Preview: David Murray at A Place for Jazz, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025

Prolific, versatile saxophonist and bass clarinet player David Murray brings credibility miles wide to open the new season at A Place for Jazz Friday. 

Even if it never actually happened, we can imagine him, underage, sneaking into 52nd Street clubs where giants invented bebop in the 50s; then other geniuses roughed it up into hard bop. And we might be surprised to see Deadheads coming in to see him Friday, drawn by Murray’s 1996 album “Dark Star: The Music of the Grateful Dead*.” Murray has made music everywhere between those influences and may be the most influential jazz artist to play here in years.

David Murray. Photo provided

Wikipedia – it’s OK, I support them – cites noisy 1960s free-jazz saxophonists Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler and Archie Sheep as early influences but also notes earlier, gentler swing stylists Coleman Hawkins, Paul Gonsalves and Ben Webster shaped the fluent and lyrical side of Murray’s playing. However, his debut album, “Flowers for Albert” (1976- an Albert Ayler tribute), has a happy hard-bop bounce – and he’s recorded it several times with different bands, big and small.

Announcing Friday’s show, A Place for Jazz credited Murray with 200 albums as leader and sideman while Wiki’s Discography specifically lists nearly 100 as leader or co-leader. That doesn’t count 22 he made with the World Saxophone Quartet from 1977 to 2010; Murray was a founder, with Hamiet Bluiett, Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake. Murray collaborations in all directions include albums with Sunny Murray (no relation), Teresa Brewer, the Roots, Jack DeJohnette and James Blood Ulmer.

Murray released eight albums in 1978 alone, then 13 in 1991. These appear on 10 different record labels; I consider this a mark of honor, of stubborn creative independence in listening to his ambitious, wide-ranging muse more than corporate commercial considerations.

These many albums, and live performances ranging from solo saxophone explorations to bustling big bands, have earned impressive awards that stack tall on paper and would fill yards of mantel space:

In 1980, the Village Voice named (then 25-year-old) David Murray its Musician of the Decade.

North Sea Jazz gave Murray its 1986 Bird Award. 

Murray received a Guggenheim Fellowship three years later, when he also won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Group Performance honoring his “Blues for Coltrane: A Tribute to John Coltrane.”

Denmark’s Jazzpar Prize came to Murray in 1991, only its second year.

Newsday newspaper named him Musician of the Year in 1993.

He received an honorary doctorate in music from Pomona College in 2012, 35 years after he’d enrolled there but left after two years, having already released seven albums on five different labels.

In 2021, the California Arts Council honored Murray with its legacy grant.

Last year, Murray led his new quartet in recording “Francesca,” a tribute to his multi-talented wife Francesca Cinelli-Murray who contributes poetry (as lyrics) and visuals for his albums. She produced and directed an animated video for the song “Ninno” on the album with painter and animator Nancy Ostrovsky.

The New York Times named “Francesca” No. 2 Jazz Album of the Year while Downbeat listed it among the best jazz albums of the year.

The same quartet that released “Francesca” plays with Murray at A Place for Jazz Friday: Marta Sanchez, piano; Luke Stewart, bass; and Russell Carter, drums.

These days Murray mainly plays tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, joining Eric Dolphy and Benny Maupin in fostering the latter saxophone-sized “licorice stick” as a jazz instrument. Like Dolphy, Murray has also been influential in restoring the flute to jazz prominence. Murray uses rotary breathing – inhale through the nose while exhaling from the mouth through the instrument – to play spectacularly long phrases. While Rahsaan Roland Kirk used this technique to astonishing effect on “Bright Moments” (1973) and other masterpieces, Trombone Shorty has recently wowed audiences by playing forever-long lines on trumpet.

A new album, “Birdly Serenade,” features the same crew as on “Francesca” and onstage Friday at A Place for Jazz.

This new A Place for Jazz season, the 38th, presents both established stars and young breakout performers, with homegrown-legend saxophonist Leo Russo in the traditional local heroes slot. 

Sept. 19: (Guitarist) Peter Bernstein Quartet

Oct. 3: (Saxophonist) Sarah Hanahan Quartet

Oct. 17: (Saxophonist) Leo Russo Sextet

Nov. 7: (Singer) Tyreek McDole

Show time is 7:30 p.m. at the Carl B. Taylor Auditorium in the Begley Building (Music Department) of SUNY Schenectady County Community College. Admission is $25 with a season discount: seven tickets for the price of five. http://www.aplaceforjazz.org.

Admission at the door is $25, cash or check (ATM available). 

• In David Murray’s album “Dark Star: The Music of the Grateful Dead,” the title track explodes in free-jazz anarchy before a trombone emerges from the fray to state the main theme of this jam-band classic. Dead guitarist and singer Bob Weir, who led the periodically reconstituted (since Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995) band in recent farewell shows in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, plays on one track.

• Jazzification of the Grateful Dead repertoire continues at full speed, but for this conversation, let me just mention Murray’s fellow saxophonist, the similarly-named, David McMurray’s two Grateful Dead albums “Grateful Deadication” (2021) and “Grateful Deadication 2” (2023).