friend (and previous Montreal competitor) Graham Wilkinson suggested he compete in Monaco, which the company did, winning in 2012. They won again in 2014 against stiff competition. After this, his dream was to compete to win in Montreal. Mark said it’s not the biggest budget competition in the world (some of the Asian ones that title now) but it’s by far the hardest due to the length. He said 30 minutes is very difficult given the setup time is tight and, with the recent increases in the price of fireworks, the budget is not really high enough anymore.

Mark had visited Montreal in 2019 and worked on the Howard and Sons display – so he already had a feeling for how much work is involved, telling me the show design consumer over 600 hours. Originally it was scheduled for 2020 and the container was packed ready to go. Unfortunately, his storage location got flooded and he lost about 1/3 of the products in the container. To add insult to injury, the shipping company used this year (Hapag-Lloyd) created all sorts of difficulties for Pyrotex meaning that they could not ship the 200, 250 and 300mm finale shells they had intended for the display, due to paperwork issues. He said he also lost time repacking the container because HapagLloyd asked for all the pyro products to be in anti-static bags (which makes no sense as a metal shipping container is already a Faraday cage) plus they refused to include certain Chinese-origin products. This means the show we will see is not quite the one that was designed for 2020, unfortunately.

The show, however, will be complex one with 11 positions on ramp 3 and 7 pontoons forming ramp 5. According to Mark there are 248 FireOne firing modules with 6702 cues and over 10,000 one shots alone with an overall total of 12342(!) items. Products come from Vaccalluzzo (Italy), Zaragozana (Spain), RICASA (Spain), Europla (Spain) and various Chinese companies imported into the UK by Celtic Fireworks. Mark noted that it’s easier to source these from a UK supplier due to the volumes needed for shipping these days.

There will be some surprises in the show and I noticed that various “letter mines” were being setup. Mark said he doesn’t use any visualization software, but he often does drawings of designs. Mark said the soundtrack was chosen such that the audience will immediately recognize the musical tracks so that they get engaged with the display right away. He said the segment he was most anticipating was the “Time to Say Goodbye” one as this is particularly poignant for him – he had lost two close friends unexpectedly, one aged 55 and the other aged 39. We all shed a tear during the interview listening to these sad stories.

On a brighter note, the weather forecast is currently promising for this final in-competition display which is to be shot this coming Wednesday August 3rd.

I met with Nikola  Koletcić, representing Croatia with Mirnovec Pirotehnika for the second time following their debut in 2013 when Nikola was a mere 23 years old  (along with Damir Belanic who was 25 at the time, making the team one of the youngest ever). Nikola’s father, Franjo, is again on the team.

Since pandemic restrictions started to be eased, Mirnovec are back to being very busy, firing over 200 shows in the two main months of summer. Nikola said this was a special challenge for them competing in Montreal this year as tomorrow his company is doing a huge show to celebrate the opening of the Pelješac Bridge – a display that features 80 firing positions over 2.7km. Due to this, they have to rent firing equipment for their Montreal display and converting from the PyroDigit system they normally use to FireOne added about a month of effort to their preparations.

During the interview, Nikola noted they still have a lot of work to do and I did notice they were still addressing boxes of the many one-shots their display will use. In 2013, their display featured around 2200 cues and this time it will be over 8500 products. Quite the increase in complexity, though Nikola noted the great local crew at La Ronde make a big difference to their task-at-hand.

Their 2013 display feature many flame projectors on ramp 3, but Nikola notice they were not too impressive from the perspective of the audience so will not be using any this time, nor anything on ramp 4. On ramp 3 there will be 21 positions (compared to 15 last time) and there will be five pontoons forming ramp 5. No structures nor set pieces will be used. In terms of products, 70% of the material is from Italy (largely Parente/Pirico with one shots from San Pio too) and the remaining 30% is Mirnovec’s special production from their associated factory in China. Lovers of large calibre shells will be pleased as there will be eight 300mm (12″) shells and these will be fired in “presentation style”.

Nikola worked on both the pyrotechnic design and the soundtrack. He noted it’s difficult to keep audiences engaged for more than about 15 minutes but was sure that his soundtrack would do the job as he believed it to be the strongest in the competition this year. With its theme of dance, it features 13 different styles of dance music and each one will be introduced by an award-winning professional dancer (who is originally from Paris but now lives in Croatia with his Croatian wife). All of the tracks will be roughly the same length (around two and half minutes) and each one will feature unique colours and angles for the one-shots. Nikola noted they will use a wider range this time compared to 2013 as they now know what the site is capable of. He used Finale3D to visualize the entire display, too. At the moment, the weather forecast is perfect for this penultimate show of the competition-proper.

I met with Antonio Lieto, assisted by interpreter Alesio Nurka and with technical assistance from Michael Lutz (of Rozzi).

Antonio is the third generation of the Lieto family working in the family business, established around the time of WW2 by his grandfather, Cavaliere in Visciano, just outside of Naples. Assisted by his son Ugo (Antonio’s father), the family business grew, but suffered a tragic accident in 2002, killing one of the four brothers. Following this, Ugo rebuilt the factory with a profound focus on safety and technology and re-established the business in 2006. Now it is one of the most modern production facilities in Italy.

