Murray Thom
New Zealand music producer and entrepreneur
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Murray Neville Thom (born 19 July 1957) is a New Zealand businessman and music producer. He is best known for his collaboration with pianist Carl Doy, which resulted in their Together 10-CD collection being featured as one of Oprah's Favorite Things of 2002.[1] Locally, his production company, Thom Productions is best known for the 12× platinum[2] Great New Zealand Songbook and The Great New Zealand Cookbook, which have also been released in numerous versions for other countries.[3]
Career
Music
Thom joined CBS Records International as a sales representative in 1979. He was appointed managing director of CBS in 1981, at that time the youngest CBS managing director in the world.[4] Thom left the corporate life to establish his own business[5] in 1986.[4]
He signed New Zealand recording artist Dave Dobbyn[6] who had featured on the Footrot Flats album and together they produced the Loyal album.[4]
Thom discovered pianist Carl Doy playing in the lobby of an Auckland hotel in 1987 and together they produced their first album Piano By Candlelight in 1987.[4] They have produced a number of recordings specifically for China.[7] In the US, the Together collaboration with Doy was packaged into a 10 CD and book collection,[8] which Oprah featured on her show as one of Oprah's Favorite Things of 2002.[1]
In 1996 after seeing Rob Guest performing in the leading role of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables,[9] Thom signed Guest to a recording contract.[10] Guest's album Unmasked was released in 1997 by Thom.[11]
Thom was the creator and executive producer of The Great New Zealand Songbook released in 2009.[12] The album went on to become certified 12× platinum.[13] Thom followed up with The Great Australian Songbook released in 2011.[3]
Thom collaborated with Neil Finn to re-record the war song "Blue Smoke",[14] which was released on Anzac Day 2015, with proceeds going to the Returned Services Association.[15]
In 2019 Thom and Tim Harper produced The Offering Project,[16] which was a collaboration between twelve New Zealand recording artists and twelve of New Zealand visual artists.[17] The concept was to record well known gospel hymns that were also interpreted by visual artists,[18] with all the proceeds going to the work of the Salvation Army in New Zealand.[19]
Books
Following the release of The Great Australian Songbook, Thom produced The Great New Zealand Cookbook[20] – instead of 40 recording artists writing their lyrics, this was 80 cooks, chefs and bakers handwriting their recipes.[21] The book won the 2015 Gourmand World Cookbook award for ‘Best Easy Recipes’.[22]
Further publications were produced including The Great Australian Cookbook (2016),[23] The Great South African Cookbook (2016),[24] The Really Quite Good British Cookbook (2017),[25] with front cover art by Sir Peter Blake,[26] and America The Great Cookbook (2017).[27]
Thom released his memoir Eat, Drink & Be Murray in 2019.[28]
Personal life
Thom's hobby is sailing and in 2005 won the World Laser Master Championships in Fortaleza, Brazil.[29]