Due to Perform at Java Jazz Festival 2010.... David Murray Black Saint Quartet

For many aficionados, David Murray is already something of a jazz dinosaur, if we consider the number of albums recorded, crowded theatres and awards that have crowned his career (Grammy Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Bird Award, Danish Jazz Par Prize, Guiness Jazz Festival, musician of the decade (1980) by the Village Voice….). And yet, with barely a quarter-century behind him, we still find verve and youthful inspiration expressed through his career that is so prolific in terms of both productions and musical orientations (from the World Saxophone Quartet of which he is a founder to his octet and including his big band and the Caribbean jazz of the GWO Ka Masters), all with the greatest musicians. David Murray is the worthy successor of the greatest names in jazz, and he is now contributing to the rise of young talents like Lafayette Gilchrist, a young pianist already hailed by critics. “Just Bop and shut up!" That was impossible for the young David, a contemporary of free jazz, the last adventure of the fin-de-siècle jazzman. Impossible for this son of Methodists, who found in Coltrane and Ayler the figure of the spiritual Negro, not to be politicized to his very core. Today David Murray is in his fifties, with a 130 albums to his name and participation in another hundred recordings as invited guest.  

At the end of the 1990's people spoke in regard to David Murray of fusion, world music, even Pan-Africanism, after he undertook a backward journey through the Caribbean, the “little" Americas, via South Africa and Senegal." Before starting that journey, David Murray lived the history of jazz: born in Oakland, he grew up in Berkeley and studied with Catherine Murray (David's mother, an organist), Bobby Bradford, Arthur Blythe, Stanley Crouch, Margaret Kohn and many others until he left for Ponoma College (Los Angeles), and then New York where he settled in 1975. In New York he was encouraged by Cecil Taylor, with whom he played, and Dewey Redman. There were more meetings, men and music: Sunny Murray, Tony Braxton, Oliver Lake, Don Cherry. As part of Ted Daniels' Energy band, he worked with Hamiett Bluiett, Lester Bowie and Frank Lowe. In 1976, after his first European tour, David Murray founded one of his legendary groups, the World Saxophone Quartet (with which he came out in 2006 with a much-noted “Political Blues") with Oliver Lake, Hamiett Bluiett and Julius Hemphill. He got into a period of intense creativity with one recording after another, in a variety of groups. From Jerry Garcia to Max Roach by way of Randy Weston and Elvin Jones, David Murray had one encounter after another until 1978, when he developed his quartet and later octet and devoted himself to his own groups. Nonetheless he didn\'t hesitate to get into other areas, working for different projects on strings (concert at the Public Theatre in New York in 1982), Ka drums of Guadeloupe (Creole, 1998, Gwotet in 2004 and a new album, "The Devil Tried to Kill Me," in preparation for 2009), or musicians and dancers from South Africa (M'Bizo, 1998).  

Recently he threw himself into his Black Saint Quartet, with “Sacred Ground," an album released in June 2007 (Justin Time) featuring the magical voice of Cassandra Wilson, an album whose sumptuous compositions pay homage to one of his richest periods under the legendary Italian label Black Saint, and digital reissue of this entire catalogue on the major digital downloading sites. This work was also followed by the rediscovery of 26 rare pieces on the DIW label, now available for downloading exclusively on Emusic, as a good way for fans to measure the expanse of an already dizzying career. Always open to new territories, Murray is now working on writing a new musical opera with Amiri Baraka, after the homage to Pushkin he composed in 2005 with his friend Blaise Ndjehoya. An opera that won't be out until 2009 or 2010. What is it? “There's poetry, music and themes. Look, I wrote this composition this morning. It's going to be entitled “You Vote, You Die."

David Murray's Myspace

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