Behind Nightrise: The People and Stories That Transformed Winter at the Banff Gondola

In honour of Nightrise's fifth and final season at the Banff Gondola, we're taking you behind the scenes to meet some of the people who made this experience possible.

The Music Of Nightrise

What is the music of snow falling from the sky?

That's one of the questions îethka Nakoda musician Anders Hunters and his team of musicians contemplated in the studio, creating the music for Nightrise.

Anders and his team - which included his 18-year-old son, his uncle, and his brother-in-law - had been tasked with making music that complemented Nakoda storytelling and light installations about cosmic rays, snow and alpenglow.

"It was quite the experiment," Hunters says. "We worked with stories about snow blanketing the land, so that our food and medicine could sleep."

"We would think about Nakoda words and phrases that we use when it snows, when it's cold, for snowflakes - anything about winter. Then put those words to melodies and layer it with drums."

Hunters has been a musician for as long as he can remember.

He's descended from a line of Sundance makers and grew up watching, drumming and singing with his paternal grandfather and father.

"Singing is in my blood," he says.

Since joining his first drum group at 16 years old, Hunters has created music for the theatrical production, Making Treaty 7, performed with Montreal's Transcestral project, a collaboration between Indigenous and Sufi musicians, and produced music for Moment Factory projects at Niagara Falls and the Toronto Zoo-which opened the door to Nightrise.

Hunters first heard the music he had created heading up the gondola, enveloped in darkness.

"It felt like a magical experience," he says, "with the sights and sounds and our language."

Hunters has since returned to Nightrise to drum and sing live alongside dancers in full regalia. Throughout the performances, Hunters shares stories about the dances, about how the land sustained his people for thousands of years, the significance of the harvest and new moon, and the spirit carried within the drums and the regalia.

After the performances, people from around the world often approach him to share similar traditions and stories from their own cultures. These moments of exchange have become as meaningful as the performances themselves.

"I'm not just giving out the information," he says. "I also learn about others, their similarities, and how cultures can be connected."

As he looks back on his contributions-and the entirety of the Nakoda contribution to Nightrise-Hunters says, "I hope that guests leave aware of who the land belongs to. I hope they would take some knowledge of how we still practice our culture and celebrate ourselves-and celebrate life itself."

Turning Winter Nights Into Magic

Banff Gondola Guest Experience Manager, Beverly Humby has lived in Banff for 21 years. She counts herself lucky to have work where she gets to share her beloved home with people from around the world.

As murmurings about a new nighttime winter gondola experience grew, Humby was curious. One thing she knew: it was hard to get people to want to come to the top of a mountain in the cold, dark, winter months.

Before Nightrise opened, Nightrise Stoney Nakoda Project Lead Cherith Marks led a training for the gondola staff. She spoke about the Stoney stories shared throughout Nightrise, and what the project meant to her people.

"When Cherith spoke to our team at the Nightrise kickoff, it was incredibly powerful," says Humby. "You could feel the pride she carries for her people and her language, and how meaningful it was to share those stories on such a large scale with people from all over the world."

"That moment reminded us that Nightrise wasn't just a show, but a meaningful experience that honoured Stoney culture."

As Humby and her team watched guests go through Nightrise and listened to feedback, they kept looking for ways to evolve the experience.

"We kept hearing that guests wanted Nightrise to be more interactive," she says. "That's when we began exploring how to provide an experience that engaged all the senses."

Humby and the team set up a bannock tasting station on the third floor. They invited Anders Hunters to perform live. They introduced an outdoor wood-burning fire pit on the fourth-floor roof where people could roast marshmallows. What would have been a blustery dark rooftop became alive with the smell and warmth of the fire against the cold, the sweetness of the marshmallows, and the opportunity to 'listen to the landscape' through six sonoculars.

That alchemy of Indigenous storytelling and music, Nakoda language, light projections and lasers, bannock with jam, and wrapping oneself in a blanket in the cold invites guests to experience what longtime Banff residents like Humby know: Winter is magic. The dark and cold have their own story to tell.

"For me, Nightrise has always been a celebration of winter nights," Humby says. "It showed us that winter on Sulphur Mountain can be a place of warmth, story and connection."