Name: Menagerie
Interviewee: Lance Ferguson
Nationality: New Zealand / Australian
Occupation: Guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser
Current release: Menagerie's new single "Danieda's Dance" is out via Freestyle. It is taken off their upcoming new full-length album The Shores of Infinity, hitting stores on September 1st 2023.

If you enjoyed this Menagerie interview, and would like to find out more about the band and their music, visit them on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter. Lance Ferguson also has a personal website with information about his various activities.



Which artists, approaches, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?

I had moved to Melbourne from my home country of New Zealand at age 17, with no real prospects, but I had recently been reunited with my biological parents, who were both musicians. My father played me a certain album by guitarist Wes Montgomery called Boss Guitar that completely transfixed me …it blew my mind.



It was the rhythm, the sound of his guitar and the forward momentum of the music. I actually remember throwing out the trash in the back alley at my dishwashing job and having the decisive thought: “I am going to be a musician”. A lot of people I know started out playing a few things and then got into Jazz, but I just heard Jazz and decided I wanted to do “that”.

I couldn’t read music, but I knew a few basic chords and the pentatonic scale, so I just bought an electric guitar and dived in. Initially it was that Wes album and then other classic, monumental things like Kind Of Blue, A Love Supreme and Giant Steps.



At the same I was going out to hear great local musicians perform, and Melbourne had (and has) a live music scene that is completely vibrant and inspirational.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to improvisation - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

As I basically began learning how to play Jazz while also similtaneously beginning to play guitar the initial curve was very steep - almost like trying to free-climb a cliff.

I was trying to learn a musical language steeped in advanced harmony while also developing the basic techniques of playing an instrument. Improvising melodically while negotiating chord changes was (and is) the goal. I made some early breakthroughs when I learned about arpeggios and the modes - and with lessons from my first great teacher James Wilson I began the journey.

I eventually developed enough on the instrument to pass an audition to get into the Victorian College Of The Arts. I saw it as a means to meet other like-minded people and to officially immerse myself in music for three years full-time. I was having lessons and taking classes, but we also put a Bebop / Hardbop band together that I felt became my “real” education.

I was sharing a house with a great trumpet player whose teacher Gil Askey was a legendary U.S arranger who had worked with Motown / Diana Ross and others. I used to occasionally get to sit in on their lessons, where Gil would demonstrate voice leading through these beautiful chromatic lines he would play. It was the closest I got to experiencing the true aural tradition of the music in person.

In terms of the ongoing learning curve It feels like now I’m just on an endless (but a little slightly less steep) gradient - it truly never ends.

Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. How would you describe the relationship with it? What are its most important qualities and how do they influence the musical results and your own performance?

I have a collection of guitars, but there are certain instruments that I come back to again and again - the ones that almost become “transparent” when you are playing them, more of an extension of your musical ideas. I need to feel like I can really make the guitar “speak”, which is a personal thing for everyone that comes down to a combination of tonal and ergonomic considerations.

The main guitar I have played live for a couple of decades now is a Gibson ES-335. I have played it so much that the feel of the neck and the string resistance are extremely comfortable to me. Lately I have been experimenting with a 1969 Gibson ES-150DCN, which feels very similar to the 335 but has a fully hollow body.

I feel like it all comes down to physical familiarity in the end. If I was marooned on a desert island for years with my old Nylon string acoustic, after a while that would feel like the most comfortable guitar I ever played.

Can you talk about a work, event or performance in your career that's particularly dear to you? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?

A great Melbourne Jazz singer named Ruby Carter ran a residency on Tuesday nights at the Esplanade Hotel in the early-‘90s which would regularly feature the best players. I was a regular attendee and got to know the band. When the great guitarist Doug de Vries missed a night, Ruby asked me to fill in and I had my first opportunity to see if I could prove myself on the bandstand.

I was so green and inexperienced, I literally had sleepless nights before the gig. On the night I certainly didn’t blow anyone’s mind, but I held my own and felt to a certain degree like I was accepted into the fold. I really have to thank the musicians around me at that time for being so encouraging and supportive. I think that they knew I really cared about what I was trying to do, even if I wasn’t quite there yet.

Derek Bailey defined improvising as the search for material which is endlessly transformable. Regardless of whether or not you agree with his perspective, what kind of materials have turned to be particularly transformable and stimulating for you?

