Titled Les Jardins Mystiques (after the “mystical gardens” that, in his view, make up the varying worlds of music), the album runs at more than three and a half hours, contains more than 50 tracks, and features just as many collaborators, from gen Z jazz upstarts Domi and JD Beck, to the 83-year-old Miles Davis collaborator Bennie Maupin. Yet his biggest challenge, 14 years in the making, is only now coming to fruition: Atwood-Ferguson is releasing his debut solo album. Some of those projects have included marshalling a 60-piece orchestra to rework the productions of cult-favourite hip-hop producer J Dilla on the 2009 live album Timeless: Suite for Ma Dukes, arranging strings on Flying Lotus’s score to the 2021 anime series Yasuke, and recently arranging and conducting an orchestral production of the late saxophonist Pharoah Sanders’ works with electronic producer Floating Points. “I just love to keep learning and taking on projects that challenge me.” “When my son’s at school, I use his room to record orchestras of myself, looping and layering different string parts,” he says with a smile. Since 2020 and the birth of his son Sebastian – named after JS Bach – those working hours have had to reduce to a more reasonable six hours a day, but Atwood-Ferguson is still finding space to create. “I’m not a workaholic I’m a very passionate person.” “I used to work 10 to 22 hours per day, every day for the past 20 years,” he says earnestly over a video call from his gear-filled home studio. To keep up his prolific output, Atwood-Ferguson has a gargantuan work ethic. I worked 10 to 22 hours per day, every day for the past 20 years. Bridging the worlds of classical, jazz, hip-hop and pop, Atwood-Ferguson – who has more than 600 recordings to his name and in excess of 2,500 live shows played in the past two decades – is the go-to guy to provide spaces of instrumental beauty in busy sound worlds. In the past decade, he has become a key part of the west coast beats and jazz scene that coalesced around artists such as the producer Flying Lotus, saxophonist Kamasi Washington and bassist Thundercat, all releasing on Flying Lotus’s label Brainfeeder. Softly spoken and typically dressed down in a washed-out T-shirt and sweatpants, Atwood-Ferguson is the unassuming presence behind orchestrations and performances for everyone from Ray Charles to Stevie Wonder, via Quincy Jones, Rihanna, Dr Dre and the Roots. You may not know who the LA-based composer and strings player is, but if you’ve listened to contemporary American music or watched recent TV and film from the US, you will have likely heard the sound of his bow sweeping across orchestral strings. Chances are you have already heard Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s work.
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