Starting with violin at age 4, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson is now a multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, music director, dj, producer, and educator. He has recorded on over 600 albums, films and TV shows, working with the likes of Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jones, Henry Mancini, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Smokey Robinson, Wayne Shorter, Billy Higgins, Ray Brown, Brad Mehldau, Hubert Laws, Dr. Dre, Flying Lotus, Sly Stone, George Clinton, and many others. In 2009, to great acclaim, Miguel celebrated the beloved hip-hop producer J Dilla with an orchestral tribute with a 60 piece orchestra. In 2016, Miguel arranged, orchestrated, and conducted the music for the entire season one of the Netflix show, ‘Luke Cage’. 2017 saw Miguel performing the Dilla tribute in Europe, Los Angeles, and New York’s Lincoln Center, orchestrating for Mary J Blige and Anderson .Paak, working on film scores with Flying Lotus, 50 concerts touring in Stephen ‘Thundercat’ Bruner’s band, and arranging and conducting the music for The Dallas Pops Orchestra featuring The Roots, Erykah Badu, Chaka Khan, Bilal, and Robert Glasper. In 2018, Miguel performed his tribute to J Dilla in South Africa for the Cape Town International Jazz Festival and in Tel Aviv, Israel. Miguel also recently put a string orchestra of himself on the song ‘Make It Better’ for Smokey Robinson and Anderson .Paak before just finishing 10 orchestral arrangements for the Questlove curated WorldWide Tour '4U: A Symphonic Celebration of Prince'. Miguel had the honor of co-writing a song named after him on the 2020 Grammy winning Progressive R+B album of the year for his friend Stephen ‘Thundercat’ Bruner. Miguel has plans to release Volume 1 of his first solo album ‘Les Jardins Mystiques’ on the Brainfeeder record label in 2022.

Photos by Violetta Markelou.