Reverberator unites boundary pushers and sonic sorcerers

Lansing is home to more than its share of music festivals, but something was missing from the scene prior to last year: a dedicated day for experimental music. Artist Stephanie Vasko sought to change that with the inaugural Reverberator festival in January 2025. Having already worked with The Robin Theatre and owner Dylan Rogers on her experimental music showcase series, Ambient Annotations, she partnered with the REO Town venue to spotlight 10 local artists, who played to a packed house that was limited to standing room only most of the day.

Reverberator returns Saturday, featuring 12 acts united by their affinity for “pushing boundaries and playing with sound,” Vasko said. Some have played at Ambient Annotations events, while others are brand-new to the Lansing experimental community. Vasko chatted with City Pulse about the festival and her own art, which will be on display at Saturday’s event.

How did the idea for the festival come about?

For the past two years, I was running an experimental music series at The Robin. It was usually a bill of three artists, sometimes four. For a while, it was every month, and from noon to 1:30, people could come and listen to experimental music or perform in the show. The reason for getting that started was that I didn’t find a lot of places in Lansing where you could perform an ambient set or try something out, a place that was friendly and amenable to helping you through that process. So, we had done a year of those, and I was like, ‘What if we had a festival for that kind of thing?’

How did you come to partner with Dylan and The Robin Theatre?

I’ve lived in Lansing for 10 years now, and I’ve known Dylan for a large chunk of that. A few years ago, I got the idea of doing these ambient shows. I would go in and talk to Dylan and be like, “Hey, we should try this out.” So, one year, I just set up with my laptop in the back of the bookstore, between some of the books, and played some tunes for people. And then we were like, “Okay, let’s formalize this a bit more,” and we started reaching out to people we knew.

There’s this huge desire in Lansing for these kinds of events and curation of this type of community. There are all these really cool experimental musicians around town who are doing their own thing in their own spaces. At least for me, coming out of the pandemic, it’s been hard to find those spaces. So, it was really intentional to create them, and to start creating a place where people who did this kind of thing could meet and develop collaborations or just see what kind of techniques other people were using. It’s been a fun experience to see the collaborations that have come out of this.

Tell me a little bit about your performance art.

It’s been an evolution, but there are a few things that have stayed consistent. I’m really interested in the ways that we can use materials you haven’t thought about the sounds of to create sounds. I do a lot of field recording, so I’ll go out in nature. I like to do Foley work, figuring out how to make the sound of something with something else, both physically and electronically with software. Over the past year, I’ve also been combining it with interactive performances with the audience, where I’m being vulnerable on stage and inviting you to be vulnerable as an audience member, and we’re creating this work of art together. I like to create these moments of whimsy and wonder with sound, with this kind of performance piece in there.

Tell me about some of the other performers at Reverberator this year.

We really try and focus on local Lansing artists, to give them a space to connect and try new things. We have a really cool selection of people. We have some people who will be doing spoken word plus sound. We have some minimal electronic work. There will be some screens and some projections. We have a lot of people who work with field recordings.

Do you have anything you want to add?

I’ve been going to the Lansing Collage Club for a few months, and I asked Dylan if he had art that would be hanging up during Reverberator. Bringing the Collage Club to the Reverberator space is happening in that some of the pieces that were at the show the club had at Hooked will also be up for Reverberator. Chelsea, the head of the club, is re-curating that show. I’m really excited that we were able to make that partnership happen.