John Murray

John Murray is a bassist from San Diego who works on the New York jazz scene, with Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, and Christian McBride among his stated models. He took up the bass at seven after hearing Mark Dresser in concert, studied classical playing with Bertram Turetzky, and came up through trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos's Young Lions Jazz Conservatory, taking his first professional gigs at fourteen. In 2018 he was named Outstanding Soloist at the Monterey Next Generation Festival, and in 2019 he won the Ella Fitzgerald Outstanding Soloist Award at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Essentially Ellington competition, the first bassist to take that prize in the competition's history. He moved to New York in 2022 to study at The Juilliard School, and holds the bass chair in trumpeter Skylar Tang's quartet with pianist William Schwartzman and drummer Ethan Oliver.