Daniel Murray, multifaceted guitarist. Photo: Gal Opido

Today, having a conversation with Daniel Murray (São Paulo, 1981-), a multifaceted guitarist, who has a dozen phonographic works, a soloist with the varied camera music and ... with the machine - Murray has already worked on the sound issue mainly by the CD productions Universos Sonoros Para Violão e Tape [for guitar and Tape] and Universos em Expansão (Expanding Universes]. With a Master's Degree in Music, this talented and award-winning guitarist is also a composer, performing in Brazil and regularly abroad. An up-to-date artist, Murray appears on digital platforms such as MIDEM Festival and Classical: Next, also he’s on many internet fronts and maintains a pulsating solo career in parallel with works as the acclaimed Trio Opus 12 (with Paulo Porto Alegre and Christian Dozza); the Duo Saraiva-Murray and a continuous focus in Brazilian music with Michala Petri (recorder) and Marilyn Masur (percussion). Murray has crossed paths with a sophisticated gallery of names of the musical scene and his effort of artistic production is nourished by the positive and determined look on the present and future of instrumental and concert music.

Teresinha Prada (TP)Daniel, what’s the importance of Timbre in your technique? In your studies / essays, do you usually approach the Timbre?

Daniel Murray (DM)For me the search for sound appears in the first contact with the material. It’s what defines fingerings, for example. I think that fingering can be considered one of the fundamental aspects for the sonorities choice. So, to do a musical score already fingered by another performer means to wear “clothes that fit well to other person". I think it’s interesting to "put on that clothes" as it gives clues to understand what the other's interpretation would be. However, perhaps it takes us away from a personal interpretation that would be the musical understanding expressed by the unfolding of the sonority or timbre(the sum of different elements), and that is revealed over time. I think that the tempo’s chose influences how we perceive the timbre – how we articulate the rhythms and where we play the notes, considering that in the guitar there are different possibilities. When I start studying a work, I go through all that. It seems very good to allow me to experiment several possibilities before having something very defined. I like to listen to all the available recordings. To cite an example: in a work like Sequenza XI by Luciano Berio, it’s interesting to perceive the differences in the total time of each interpretation and how the versions of the most violent colour are shorter than the most contemplative ones – as a result of choices made at the beginning of the piece, where the material that is going to be worked is located. The reading of that material and the understanding of it through sound and the choice of timbre influence the total duration of that interpretation, which is the unwinding of the sonority. Everything is connected.

(TP)Do you think that extended technique studies come into (or have already did?) the list of guitarists techniques?

(DM)I think it’s a matter of time till arise more methods, easy pieces, new "simple studies" that deal with musical issues and techniques not so frequented by the young students of "classical guitar". I think it's in our hands to create that kind of material. I believe that the so-called "extended techniques" will enter the list of techniques practiced by everybody; mainly techniques that work better or can be applied not only to many compositions and studies, but also other works repertoire interpretation that don’t foresee such techniques. Until not long ago, play with the thumb of the L.H. (left hand), fingering the fretboard was not common for guitarists (since for guitarists [of the Classic] it’s something more recurrent, I’m referring to the thumb above the fretboard to play bass while the other fingers of the L.H. deal with some melody or chord). This type of technique is found as an exception and almost optional, e.g. Choro da Saudade by Agustín Barrios (depending on the size of the hand or the guitar) and some examples (mentioned in the previous parentheses), in the case of guitarists-composers of the Classical period (taking into account also the smallest body of the "romantic guitar”). I don’t remember finding something similar in Renaissance tablatures, but I cannot say. So, today we have the wonders done with the thumb of L.H. by Guinga and Marcos Tardelli. If we start using here and there, soon we may have a finger named “5” in a method like "Ciranda das Cordas" [method of beginners well known in Brazil, by Henrique Pinto]. But it’s really in our hands.

(TP)What can you say about the connotations, the value judgment of some sounds, from the audiences? You’ve already played that repertoire innumerable times and places - the strangeness (in the reception) persists? Have you noticed changes?

(DM)In a performance everything depends on your relationship with the public. You don’t expect to hear a siren inside a concert hall - and this is an incredible deed of Varèse. And that is how it should be. That's the idea. Some videos that I’ve shared on social networks receive incredibly violent comments from haters (I think they are unpleasant people who lack things to do). So violent that I wouldn’t reproduce. And some people say that nowadays it’s impossible to receive boos, as on the premiere of the Rite of Spring... Don’t be discouraged! If everything goes right, we'll get there! Haters aside, I rather prefer the reaction (of displeasure, surprise or oddness) than the monotony (of who already seems to know everything that is going to happen).The music is the great winner. Playing or working contemporary music with children is a wonderful experience. I had the opportunity to hold 12 workshops through the Proac [government promotion of culture] with the piece Happy days II by Arthur Kampela. There were 50 to 150 children from public schools in various states. If a good relationship is established everything becomes a great playful game. Technology, for example, is extremely attractive. After the presentation of the piece, I asked them "what do you think?" After a certain moment of shyness, many of them get the best word out of their vocabulary of the top hat. Occasionally one that didn’t like had the courage to speak. The comment used to be always the same "where is the rhythm that I was used to?" And never of discomfort with the asperities of the proposed sonorities.

