The display, which was free to anyone within sight of the Cathedral on the Sunday night, broke new technological grounds with the live broadcast of the specially-composed soundtrack by Liverpool City Council's local radio media partner, 96.7 FM Radio City. This meant the show was enjoyed not just by a traditionally placed audience close to site, but by anyone tuning in to the radio and able to see the Cathedral - with the sonic advantages of no time delays! The innovative staging idea opened the event to a potential audience of hundreds of thousands all around the city, within sightlines of the majestic 300ft high, 600ft long, 10,000sq.m Cathedral.
The display was planned and co-ordinated by The Liverpool Culture Company, and the pyro was rigged and run by a Fantastic Fireworks team of 17 firers. It involved the craning of six tonnes of materials onto the Cathedral roof on the Friday, over 450 hours of rigging and preparation and the running of over 4km of cables. The Fantastic team had to deal with the various environmental challenges of working at height on the raked roof; the maze of narrow access passages throughout the building; the fact that the Church was open to the public during rigging, plus several bell-ringing sessions (the highest and heaviest peal in the world) on the Sunday of the show - which marked 100 years from the laying of the foundation stone by King Edward VII.
The performance included over 3,500 different firework effects, sourced and imported by Fantastic from Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia and China, plus hundreds of individually-timed cues. The show was called by Ian Woodroff and detonated from four synchronized Pyromate remote firing systems.
The Anglican Fireworks event is one of many community events staged in the City of Liverpool over the year, and the latest building in the city to feature in a pyrotechnic spectacular. Others have included the Three Graces, St John's Beacon, the River Mersey, various parks, the Walker Arts Gallery and Wellington Column.
(Lee Baldock)
