In memoriam Nigel Murray

It seems appropriate to start this blog by talking about my old Director of Music at St Mary's Music School, Nigel Murray, who died of cancer last November aged 64. Nigel's path to this job had been a difficult one, his previous career as a successful freelance violinist in London being cut short by an arm injury. How great a loss this was became clear to us students when he played the solo violin part from Erbarme Dich in a school performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion; it remains one of the deepest musical experiences of my life, a performance whose emotion was only heightened by the sense of his struggle with the instrument.

As a teacher, Nigel was a joy. I accompanied a few of his violin students over the years and his focus always seemed to be on developing musical personality, not competent performances. Once I mentioned how hard I was finding it to decide on a particular tempo in a Mozart concerto and far from trying to provide a simple solution his reply was words to the effect, "Ah yes, I know just what you mean. It's terribly hard, isn't it?" Nigel never shied away from the complexities of making music, but loved to raise questions in our minds, to provoke us to see music in a broader perspective. Above all, he had great faith in us - his sense of pleasure at being around his students was palpable and his way of teaching conveyed a trust that we could find our own answers. He never seemed to place himself above us and had a way of gathering staff around him with a similar mindset. Studying at St. Mary's was a marvellous experience.

Much of my interaction with Nigel came through playing cello in the school orchestra which he conducted with vigorous abandon. He could be unpredictable in concert; I remember a performance of Strauss' Metamorphosen in which the sudden general pause near the end must have lasted a full 10 seconds (it's normally about 2 or 3). I still remember his expression of rapt concentration at that moment, telling of the most intense engagement with the musical drama (not to mention the looks of terror from a few of us wondering whether the downbeat was ever going to come, or whether we were going to be forever stranded on the Queen's Hall stage). It is moments like this that encapsulate how I remember Nigel, a man of enormous vision for whom the purpose of music was both a journey into oneself and the unknown, and to whom music without risk was unthinkable. He never lost this curiosity and passion. I saw him a couple of weeks before he died by which time he was rather frail. As we talked I started telling him about some thoughts I'd been having about rhythm in music which prompted him to exclaim, in full voice, "Aaaah, what a marvellous subject!", before leading him on to talk about rhythm in music, in the body, and in life. He faced his impending death with some apprehension but also great dignity, and when he died I had a sense of having lost one of the great influences on my life, a man who enriched my music-making and my living immeasurably. There will be a memorial concert for him in the Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, on the 2nd of June this year, given by colleagues of Nigel and pupils, both current and past, of St Mary's Music School.