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Partly Cloudy Annual fireworks show set for Saturday
Get ready for a fireworks show in your backyard, Rockville Centre.
More than 8,000 people are expected at the 22nd annual fireworks display at Mill River Park on Saturday. The rain date is Sunday.
Beginning at 6 p.m., there will be performances by the South Side High School Jazz Ensemble, the School of Rock, Miss Colleen’s Elite Dancentre and Leggz Ltd. Dance. The South Shore Symphony will perform at 7:45, and the Grucci fireworks will start at 9:15. The symphony will play again at 10:15.
“It’s close for people who live in the area,” said Wayne Lipton, the symphony’s president. “You can walk over … You’re so close to the fireworks that you can experience it in a dramatic way. … You can be within 75 or 100 yards of the launch point.”
Lipton said that the symphony would pay tribute to the composer John Williams and the armed forces, and play Broadway songs and patriotic music as well.
Lipton also helps mix the music for the fireworks, he said, as he has done for the past few years. “Nowadays, fireworks go along with music,” he said. “So we felt, why shouldn’t music go along with [our] fireworks? Grucci was kind enough to offer us the opportunity, which is really special.”
As long as there is good weather, Lipton said, the turnout should be large. It has only rained once in the past 13 years that the symphony has performed at the show, he added.
The annual fireworks show started during the village’s centennial in 1993. Donations from residents to the Rockville Centre Guild for the Arts pay for the pyrotechnics and the entertainment, so the show remains free to the public. Mercy Medical Center and South Nassau Communities Hospital also sponsor it.
