150 Years of Passion
Designed by Guillaume Chartier and Simon David, Soundtrack by Guillaume Chartier; PyroDigital and FireOne firing with ~4200 cues
Montreal’s complicated summer continued with torrential rains for the morning of the display, though these cleared up to give a perfect evening for this first competition display for Canada’s oldest fireworks company, celebrating their 150th anniversary this year, since the inauguration of the competition 38 years ago in 1985. More on the weather later. Despite the rainy start to the day, the largest audience of the season, so far, was present, and enthusiastically cheered on the local team as they were presented on stage. This week, the protocol proceeded almost without incident, save for the lights on the bridge coming back on after the countdown for a minute or so as well as the Grande Roue flashing back fully on for a moment at the end of the countdown. A couple of minutes before the display began, the International Space Station flew over Montreal – a few minutes later and the crew would have possibly been able to watch some of the show!
The display began powerfully with dazzling fans of yellow-headed silver comets with volleys of large shells above. During this first segment it appeared that there might be minor problems with the cakes on ramp 3, with some positions not appearing to fire or finishing late – leading us to wonder if the morning’s heavy rains had had an impact. This first segment ended with large volleys of nautical shells, to cheers from the crowd as this is something that has been missing so far this year! In fact, many of the segments featured nautical shells, demonstrating that it is possible to use these even when the ramp 5 pontoons are in place.
There was a good variety of shells used during the display, but not quite the diversity used in the display by HC Fireworks. I found the display design was a little bit repetitive, with the same kinds of patterns and shells used several times. Also in some places we had effects from ramp 3 that were much brighter than the shells above or we would have loud cakes ending musical tracks that were more serene. Guillaume had mentioned in the interview that he has somewhat of an Asiatic style of design and this was evident a few times where a large shell would be the only item firing, allowing the audience to appreciate it without interference from lower-level effects.
The highlight of the display, for me, was the segment that used the Tanya Tagaq, an Inuk throat signer. The music was atmospheric and the fireworks included all sorts of sound effects with whistles and salutes and other noise makers of different types, including ground level salute (presumably manufactured by HFI as Guillaume had hinted during the interview). This was really something different to what we normally see.
Other portions of the display were less successful, with an imbalance between the different levels, with seemingly long periods of time with no low-level effects at all. I wondered if there were problems caused by the rain as ramps 3, 4 and 5 seemed to be less active than I’d have expected and at one point in the display we had more than 20 seconds of dark sky. Fortunately, everything seemed to work correctly for the finale, which was powerful, though the apotheosis was a tad short. The audience rose to their feet and cheered when the display was over.
Overall, this was a good display, but with a few weaknesses. I found the soundtrack edits sometimes clumsy between songs as well as pyrotechnic transitions, where recalcitrant cakes would continue firing – though this might have been related to the rain. Guillaume did tell me subsequently that around 30% of the products on ramps 3, 4 and 5 had not fired, even though everything had tested fine. This was a shame and might explain the feeling of imbalance between the levels that was apparent from time to time during the display. That said, I found the theme to be somewhat vague and we did have some repetition of patterns and effects. At the moment, HC Fireworks is the top contender for a Jupiter, with Hands and Macedos battling it out for the other two places. The remaining two displays will really have to fight to get onto the podium!