The New York Artist Mur Is Moving Into A New Dimension

“My screentime is down to forty-five minutes a day,” Mur tells me over the phone. It’s an unheard-of metric in today’s always-online world, but the New York-based artist is a rare breed. Mur is a Manhattan-residing, performance-producing, creative-directing, full-time composer who can name directors, playwrights, opera singers, costume designers, and choreographers of every generation. In this particular conversation, Mur is talking about how they’re entering a new phase in their career — one that involves taking more breaks from their phone, experimenting with new styles of music, and working on their first full-length opera called MOMMY! “I am interested in success that exists on a phone but wasn’t birthed for the phone,” they say. “I’ve made a lot of art for phone audiences and I’m glad it reached people. Those pieces will be at my MoMA retrospective, but I don’t have the same desire to create that way now.”

At 37, Mur has a lucid vision for their long-term dreams, and they’re setting the stage for their next act. Over the last three years, the New York artist has written and staged four new shows, each part of a series that addresses how we live in the modern world, and how we might be better. The first, Children of the Earth, released in 2021. Six performers sang Mur’s music and lyrics about childlike intuition, dreams, the state of our environment, and love. Next, they produced Wonders of the Water, another musical that paid homage to our decaying planet through a series of songs Mur wrote and composed. Third and fourth were Angels of the Air and Salamanders of the Fire, each of which carried out Mur’s signature melodic conversations around fairies, ghosts, folklore, Greek mythology, and the topics philosophers like Eckhart Tolle and Marianne Williamson often explore. Now, they’re blending these themes into one production, MOMMY, a dissertation on folklore, religious teachings, and existential questions.