Celebration of Light kicks off with U.S. team up first

VANCOUVER - On Tuesday, Joe Rozzi and his crew were working in the sun, enjoying the breeze blowing into English Bay, the gently bobbing barges on which they worked the launch pads for their 2010 Celebration of Light performance.

Rozzi and his team will represent the United States tonight, the first of four fireworks extravaganzas this year.

Rows of mortars studded the sand piled onto the two barges. Each mortar was loaded with a shell or waiting to be loaded and wired to the control boxes at the end of each row.

A group of men laughed and joked as they ran many, many strands of yellow wire from individual mortars to the control boxes at the end of each row, loaded shells and dug in the sand to position the mortars.

It is the first time the team, made up of employees of Rozzi Famous Fireworks, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, has been invited to take part in the event. Rozzi’s great-grandfather started making fireworks back in Italy more than 100 years ago.

Rozzi said his team started planning their display soon after they were invited. “It took us a month to put it together,” he said of the Americans’ routine. He said his team, which began setting up Monday, was happy about the music that the Big Band theme inspired. He didn’t want to give too much away, but Rosemary Clooney fans should be pleased with Team U.S.A.’s musical decision-making.

Team U.S.A. will be followed Saturday by Spain. Its theme of Hell and Heaven will recreate the fight between light and darkness. Next up on Wednesday, July 28, will be Mexico, with rock “en español,” pop, Mexican contemporary and blends of popular (Banda) music with electronic elements. China will wind up the event on Saturday, July 31, with The Butterfly Lovers legend taken into a new dimension with the music and choreography of fireworks.

Maude Furtado, the producer for the Celebration of Light, was giving media tours on the barges while Rozzi and company worked.

“This would be more complicated than just a ball of colour,” she said, pointing to the different components inside of what looked like a bisected bowling ball with a thin plastic skin, packed with little round pellets and what looked like Christmas crackers cut into halves. In addition to their dazzling payload, the shells also have a load of black powder at their base to launch the projectile out of the tubelike mortar and into the night sky.

Each show is a one-off event. Because of variables like humidity and wind, it is nearly impossible to exactly recreate a fireworks display, Furtado said. Since the shells used in the displays cost so much, there is no chance to practise beforehand: “It’s much too expensive to do rehearsals.”

Furtado started on the job when she was 18. “I’ve been involved from the beginning, since my dad was the very first producer of what was at the time, the Symphony of Fire,” she said.

Late Tuesday morning, she had more than just the Celebration on her mind.

Her four-year-old son, Jules, and her father, Frank Furtado, were set to arrive to watch the show with her.

jabeita@vancouversun.com

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