Ten truckloads of fireworks arrived in Tennessee over the weekend as Nashville gears up for what’s being billed as the nation’s largest 4th of July fireworks show.
Lansden Hill has been in charge of Nashville’s Independence Day fireworks for nearly 30 years, and planning is a year-round process. He starts prepping in the fall with overseas shopping trips to China and Spain. Hill says he found a unique special effect for Music City, one that’s the product of a three-year search.
“We have been on a quest to get fireworks that break in the shape of music notes,” Hill says.
After securing the fireworks, Hill gets sheet music from the Nashville Symphony and his team plans the timing to the music.
Larry Trotter is the show’s chief choreographer.
“A dance choreographer would look at all the different moods of that song, the beat, the dynamics, does it get fast does it get slow? And they go in and imagine in their creative palette what dance steps go with this? It’s the same process, instead of dancing the fireworks do the dance,” Trotter says.
Big city shows are compared by how many shells they shoot off. But Mayor Karl Dean says that number is not being made public.
“Once you say you’re the biggest then somebody else is gonna say we’re gonna add 10 more and they get to be bigger,” Dean says.
Nashville officials say only that they believe the show will have more shells than anyone else, including New York City.
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