Name: Miguel Atwood-Ferguson
Nationality: American
Occupation: Multi-instrumentalist, session musician, arranger, composer, music director, producer, DJ, orchestral conductor, educator.
Current Release: Miguel Atwood-Ferguson's Les Jardins Mystiques Vol.1 is out via Brainfeeder.

If you enjoyed this Miguel Atwood-Ferguson interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter. For more thoughts about Les Jardins Mystiques Vol.1, read our earlier Miguel Atwood-Ferguson interview.

Over the course of his career, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson has played with a wide range of collaborators, including Wadada Leo Smith, Carlos Niño, Jamael Dean, Nels Cline, and Lara Somogyi.

[Read our Wadada Leo Smith interview]
[Read our Carlos Niño interview]
[Read our Jamael Dean interview]
[Read our Nels Cline interview]
[Read our Lara Somogyi  interview]



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I like to experience and listen to music in as many different ways as possible. Depending upon what state of mind I’m in, I notice all sorts of things when listening to music.

One of my favorite intentions with music is to let it be a guide for me to bring awareness to my life in order for me to learn how to bring more humility, responsibility, love, gracefulness, courage, etc to my everyday life.

It’s fair to say that’s the conscious funnel that I listen through.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music have always exerted a very strongest pull on me – which is one thing among many that fascinates me about LJM Vol. 1. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?

I’m looking to evolve daily as a human being, so I’m drawn to anything that inspires me to do that. It’s usually music that is coming from someone’s gut and is music that is so important to them to create that if they didn’t, they would get sick. That essential.

I’m really attracted to intimate music. As if it’s a love letter to a person / place / or thing that is incredibly important to the person creating it.

About performing and playing with others, Stewart Copeland said: “Listening is where the cool stuff comes from. And that listening thing, magically, turns all of your chops into gold.” When it comes to performing, what do you listen for?

That’s awesome, I love that, thank you for sharing, I agree!

When performing, I listen for depth of authenticity and whether or not people are enjoying themselves and feel seen/safe. I want to be an enabler for magic, so I listen for how much magic is being created so that I can open it up more. I listen for joy a lot too, also in order to facilitate it all the more.

I listen for how much everyone on stage is communicating with each other, or are they in their own worlds. I want to include everyone in a vivacious dialogue that stimulates people’s cores. I listen for anything that can give me cues towards that, like what’s working, what’s not.

We all start as listeners – not just as artists, but as human beings. Why do you think we lose that capacity at some point and mainly try to make others listen to US?

I see for some, that we simply don’t set aside enough time daily in order to create the space needed to cultivate available space to listen to others. I can’t afford not to be an amazing listener.

I’m convinced that for what I want to do in life, it is completely necessary for me to cultivate my ability to listen to everything daily and cultivate the eternal infrastructure to be able to do so with ease, without getting oversaturated.

Why is verbal language words, otherwise perhaps humanity's greatest invention, so problematic when it comes to listening and performing?

I just think it’s because so often the words we choose and the spirit behind them.

If we are choosing uplifting words with a spirit to open doors in our hearts and minds, then I don’t see a problem.

Decisions between creatives often work without words. From your experience in general and the many collaborations on LJM Vol. 1, do you have some examples for what this process feels like and how it works?

There are many different types of collaboration on LJM Vol. 1. From the performers, to the engineers, to the visual artists, to the record label, etc- and with that are different approaches.

One example is in regards to the recording sessions that involved multiple people. They consistently looked like this: I would write all of the music at home before each session, hand everyone sheet music at the session or email it to them sometimes ahead of time, talk to them about the emotional intention behind each song, record a couple takes of each song, and never belabor anything or make anyone feel stressed.

Keeping a good vibe in the studio is a must to me. After doing a bunch of recording sessions, I would make sense of everything after the fact, edit out the sections I didn’t want to use, and often add orchestral overdubs later.

There can be surprising moments during improvisations – from one of the performers not playing a single note to another shaking up a quiet section with an outburst of noise. Have you been part of similar situations as part of this project and how did they impact the performance from your point of view?

Yes, those are absolutely magical moments. I think I was able to facilitate moments like that by asking people to improvise over reversed recordings as a group on some of the songs.

The cats said that they had never done that before. It was totally magical, like making music for the first time all over again.

When you're in the studio to record a piece, how important is the actual performance and the moment of performing the song still in an age where so much can be “done and fixed in post?“

For sure, I try to refrain from any fixing anything in post. Unless it is just such an egregious mistake, I’d rather leave a flaw than fix it in post, and that’s exactly what I did. I left many mistakes on the album as is.

I think there is a natural perfection in the moment and when people try to manipulate too much in post, I think it looses it's magic most of the time.

If we construct our world view through language and language is thought made sound, then we literally construct our reality through listening. I'd be curious about your opinion as to how different our world be if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead – and how we could use the undeniable power of music “for the greater good”?

I think we can only see correctly with our heart. Looks deceive for sure.

I think if we paid less attention to looks and focused more on our feelings, there would be more peace and love in the world.