Father-daughter duo collaborate
Jazz pianist DanMurphy helps 8-year-old create music video
Jazz pianistDanMurphy has seen his performance schedule upended because of the pandemic. “I’ve only had a handful of gigs in the last six or seven months. I normallywould have two to three, sometimesmore, live performances everyweek,” theMorton Grove resident said. “It’s kind of emotionally, musically lacking. It’s a huge chunk missing frommy life. Along with that comes a financial impact as well.”
ButMurphy is hardly idle. He is a senior lecturer in the School of Theatre andMusic at theUniversity of Illinois in Chicago, now teaching virtually. AndMurphy continues as director of music and liturgy at St. James Catholic Church in Bronzeville, a position he has held for 10 years.
In addition, Murphy has been filling in some of the rest of his newfound spare timewith a project dear to his heart— helping his 8-year-old daughter Everleigh create her first video,
“Livin’ in a VirtualWorld.”
Everleighwrote the lyrics to the song. The multitalented youngster sings the song and also performs a violin solo on the video. “Iworked with her on the melody and I put the two together,” Murphy said.“We worked together on the violin part.”
After they had recorded the song, Murphy recorded the video in several locations. Everleigh said she decided to use her song in a video because, “for some people it’s easier to picture something and then you can get our message.”
“We’ve found that people seem to connect to it,” Murphy said.
Everleigh said it took her about three days to write the song, which she initially sang during a virtual performance this summer presented by the Paramount Theatre in Aurora.
Everleighwas invited to participate in that project because shewas in the cast of “Once The Musical” at the Paramount in 2018. A professionalmodel and actor since the age of 5, Everleigh’s credits also include “Annie” at Citadel Theatre in Lake Forest. She takes private classical violin lessons and studies Irish fiddle at the Irish AmericanHeritage Center.
Daughter and dad loved creating the video together.
“It’s really fun to do it withmy dad,” Everleigh said. “She’s a really good student,” Murphy said. “I can explain something to her that Imight explain to a college-level student. She absorbs it and asks good questions.”
Murphy is currently teaching piano, jazz keyboard and theory, and jazz history at UIC. He noted that teaching piano virtually “involves a lot more back and forth interaction using the internet. If I’m standing in a room with them I can see what they’re doing. There are a lot of technical barriers to teaching piano online.”
Initially, Murphy played for masses at St. James online from home. One advantagewas that Everleigh could perform with her father. “We got to do some duets on Zoom for the benefit of the church community,” Murphy said. Since July, Murphy has
been performing services at the church. The services are also presented virtually because church attendance is limited to allowfor social distancing.
Murphy is also devoting time to finishing a new jazz piano album.
Although he misses performing live, Murphy is pleased about one benefit. “I spend a lotmore time withmy family,” he said. That includes helping Everleigh accomplish her next goal.
“I really hope to write a whole album,” she said.
“Livin’ in a VirtualWorld” is available on Spotify, AppleMusic, YouTube, YouTubeMusic, Google, Deezer, AmazonMusic, TIDAL, Napster, and Yandex.