It’s funny you mention Derek as my first guitar teacher James Wilson would often play his music for me and also talk about his musings on music. Derek Bailey’s approach to the guitar and improvising in general are truly revolutionary, especially for the time … I feel like he is a major unsung guitar hero.

For me I would say the main “material” (or raw material) are the twelve notes in the chromatic scale - which seem to be endlessly transformable and hold infinite mystery and complexity. The other items in the creative toy box are the timbres, intrinsic sounds and sonic possibilities of the instrument itself, which is an area that Derek Bailey certainly innovated within.

Speaking of toy boxes, I was raised playing with Lego, I had only a certain amount and had to make do with what I had. I really believe doing this day in and day out has informed my approach to music. I may not have actually learned an instrument as a child, but I learned how to re-imagine and re-purpose disparate materials to reach an expressive end result - this sounds kind of like a blueprint for making music to me.

Personally I like to have some limitations rather than an infinite palette. We live in a world where basically every instrument, sound, sample and recording are available to us, but it can also become overwhelming. I am currently working on an album where I am playing every instrument, now there is some limitation! (especially on the drums!).

When you're improvising, does it actually feel like you're inventing something on the spot – or are you inventively re-arranging patterns from preparations, practise or previous performances?

I think that it is both of these things. Our brains recall, reconstitute and re-interpret information in our own individual fashion, guided by myriad stimulae and enviromental factors. There are so many experiential variables that go to make up how we input and output everything we do - and this is why no one does anything exactly the same. The act of improvising brings this into stark focus.

It is a great feeling being in right in the moment, when the conscious mind recedes and things start coming out that you are not pro-actively thinking about playing. I have practiced certain ideas and concepts for years and only now are some of them unconsciously appearing in performance.

To you, are there rules in improvisation? If so, what kind of rules are these?

In the broad strokes I don’t think there are any rules as such, but there are definitely areas of musical language and vocabulary around certain genres, and to improvise in these genres authentically one must be versed in those languages. Learning the musical dialect of certain genres is just part of being a well-rounded musician.

Ultimately though, the goal is to sound like yourself, to develop your own recognisable and identifiable style, regardless of what setting you may find yourself in. When I was young and the genre of Hip Hop exploded, the emergent ethos was to not imitate or “bite” someone else’s style but to instead develop your own. Later my guitar teachers expounded the same philosophy.

I think my own path has been be to try to know the language fluently but to strive “speak” it with my own idiosyncratic nuances.

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. How does this process work – and how does it change your performance compared to a solo performance?

I don’t really perform live music solo anymore, though I did in the past. I spent a lot of time as a street performer when I was starting out, just playing solo guitar arrangements of Jazz standards and songs I liked. That situation was mainly born out of necessity, both financially and because I didn’t know many musicians at the time.

Once I began to play with other musicians on the scene I was gradually able to build the musical and personal relationships that have lasted through the years. It’s the basis of great personal friendship that I find makes the best music. This is because trust is obviously such a vital part of all our interactions - and if you innately trust the people you are playing music with then you all start to feel that you can safely step outside your own boundaries and push each other to new heights.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? In which way is it different between your solo work and collaborations?

I divide my time between songwriting, studio / production activity and live performance. Each area requires its own disciplines and presents its own set of creative challenges, but it is all driven by the inescapable act of deliberately stepping into the unknown everyday.

You go into the studio not knowing what you will come out with: Maybe nothing? Maybe something special? Maybe something that you can’t use for this particular album but which will be perfect for that future project you don’t even know about two years down the track.

Launching into a live improvised solo on stage is very much that same feeling of stepping into the unknown. Over the years I have become mostly comfortable with this kind of unstable, tenuous, unpredictable way of living life - in fact I find it exciting.

In a way, improvisations remind us of the transitory nature of life. What, do you feel, can music and improvisation express and reveal about life and death?

I keep coming back to this beautiful quote from great theoretical Physicist Brian Greene, which basically sums up everything for me:

“We are ephemeral. We are evanescent. Yet our moment is rare and extraordinary, a recognition that allows us to make life’s impermanence and the scarcity of self-reflective awareness the basis for value and a foundation for gratitude. While we may long for a perdurable legacy, the clarity we gain from exploring the cosmic timeline reveals that this is out of reach.
But that very same clarity underscores how utterly wondrous it is that a small collection of the universes’s particles can rise up, examine themselves and the reality they inhabit, determine just how transitory they are, and with a flitting burst of activity create beauty, establish connection, and illuminate mystery.”