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Miguel-Atwood Ferguson At First Fridays @ NHM, 2/4/11
By James Thorner / Special to LAist
The Natural History Museum’s First Fridays series picked up again last week, celebrating the normally unremarkable date of February 4th and continuing this year’s engaging amalgamation of intellectual, cultural, and musical intrigue. Unlike January’s, in which lines of anticipating concert-goers stretched far out into Exposition Park, this month’s turnout was impressive but modest; it was enough to make you feel like you’re a part of a pretty badass show while still able to escape from the madness in one of the stoic exhibits.
The lecture portion of First Fridays continued its Nostradamus theme, not by making sweeping, unfalsifiable statements about the future, but by discussing how the science of today can provide insight into the world of tomorrow. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jonathan Wiener discussed the possibility of finding a scientific cure for aging, and maybe even mortality, while ironically being surrounded by a wealth of taxidermic remains in the North American Mammal Hall.
The museum itself is as good as ever, with the recently reopened Haaga Family Rotunda and Age of Mammals exhibit. If you’re lucky, on the way there you’ll come across a life-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex puppet (operated by museum staff) meandering through the hallways. It doesn’t bite, but the thing is so eerily lifelike you won’t want to get any closer than a few feet. Who knows, maybe it’ll be a sabertooth cat next month...
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Meanwhile, in the Diorama Hall the Miguel-Atwood Ferguson Ensemble rocked, jazzed, and hip-hopped throughout the night, and their mouthful of a name complimented the dozen or so members of the band strategically arranged onstage.
The ensemble played a generous two sets to make up for the lack of an opener, and included special guests The Gaslamp Killer (who in particular could have passed as modern man circa 30,000 B.C.) and Anna Wise of Sonnymoon. Improvisation was a welcome and regular feature of their set, and the musicians were so enveloped within their playing that they sort of made you forget the fact you were in a museum.
Of course, any band that welcomes a jam session attracts the bearded-60-something-eccentric-types that affirm their musical prowess with some intense head nodding. With covers of the Beatles and Bjork, the Miguel-Atwood Ferguson Ensemble’s mix of jazz fusion, hip-hop, soul, and psychedelia seemed to win over an initially stagnant crowd of museum attendees.
Next month, Dr. Janet Kubler will discuss the effects humans have had on biomimicry and how it will aid us in the future. Hopefully she’ll explain what biomimicry is to us laymen beforehand. Also, Wild Nothing and Abe Vigoda will be performing in the Diorama Hall, bringing a more youthful and assuredly more crowded turnout. To keep in line with the Nostradamus theme, I predict that next month’s First Fridays will be a day of expected jubilee and celebration; most will enjoy it, and some kinda won’t. But I think most will.
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