The company not only fabricates fireworks but also puts on large displays, the largest of which is fired in Naples over a length of coastline of approximately 3km and with a 45 minute duration. The company has also won competitions in Malta, Vienna, Madeira, Moscow and Vienna.

When asked about how it felt to be competing in Montreal, Antonio said he felt like a child having a dream come true as it has been his ambition to compete here for as long as he can remember. He said the news of the invitation brought him great joy, but also some trepidation as Montreal is the most prestigious competition. Even though the display in Naples is technically larger, the Montreal project, for him, is a much more complicated project.

The first step, for the company, was to specially manufacture the best quality fireworks possible for the display and then, secondly, work on the soundtrack. Antonio chose and mixed all of the soundtrack and it represents his love and pride of everything Italian. Almost all the fireworks in the display will be Italian, with the vast majority manufactured by Lieto, but also Roman candles from Panzera SRL and a very small number of cakes manufactured in China. Antonio noted his company has some specialties that will be included such as the so-called “ghost shells”.

On the technical side, the display will feature the use of all the firing ramps, including three pontoons forming ramp 5, but no special structures. There will be some special surprise effects included too. In terms of large calibre shells, there will be six 300mm (12″) shells and over forty 8″ (200mm) – but also many many cylindrical shells including, of course, studatas. The display features approximately 7,000 products and will be fired with the same number of cues (and, evidently, features a lot of one-shots). The team will be using FireOne to shoot the display. When asked about the soundtrack, Antonio said he’s particularly looking forward to seeing the Formula One theme brought to life, as well as Nessun Dorma (the finale) plus Tu Vuò Fà L’Americano and ‘O Sole Mio.

The weather for the interview was terrible, hence the indoor-only photos, however, the rest of the setup time is forecast to be warm and sunny. Fingers crossed for perfect conditions on Wednesday evening!

I met with Patrick Chandonnet, competing for Canada for the first time in Montreal with his company, Orion, based out of Shawinigan in Quebec. Orion is very much a family run company with several people from the Chandonnet family involved in the operation. The name of the company was suggested by Patrick’s mother, who loves the stars! Orion have competed in local and international competitions over the years including in Sherbrooke (Quebec) where they won the top prize in 2012 as well as in Macau (3rd place in 2016) and in Blackpool, UK, where Orion won the top prize in 2015. The company now puts on over 150 displays per year and Patrick said that he has been testing out elements of his Montreal competition display at different locations over the past couple of years! The company was originally scheduled to compete in Montreal in 2021, but the pandemic forced the cancellation of the competition that year.

The theme of the display is “Myths and Legends of Québec” and each will be illustrated by the different elements of the soundtrack. To tie everything together, the display will be narrated by Bryan Perro who is the author of the children’s fantasy fiction series Amos Daragon and also a fellow native of Shawinigan. Patrick designed the diverse soundtrack and mixed it at StudioD which is close to Orion. The soundtrack is a total of 35 minutes long, with the narration interspersed throughout the display to tell the story of the different myths and legends, such as The Blue Pig, The Lady in White and many others! The fireworks chosen will match each mythical element and will include a suspended waterfall for The Lady in White segment as well as many other special effects.

Orion will be using a large array of diverse products from Dancing Dragon and Pyragric (China, imported by Royal Pyrotechnie), Vulcan (Hong Kong), Mystical (China), Icon (Chinese line of Foti Fireworks), Sunny (China), Zaragozana (Spain), Igual (Spain), Vincente Caballer (Spain), Panzera (Italy), Guiliani (Italy), Rozzi (USA) and NextFX close proximity (USA). Patrick said this would avoid any repetition of effects!

On the technical side, the display was designed using ShowDirector, but without any 3D visualizations as Patrick said he prefers to do this in his head as this gives a better result and is faster than futzing around making everything look perfect on the screen. The show will use about 3800 cues with around 2100 one-shots and over fifty large shells in the 8″ – 12″ calibre. It will be fired using FireOne. All five firing ramps will be used too.

Patrick said there have been some logistical challenges with the final stock for the show arriving just this week, but everything is in place. His aim is to create a fantastic and exciting display first and foremost for the audience and hopes the jury will consider it for a Jupiter award! The weather is forecast to be perfect for the display too!

I met with Ferenc Tóth (Managing Director) and Anikó Tóthné Seres (Designer) of Nuvu (pronounced “New View”, representing Hungary for the first time in Montreal.

I had originally met Ferenc in Budapest in 2001, when he had invited me to photograph his company’s display for the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of Hungary. This link has photos of that historic display. I also saw him at some of the displays at the end of the 2019 season – leading me to think his company would be invited.

Indeed it was so – Ferenc had met the organizers at the Symposium on Fireworks in Mexico and, after visiting Montreal to see how the competition works, was subsequently invited for the 2020 season which, of course, ended up cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic. Well, not so much cancelled, as postponed as 2022 is the continuation of the competition series.

