Musician
Imagination is our greatest natural resource.
Bandcamp | Youtube | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Resumé
"Monstrously talented...an act the likes of which I have not seen in a long time."
- Willy Porter"The perfect opening act."
- Michael Travis (String Cheese Incident, EOTO)“Intoxicating, rejuvenating, and unapologetically spiritual work...entertaining songs that completely upend the stereotypes of intelligent music...instantly memorable and utterly magnetic tunes whose authenticity and sweetness is boundary breaking.”
- Reality Sandwich“Michael has mastered a method of playing on a pedestal all its own. Ultimately [his work] is an exploration into what you perceive music, the guitar, and technology can do…then completely altering it.”
- Mixolydian
Artist Bio
Michael Garfield writes simultaneously tender and climactic, chill and energetic, intensely technical yet vulnerable tunes that marry analog and digital, head and heart. Part avant-fingerstyle guitarist, part songwriter-storyteller, and part electroacoustic pioneer, his concerts draw comparisons to acts as distinct as Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, Son Lux, Jeff Buckley, David Byrne, and Kaki King — sometimes all at once.
His music has been widely deployed as the score for major life transitions, from conception to childbirth to marriage to psychedelic trauma therapy. Committed to adventurous venues and collaborations, Michael has performed at dozens of festivals on three continents, including Boom in Portugal, Rainbow Serpent and Earth Frequency in Australia, Motion Notion in Canada, and Wakarusa, Moogfest, Sonic Bloom, SXSW, Art Outside, Astronox, and Rootwire in the United States. Over twenty years of touring, he has lit up a host of legendary venues, including Arcosanti, Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return, The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, The Dallas Museum of Natural History, Austin’s Paramount Theater, Detroit’s Majestic Theatre, and The Santa Fe Institute. Michael spent multiple years as the resident musician for Burning Man's aerial dance showcase; was the first musician ever involved with the MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference; founded and hosted multiple long-running group improvisation residencies in some of Austin and Santa Fe’s finest listening rooms (including Loopers' Night, Paint Jam ATX, and The Tumbleroot Music Lab); rocked out in the rainforest in Costa Rica and underground in the Longhorn Cavern State Park; and continues to push the envelope of fearless creative exploration in every available dimension.
The chromatic diversity of artists he's opened for speaks for itself: DeVotchKa (multiple sold-out shows), Mary Lattimore, Gaudi, Papadosio (multiple sold-out shows), Taylor McFerrin, Tim Reynolds, Willy Porter, Random Rab, Bluetech, That 1 Guy (multiple sold-out shows), Zach Deputy, The Floozies, Rena Jones, Andreas Kapsalis, Shane Mauss (multiple sold-out shows), Sqwerv, and side projects of both Beats Antique and The String Cheese Incident. And he has jammed onstage with many more, including Fareed Haque, Entheogenic, Ayla Nereo, The Human Experience, Bird of Prey, Erothyme, and Master Margherita.
“A transcendent exploration of what one man can achieve with an acoustic guitar and some pedals...the glitched-out grooves [are] simultaneously calm yet very much switched-on.”
- Everyday Guitar Gear“Amazing to watch and even more amazing to listen to.”
- TwoGroove.com
Additional Career Highlights
• His music has been featured in numerous documentaries (including PBS’s award-winning Arts in Context, Shane Mauss’ award-winning Psychonautics, Psychedelic Science 2017, and Soldiers of the Vine); studied for peer-reviewed research in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface and The Proceedings of EVA London; and deployed in live theater productions (including P3M5 and Land Without Evil).
• He was the first musician in the world to stream POV video from smart glasses through a projector, allowing audiences to watch the show through his eyes, in 2013.
• He composed and produced a 46-minute original score for the Biosphere 2 retrospective exhibition at UC San Diego’s Gallery QI curated by Jacob Lillemose.
• He predicted AR-integrated live music NFTs in 2009 and was the first (and perhaps still only) musician to combine live instrumentation with X-ray observatory data sonifications and AI-generated sonic elements.
• His instrumental improvisations were used in the FDA-approved Phase 2 & 3 clinical trials for MDMA as a therapy for PTSD, on myriad podcasts (including Expanding Mind, The Psychedelic Salon, and The Invisible Room, and in countless live co-improvisation events with aerial fabric artists, live painters, visual projectionists, and avant-dance companies.
• He was the first musician in the world to perform with the Synesthesia music visualizer in a public alpha test at the Austin Technology Forum in 2015, and the first to use it in mind-altering A/V setups for his futurist talks at Moogfest and Boom Festival 2016 (on lineups with Jaron Lanier, Reggie Watts, Sunn O))), and Solar Fields).
• His music has been investigated at length on multiple acclaimed podcasts, including The Danny Jones Podcast, Love & Philosophy, and Erik Davis’ Expanding Mind.
Videos
Press Photos
Organized Benefit Albums
More Reviews
“It takes creativity to make the next step in a newer, more shocking direction, but it takes a visionary to go beyond the breaking point and meet music on the other end of the spectrum. That’s what Michael Garfield does.”
- The Untz“Unique and amazing....something sorely lacking in the world in which we live where cookie-cutter boys and girls are given stardom on a daily basis. In this world, [Michael is] a supernova.”
- Penny Moon, HireABandStLouis.com"Michael Garfield's extraordinary acoustic work...finds the ears captivated and entranced in a dance of delightful sonic textures. A gifted instrumentalist, Garfield's vocal prowess should not go unheard either, resonating in haunting fashion, full of chills and thrills. This is wonderful, simple music for the listener's ears to feed on."
