Montréal International Fireworks Competition Reports

Heart of Italy

Designed by Antonio Lieto; FireOne firing with ~7000 cues (assisted by Michael Lutz)

For the midpoint of the competition, muggy summer weather meant that the first radar consultation of the season was required prior to showtime. Threatening clouds did, indeed, produce some rain a couple of hours before the display, but these left the area with a rainbow in their wake.

Pre-show rainbow

The display featured a theme representing a diverse selection of Italian music, with a good range of rhythm and pace. Synchronization was flawless throughout, not only with the one-shots and mines, but also the shells including the many magnificent studatas. Ramp 5 was well used and contained five pontoons, not the three I had thought from the interview. There were some “magic carpet” type nautical flares but otherwise no actual nautical shells.

The quality of the fireworks was very high indeed, with a good range of effects and bright, long-lasting stars. The studatas were really excellent with great timing and we were treated to many different types of “horsetail” shells with various different effects. I particularly enjoyed the shells with heart-shaped pistils that were surrounded with dark stars that turned to crackle. Many shells had pistils, but typically we only had one or two colour changes (red, white, green being the most popular). The strobe shells and silver rain effects were also very good. There were some ghost shells, but they burst so large that it was difficult to appreciate, at first, that they were, in fact, ghost shells. It doesn’t help that the Montreal sky is not quite dark enough to really appreciate the effect.

The pyromusical design was very clean, though perhaps the firing patterns were a little bit conservative and predictable. This style did, though, all for the high-quality shells to be seen in all their glory. As expected, the finale was fantastic, building to a dazzling and deafening climax, leading to the audience stamping their feet in appreciation and standing up to give the team a well deserved standing ovation.

This was a really enjoyable display with a strong soundtrack with a good variety of rhythm and pace. There were a few errors in the setup, where we’d see the wrong shell firing from one position and a couple of places where the wrong produce was used in a sequence of one-shots. These are very minor quibbles though. The brilliance of the fireworks, together with the intense finale definitely put the Italians on the podium at this stage in the competition, along with Hungary and Canada. That said, there’s still two strong competitors ahead! What a competition it’s shaping up to be this year!

Quebec Myths and Legends

Designed by Patrick Chandonnet; FireOne firing with 3800 cues

A perfect summer’s evening, with the warmest temperatures (around 28C) of the competition so far this year, welcomed the debutant Canadian team from Shawinigan, Quebec. And what a debut display it was, with an excellent performance! I suspect that it was a busy setup again as the final fireworks, atop a large cherry-picker, were installed just an hour before showtime.

I was a bit concerned that a display with a large amount of narration could feel disjointed or anti-climactic, but Bryan Perro’s explanations of each of the legends that formed the theme was very well integrated into this almost 34-minute long display. Beginning with a 12″ shell, the first part of the display was the most serene, but the overall feeling bold and bright, enhanced by the most epic soundtrack since the joint display be fellow Canadian Royal Pyrotechnie / Fireworks Spectaculars on the same date (July 16th) in 2014 – a display that was awarded the Gold Jupiter.

The large array of manufacturers present in Orion’s arsenal meant that they essentially achieved almost no repetition of fireworks during the display, though there were some design elements that were reused from time to time. Great use was made of all the space with the full horizontal and vertical aspects of the display area utilized completely. One-shot sequences produced well defined “wave” and “mountain” effects and the angles were very precise giving a clean design feel. Fantastic nautical shells of 6″ calibre bust dramatically in the lake, causing me to exclaim a large “wow”. There were quite a few wow moments as the epic music allowed for several mini-finales during the display.

The range of effects used was impressive with some really fantastic “ghost” shells with very well defined colour animations. Lots of really good studatas, too, and many other high-quality shells, especially the beautiful and dazzling strobing horsetail shells. We were also treated to some double-ascension girandolas as well as note-synchronized flash pots. The cherry-picker was used as a high platform to launch a waterfall for the segment representing “Our Lady of Montmorency” (a waterfall just outside of Quebec City), but I found the fall was rather narrow for the distance from the audience and not quite as bright and sparkly as it should be. The fan cakes fired from either side of the cherry-picker’s basket did give a good effect.

The all-gold finale was rather longer than previous competitor, Nuvu’s, and brought the display to a powerful end, though it lost a bit of power for a few moments before the ultimate end. The large audience gave the Canadian team a very well deserved standing ovation, stamping their feet loudly on the metal grandstands.

Overall, this was an excellent display indeed with a good clean design making use of the entire site. I found the soundtrack to be powerful, but this was also a downside – it was just a bit too epic, allowing for few segments that were more serene, or limiting how serene they could be before the music rose to epic levels again. There were a couple of small mistakes where the wrong set of shells on one side appeared, but these didn’t distract from what was a truly excellent and enjoyable display. The level of the competition (ignoring Mexico) this year is already very high with this and the previous Hungarian display deserving of a place on the podium.

