Best Local Musician (2015)

Dennis Murphy

171 Webster St., Monterey

(831) 920-1310

www.dennismurphyschoolofmusic.com

Logic suggests Dennis Murphy’s special sauce would be his gift for bass guitar. Or a voice that feels like a friend’s but croons like a legend’s. Or that he gels seamlessly with so many other musicians. (Look for more evidence to those ends in his new album out soon.) But it’s not. Instead, it’s his untreatable obsession with spreading music through his Dennis Murphy School of Music, and his gift for doing it. As one of his instructors, supremely gifted in her own right, put it: “I overhear many of his lessons and always find myself impressed at whatever it might be he’s doing. He has a way of speaking to kids that isn’t trying to fake their level or patronize. He always notices such wonderful and simple things about each of his students, and lets them know they can feel special.” Saucy.