Mark Murphy

My singing evolved with a feeling of intense relaxation, always using my diaphram and breathing specifically through my nose.

Your accompanist has a lot to do with how you sing, so experiment and choose your partner wisely.

The louder they [the band] play the softer I sing.

Give it a good go, try to have fun at it, try to pass on some good notes and some good sounds to your fans, and I don’t think you will have wasted your time.

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.

Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic.

Play for the spiritual aspect, the emotion.

[on B. B. King] Very seldom does he talks about the way he play, man. He always wanna talk about young women. And I fuss at him sometimes, I say, ‘Man I wanna know what did you do here!’

You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

I had an affinity for music and could play anything I heard on the piano, but I wasn’t scholastically advanced in any way. It was more of a habitual tendency. I would work on weekends at piano bars playing jazz when I was an art student, but the music wasn’t mine – it was covers: everything from Radiohead to really old jazz. But other than that, the only training I had was piano lessons from when I was nine until I was eleven.

I’m an interpreter of stories. When I perform it’s like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.

Every symphony, for example, is a sonata for orchestra; every string quartet is a sonata for four strings; every concerto a sonata for a solo instrument and orchestra.

Being a Jazz musician is not a rose garden!

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

My music had roots which I’d dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.

I play the way I do cause it allows me to come up w/ the sickest sounds possible. That’s the point now isn’t it?

Learn the tunes by playing the masters, learn expression by playing yourself.