Death of an FT critic
mainThe former Financial Times music critic David Murray died just before 11 yesterday morning, in the Marie Curie Hospice in Hampstead. He was 79.
A Canadian who came to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, David lectured in philosophy at the University of London and gave occasional piano recitals. He gave up the piano after breaking a finger and retired as a critic in January 2007 after 27 years on the FT.
UPDATE: His sister Jan, a well known dance critic, died a week later.
l-r on the FT: Jeremy Noble, Andrew Porter, David Murray
Favorite David Murray story. He reviewed premiere of Powder Her Face saying, it’s the first opera to show a blow job. Instead FT printed “simulation of oral sex.” Meeting his editor at a party he confronts her: Why did you change my text? FT editor: We have a very large American readership and I’m not sure they are familiar with the term blow job.
A year or so later, he again reviews the piece, uses the same term, and they let it stand.
This must have been the year Wall Street shorted the bj.