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The English soprano and recorder player, Emma Murphy, graduated from Birmingham University in 1994 before going on to Trinity College of Music to further her studies with a Masters degree. She was one of the youngest people ever to be awarded an FTCL at the age of just 19.
Emma Murphy was a versatile musician with a passion for exploring the wealth of material the history and range of her instrument offers. Her love of the recorder led her to promote concerts, think up new projects, as well as commission new works. Her interest in novel ideas led to her researching and organising this disc of some of the best known recorder music, as well as some of the most neglected, from a collection that has never really fully been recorded before. She also researched, written and presented features related to the recorder and early music on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Early Music Show’.
Emma Murphy performed music from the medieval period up to the present day, and even combined the two by arranging and recording one of Jimi Hendrix’s greatest hits, ‘Purple Haze’, on medieval instruments for the BBC. She performed and recorded with the Gabrieli Consort, King's Consort and Ex Cathedra as well as with smaller chamber groups, in particular, with the trio Da Camera. She was a regular tutor at Dartington International Summer School.
Emma Murphy died in August 2022 from an illness called Systemic Scleroderma (not Covid-19), from which she had been suffering for most of the last year. She was a few days short of her fiftieth birthday. She left a husband, Alex, and two grieving children. |
