Hunky Clifton Murray’s golden throat is one-of-a-kind (well, 1 in 4)
SINGING STRONG | Murray, second from left, has the build of a basketball player but the soul of a singer.
JONANNA WIDNER | Contributing Writer
jonanna.widner@gmail.com
The Tenors have shared the stage with the likes of everyone from Neil Young to Paul McCartney to Justin Bieber. They’ve performed on Oprah (along with Celine Dion, no less) and had tea with the queen. Not just any queen — the queen. Of England.
In other words, the four fellows who make up the Tenors — Fraser Walters, Remigio Pereira, Victor Micallef and Clifton Murray — are stars, albeit unlikely ones. In an entertainment world full of glitz and stripper poles, the quartet’s mix of classical and pop music has found an ever-growing audience (with gay appeal), and as they tour behind their third album, Lead With Your Heart, they continue to thrill audiences with a repertoire of standards, lesser-known songs and originals.
Life with the Tenors is a much different world than the one Clifton Murray — he’s the one with the piercing blue eyes and boy band good looks — grew up in.
Murray grew up in a small, picturesque town in British Columbia, where his parents owned a fishing resort. Murray’s mother ran the kitchen and dining area, he says, while his brother and father acted as fishing guides. Every night during his childhood, Murray would dress in a “red bow tie, shiny shoes and shorts that matched the curtains,” and serve dinner to the resort guests, while his father entertained.
“My father would take his guitar out and start playing those singer-songwriter tunes,” Murray recalls during a recent interview. “I’d watch him entertain the guests, telling stories and jokes. Around 12 years old, I was peeking through the kitchen door and my father called me out and said, ‘It’s your turn, boy.’”
Murray took to entertaining immediately. “That night he started singing along with me and there was a connection there I felt with him and the audience that really stuck with me.”
As much as he loved singing, the strapping 6-foot-2 gym rat felt his life pulling in another direction as he grew up. An exceptional athlete, Murray received a rugby scholarship to The University of Victoria, but his sports career ended when he was diagnosed with hypertropic cardiomyopathy — an enlarged heart. Suddenly, he had to switch gears.
“It took a lot of soul searching,” Murray says. “I realized that I needed to follow my first love, which was performing and entertaining.”
Murray worked his way up. He joined a gospel choir in Vancouver, polished his solo material, and even took several acting jobs along the way, including spots on Reaper, Boston Legal and The L Word, as well as a stint on Canadian Idol. “All that led to being with The Tenors,” Murray says. “So if it wasn’t for my heart condition, I wouldn’t be with the group. So I’m a living representation of ‘leading with your heart.’”
Lead With Your Heart, from which Murray and the rest of his Tenor brethren will be culling songs during this tour, represents a step forward for the group.
Along with performing their versions of songs by Elton John and Bob Dylan, the Tenors wrote their own songs for the album. Combining an almost operatic sensibility with a poppy rhythm track, the title track especially highlights the group’s aesthetic as their voices intertwine.
“There’s something about when you’re reaching for those high notes, it’s just like we are in life reaching for our dreams or goals or reaching for answers, maybe there’s some type of connection with that feeling and that soaring, reaching feeling of when you’re listening to a tenor go for those high notes,” Murray says.
It’s that kind of philosophical bent that discerns Murray from other pop stars. His voice is thoughtful and confident, but never condescending. He seems to take everything in stride.
“I’m always grateful for right now and realizing that, who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. I never thought I’d be in a tenor group four years ago, when I was pop singer.”
But really, Murray landing in this group makes sense. Not only was his father musical, but his grandfather, George Murray, was a famous Irish tenor (of course) on Cross Canada Hit Parade, which aired in the ’50s and ’60s. Clifton never met his grandfather, but George Murray still remains a presence in Clifton’s life.
“I was at a show in Riverside, Calif., and after the show an elderly gentleman came up to me and said, ‘The last tenor I ever knew of was George Murray,’” Clifton says. “He didn’t realize it was my grandfather! We started chatting and it turns out he was the cameraman for Canadian Broadcasting. It was beyond coincidence.”
Clifton, his father and the elderly man ended up hanging out a few weeks later, watching old clips of George. It was the first time Clifton had ever seen footage of his grandfather.
“If you have the will to look a little deeper at the world around us, you realized we’re all connected and what you put out comes back,” Clifton says. “And that’s the great thing about being in this group is, we’re constantly sending out positive energy and it’s coming back to us. We’re just very thankful and we’re just trying to keep our hearts open to the wonder that surrounds us and let it affect our music.”
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition June 28, 2013.