Ferenc formed a new company in the 2007/8 timeframe and named it Nuvu – which is pronounced “New View” – a name that had inspired him whilst attending a course in Australia in 2002 to improve his English skills. This company continues to present the St Stephen’s Day display every 20th August in Budapest and it’s now the largest display in Europe. Fired along 4 1/2km of the River Danube, from 7 barges, 65 pontoons and two bridges, it has a huge budget and brings out crowds of over 700,000 each time. He said both this display and the Montreal competition present huge challenges for the company, but in different ways. The Budapest display is very complex logistically (and is also 30 minutes in length – the whole evening also includes multimedia effects such as video mapping on the Budapest parliament building). Ferenc said Montreal is very challenging technically and he has wanted to compete for many years, but needed time for the company to “pull its trousers up” before they finally felt ready.

Ferenc designed the entire soundtrack for the display and passionately spoke about Hungarian culture and artistry. The Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály was famous for introducing a method of teaching music that lead to the now familiar concept of “do-re-mi”. The soundtrack is a historical journey through musical culture and includes a folk song that every Hungarian knows by heart, since it was written when the country formed just over 1,000 years ago. The version in the display is translated as “Spring Wind” and should bring tears to the eyes of all the Magyar people, including technical director Paul Csukassy, who also has Hungarian roots. Designer Anikó passionately described how she worked on the design and also how she wove in contemporary Canadian music for the latter half of the display. Hungarian is a unique language quite different to all others, so they had the band who performed the piece “The Red, The White, The Green” (colours of the Hungarian flag) do a special version in English.

On the technical side, all of the products used in the display are from Europe with Hamex from Slovenia, Igual and Europla from Spain, and Parente from Italy. Ferenc noted that they had learned in Budapest to use products that don’t create too much smoke when it’s hot and humid. All ramps will be used but ramp 5 will be special – five large pontoons and an inverted V shaped array of 30 smaller ones. There is a plan to use “pyrofiguration” which is a very nice term for pictures made with lancework – ramp 4 being the venue for these, should time permit their construction. The hope is to produce at least the iconic Hungarian Crown – as can be seen here in the photo I took in 2001.

Firing will be performed using 80 Galaxis 100-cue modules with over 3600 single shots alone and around 6700 total products. During the interview I noticed many circular one-shot holders – these will be mounted on three towers and many “letter-mines” were being setup as well. Finale3D was used to visualize the display during the design process.

The team were so full of passion and pride during the interview, which was interrupted by a call from the Hungarian Consul-general. It was truly a pleasure to welcome an old friend to Montreal.

After a three year hiatus, the first interview of the 36th Edition of the Montreal International Fireworks Competition. Due to some logistical challenges this year I was not able to speak to the designer, Patrick Brault, on the firing ramps at La Ronde.

First competition under a Canadian flag in 2012, Sirius Pyrotechnics was created after Miguel Caballer contacted Patrick Brault to be the Canadian distributer of his products. Patrick had been on the original La Ronde crew working on the competition when it started in 1985 and went on to be a founding member of Concept Fiat Lux (which subsequently merged with Ampleman to form GFA who then also recently restructured with Bob Deng of Lidu becoming CEO).

The name Caballer is an important one in Valencia, Spain, where there are many branches of that family involved in fireworks. With more and more complexity in shipping dangerous goods from China (and Europe) to North America by boat, various artisans and chemists who had been involved in the Antonio Caballer group in Spain (founded in 1877) setup a factory in Mexico in order to make large caliber shells for the North American market, using Spanish formulae and techniques. Miguel Caballer had worked in the Antonio Caballer factory in Valenica, but subsequently he was deceased and the Spanish factory closed. The Mexican facility is carrying the torch for its Antonio Caballer ancestry. Patrick had told me that he had fired the last of the original Spanish stock at his display in Montreal in 2012.

Fast forward to 2022 and Sirius Pyrotechnics essentially is a Mexican fireworks company with a full manufacturing facility and a large proportion of the products that will be used in the display come from there. The rest are imported from China.

This year’s display is technically more complex than the previous one fired in 2012 and features 90 32-cue firing modules. Ramp 2 features five firing positions with over 900 4″ shells and almost 1000 3″ shells, of which more than half are titanium salutes! Lovers of large calibre shells should be pleased that there will be around 75 8″, 10″ and 12″ shells! Ramp 3 and two pontoon positions on ramp 5 will have a multitude of one-shots and mines, totalling well over 1000 and there will be plenty of cakes including nauticals.

The theme of the soundtrack is “Bells and Drums” and there is a diverse range of music to support this. According to the official display description in Mexico there are often parades on Sundays through the streets to the sound of bells and drums and, similarly in Montreal on Sundays, we can hear the sounds of church bells. Thus the display “celebrates the colours and sounds of Sundays—in Mexico and Montréal.”

The weather is forecasted to be perfect – pleasantly warm with light breezes and low humidity!