 At the tender age of two, when many children are reveling in their "terrible twos," Tai Murray, strolled up to her mother and announced "I want to play the violin, mommy."
"I was shocked," says mother Ellen Murray, who adopted her when she was seven months old. “Music was always in our house, mostly jazz and gospel, but I don't know where she first heard the violin."
The 22-year-old began taking violin lessons at the Sherwood Conservatory of Music in Chicago when she was five. At age nine, she made her solo debut with the prestigious Chicago Symphony, to great fanfare.
She moved to Bloomington with her family at age eight to study with the late Josef Gingold, former IU School of Music faculty member and one of the founders of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Murray was a semifinalist in the competition in 2002, the first black musician to be accepted into the contest. While at IU, she studied modern violin with Yuval Yaron and Franco Gulli, and Baroque violin with Stanley Ritchie.
She received her Artist Diploma in Performance/Violin from IU in May 2000 and was soon hailed by Ebony magazine as “one of the new child prodigies." She was recently featured in Essence magazine’s “Accomplished, Amazing, and Under 40.”
She has performed extensively as a soloist with orchestras and in recitals throughout the United States and Europe, and made her New York concerto debut at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in May 2002. Murray was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2004.
As a young black female, Murray knows that she is a rarity in the domain of classical music, a realm that has historically been that of the privileged white male.
Even today, black violinists are struggling because of the associated costs of playing the instrument.
"A good violin, even for a child, is expensive," says Murray's mother, Ellen, who paid $1,600 for a violin and bow for her when she was just seven years old. "Today, Tai doesn't own a violin, and she needs a quality Italian-made violin like a Guarneri, or a Stradivarius. These violins are rare and can cost anywhere from $150,000 to nearly $1 million." A number of supporters, including Minister Louis Farrakhan, have tried unsuccessfully to launch a campaign to buy her a violin.
Murray practices five hours a day with a Juilliard-issued violin when in school and borrows a violin from a music store when on tour.
Despite the setback of having to play with a borrowed instrument, Murray's performances are earning her critical acclaim from coast to coast.
"She gushes over classical music like a high school crush—only she has made music her life, not a passing fancy," writes Final Call News.
"There's something about a great classical work that touches you enough in a way that nothing else can. You hear it and it just strikes a chord somewhere and that's what I really love about the music that I play," she shared.
Murray has received top prizes in the Indiana University Concerto Competition, the Inaugural Sphinx Competition, and the Juilliard School Concerto Competition. She was also awarded a Certificate of Honor for outstanding musicianship by the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy.
She is currently studying with a full scholarship at the Juilliard School under Joel Smirnoff and in September will begin a two-year residency with the Chamber Music Society II program of Lincoln Center.
Manhattan-based Murray still has very strong ties to her mother, who now lives in Philadelphia, and is forever indebted for the unwavering support she continues to offer.
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