David Murray
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Biography
David Murray is an American jazz musician celebrated for his innovative technique with deep tones on the tenor saxophone and bass clarinet. His extensive catalogue of recordings includes albums with a variety of his own ensembles from a trio to a big band. Born in Oakland, California (February 19, 1955), to a musical family, he played saxophone and clarinet as a child, studied at Ponoma College in Los Angeles and became a professional musician after he moved to New York City in the mid-1970s. He has collaborated with a vast number of other artists in a long career marked by a willingness to embrace different styles including jazz fusion and world music. He plays tenor saxophone on the 1987 Grammy Award-winning jazz album Blues for Coltrane: A Tribute to John Coltrane with pianist McCoy Tyner, tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Roy Haynes. In 1993, he and his octet performed with rock band Grateful Dead on stage at Madison Square Garden and they appear on the 1996 album Dark Star: The Music of the Grateful Dead. He is the subject of the 2008 Jacques Goldstein documentary David Murray: I'm a Jazzman, which is included in a double-DVD release David Murray - Saxophone Man which came out in 2011. In 2015, he performed with pianist Geri Allen and drummer Terri Lynne Carrington at the Winter Jazzfest in New York City and the following year they released Perfection and performed music from the album on BBC Radio in England from the EFG London Jazz Festival in November 2016. Murray's 2018 album, Blues for Memo featuring his music and poems of social commentary by American poet Saul Williams, was followed by his New World Trio's Seriana Promethea (2022), Plumb with Questlove and Roy Angry in 2023, and Francesca that same year with his quartet of Marta Sanchez, Luke Stewart, and Russell Carter. The same musicians recorded Birdly Serenade, issued in 2025, featuring vocals from Ekep Nkwelle and Murray's wife Francesca Cinelli on "Oiseaux de Paradis", sung in French.
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Albums
Top Tracks
- Track Popularity
- Muhammad Ali
- Inbertwinxt
- Moon Over Sand II
- Akhenaten
- One World Family by David Murray
- As I Woke
- Luminous
- Song from the Old Country
- High Priest
- Fast Life
- Chazz
- Blues for Savannah
- At the Cafe Central
- In the Spirit
- Intuitively
- Shakill's Warrior
- Off Season
- Patricia
- Black February
- Milano Strut
- Strollin' (For Jean Michel Basquiat)
- Gratitude
- Steps
- Dark Secrets