Hungarians in the Big world Evolution of the Hungarian Music Culture!

Designed by Anikó Tóthné Seres, Soundtrack by Ferenc Tóth; Galaxis firing with 80 modules and ~6000 cues.

A pleasantly cool summer’s evening was the backdrop for the Hungarian team’s debut display in Montreal, though, unfortunately, the light winds were not always in a good direction, leading to a murkiness in the early part of the program as smoke made its way directly to the audience.

It was evident that a complex setup had been achieved, though not quite everything that was described in the interview was actually present on site. I had the feeling when I conducted the interview that the team were being very ambitious. Five days of setup sounds like a lot in theory, but it goes fast. Indeed, even an hour before showtime, workers could be seen on ramp two finalizing the installation of what had promised to be three towers, but turned out to be two. Two large set pieces which Ferenc had said he might include, if there was time, were not there. All that said, the lake did have the promised five large pontoons and two columns of 15 smaller ones, extending from the ends of ramp three perpendicular to the audience and linking up to the row of larger ones.

As the display began, it became very quickly evident that all of the pyrotechnic material used was of very high quality with vivid colours, long burn-times and complex and varied effects, in stark contrast to the previous Mexican entrant. Despite the wind direction and early smoke in the display, it was still vivid and bright. Various special effects were used during the display. During the Sound of Music piece “letter mines” were used to highlight the Do Re Mi lyric. Other special effects included note-synchronized flashpots; sequenced flights of stars from ramp 3 making patterns, including the “69″ in the Summer of ‘69 Bryan Adams song as well as pattern shells with colour changing stars.

The extensions to ramp 3, formed of two columns of 15 pontoons added and interesting extra dimension to the display, but also some constraints as it appeared that most of the low-level action was contained within these boundaries. We have definitely had visually wider displays in the past, but these extra pontoons still added a certain depth to the display. The two towers were not used so many times during the display and, due to their distance from the audience, did not add as much as might be expected. To be effective I would think they would need to be at least 3x higher – which is really impractical.

The soundtrack was excellent and very well edited. The only negatives were that sometimes the fireworks would stop before the music. It was clear that pauses between pieces had been deliberately added and these were effective at allowing the smoke to clear – just that in a couple of places they were perhaps slightly too long (at least it felt that way when the fireworks stopped before the music). The synchronization with the music was very good throughout – with lots of note-synchronized effects and runs of one-shots complementing the music very well and there was a great variety of intensity and pace. The Hungarian Folk Song “Spring Wind”, done largely in gerbs and one-shots on the pontoons and ramp 3, with support from the towers was one of the stand-out segments.

Note must be made, again, of the very high quality of all the products used. Shells with two pistils, all colour-changing. I think I counted up to 5 or 6 colour changes in some of the largest shells. Lots of really good farfalles and studatas as well as colour changing horsetail shells. Even the dim gold effects were bright and sky-filling, enveloping the whole site and trailing to the lake. One small criticism, though, sometimes there were two many different levels of effects/shells at the same time and this lead to some of the really beautiful large shells being hidden by lower-level ones, leading the display to appear less “clean” design-wise than it could have been. As the shells were particularly good, this was a shame sometimes.

During the interview, Ferenc told me he had dreamed of coming to Montreal for more than 20 years, but that his company had to learn to “pull up their trousers” first. I think they certainly achieved a very high quality display indeed, especially given their debutante status. I think they also learned that the site is bigger on the ground than it is on paper and that they really had to work very hard to get everything assembled. The end result was definitely worth the efforts of the team and the audience gave them a well deserved standing ovation afterwards. They have set the bar really high and are definitely a contented for a podium position.

Bells and Drums

Designed by Patrick Brault; FireOne Firing with 90 32-cue modules and ~2600 cues

The first in-competition display of the 36th edition of the Montreal International Fireworks Competition was blessed with perfect weather for the setup, but, unfortunately, the large audience was subjected to light winds blowing smoke almost directly at them. The smoke contributed to making the display appear somewhat dim, but more on that later.

I did not have very high expectations for this display. Despite a potentially interesting and rhythmic soundtrack, the design, as presented to me during the interview, appeared simplistic and conservative. This was surprising as the designer is very familiar with the site but didn’t appear to want to push any creative boundaries, eschewing the use of ramp 5 and nautical products, save for some “magic carpet” type flares/fountains. Often a designer will avoid nautical products when using ramp 5 so it was disappointing that, without ramp 5 present, there were so few nauticals used. As was evident from the setup, the design was simplistic with a relatively low cue count by recent standards and relatively few positions (seven) on ramp 3. Sometimes this is offset by using a wider variety of firing angles, but this was not the case in this display.

