The Mark Murphy experience is just that. A song man who mimics instruments with his voice in a streetwise art, strong on observation and style.
Confident, urbane and hip, Wednesday's concert was a heady fusion of fast-talking song-yarns, a vocal circus of mouth-music, and the odd ballad.
Murphy is master of the positive outlook. At almost 70, he could easily pass for a young 50. Not one for world-weary woe, his approach seems to seek out the brightness, the canny detail and the happy remark.
But a song is never a song in the conventional sense when Murphy sings. It is a conduit to explore other things. Words become bits of words, which become bits of sounds, engaged in tit-for-tat melodic games with themselves - and the supporting trio.
Described by Murphy as his "London crazies", the trios' members were pianist Pete Churchill, bassist Andy Hamil and drummer Mark Fletcher. Churchill and Fletcher stood out - exuberant, but neat.
Murphy nodded to other gurus with sterling renditions of Cantaloupe Island and Maiden Voyage, by Herbie Hancock, and Miles Davis's Boblicity.
He was best, however, when balladeering. Keen and sincere, his homages to Davis - of the "pain-filled solos" - and to a "battered piano sitting silent alone" were the highlights. These were the stories of a confidante, telling intimate, well-lived tales.
Murphy first came to Ireland in the 1960s, "when it was hard to find anything past Johnny Cash". Though warmly received, he deserved a larger audience. Great music.
