Less than one week before the opening of the 2016 Montreal International Fireworks Competition!

We already knew that the 2016 competition will start with an off-competition display made by Canadian team Apogée, on a soundtrack performed by the Royal 22nd Regiment. The 45enord.ca website now provides information about the 3rd "Con Forza" edition, which is partly held at La Ronde on July 2, as it was in 2015.

We still don't have public information about the details of this partnership between La Ronde and the Canadian Army. It would be of public interest to know whether any financial agreement does exist as part of the funding structure of the fireworks competition.

From an artistic point of view, it would also be interesting to know to what extent Apogée and the Royal 22nd Regiment actually collaborated to the design of the soundtrack, or whether Apogée was asked to craft a display on the basis of a music choice previously made. It does make a difference on the assessment of the job done by the pyros. I suspected, last year, that B.E.M. had the difficult challenge to design a show on a soundtrack which wasn't exactly appropriate for a fireworks display. This year, the music is mostly inspired by movie soundtracks (many from John Williams: Star Wars, Harry Potter, Superman) more suitable to a fireworks display.

Fred