32 PL & P
BY MICHAEL RAINE
RAYANNAH
Keeping it simple & entrancing for her new performance video
PHOTO : BUIO ASSIS / BNB STUDIOS
As
Stanners tells it , Rayannah is the kind of person and artist where if you offhandedly suggest
AsJonathan
something , you ’ d better be prepared for her to go through with it . That ’ s exactly how her recently-released live performance video came to be .
Rayannah is a Manitoba-based artist who ’ s known for blending voice , breath , synth , and percussion through loop pedals , building her music into lush soundscapes that combine well with her affecting lyrics in English and French . Stanners is the co-owner of Winnipeg ’ s Red Rover Entertainment who has designed shows for Jessie Reyez , SonReal , and others , and worked the lighting board for the likes of Marianas Trench , The Glorious Sons , and more . It just so happens that Stanners and Rayannah are friends going all the way back to elementary school .
Back in May 2021 , they pulled together some video-oriented friends , found a space , and created a 41-minute performance video that provides a great example of how a simple design can be beautiful and captivating with the right combination of music and vision . The full , finished product was finally released in February 2022 as part of the Quebec music festival Le Phoque Off , which this year took place in the metaverse .
Rayannah also plans to use parts of the performance on her online channels throughout the year .
“ So , me and her and one of our video guys , we ’ re just in a group chat where we ’ ll see cool things online and we ’ ll share it — whether it ’ s a lighting thing , a video thing , doesn ’ t matter ,” explains Stanners about how this came to be . “ In there , I just shared a similar thing with a DJ event , where it had a DJ in the middle of a room with a bunch of lighting . It had more height because it was in a different kind of room , but I sent it to her and I was just like , ‘ Hey , this is cool .’ That ’ s all I said . And then about two weeks later , she ’ s like , ‘ Hey , I got funding , we can do it .’ I just said it would be cool ! [ laughs ]. I mean , of course I was down , but I wasn ’ t planning to do it . I just said , ‘ here ’ s a cool idea ’ and she ’ s like , ‘ Yeah , we ’ re doing it !’ I ’ m like , ‘ Oh shit , okay , let ’ s go , I guess ,’” Stanners laughs .
Prior to the pandemic , Stanners hadn ’ t done much video work , but over the last two years he ’ d befriended a few folks in that realm . That certainly helped when pulling together the crew for this project . “ For them , music is fun . It ’ s kind of easy to bring people into these projects , and I don ’ t mean to get them to do it for cheap , but just to get people to want to do it ,” he explains . “ For a lot of them , they ’ re shooting films all the time , which is kind of cool , but music to them is this whole other world of cool lighting and musical things happening … So , I was able to get a few good friends of mine on board that are good at video , and nobody said no to the idea .”
The venue was the gymnasium of Winnipeg ’ s Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain , and since the building didn ’ t have a lot going on last May given Canada was in the depths of COVID ’ s third wave , Stanners was able to get a few extra days in there for design and programming .
“ Rayannah sent me all the songs and how she was performing them . So , I was able to have them programed . I likely wouldn ’ t have been able to busk a show that detailed to the music . So , in our warehouse here [ at Red Rover ], we built Studio B and a preview suite and we bought a grandMA3 Lite and we have a media server in there ,” he says . “ So , similar to any tour , I built it to the room in Capture , pretty in-detail . I built it so I could program it and send it to my business partner who could then deal with power and the infrastructure . Normally I ’ d have to do it , but we were pretty available last May !”
The central concept for Stanners ’ lighting design was to have a floor full of fixtures that pulled the viewers ’ eyes to the middle .