Nigel Wright

Nigel Wright, at ten years of age, returned to his birthplace– moving from the murky rivers and steamy marshland of the Georgia low county, to a cool, misty mountaintop in the Blueridge. The wavey milfoil aquatic plants in his mountain lake struck him as an inversion of the treetops filled with Spanish moss from the coast. Not crediting his observation – milfoil and moss, swaying in currents of water and air, both remote, both beautiful – Nigel felt there was nothing special in gathering the raw material of poetry.

After all, having been born into a surround of professional artists, writers, and musicians, Nigel knew an aptitude for the arts alone could not give him a personal outline. Passing over his talent for painting, recoiling from the snap, snap, snap from the fingers of his piano teacher, Nigel still had to admit that he must create something, just so long as it was unique. When he finally, almost reluctantly, picked up his father’s guitar, it was with determination to avoid obvious progressions, standard tunings, and plain chords. If that ambition was too strenuous to start with, his first compositions did show the sixteen-year-old’s exploratory grasp of fresh, solid musical structures.

The resulting album, MILLFOIL, Wright recorded at a home studio in 2010. His lyrics, delivered in a voice both resonant and pure, hover in abstraction with an uncanny power to evoke. Finding the distinct and honest in his own voice, Nigel makes his link. Butterfly Collectors discovered Nigel Wright’s work completely by surprise. The Berlin/Haldern label partnered with him for a remastered version of MILLFOIL on vinyl, release planned for 2012. The stylistic influences of the singer songwriter are evident in his single “Anna,” but Nigel’s work embodies a larger musical arc. “Clear Eyed Plans,” on the flip side, is his studied leap into bold contrasts and layered voicings.