- Performer Magazine"Welcome to the future... Michael is a pioneer exploring the edge realms where the electric and old world meet."
- LostInSound“Inspired, revelatory, heart wrenching, mind expanding noise, as if conducted from the noosphere in a collaboration by Leary, Terence McKenna and Teilhard de Chardin.”
- Tom Huckabee“Michael Garfield has some absolutely amazing chops...the musicianship on this album is truly wonderful.”
- Marquee Magazine"Phenomenal. I love the blurring of lines between performance-composition, space-time, etc. It's very moving too, and very strange. Awesome stuff."
- JF Martel (host of Weird Studies and author, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice)
"If you are like us, then [in you] lies a yearning to discover something DIFFERENT and new, something that floors you, something that moves you, something that gets you excited to go home and download everything of theirs available online and to tell all of your friends about it...Michael Garfield could do that for us this summer."
- Sparkleberry Lane
"Michael Garfield paints the world with sound...some truly mind-bending improvs. Fans of art and performance will find a lot to love."
- The Horn
"Don't jump to conclusions based on 'acoustic guitar improv'...this sounds more like some of the sonic explorations that came out of the Robert Fripp/Brian Eno collaborations than some hippie 'jamming' on an acoustic in a park somewhere. [It's] full of odd timbres and textures, but the occasional splash of melody erupts and there's a strange, sci-fi psycho-Western feel to a lot of it – let's just say if they'd ever done a psychedelic drug sequence on Firefly, this would have worked perfectly as the accompaniment...frequently evocative and never less than interesting."
– Denver Westword"'Golden Hour' slides into my veins and spreads its claws deep, holding me with unrelenting insistence and a funk groove plowed clean, deep and dangerously direct."
- David Namerow"Amazing. I have not seen that before...I was hypnotized."
- Ramaya Soskin"The twisting braids of sound he can generate with such a simple rig is incredible, as is the simmering energy that comes through even the quietest moments, a feeling of suspense that something you don't want to miss is about to happen. The inventiveness and the passion that drives all of the meticulous work that goes into such projects is evidence of a deep and interesting well of ideas...memorable and beautiful."
- LostInSound"Astonishing...insane guitar talent."
- Smother.net"Dope. Evolving cyberacoustic experimentation recorded in a geodesic dome..."
- Infinite Third"A Million Anniversaries has put me in a more spiritual place than I have been in quite some time...I highly suggest grabbing this album. It will make your day."
- NoneBackwards.com"This music makes me high. [Michael's] guitar talks. It tells stories and laughs and enters into shamanic fits…but it also weaves together a blanket of the familiar."
- David Titterington"Esoteric and intricate, I found myself struggling to describe his sound and style...some surprisingly pleasurable heartbreak."
- Mousike Magazine"The only reason this album might not be appreciated is if you don't have a musical ear."
- Scene Magazine"An amazing artist. The diversity of sound on this album is incredible considering he only used an acoustic guitar and various pedals. You could enjoy it on a Friday night, or a Sunday morning."
- Appalachian Jamwich"An insanely moving spiritual experience in sound. His intricately developed soundscapes delve into the internal harmonies of what it means to be human: the percussion our pulse and the melody the flow of our spirit, like blood vessels serpentinely traversing through the labyrinthine veins of the body."
- LostInSound"Here is my frank review, Michael: I think you love babies. And you want everyone making them so you go around giving people this music. You're like the Johnny Appleseed of a whole new crop of children."
- Rebekah Armstrong“Electic elegance. You got it, keep it up, the world is hungry for the real deal.”
- Erial Ali“Watching your show the other day was a PROFOUND spiritual experience for me...a highlight of my musical experiences up till this point. Dude, you hit me on the deepest soul level.”
- DJ Dreamcode"I've chosen [this] as the music I will conceive my first child to...in all seriousness."
- Jeremy Judkins of Deep Blip Records“[Michael] is leading the charge in bringing a more human and soulful aspect back to electronic music.”
- Zympht“Great vibe, masterful looping. Hypnotic and wonderful sounds. Looking forward to hearing more.”
- Marco Oppedisano"Your sound is totally sunkissed Cali psych mysticism. That sound is classic and cannot be faked."
- Pelican Daughters“So so so SO Good!! Yay and wow.”
- Kyrstyn Pixton“Wow...awesome!”
- Dixon’s Violin“You made me cry.”
- Lauren Bruno (director, Solstice Live)“While I MEAN to give helpful, rational feedback, all I want to do is run around and throw copies of your CD at people, photograph their faces upon listening, and give THAT to you instead. The music makes me FEEL too strongly to be able to THINK about it enough to speak on it in a way that would be useful to you.”
- Ruth Carter"If you've never seen [Michael] perform live before, it's something between a front row seat at a paradigm-shifting TED talk, and sharing the archetypal wonder on display when a modern child first interacts with a mechanism of artificial intelligence, grappling with the intriguing chasm between its utilitarian function and its subtle humanity."
- Jared Buschbaum“Show me someone who believes they have an original idea, and I will invite them to meet Michael Garfield.
- Colorado Music Buzz“A bit of a philosopher-scientist…he likes to go deep.”
- Santa Fe Reporter“Known for his chill and energetic guitar music, which showcases the technical side of himself...a lot of Garfield’s work comes into making his music performable.”
- Albuquerque Journal"Michael Garfield is simply too multi-talented to be categorized, too out-of-the-box to be typed…a masterful thinker, poet-philosopher, and visionary artist."
- Ecstatic Saturdays