(upbeat music) (bright music) - [Shelley] And now we head for a concert under the stars.

We chat with an eclectic group of musicians led by Kalamazoo artist Jordan Hamilton.

Their performance is accompanied by original video art projected onto the dome of the Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium in Grand Rapids.

- My name's Jordan Hamilton and I grew up in Maryland.

I've been playing cello in elementary school, middle school, high school, through graduate school.

And that brought me to Michigan where I started trying to explore sounds outside of classical music.

And then that introduced me to musicians around the community.

And that's kind of how I met Lasso here.

How I met Jared Sellner, AKA Saxsquatch, and Grayson Nye, the piano guy.

And we make music just kind of all over.

My sound is a little bit like classical, hip hop, experimental, folk.

And then I've participated in a bunch of different projects that make different sounds.

- I'm the Saxsquatch, I'm from Kalamazoo, Michigan.

There's a guy with a costume, that's not me, it's a different guy.

- This is the Saxsquatch.

- The Saxsquatch.

I'm not a Saxsquatch.

I from Kalamazoo, Michigan, grew up here.

I play, I hope obviously, saxophone.

I also play drums, bass, and guitar, and a number of different projects including my own and other people's.

But I started really working with this group sort of, what, seven years ago or six years ago now?

I got sucked into the LassoVerse and it's been fun ever since.

Musically, I sort of, my guiding light and North Star is actually sort of in the avant garde and free jazz world.

A lot of noise stuff, drone, that kind of weird stuff.

But I also really love like prog and like prog and fusion jazz, that kind of thing, acid jazz.

- Yeah.

My name is The Lasso.

I'm a producer.

I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Currently live in Detroit.

I'd say my specialty is kind of bringing other musicians together and kind of setting the space for them to compose or kind of show themselves who they are, whether they're singers or instrumentalists.

So I play a lot of instruments myself, but mostly kind of write on a computer using electronic instruments, but also acoustic stuff, sampling, all different styles and kind of bring that together.

And these guys are a big part of a lot of my sounds.

I'd say my sound is a mix of like hip hop music, electronic music, film scores, jazz, classical.

So it makes sense, as you hear us go down the line and say what we're into, there's probably gonna be a lot of overlaps.

- But everyone has like a sound that they've been exploring consistently in their own way.

I've kind of bumped into the LassoVerse, the Lasso universe a little bit in the recent years, but I've been a part of other universes like Earthworks Harvest Gathering or Last Gas Collective.

And they all have different sounds, but everyone has a different sound.

- My name is Grayson, I'm a keyboard piano player from Chicago, I guess, I live there and I'm from there.

I met these guys actually in Michigan because I went to school here and I guess I'm the most recent addition to the LassoVerse, it's only been a couple years kind of since the pandemic.

Is that when we met?

I'm a new member of the family I guess.

But my style is, it's kind of like all of them, it's just a mix of a bunch of things.

I studied classical growing up and like doing pop music and then I got into jazz and that's sort of the main thing that I do now.

But I also play hip hop, I sometimes play in a Celtic band.

So I'm all over the map.

(gentle upbeat music) ♪ Sit down, love, sit down, love, yeah hey ♪ - Collaboration's definitely the center of my whole crafting process.

I have a lot of ideas and they're kind of these like, they're not very concrete, they're kind of just things in my head or things I want to hear.

And so it takes like other musicians to actually realize a lot of the ideas I have.

Or also maybe I see something in a musician whether it's Jordan, Saxsquatch, or Grayson, like I hear them play and then I kind of think, I'd like to hear them in this context.

So for me, I'd say my collaboration's kind of what drives my process.

It's a way to grow and a way to kind of morph who you are.

- This performance has to be a little more regimented and scripted because we've got these wonderful visuals that we're accompanying.

So that's, you know, now it's like, well we gotta stay on the train track a little tighter.

But other times we stretch a little more.

And even within the context of something where we're regimented in our timeframe, we still hold space to stretch in different ways and in different places.

- Also like the spontaneity of improvisation, like we generally play the same songs, but I don't think we've ever really played them the same twice.

And that's kind of another fun thing for us, keeps us all on our toes I guess.

- And it's not the goal to play it the same way twice.

- In fact, even today Jordan was telling The Lasso, "I like when you surprised me on this part."

- I think one of the key parts of our sound is like the combination of like electronic DJ aspects with live musicianship.

And that's something a lot of people I think have thought about.

And it's really takes like a certain kind of musician and a certain kind of practice to make it where it's like there's these electronic elements that are being on a grid, but then we're also free to like change it every time.

So this is probably the most progressive group I've ever been a part of in terms of combining those two things.

- I love riding that energy that's in the moment, whether it be in rehearsal or whether it be in a performance, obviously you feel it tenfold in the performance, but riding that energy, changing that energy, and then figuring out how that compares to other performances, I think I find a lot about myself in each performance.

And then sharing that experience with other people that are your friends and stuff, you all have created bonding experiences, and going through life with those experiences and those bonds is all that you really want in life.

So that's what I love about it.

(upbeat music) ♪ Falling down, running round, inner sound yeah ♪ ♪ Falling down, running round, inner sound ♪ ♪ Call around, sacred ground, lost and found yeah ♪ ♪ Call around, call around, call around yeah ♪ (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) ♪ Falling down, running round, inner sound yeah ♪ ♪ Falling down, running round, inner sound ♪ ♪ Call around, sacred ground, lost and found yeah ♪ ♪ Call around, call around, call around yeah ♪ (upbeat music continues) (applause) - [Announcer] Support for "Kalamazoo Lively Arts" is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of Greater Kalamazoo.