Greg Murphy

Greg Murphy – You Remind Me (Whaling City Sound)

Pianist and Chicago native, Greg Murphy, is back with a new disc for 2024 called You Remind Me. Obasi Akoto joins him on bass, Steve Johns is the drummer, and violinist Zach Brock is in on the action for three songs as well. You Remind Me is one of Murphy’s finest efforts in years, featuring both well-executed standards (“Nancy with the Laughing Face,” Frank Foster’s “Simone,” John Coltrane’s “Mr. Day”) and some excellent originals, like “After Dark,” which is one of the Zach Brock features, or “Night Flight” which gives us a taste of Murphy’s hard swinging trio. All in all, You Remind Me is a charming album that will certainly be getting a lot of love around our studios at WDCB.

Music & Memories

February 16, 2024

You Remind Me, Greg Murphy's new album, is in honor of his late wife Nancy. He included Jimmy Van Heusen's Nancy (with the laughing face) among the mainly original tracks. I also find the title applicable to the varied styles of the performances. Whether coincidence or by design, the works remind me of different musical eras and musicians. Murphy's piano work is strongly influenced by McCoy Tyner [Fly with The Wind], and there are suggestions of the late 1970s and 1980s fusion and soul influences and the anxiety of the 1990s. Zach Brock's violin on 3 pieces hark back to Jean-Luc Ponty, and the occasional electric keyboard triggers memories of Bob James and Chick Corea. The opening, After Dark, and the following The Cure are energetic, dense, intense, and loud. Murphy offers a brief melodic phrase and immediate goes to development. Bassist Obasi Akoto has a fine solo in this second work. Nights Over Egypt, Dexter Wansel's composition, captures early global music inroads (Pharoah Sanders' Journey to The One and Yosef Lateef's Eastern Sounds). Contributions of vocals by Malou Beauvoir bring forth the R&B fusion sound of The Crusaders. Frank Lacy offers the tenor in the duet of the album title work. It is full bodied piece with keyboard pseudo strings, and I recall Wynton Marsalis's Blood on the Track. (Murphy studied with Ellis Marsalis.) The very sensitive rendition of the ballad Nancy is a change of pace, and you feel the love. Suddenly, we have social strife with clashing drums, chordal electronics, and nervous piano. John Coltrane is representated by Mr. Day, and the group goes blue, with another bass solo of merit, and here the drumming of Steve Johns becomes interesting. Along with Nancy, this track is an album highlight. With the opening bar in the manner of Jamal's Poinciana, David Foster's joyful Mornin' with vocals and electronic keyboard is next. The arco bowing of bass and abstract flurries slowly taxi the lane for Take Off. It crashes. Another Foster, this time Frank, composed the following modal waltz, Simone; Akoto dances. In NIght Flight, the plane skids and bounces along the runway but finally rises; it is a noisy bucket of bolts, and the abstract jam lands remarkably intact. The concluding work is aptly A Night to Remember, a Myers, Sylvers, Beard 1980s soul hit. The chameleon Murphy displays his technical talent and extensive knowledge of modern jazz history. His memories of his wife are time-traveling, and the album achieves the effect.

We last visited with pianist and composer Greg Murphy with his 2021 Cool Water on these pages. While that album celebrated his travels to Africa, this is a heartfelt love letter to his recently passed wife, Nancy. Having studied extensively with the late pianist Ellis Marsalis and played for two decades with Coltrane’s last drummer, Rashied Ali, this is Murphy’s fourth release on the label, and his seventh as a leader. Fronting a new trio and employing a cast of different musicians except for longtime collaborator Frank Lacy, who contributes vocals to three tracks, Murphy also invites special guests: violinist Zach Brock (3 tracks), vocalist Malou Beauvoir (4 tracks) and David Stoller (harp and percussion on “Nights Over Egypt.” Murphy’s trio mates throughout are bassist Obasi Akoto and drummer Steve Johns. Most of the album was recorded at the jazz shrine, Rudy Van Gelder Studios.

Contrary to what might be an initial impression, this is far from a mournful, elegiac album.  Most of the tunes are highly vibrant, even celebratory as in Murphy’s words – “…let’s create the world we want to live in – in the here and now. After darkness comes the cure…This album represents different moments in time on many different levels. What ties everything together in all dimensions, vibrational levels, spaces and time –is LOVE.” Murphy mixes six originals with jazz standards and compositions from Frank Foster, John Coltrane, and others.

The addition of Brock’s violin, first heard in the colorful opening original “After Dark,” and especially when coupled with vocals and harp on “Nights Over Egypt” (Beauvoir and Stoller respectively) and “You Remind Me,” where both Beauvoir and Lacy join, add rare and sumptuous symphonic layers to the customary piano trio  The latter with lyrical assistance from Ernest Bell, is of course dedicated to his Nancy in a celebration of life mode while the rather obvious cover choice, Jimmy Van Heusen’s “Nancy (With the Laughing Face),” a ballad popularized in a sense by John Coltrane, is a tender tribute, rendered by the core trio that explores and paints his wife’s spirit from the serious to the exuberant. As heard here, throughout the album there are remarkably few if any notes that are not uplifting.

The trio navigates tricky rhythms in “Shrimp Fried Rice” and gives an inspired reading to Coltrane’s “Mr. Day.” We hear Murphy’s vibraphone-like keyboard and the choir-like reunion of Beauvoir and Lacy on the David Foster/Jay Graydon “Mornin’.” The two vocalists return for the stirring, jubilant closer, “A Night to Remember.” In between the trio shines on Murphy’s somewhat alternately pensive and unbounded “Takeoff,” Frank Foster’s mid-tempo “Simone” featuring impressive kit work from Johns, and most vividly on Murphy’s “Night Flight,” which stands as the most striking example of group interplay, improvisation, and unrestrained expression on the disc, as they reveal an avant-garde bent, highlighted in part by Akoto’s arco bass and Johns’ sterling drum solo.

This proves yet again that often the best music is born from poignant, heartfelt moments. Immerse yourself in 66 minutes of truly heavenly music. You’ll be rewarded handsomely.

--Jim Hynes