LA native Miguel Atwood-Ferguson has played on hundreds of contemporary albums as a studio musician. He's led orchestras and composed his own jazz and hip-hop arrangements. He’s now releasing his own debut album, Les Jardins Mystiques Vol. 1., which boasts more than three hours of original compositions. Some musicians helped him create it, which took 14 years, on and off.
“It's like my love letter to the multiverse, and a way of me repaying a debt of gratitude to all the people that have supported me and inspired me,” he describes the album to KCRW.
The title is French for “mystical gardens.” He explains, “I like to think of everyone and everything as a garden. Sometimes we're manicured, sometimes we're sprawling and really wild. But we're a work in progress. That's how I like to see it. … I want to try to … encourage or empower some type of appreciation for diversity.”
The Topanga Canyon native grew up in a musical household — his dad is a multi-instrumentalist and his mom was a special education teacher who loved Mozart and opera. They often played tracks from Jimi Hendrix and Motown, plus other genres like folk and European classical. He started playing violin at age 4.
“It was always around me — this diverse feeling. … Not just the music, but the feeling of inclusivity and a type of curious-ness about life. And how do we make sense of this all?”
Atwood-Ferguson recalls Johann Sebastian Bach being his first love: “My mom told me that at age 5, I told her, ‘I know everything's gonna be okay in my life because I have Bach.’ And then when I was lucky enough to meet my fiancée … we decided to have a child, and she suggested that we name him after J.S. Bach. And so now we are blessed with Sebastian Atwood-Ferguson.”
Atwood-Ferguson’s music, including his song “Ano Yo,” has a Japanese influence. The jazz musician is a practicing Buddhist, and he says the faith has been his entryway into the Eastern world.
“All my music, I think, is just my brand of freedom music. And for me, freedom starts from the individual from within. … It's more of a spiritual, emotional thing, rather than it being a musical style thing.”
In the harp and electronic-forward “Apotheosis,” Atwood-Ferguson uses the effect of reversing music. The Beatles and Hendrix inspired him. “I had an improvisation on the piano and I really liked it. But then I reversed it and it opened my imagination. And so after I rehearsed it, I picked the part that I really liked, and then I orchestrated on top of it.”
Atwood-Ferguson’s favorite performance was at the Hollywood Bowl in September. He says the audience was filled with his childhood friends from LA and people he had spent decades working with. However, he says the night was special particularly because of the silence during his rendition of Sam Shepherd’s (aka Floating Points) “Promises.”
“It's a really sublime piece with just so much tenderness, and spirit, and poeticness. And almost every time I listen to the piece, it makes me cry, actually. And I don't get affected that way by music that often,” he explains. “And in regards to silence … on the record, there's about 71 seconds of complete silence before the coda section. And then at the very end of the piece, there's about 23 seconds of silence. … [Of that] 71 seconds, I think I did around 30 seconds. … It wasn't like, okay, everyone be prepared, we're gonna have this moment of silence. It's not like it was dedicated to any person, place, or thing. And to my astonishment, for that first chunk of silence, I think almost everyone was quiet, actually.”
He says insects and planes overhead were audible, and the moment didn’t feel awkward. “People were saying that they never experienced something like that at a concert or at the Hollywood Bowl. … It was truly magical.”