The Tenors’ Clifton Murray is learning how technology connects us – and can deliver a great performance

Singer Clifton Murray tells The Globe and Mail how he’s spending his time at home.

We didn’t have a tour booked and we weren’t releasing an album, so we were lucky compared to a lot of our friends in the music industry. They’ve had to deal with figuring out all the upfront costs like who gets paid and how to refund tickets. The pandemic has been devastating for them.

In early March we realized we could use our voices to send messages of positivity and hope, and we’ve recorded a version of Bridge Over Troubled Water as well as a new song we co-wrote, called Mother, for Mother’s Day.

Recently we were part of the TV special Stronger Together and the ensemble performance of Bill Withers’s Lean on Me with Justin Bieber, Sarah McLachlan, Michael Bublé and a bunch of others. Fraser’s [Walters] in New York, Victor’s [Micallef] in Toronto and I’m in Vancouver. The producers wanted each of us to film our section horizontally with a white background. The only place in my house was above the headboard on my bed. My wife, Rachel, was standing on the other end of the bed filming me while our nine-month-old baby screamed across the hall. We felt like terrible parents but we had to get it done. The deadline was super tight.

I’m so proud of Canada through all of this. How we’ve handled it as a whole. My wife’s dad’s a doctor and he’s working on the front lines. Her sister works in a clinic. And my mom, who runs a church in Port McNeill, B.C. is doing virtual services for the elderly who are dealing with loneliness and depression. I would never have imagined my mom would figure out how to do that, but she did.

I think a lot of people are overcoming their limitations in terms of what they think they can and cannot do. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that necessity truly is the mother of invention.

As told to Gayle MacDonald

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