| Out with a bang |
| Words: Curio | |
| Monday, 03 September 2007 | |
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Firework spectacular is fitting finale to the 2007 Edinburgh Festival.
 The skies above the city of Edinburgh exploded in colour on Sunday 3 September as around a quarter of a million people watched the festival season go out with a bang.Thousands of spectators crammed into Princes Street, Inverleith Park and dozens of other vantage points around the city to watch the Bank of Scotland Fireworks Show. Crowds began to gather in the city centre hours before the celebrations began, with all 12,000 tickets sold out for Princes Street Gardens prior to the event. The classical music concert began at 9pm as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra began to play and Europe's largest annual firework-concert officially got underway. Conductor Clark Rundell led them in an uplifting performance of American music, including rousing classics by George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein. Over 100,000 fireworks, weighing a total of four tonnes and laid out by a team of 15 pyro-technicians over the previous week, illuminated the skies above Edinburgh. Two giant screens in the gardens ensured everyone could see the orchestra, while live footage was also shown in the Bank of Scotland family viewing areas in Inverleith Park. The concert ended in boisterous style with Sousa's 'The Liberty Bell', better-known as the theme tune to Monty Python's Flying Circus. It brings the end to the 2007 Edinburgh International Festival which returns in August 2008. Highlights of this year's Festival season included: * The Fringe in 2007 featured 31,000 performances of 2,050 shows in 250 venues. An estimated 18,626 performers were on stage. * Fuerzabruta at the Black Tent was the best-selling Festival show, outselling The Lady Boys of Bangcok which had held the accolade for the past five years. * Australian comedian Brendon Burns lifted the prestigious if comeddie award for Best Act. * The Edinburgh Film Festival created a shock after artistic director Hannah McGill announced the festival would take place in June from 2008. * This year's Book Festival saw appearances from Norman Mailer, Julian Clary and Alan Bennet, among others.
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