The Age of Rock
Designed by Michael Lutz; soundtrack by Michael Luzt; FireOne firing with ~6200 cues
Once again, mother nature decided to cause stress for the incontournables who venture to La Ronde for each display, no matter the weather. After a beautiful, albeit cool, summer’s day, two distinct lines of heavy showers managed to form. One went through a couple of hours before showtime, but with the heaviest rains and lightning off to the west. By 9:45pm, the rain had stopped and there was sufficient wind to move the smoke. Just past half way through the display, a few sprinkles manifested themselves, but nothing to detract from the first competition display by Rozzi and Michael Lutz since 2015.
An over-enthusiastic volley of nautical shells burst on the lake in the minute before the countdown commenced, leading us to wonder if everything was OK. At 9:59:50 the countdown started as normal, though the light’s on the Grande Roue again didn’t cooperate for a moment or two at the stroke of 10:00. The display began very powerfully, with barrages of correctly-timed nautical shells and volleys of powerful and colour shells above, together with titanium salutes. Within the first 30 seconds or so, it was clear this was going to be a display most definitely in-contention for a Jupiter.
We were treated to an excellent and well-edited soundtrack featuring many well-known classics of the Rock-n-Roll era, together with some pieces with a lessor rock-nature. There was a good contrast between very powerful pieces of music, with the fireworks reflecting this really well. Synchronization was perfect throughout the display and used artfully to highlight the music when needed. It became quickly apparent the quality of the pyrotechnics used, both low-level and in shells. Vivid colours, powerful bursts, long-lasting effects and plenty of studatas, farfalles and other Italian specialities. Panzera has some really well-done ghost shells now and these were fired so we could appreciate the effect clearly. I was also pleasantly surprised to see effects, possible from candles, that were very reminiscent of signature “sky-mines” that Rozzi used to manufacture in the US.
The low-level effects in the display were particularly well done, with very good use made of ramp 5. We were treated to a pink heart fired from an array of one-shots (with heart-shaped shells above) as well as a couple of smiley faces. I also enjoyed fans of crackling comets that really augmented the distorted guitar in AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell”. Hearing The Beatle’s “Here Comes The Sun” reminded me of the Gold Jupiter-winning display by Pains in 2007 together with the late Bob Burch’s famous photograph of a large sun set piece. Rozzi sequenced it differently, of course, but it was very effective with strobes representing winter and the ghost shells representing the sun. Serene moments were included with “magic carpet” nautical flares at several points, as well as the use of horse tails shells of different types. I enjoyed the back-and-forth horizontal firing use across ramp 3 in a couple of places too.
With such a good display, it’s hard to think of any negatives at all. I think maybe strobe shells effects were a little bit overused and some of the firing patterns across ramp 3 were similar from time to time. That said, the quality of all the products used was really high. The finale was a bit of an enigma though. It began fairly serenely but built into a thundering sequence of volleys of salutes, but at the very end, I was surprised there wasn’t a barrage of sky-filling studatas or some other large and dramatic effect. Instead, there was a modest barrage of mediocre shells that left a bit of an anticlimactic feeling given the intensity of the salutes that had preceded these. All that said, the audience jumped to their feet to give the team a well deserved standing ovation. There’s no doubt this display was very powerful and extremely well done – quite different from the also excellent HC Fireworks display by the Belgian team. At this point, it’s very hard to say which of those two is leading the pack. I suspect that it will be the choice of music that makes the difference. Certainly the final display from Team Finland has a high bar to surpass! What a great competition this is turning out to be!