In another era, I would have played square dances, been a court musician, or a circus fiddler, and loved every minute of it,” says veteran LA violinist and songwriter Chris Murphy, whose spirited and haunting original music bends genres and even centuries with ease.
Murphy grew up in an Irish-Italian family near New York City, surrounded by the disparate sounds of his neighbors’ traditional music: Italian mandolin songs, pulsing Latin rhythms, and bracing Irish rounds. Eventually falling under the spell of late, great multi-instrumentalist David Lindley (Jackson Browne, Ry Cooder, Bob Dylan) Murphy went on to explore Turkish and Indian music at Bard College, and studied composition at Boston’s prestigious New England Conservatory of Music.
Since then, Murphy has hypnotized crowds in more than forty US states, done extensive tours of England, Belgium , and The Netherlands, and amassed a breathtakingly deep catalog of over 500 works. His over fifteen original albums—including 2023’s brilliant “The Road & the Stars”—boast A-list players from the Tom Waits band, Wilco, X, The Desert Rose Band, Elvis Costello, and the Buena Vista Social Club.
“To me, music is liquid,” Murphy explains thoughtfully. “I’ll twist and turn, and hammer and mold, and shape, cut, and paste the music to create a fresh experience for my audience at all costs.”
