Muriel Grossmann Plays The Music of McCoy Tyner and Grateful Dead

On the surface, McCoy Tyner and the Grateful Dead appear to come from different galaxies. But listen deeply, and it becomes clear: they were orbiting the same planet. Strange but true. Weir metabolized Tyner’s harmonic density, left -hand power, and asymmetrical swing into a singular rhythm guitar language. Listen to “Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit” from Tyner’s Enlightenment (1973), then compare it to a long jam on “The Other One”—say, 5/10/72 from the Europe ’72 box. That centerless gravity, that rolling churn?

Different instruments, same engine. Muriel Grossmann’s project is a continuation: tracing Tyner’s influence as it threads through Weir and onward, then using it as an invitation to explore these compositions anew. Joined by Radomir Milojkovic on guitar, Abel Boquera on Hammond B3 organ, and Uros Stamenkovic on drums, she treats these four works not as artifacts to preserve, but as invitations to explore.

“We played this music using a sort of filter,” she says, “so it sounds like when I compose, record, and perform our own music. It’s somebody else’s music, but it sounds like our music.” —Muriel Grossmann, 2025 

It would be easy to present this as a concept album. Tyner meets the Dead. Jazz meets jam. Two cultures, one filter.