Miguel Atwood-Ferguson on his giant 50-song album: ‘I wanted to approach it like an experiment’

Chances are you have already heard Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s work. 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.

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. 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. 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.

To keep up his prolific output, Atwood-Ferguson has a gargantuan work ethic. “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. “I’m not a workaholic; I’m a very passionate person.”

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. “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. “I just love to keep learning and taking on projects that challenge me.”

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.

Yet his biggest challenge, 14 years in the making, is only now coming to fruition: Atwood-Ferguson is releasing his debut solo album. 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. Sonically, it traverses everything from gorgeously detailed contemporary classical to intricate jazz, richly textured ambient music, shades of hip-hop rhythm and even prog-infused synths. It is only the first of a planned three-volume series that will ultimately run to more than 10 hours of music.

“I’m not really concerned with winning awards and I’m not trying to be popular,” Atwood-Ferguson says of his opus. “I’m trying to do something that I can be proud of. I’m not trying to make money with this album, either. It’s just a sincere statement. One that has been percolating for a long time.”

Initially planning to release a double album, which might have taken four years to create, Atwood-Ferguson soon realised that if he was going to finally show the world his sonic identity, he would need much more time and money. “I didn’t want to go into the studio with the pressure of feeling like we needed to ace a certain amount of songs,” he says. “I wanted to approach it more like a laboratory, where we could experiment.”

Self-funding more than $100,000 of studio sessions from his arranging and session work, Atwood-Ferguson eventually amassed 250 hours of music and spontaneous collaborations that he then began to chop up, warp and edit. “I was inspired by Quincy Jones, who had said that, during the Off the Wall sessions with Michael Jackson, they went through over 800 songs and then settled on the nine final tracks,” he says. “That approach makes a lot of sense. I was also influenced by Miles Davis and his producer Teo Macero’s Bitches Brew sessions where they would record a bunch of ideas in the studio and then later cut it up in ways that can portray a beautiful narrative.”

Making sense of so much dense material sounds like a painstaking task, but Atwood-Ferguson radiates calm and self-assuredness that he will pursue his passions, no matter the cost. It may have something to do with his 24 years as a Nichiren Buddhist, which he picked up after realising his jazz idols Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter were also adherents. “I chant up to five times a day and it’s so enthralling,” he says. “I always walk away with courage.”

It may also have something to do with the cultural grounding of his upbringing. The son of the multi-instrumentalist Steve Ferguson, who played with Etta James and Ry Cooder, Atwood-Ferguson began playing violin at four and by 10 had written his first orchestral score, which was performed by the Palisades Symphony. He describes being obsessed with western European classical music, before becoming a jazz fanatic in high school and then finding “freedom” in the political messages of 80s and 90s hip-hop. “I wouldn’t call myself a prodigy because my parents weren’t taskmasters; they made sure I was well-rounded,” he says. “I was equally interested in sports, Lego, nature and music. I knew from an early age that success comes from within, not from external validation.”

Today, that success takes varied forms. There is of course the new album, as well as his ability to give back to new musicians. “I’ve had so many amazing teachers, like [LA producer] Carlos Niño who was the bridge to me meeting great people like Flying Lotus and [hip-hop producer] Madlib, so I now also teach for free every week over Zoom,” he says. “I want to empower other people that are trying to lead healthy lives in the music industry and give them all my goodies. That makes me feel really good.”

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Volume 2, he says, is “50% done” and Volume 3 is “25% there”; there are also several current projects, including an album featuring work by the late Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto; a film score; and playing on and doing arrangements for a forthcoming record by the British woodwind player Shabaka Hutchings. Atwood-Ferguson seems at the peak of his creativity. Does he ever worry the flow of inspiration will stop?

“I feel very deeply that if I continue growing and learning as a human being, the music will exist and I will happily continue paying to make it,” he says with a laugh. Is he nervous to be putting himself into the spotlight after so long operating behind the music stand? “I’m 43 years old and while I still feel very youthful, it’s time.”

He pauses: “This is my statement. It’s the best I got.”

Les Jardins Mystiques Vol 1 is out now on Brainfeeder Records.