Lynda Murray

Biography

  Sidney Bechet 
  (1897-1959)

a brief history:

My 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 my mother an Irish emigre at a dance in Tottenham Court Road.
My 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. My 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. As a child, most days after school, would find me either at the swimming pool or at the local ballet school and I think my jazz roots are there. I excelled at tap and modern dance and my excellent sense of rhythm was always being commented upon. I always had bags of energy and I found school boring and unchallenging.

Everyone thought I would pursue a career in dance but when I was 14 I gave up. I just did not want to dance anymore and gradually I turned to the piano and went to music college (yes I was in one of those homes that had a piano). Through music college and my ex-husband Jak Kilby (jazz photographer) my 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 properly until my late teens and a few years later somehow managed to get into Music College. In a desperate bid to get out of my second study, 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 college 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 practice 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.

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.

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.

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 I had moved to Hastings and traveling up to London from Hastings was becoming a bind.
I moved on to playing a mix of my own music and modern standards and set up bands such as 'What's Cookin' and Little M's Fusion Band.

Then came the round of section playing, from military wind band, jazz big band and even the horn section of a 16 piece soul band Time Machine what a hoot. I had grown up dancing to sould music and now I was playing it amazing. Besides our own gigs we supported soul band The Stylistics at Wembley Conference Centre and The Fairfield Halls Croyden.

But, I love jazz and so the pull back to that genre came and I have played with on piano Steve Lodder, Terry Seabrook, John Donalson, Liane Carroll, Mark Edwards, Pete Letanka, Frances Knight, Simon Robinson, Pete White and Joe Thomas.
Guitar Cathy Dyson, Steve Thomson, Andy Williams, Luke Rattenbury, Phil Hudson and Paul Richards,
Double bass Nigel Thomas, Terry Pack, Steve Thompson, Paul Whitten, Erica Wilson and Nick McGuigan
Percussion Dave Trigwell, Neville Murray, Vince Clarke, Dave Storey, Nana Tsiboe and Loz Thomas.