Posted on

Revisiting | Me’shell Ndegéocello

catching up with things i loved and left…

Saw Meshell Sunday.  She was one of the featured performers with the Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble at the JazzReggae Festival at UCLA.  She did Love Song#2 from Comfort Woman as well as a tribute to Gil Scott-Heron.  I haven’t been able to get her out of my head since.

I’ve been feeling out of sorts since Thursday.  The death of Gil Scott-Heron, Friday, deepened whatever funk I’d wandered into.  Then, she played and I wanted more.

At some point this morning I figured out how to shake the ache.  It was Bitter.  Her meditations on desire, fault, blame, longing and pain that seductively and beautifully paint the dull persistent ache of melancholy louder than any all-out wail of loss.

She lets me be in my sadness without sinking further into the grips of despair.  She doesn’t tell me it’ll be better.  She just quietly lures me away, toward a bit of honesty, vulnerability and hope.

Somehow, I’d forgotten what Bitter does for me.  Maybe on purpose.

N♥

Posted on

I’m So There | Grand Performances: Miguel Atwood Ferguson’s Quartetto Fantastico

I’ve been working on an another UnderTheInfluence piece for a while that has a bit about the first time I saw Miguel earlier this year.  I’m still kinda fascinated by my intense reaction.  Since then, I’ve tried to catch him whenever thehermit hasn’t taken over and kept me home, safe and cozy in front of some machine with light emanating from its screen.

As luck/chance/Grand Performances would have it, he’s playing a holiday concert with his string quartet up the hill from me today at noon.  Um, yeah.  Love that.  

So.  Miguel Atwood-Ferguson.  Composer.  Arranger.  Multi-instrumentalist.  To me, he’s like this conduit that allows you to feel music, while bypassing, even transcending, the limiting and self-segregating nature of genre.  He embodies the interconnectedness of all sound.  And inhabits what are still “different” spaces with such contagious passion, that even the possibility of discovering something new leaves you open to wherever his muse takes him.  It’s kinda wild to be so excited to venture somewhere with only his hand to guide.  So, yeah. I’m going to see a dude play his viola with his string quartet at lunch.

If you’re around, come by California Plaza | Downtown LA at noon.  Otherwise, keep pressing play.

Nikki♥

MoreMoreMore:

There are a couple of really cool pieces over at The Qualities of Light.  There’s a kinda, but not really, solo performance and an interesting profile.  Vtech has footage of Quartetto Fantastico celebrating the music of John Lennon w/ “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” shot by Mochilla‘s B+.

Timeless Concert Series | Suite For Ma Dukes Orchestra

w/the wondrously talented Bilal Oliver (Vtech has a bunch of great MAF clips)

Grand Performances July 2010
Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble f. Flying Lotus


Posted on

Seen+Heard | Flying Lotus

Have you ever wanted to just give a musician some money?  Not just, here’s money for your record money, but here’s money for dinner money.  Can I buy you some sneakers money? Do you need a haircut money? How can I help you make some more of this money?  I’m feeling that way about Flying Lotus and Cosmogramma.

Don’t ask me where I’ve been on Flying Lotus.  I could say that I blame the dj friends  who used to hip me to EVERYTHINg, but it’s not their fault I’m so out of it.  My heads been in the no-no place on a lot of good music. (♥: chile…)

Won’t explain it.  Can’t describe it.  Just experience it.

Who says you can’t rock the fuck out of it live?  And at some point I’m going to have to write about my weeks long obsession about Miguel Atwood-Ferguson.  Don’t take that the wrong way.  I didn’t know that this amazingly talented man walked the earth with notes dancing on his soul until I watched Mochilla’s Timeless DVDs.  Seriously, give that man a bow, or hell, just watch him feel music.

Right now, the neighbors and I are dancing to Do The Astral Plane off Cosmogramma.   Okay, I’m dancing and they’re nodding heads behind thin walls.  I think.  (♥:They better…)

Nikki♥