Itaal Shur

Itaal Shur
Itaal Shur, December 2009
Background information
Also known as	Big Muff
Born	(1966-10-22) October 22, 1966 (age 50) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Genres	Acid jazz, avant-garde jazz, funk, techno, hip hop
Occupation(s)	Composer, record producer, musician,
Instruments	Keyboards, vocals
Years active	early 1990s – present
Associated acts	Groove Collective
Website	itaalshur.com

Itaal Shur (born October 22, 1966) is an American composer, producer and musician. He has written songs for a number of musicians, including Maxwell, Jewel and Enrique Iglesias, and has produced records for various artists, including Kronos Quartet, The Scumfrog and Lucy Woodward. He was the founding member of the acid jazz group Groove Collective, and has released three solo albums.

One of Shur's most notable works is the song "Smooth", which he co-wrote with Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas for Santana's Grammy Award winning album Supernatural. "Smooth" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1999, and won Shur and Thomas the 1999 Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

Itaal Shur was born in Los Angeles, but was raised in Seattle and Cincinnati, Ohio. His parents are the late Bonia Shur, who was a composer of Israeli and Jewish music and director of Liturgic Arts at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, who had emigrated to the United States from Russia via Israel, and Fanchon Wechsler Shur, born in Chicago, Illinois, a former dancer and a choreographer. Shur attended middle school at The School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA) in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, and studied jazz and composition for a year at the College Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. In the early 1990s he joined a local art rock band called Sleep Theater with Rob Hamrick and Chris Sherman (later known as Freekbass).