Red Rover delivers with Elation rig for Faouzia
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Both Faouzia and Stanners have roots in Winnipeg’s French community and the designer says he has been familiar with the singer since she was a young artist. “The French community of Winnipeg always had high hopes for her and now she’s really realizing her potential,” he stated. “We’re from the same city and have been doing the same calibreof shows over many years so I’ve known her a long time.” Stanners even lit one of her music videos years ago and has done several one-off shows with her. Faouzia’s fall Citizens tour, which ran from 15 October to 17 November, was Stanners and Red Rover’s first chance to work with her on a tour.
Faouzia and Stanners have worked together enough that he knows how best to coordinate the lighting looks with her music, creating the right moods for old and new material alike. “For her older songs, which are more intimate piano numbers, I often put the focus solely on her,” Stanners describes. “But for her newer material, which is more Moroccan-influenced with offbeat rhythms, I’ll use more layered looks.”
The show also features a number of pop numbers. Stanners says he also likes to work with Faouzia musical director David Steinmetz “to better understand what his intention is and how I can complement that.” Lighting operator on the tour was James Moore from Red Rover Entertainment.
Red Rover supplied the lighting for the Citizens tour with Stanners handling lighting design and programming. The tour played anywhere from 400-capacity venues in smaller markets to 2000-capacity venues in larger markets and the design, Stanners says, had to fit into both.
“I wanted a rig that could hold its own in venues where there was very little house lighting,” the designer comments. “Most of my tours go out without some kind of side light so if the venue’s front house lighting was inadequate, it was still taken care of. For eye candy on this tour, I used Elation’s Fuze SFX to create the moods using anything from gobo looks to tight beams. It’s a versatile fixture that saves you from having to have both a beam and a profile fixture.”
Another creative design element involved 15 floor-positioned SixBar 500 colour-changing battens in a semi-circle behind the singer for colour and eye candy looks. Stanners explains the idea behind the look: “I wanted to create a play area for her to move in where there are no other musicians or cables, an area that was clean visually. No matter what size the venue, that was her space.” Additional to the rig were 7 SixPar 200 colour-changing PAR lights, two per side as sidelight and one for a ‘halo’ behind each musician.
Stanners has operated Red Rover Entertainment since 2013 and has stocked Elation gear since 2018, much of which he employed on multiple tours this past fall. “On Faouzia, it was a really effective rig that worked well in both the smaller and larger venues,” he concludes. “We had the power and pixels to create something really unique, and also from the power consumption, size and weight perspective, it was the right rig to use.”
