Deidre Murray

Diedre Murray is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, two-time Obie Winner and master musician. She is an innovative composer, cellist, producer and curator. In the 1970s and 80s, she pioneered the use of the cello as a jazz and new world music instrument.  Since the 90s she has turned her attention to composing for extended musical works and the theatre.  Credits include Unending Pain, co-presented by the Performance Garage and the Whitney Museum of American Art, toured to the Studio Museum of Harlem and Productions Traquen'Arts Cello Festival in Montreal; Lets Go Down to the River, for the Willasau Jazz Festival in Switzerland; The Eves of Nhor, for National Dutch Radio and De Effenaar Festival in Eindhoven Holland; Kamerados, for mixed ensemble at The Women's Improviser Festival in New York; Five Minute Tango, for the inaugural concert at the Danny Kaye/Sylvia Fine Playhouse entitled, performed by the Manhattan Brass Quintet; The Conversation for the Seattle-based New Performance Group at the Walker Arts Center in Minnesota; You Don't Miss the Water, a music-theatre piece, in collaboration with noted poet Cornelius Eady, produced by the Music Theatre Group (MTG); Women In The Dunes, a dance piece created by Blondel Cummings for the Japan Society; the jazz-opera Running Man, for which she wrote the original story and score, and book with Cornelius Eady (two Obie Awards, finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama); music arrangements for Eli's Coming (Obie Award); The Blackamour Angel; an adaptation by Diane Paulus of James Baldwin’s Another Country;  an adaptation of The Voice Within with Marcus Gardley, Harlem Stage and the Apollo Theatre.  Current projects include a new musical, Sweet Billy and the Zooloo’s, with writer Lynn Nottage, for Colored Girl’s Productions, scheduled for 2009; and Spoleto, a series of rags for solo piano in 2009.  She received a B.S. degree from Hunter College in Ethnomusicology and has numerous recordings.