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Lynda Murray

Lynda set up Hastings Jazz Club to bring bands who play original jazz to Hastings.

a brief history:

Lynda moved from London in 1986 to Hastings. Her father was born in British Guyana and came to England with the air-force during the second world war. After the war he settled in London and met her mother at a dance in Tottenham Court Road. Her father, the late Robert Murray MBE, wrote
'Lest We Forget' a collection of aural histories about West Indian air-force servicemen and women who came to England during World War II. Her family were also chosen to be in a BBC2 documentary called 'Love in Black and White. Lynda Murray myspace page link

The saxophone and jazz found me I never set out to play sax or be a jazz musician. I wanted to be a ballet dancer then a classical pianist but through music college and her husband Jak Kilby (jazz photographer) her true nature was found. "I am a sax player and I love jazz and have a real affinity with the music. I didn't start learning to play piano until my late teens and a few years later somehow managed to get on to the music course at Trent Park, Middlesex University. In a desperate bid to get out of classical singing a friend gave me a battered old soprano sax".

My very first lesson on soprano sax was with Trevor Watts, he gave me a mouth piece, showed me how to hold the sax and taught me the chromatic scale. Armed with these tools I then taught my self to play some tunes and after the summer break managed to convince my course director that their money would be much better spent paying for me to have sax lessons than classical singing. He acquiesced.

After Trent Park I worked on my technique with Jimmy Hastings, he was busy working with Wayne Sleep and I was busy being a wife and mother to two young 'sprogs', affectionately known as the 'kilbets'. Crazy while being a student I had also embarked on family life. So of course lessons and practise were sporadic. I enrolled in several jazz classes at the City Lit and the most memorable were Olaf Vaz's big band. I only played soprano in those days so he stuck me in with the trumpet section, amusing, he was always very kind towards me and I learnt to play trumpet phrases. I also attended Cathy Stobart's sax classes. She was very encouraging and a great inspiration. A female who could really play the saxophone.

Gradually I was battling with the dilemma am I a jazz piano player or am I a jazz sax a player.
The sax won.
In 1984 I formed my first band "In Your Own Time". This was a 6 piece all female band. I just did not have the confidence to ask a man to play in the band. The sole intention of this band was to play original music. This also became the bands downfall. We were all novices at composing and we did not have a common aim. We all wrote in very different styles. Although it was my band I ran it as a collective and so for diplomacy's sake everybody had a composition in the set regardless of its merit. I finally left because musically it was going nowhere and travelling up from Hastings was becoming a bind.
I moved to playing my own music and modern standards and set up bands such as 'What's Cookin' and Little M's Fusion Band with trumpeter Bob Turner. I then fronted my own quartet. These bands at sometime or another have featured on piano Steve Lodder, Terry Seabrook, John Donalson, Liane Carroll, Mark Edwards, Pete Letanka, Frances Knight, Simon Robinson, Pete White. On guitar Cathy Dyson, Steve Thomson, Andy Williams, on double bass Nigel Thomas, Terry Pack, Steve Thompson, Paul Whitten, Erica Wilson, on percussion Dave Trigwell, Neville Murray, Vince Clarke, Dave Storey and Nana Tsiboe.

After our move to Hastings my personal circumstances changed. My husband 'found God' and became a zealous religious convert, being told to give up playing the saxophone was the final straw for me, I had put up with a religion that changed my cultural habits e.g. not eating any pork products, not celebrating Christmas or birthdays but now he had gone to far. He might as well have asked me to cut out my heart. I decided to stayed in Hastings to raise our two children and he moved back to London.
I had not even completed my degree and I had to become the sole bread winner and I had two young children. Nightmare! I managed to get accreditation for my 2 years spent at Trent Park with the Open University and took 2 modules with them to get my degree. Then in 1991 I enrolled on the 1- year full time postgraduate course in Music (Sussex University) and qualified as a schoolteacher for music in 1992. I ended up teaching music full time in a comprehensive school for more that 10 years so that I could pay the mortgage and provide a home for our children. I kept playing the soprano and took up the alto but my own playing always took second place to everything else in my life. I am trying to redress this imbalance now. Playing comes first and everything else in my life takes second place. My babies have flown the coup, I no longer need to teach full time and I have this old desire back, to play, play, play. I am in love with music.

The 'kilbets' are now young adults embarking on their chosen paths. Naomi a young classical concert singer has just been awarded a full scholarship to go and study singing at the Franz Listz Academy in Budapst Hungary from September 2007 and Zak who has a degree in illustration with animation is working as a young designer in London.

While in London I attended several jazz workshops and devoured jazz harmony. In 1984 I met Courtney Pine we were in the same cohort in a music project set up by the late John Stevens - (free music exponent) and John Cummings now director of Serious (International Music Producers). The project was called Search and Reflect and it was to train music students to run music workshops within the community using non-traditional methods for teaching music.

One of my most embarrassing moments with the sax was when my battered old soprano needed some work doing to it. This happened on a regular basis so this embarrassment happened on a regular basis. Trevor Watts recommended Willie Garnett over in Hammersmith. So I duly trundled innocently along to his studio, trusted soprano in hand to meet a wonderful guy who loves the sax and is passionate about jazz but I had entered a 'blokes' den. Similar to a mechanics garage, bits and pieces everywhere, and on every inch of every wall were pictures of naked ladies. I did not know where to look. Everywhere I was confronted with images of bare breasts. He must have smiled about my embarrassment. I did visit Willie's workshop many times with my battered soprano which he never disparaged, although it was an appalling example of the instrument, until I bought my first Selmer Mark VI silver plated soprano. I hear his workshop is now in Putney at Ritzy Music Store and the naked ladies have gone.