MURDOCH MYSTERIES IN CONCERT
Where: Royal Theatre, 805 Broughton St., Victoria
When: Saturday, Nov. 2, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 3, 2:30 p.m.
Tickets: $34-$116 from the Royal McPherson box office (250-386-6121) or rmts.bc.ca
Murdoch Mysteries is Canada’s longest running show at the moment, with nearly 300 episodes of the period drama having gone to air since 2008.
Only a series with such an impressive track record has the ability to branch out with something unique like Murdoch Mysteries in Concert, a series of hybrid performances with orchestral accompaniment and imagery from select episodes designed to explore the music of the hit TV series.
“Everyone has seen movies like Elf, Home Alone, and Stars Wars with symphonies — that happens,” said Robert Carli, who composes the music for the series. “But you don’t get a TV show doing it.”
Murdoch Mysteries is a whodunit set in the early 1900s and built around the character of Detective William Murdoch, who conducts his investigations via unconventional means. Now in its 18th season, it remains remarkably popular, with several fan websites dedicated to the show and its star, Yannick Bisson. The fandom is what eventually led to Murdoch Mysteries in Concert, which stops at the Royal Theatre for two performances this weekend featuring Bisson, Carli and the Victoria Symphony.
The concert series was born from an idea by executive producer Christina Jennings, which had been percolating before the pandemic, Carli said. In 2022, the concert premiered in Carli’s hometown of Kitchener, Ontario, drawing raves. A cluster of symphonies across the country (Edmonton, Halifax, and Toronto, among them) have since signed on for similar events co-hosted by Bisson and Carli.
The Victoria Symphony, conducted by Lucas Waldin, will provide live accompaniment this weekend for a screening of a new music-related episode of the series, Murder in F Major, which has yet to air. Carli is on hand to break down the inner workings of Murdoch Mysteries episodes, and the music therein, which has earned five Gemini Awards and three Canadian Screen Awards for his musical contributions to the series.
“I talk about the construction of music and show scenes of the show, without music in it, and slowly build the music around it,” he said of the performances. “It’s the organic process, which I think is very exciting for people. When we build the orchestra [into the scene], you can appreciate how it is realized with music. It’s educational, it’s interesting, it’s totally unique. There’s a bit of a meta quality to it as you’ll see an orchestra on screen [during the episode], and a conductor, while right below the screen is a real orchestra with a real conductor playing sympathetically with what you’re seeing on screen.”
Carli has loads of prior experience, having written and performed with a range of pop (Barenaked Ladies), rock (Luke Doucet), and jazz (Art of Time Ensemble) acts around Toronto. But when he scores episodes of Murdoch Mysteries, Carli said he operates less like a contemporary musician and more like a conventional soundtrack composer.
“It is aligned with what most film composers do, where they watch a film with the producer or director and devise a framework for the musical accompaniment. The difference between film and television is that in film, you’re creating it for the first and only time. You’re inventing a soundscape. For a television series, you’ve already established the palette, the sonic world, and you’re working in that place. You’re not reinventing the wheel every time.”
Esteemed film composers such as Howard Shore (who was a member of Toronto soft rock act Lighthouse), Danny Elfman (Oingo Boingo), Hans Zimmer (The Buggles), and James Newton Howard (Elton John) all spent time in bands before making the switch to film. Carli was a member of The Rhinos, a Kitchener-based rock group that played Victoria often during the early 1990s, which he believes was an important step on his journey.
“I played in rock bands, jazz ensembles, and funk bands, but I also played in symphonies, like the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and for the National Ballet of Canada. There’s a versatility you get from being a journeyman musician, and these little tiny fragments are really important. They inform your experiences as a composer.”
A sense of on-screen adventure is nothing new for the TV series. Earlier this year, Murdoch Mysteries broke new ground with Why is Everybody Singing?, the series’ first musical episode (tip of the hat to Victoria’s Naomi Costain, who was a musical coordinator on the episode.) There’s a certain style to the series, however, and Carli believes that needs to be preserved to the best of his ability.
“I have some lanes that we want to stay in,” Carli said. “There’s no electric guitar, but I did use a vibraphone once, which wasn’t invented until after Murdoch’s time, so I cheated a little bit. You don’t want to draw too much attention to yourself. But you want to create pace and rhythm and a mood.”
