A. Kori Hill
Tai Murray was born in Chicago. She is one of six kids, and as a kid, she became fascinated with the violin. She couldn’t get enough of it, and so her mother signed her up for violin lessons when she was five. She studied with Mimi Zweig, Yuval Yaron, and Franco Gulli at Indiana University’s School of Music and soloed with the Chicago Symphony at age nine.
She would go on to study at Juilliard too, and today she’s an active performer and teacher. When she’s not traveling the world performing, she teaches at the Yale School of Music in New Haven, CT. And when she’s taking a break from traveling and teaching, she’s at home in Berlin, Germany.
Tai is a performer that loves old and new music. Her first album is a recording of Eugene Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas for solo violin (1923). Eugene was a Belgian violinist-composer who decided to write solo works for violin that engage with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas (c. 1720). Last year, Tai played Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto (2015) with the Yale Symphony Orchestra. And in 2021, Tai played Wynton’s A Fiddler’s Tale (1998) (my first post for this blog!), Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale (1918), and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Romance for Violin and Piano (1993).
For Tai, playing the violin isn’t only about sounding smooth and pretty. You have to pull out different sounds to show the different emotions that are occurring in the music, and those emotions aren’t always sweet.
One of my favorite examples of Tai’s playing is her performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending (1909) in an orchestral version arranged by Martin Gerigk. Now, you may think this isn’t the best example, because this piece is all about sounding pretty: from the key Ralph wrote it in to the prominence of pitches that correspond with the violin’s open strings, thus increasing the resonance; it’s all about what sounds best!
But that’s just part of it. Tai isn’t just showing you how beautiful the violin can be; she’s telling you a story! About a lark flying through the air and all the loops, obstacles, and adventures that comes with it as the English countryside rolls far below.
Listen to how she uses articulation and when her tone is full versus gossamer. How does that impact the emotions you feel and the images you see when she makes these changes? Hear how she pulls and pushes the tempo; flight can’t be steady as you use the wind to get you where you need to go.
We violinists are often told to vibrate all the time. But vibrato is an interpretive tool, not something that is always essential. Pay attention to how Tai uses this tool and when she puts it aside. Also notice how she uses her bow – speed, pressure, angle – to give variation to her violin’s timbre, articulation, and dynamics. Are there certain sounds that reappear, certain increases or decreases in tempo that you start to associate with certain images? Write those down and reflect on why. Then see how you can include them in your own playing.
