Thursday, January 19, 2012

David Browne Murray (Out to Lunch Festival)

Out to Lunch 2012 festival banner

David Browne Murray’s lunchtime performance at the Out to Lunch festival was breath-taking. With just a guitar in his hands he’s like a one man band with no need for cymbals between his knees or a bass drum on his back.

The sheer variety of melody, counter-melody, rhythm and percussion that he extracted from just one guitar was amazing. Strumming, picking, harmonics, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slapping the side of the guitar’s body: sometimes it sounded like there was a backing track … but there wasn’t.

David Browne Murray (guitar) playing along with Charlie Reilly (oboe) at 2012 Out to Lunch Festival in Belfast

David played a beautiful cover of Every Breath You Take, as well as some of his own compositions. For part of the show, Charlie Reilly joined him on stage and accompanied a selection of Beatles tracks on his oboe. Turns out the trick is to tune the guitar to the oboe!

It was an informal gig, with David seemingly making up the set list on the spot. The improvisation between David and Charlie made for some very relaxed playing, with David at one point quipping quietly:

“We’ll do it in a different key for a laugh!”

While David’s patter in-between pieces might be basic, his playing more than explained why he won the 2011 Yamaha Six String Competition. You can pick up a flavour of his style and talent from some videos on YouTube. If I see a gig by David Browne Murray advertised again, I’ll be buying a ticket.

Another great catch by the Out to Lunch festival programmers. And probably the only artist at the festival who’ll turn up on stage with one shoelace red and the other black!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

he was fabulous at guitar festival in Bigfork MT... glad he won the award.
look forward to seeing him again this year.