Hogmanay 2013: musical fireworks for Edinburgh while Stonehaven residents vow floods won’t put a damper on fireshow

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Published on 26/12/2012 13:31

EDINBURGH’S famous Hogmanay fireworks will be set to music for the first time this year.

The five minute display will be accompanied with songs from four of “Scotland’s biggest artists”, but organisers are not saying who the performers will be.

The spectacle involves thousands of fireworks set off from 45 locations spread around Edinburgh Castle and West Princes Street Gardens. More than 20 tonnes of equipment and 7.5 miles of control cables and wires is used and work to set up the display has already started.

Pete Irvine, artistic director of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, said: “Every year we offer something new and exciting to our guests and I am thrilled that for the first time our spectacular midnight fireworks will be set to music. What a great way to welcome 2013.”

The Hogmanay celebrations start on Sunday with a torchlight procession led by Up Helly Aa Vikings from Shetland before the street party and concert on Monday featuring Simple Minds, The View and The Maccabees.

Fireshow

In Stonehaven, residents say that the recent floods which have hit the Kincardineshire town will not put a stop to the town’s famous fireballs ceremony where huge balls of fire are swung around on chains before being thrown into the harbour.

Over 100 residents were forced to evacuate the old town area on Sunday when the River Carron burst its banks and rose to waist height.

Martin Sim, of the Stonehaven Fireballs Association, told the Daily Record that the procession would go ahead.

“After consulting the residents of High Street, we have taken the decision to go ahead with the fireballs.

“Their overwhelming reaction was, ‘It must go ahead, if just to give us a focus for the clean-up. It has to go ahead, it always does, it’s the tradition’.

“So we will, with their permission. The money we raise will go towards a flood fund.”