(TP)You have had dedications and premieres of many works, how do you feel that 21^stcentury music for the guitar will be established? What's next step? For example, very unique, strong works, or a hybrid of several trends...

(DM)I don't know how to answer this question. I feel privileged to be able to work with the authors. Everything I've recorded meant a step forward, an apprenticeship. It is the union through music that is very good. The feedback doesn’t always have to be positive. It is an experience that makes you truly understand yourself as a performer. As for what is coming, I don't know how to respond, but I pretend to be here.

(TP)Authors who use the sound material in their compositional ideas for the guitar, could enter the sphere of research and practice, which would promote the guitar’s possibilities knowledge to them, going to meet or moving away from the language of the instrument. How do you see this question of “idiomatic” in current works – or even historical works – and if there’s a liaison with complexity = less idiomatic ... or there is something beyond that ...

(DM)The idiomatic can be found by the performer through his technical devices. Returning a little in the previous question, it is how the commissions end up being worked. The idiomatic is changing as well as the harmonies, the rhythms, the instruments. I find it hard to say that this can define a composer's language (less or more complex). However, those idiomatic already known from other times, when reused, can refer to those who "created" it, so to speak. I think that the idiomatic for the composer or performer is something that is found in order to express something, which may be less or more complex.

(TP)Daniel, what about the academy? Did you deal with contemporary music in your Master's Degree [Extended techniques for guitar: hybridization and parameterization of ways to play, 2013,http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/285299]. What livingness did you already have before your Master's thesis with extended techniques theme for the guitar?

(DM)It was an incredible experience to be guided by [José Augusto] Mannis at Unicamp (University of Campinas - São Paulo / Brazil). I am very grateful. The most difficult thing was finding the right way to write. At the final stage, we use fragments of videos and scores allied to the textual list generated by the parameterization of the movements. We have made an analysis through the deconstruction of the gesture in lists and more lists of movements used for small fragments of the compositions where we find a mixture of two or more coordinated techniques. My previous experience in that sense was a end-of-course writing paper in the FASM [Faculdade Santa Marcelina – art college in São Paulo City] titled Epigraph on a sonorous universe of the 21^stcentury. I think the first piece that I’ve played that demanded different things from the more traditional way was an arrangement of the Valsa Brasileira by Edu Lobo and Jongo by Paulo Bellinati. In the Paulo’s arrange of Valsa there was a rather personal way of "hybridization" of artificial harmonics and natural notes. I was 14, 15 years old. I got to know Flo Menezes musical work at that time through my cousin Guga Murray who was studying composition at UNESP [state university in São Paulo]. When listening to Studio PanAroma discsI was trying to imitate some sounds on the guitar, so I ended up discovering different ways to play in this fun situation. I was learning classical guitar with Floriano Gomes and my uncle José Murray was living at home. We used to listen music and play together almost daily.

(TP)What was more difficult to do in that investigation and what gave you more pleasure? What can you tell us about that academy / career relationship?

(DM)For me, what gives more pleasure is thinking, absorbing content. In addition, the exchange of ideas and to bring those thoughts things to musical results. The most difficult thing was writing. From my experience, the relationship academia / artistic career was great on the one hand and not so good on the other. The good side is to take advantage of the knowledge acquired for another step in my own musical practice: composition. My inner composer evolved a lot during Master studies. The downside is the lack of time, so you having just move away from being your own "producer" in unsent messages, calls that you didn’t have time to make and consequently fewer concerts. Because of that and other issues I don’t see myself doing a PhD at the moment. I don’t see myself with time to do it now.

(TP)Daniel, just to finish, what are your plans? How is your career... today, next year ...?

(DM)My professional time is divided between working on the guitar, in my artistic projects, and classes at the Municipal School of Music[São Paulo City].In the first-half year, I recorded two solo albums: a music project by Egberto Gismonti, produced by him, and a Brazilian music album for the German label Acoustic Records, which will be released on a tour next November. With Egberto I’ve been working for about two years on this project, which contains everything I've already studied about him and something else; they are unpublished arrangements for compositions born and played by him at the piano (like Baião Malandro, Sete Anéis, Maracatu among others). Soon, CD and scores album(or link to download) should come out. I recorded some videos of this project last year. To whom to be curious can go to my channel on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCfMyprSC-OoW-In8PGdRNQ) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/daniel.murray.56808).

Another project that I recorded this year involves the following composers: Victor Assis Brasil, Ernesto Nazareth, João Pernambuco, Nelson Ayres, Edu Lobo, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Guinga, Paulo Bellinati, José Murray and Egberto Gismonti and compositions mine. It’s a general overview of everything that I’ve been doing in this context and that I hadn’t had the opportunity to record – arranges that I made over the years, here and there. The result is a "panorama of Brazilian music". This is the one that will released by the German label (www.acoustic-music.de)and that provided with technical works and executive production bythe musician, guitarist and music producer Peter Finger. A tour with Michala Petri and Marilyn Masur is scheduled for 2019 with whom I recorded Brazilian Landscapes in Denmark. In the next plans I must return to my compositions as well as new partnerships and new projects with Trio Opus 12 and Duo Saraiva-Murray.

(TP)Thank you very much!

(DM)I appreciated! Big hug!

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