On the pyrotechnic side, despite the relatively simple design, the display was dense and active most of the time, with some good note-synchronized sequences (though with limited variety in effects and patterns used). The biggest issue I found was the quality and variety of the products used. First of all, there were many low breaks or shells that fired as mines – more in this display than I recall in any other over the past 29 years of covering the competition. Secondly, many of the larger shells broke with poor symmetry or with few stars lighting. Thirdly, many of the shells were either dim and/or had weak colours. It was clear that the Chinese shells used in the display were, in general, brighter and of purer colours than the Mexican products. The variety of products used was also rather limited with much repetition of effects throughout the display and a somewhat chaotic mix with many assymetries. Even the one-shots were largely of mediocre quality with inconsistent heights and, again, weak colours and brightness, though some were better than others (such as the whistles and salutes).

The soundtrack was enjoyable and approached what appeared to be the finale with AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells. This was enjoyable with a thunderous blast of hundreds of salutes fired simultaneously. Then the designer appeared to completely lose the plot with the bizarre final two minutes to Luis Marino’s Chanteur de Mexico. After the energy of Hell’s Bells, this fell completely flat with very few shells fired and a completely out of place piece of music. It caused a great feeling of anti-climax, even though there was another volley of salutes at the end and then a few random large shells. It was as though the designer wanted to sabotage any chance of winning. Very bizarre.

Back in 2012 when Sirius last competed, as well as Archangel in 2015, one of the goals was to showcase the production of Spanish-type shells of large calbre in Mexico, to circumvent the increasing difficulty of shipping anything over 6″ calibre from China. Being able to service the North American market by road transport seemed like a great idea. Tragically, if this Sirius display was supposed to showcase these products (forgetting about the design of the display and the soundtrack ) then it was a failure. They were largely of poor quality: dim effects, asymmetrical breaks, low quality (too many low breaks or stars not igniting). A few were of reasonable quality (such as some of the farfalles and some gold glitter effects as well as the titanium salutes), but otherwise, they missed the mark. Of course, the direction of the smoke made the shells appear dimmer and less saturated than ideal conditions would have, but the other issues were definitely present.

All that said, the audience did enjoy most of the display so it’s a shame the deficiencies mean that it will be very unlikely to appear on the podium.

Three years after the 35th Edition of the Montreal International Fireworks Competition concluded, and with two years of an ongoing pandemic responsible for this delay, perfect weather was on hand for the return of the fireworks to La Ronde. A show, honouring essential workers, had been promised for Labour Day weekend in 2021 and was preceded by several “surprise” shows in different Montreal arrondissements, but this was cancelled as the ongoing public health conditions started to deteriorate towards the end of summer, to the great disappointment of both the public and the organizers. Even back in Spring 2020, there was a hope that, by the summer, conditions would have improved enough to hold the competition, but this was not the case.

So in a La Ronde first, the opening show of the competition (a feature that was put in place in 2014 for the special 30th edition) was preceded by a rework of this special display that had been scheduled for Labour Day weekend 2021. As the theme had originally been a tribute to essential workers in Quebec, the soundtrack already featured renowned Quebec artists and so the new title, Je Me Souviens, was both appropriate as a memorial for everyone who had lived (and died) through the pandemic, as well as a nod to the June 24th St Jean Baptiste Fête Nationale celebrations. A special 10 minute long drone show, put on by Patrice Guy’s North Star Drones company was also something new for the audience in Montreal. I was happy it was a separate show, rather than interwoven with the fireworks. This was also a pandemic tribute and thrilled the audience.

Both displays were designed by GFA Pyro’s Eric Cardinal with the pre-opening show’s soundtrack being also crafted by competition technical director, Paul Csukassy and the actual opening show’s music being put together by Eric.

Perfect weather was present for both displays, together with the voice of the fireworks, maître de cérémonie M. Michel Lacroix. And so a familiar and comforting pre-display ceremony in both cases, with the usual atmospheric music of Vangelis setting the atmosphere.

Both displays were good, but I found the real opening show, A Tribute to Prince, to be the better of the two. The soundtrack was excellent and Eric made good use of ramp 5 (the floating pontoons) to add extra dimension to the display as well as some great note-synchronized letter mines firing 1, 2 then 1 2 3 4 during the Raspberry Beret track. The audience was especially enthusiastic throughout the entire display and gave the GFA team a well deserved standing ovation at the end.

It was great to be back, front and centre, reporting on the competition again. A feeling of normality in these still abnormal times. The joy was palpable for all to see and feel. Summer had returned to Montreal with the fireworks!