Nigel Sifantus » Shows

Live duo performance with Taylor McFerrin at Zanzibar

Nigel — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 05:53:07 +0000

My old friend and musical collaborator Taylor McFerrin called me a few weeks ago and said he was rolling through LA on tour supporting his soon to be released album “Early Riser” and invited me to sit in with him at his show at Zanzibar in Santa Monica. Naturally I was totally excited to revive our old chemistry and eager to see what we would actually do. The show was put on by KCRW Dj Aaron Byrd and featured the bands Master Blaster and Electric Wire Hustle. It ended up being an amazing evening and we played a mix of Beat-box, Rhodes, Drums, iPhone, and dueling Ableton Live systems at times building beats from scratch on the spot using the Akai APC 40 and the Novation Launchpad. The whole show ended up being a total free form improv and it went places we didn’t even know we would go. One of the other DJ’s from the night, Anthony Valadez also posted this video recap of the night which has some great footage from the whole experience.

The Vault has been opened!

Nigel — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:05:11 +0000

During my days in NYC from when I arrived in1998 until around 2005, I used to constantly travel with my mini disc player and audio-technica stereo microphone to capture every bit of my musical life. I recorded everything from amazing class rehearsals at the New School University with some of the most amazing and diverse musicians I had the fortune to collaborate with, live performances with all my bands of the time (Spaceship, Sevenseventeen, Grandfather Ridiculous, L Maestro Presents), and other random concerts and jam sessions. I kept piling up a collection of these discs, some neatly labeled, some not at all, and usually used them to listen to once and analyze what I had just done for musical education purposes. Even though I generally cast them aside in a box, I knew that at some point I would have to revisit this material.

Well at this point the Mini-Disk player is a technology of the past, my disks had been collecting dust for years, and my last working player long been busted from carrying it in my stick bag where ever I went. Recently I opened this box and knew I had to dive in but first I had to get a hold of a player. Enter the wonders of eBay and the next thing I knew I had a great component player for around $40 and I was off and running.

This post is an initial collection of my findings. I’ve got some great vintage Grandfather Ridiculous performances, jazz sessions with some amazing students I was going to school with at the time including Marcus Strickland, John Lee, Richard Cruz, Reid Taylor, Joe Ashlar and others, and some live performances I have re-mixed that I had totally forgotten about.

Enjoy and check back later for more choice additions.

Nigel Sifantus – “The Vault” Recordings from 1999-2005 by Progtronica

Spooky Halloween classic: "Exoskeleton" Live in philly 10/27/07

Nigel — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:32:49 +0000

I figured this was the perfect time to revisit this classic video taken at a Halloween gig 2 years ago with New School University “Super Group” Exoskeleton which features Aaron Dugan on guitar (sevenseventeen, Matisyahu, guitar god in the making) Jason Fraticelli on Bass (Cell theory, L Maestro Presents, Grandfather, and 2/3rds of all other bands out of Philly) Brian Marsella on keys (caveman, beat the donkey, the Flail and my old “super trio’s class with Lee Anne Ledgerwood) and myself on drums. The band name was inspired by the Halloween party scene in “the Karate Kid” where the Cobra Kai kids all had on matching “exoskeleton” costumes when they beat up Daniel son. When we got the opportunity to actually play on Halloween, we decided to make a theme of it and dress in costumes as close as we could find to the ones in the movie and improvise a new soundtrack to the “Karate Kid” while the music was playing in the background.

Warning… This is some pretty weird wild stuff and the sound quality is not the greatest but it is amusing none the less. What we learned from the night is that the “karate Kid is actually kind of a long movie when you try to play continuously throughout. Once the fight scene in the end came up we were pretty much exhausted.

Happy Halloween!!!!

L Maestro Presents live at the Grog Shop Cleveland

Nigel — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 05:47:46 +0000

L Maestro descended to the surface of the earth once again in Cleveland Ohio on Sunday, August 16th to rock the Grog Shop. Although Taylor, Jason and I have been performing as “The Cell Theory” in the mean time, this group hadn’t played together since late 2004. We were scattered around the country in proportion for the gig and were only all in the same place in time to make a sound check. The previous week had been spent emailing around to each other tracks we had of recordings from old shows so that we could all re-learn the material while adding new twists. With the aid of L Maestro himself, the gig came off flawless. Here are some highlights!

Drum solo at the Blue Note

Nigel — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 03:58:32 +0000

Here is a video of a drum solo of mine during a Cell Theory performance at the famed Blue Note jazz club in downtown NYC in March of ’05. I was using a setup at the time running Ableton live on my mac, triggering short and long samples on which I soloed over the top using the acoustic kit. I was using the house kit which actually got a great kick drum sound.

Grandfather Ridiculous live at Tribeka

Nigel — Thu, 15 May 2003 04:08:35 +0000