TapRoot Sessions: Chris Murphy Workshop and Concert

TapRoot Sessions: Chris Murphy Workshop and Concert
Dewey Hall, 91 Main Street, Sheffield, MA 01257
Friday, June 23rd
Workshop: 6:00pm-7:15pm
Concert: 8:00pm-9:15pm

Contact: taprootsessions@gmail.com, 413 429 1176
REFRESHMENTS available (pizza by the slice)

Tickets:
$25 for workshop
$25 for concert
$40 for both

TapRoot Sessions produces concerts featuring traditional music. Join us for the workshop, concert, or both!

WORKSHOP:
Finding & Nurturing Your Own Artistic Voice as A String Player

As Oscar Wilde said; “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” In this workshop we will discuss developing your personal style as a strings player. Open to players of all instruments, styles, ages & abilities. In this practicum, Chris will guide participants through considering what makes their playing distinctive and unique. How do you utilize your traditional training to create your own sound. Participants will be given tools and practices to deepen and strengthen their relationship with their instruments, their art form, and their unique path.

Join critically acclaimed Violinist/Fiddler/Singer-songwriter and producer Chris Murphy for a fun, stimulating and rewarding workshop going down the most important musical path of all; being & expressing yourself!

Los Angeles-based Chris Murphy has 19 solo albums to his credit and has produced an additional 12 albums for other artists. He has been a full-time working musician for 36 years and performs 200+ shows a year of all original Violin music in a variety of formats including; solo, duo, trio, quartet, and quintet. He has toured Europe five times with his original music and has a Music school in Los Angeles called The Blacktree Music School. Chris is a graduate of New England Conservatory of music.

ABOUT THE CONCERT
For Murphy, the path forward is charted by looking backward, to the troubadours and minstrels of ages past. “In another era,” he says, “I would have played square dances, and loved it. I would have been a court musician in Versailles in the 17th Century, or a violinist in a circus orchestra.” For Chris Murphy, inspiration spans eras and aesthetics, but the fundamentals are the same. He learned about Turkish and Indian music at Simon’s Rock of Bard College and then studied composition at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music.
He is that rare breed of musician that creates and performs in a multitude of music worlds with ease. As he searches for new ways to communicate through music, fusing styles and techniques from across the globe — a unique fabric of world music, he calls it — Murphy finds his element on the stage, where spontaneity and improvisation reign. “To me, the music is liquid, and I’m looking to have some kind of experience,” he says. “I’ll twist and turn, and hammer and mold, and shape, cut and paste the music to do that. We’ve never done a song the same way twice.”

Murphy has amassed a deep catalog of 500+ works, 16 solo and 20 collaborative albums, and made cameo appearances on records by Har Mar Superstar and The Dandy Warhols, among others. Chris has also been featured on television programs such as ‘Til Death and The Ellen Degeneres Show; his diverse and chameleon-like talents make him a sought after composer and collaborator for film and television. A modern-day troubadour and considered a colossus of Americana, Cyrus Rhodes of No Depression considers Murphy “one of the best songwriters in popular music unjustly flying under the radar.”

THANKS TO:
TapRoot concerts, workshops, and dances are sponsored by Big Elm Brewery and supported in part by grants from the Alford-Egremont, Great Barrington, Lee, Monterey, Mt. Washington, New Marlborough, Otis, and Sheffield Local Cultural Councils, local agencies which are supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.