Documentaries &
Lifestyle TV 
In 1991 Fiction Music did the season premiere of “The
Nature of Things”. It was a very controversial episode called “Animals in
Research” and raised the ire of many in the medical field. It went on to win a
Genesis Award for best documentary of 1991.
From such an auspicious start we have gone on to do “The Fifth Estate”, “Adrienne Clarkson Presents”,” Man Alive”, “Undercurrents”, “Venture”, “News World”, and other high-profile CBC documentaries and news shows. Although we are based in Canada our cues have been featured on American shows as well. ABC’s “20/20”, TLC’s “Battles that Changed the World”, and A&E’s “Canvas of War” have all used our music. In these contexts the music is often dramatic and suspenseful and most often uses ambient synth washes and textures with acoustic instruments like strings, voices, percussion and guitar as lead sounds.
We’ve worked on shows that featured such notables as dancers Frank Augustine and Karen Cain, musicians Pinchas Zuckerman and Jon Kimura Parker, and production designer Carol Spiers. In each of these shows a different approach was needed, ranging from orchestral grandeur to plaintive solo violin. In one show for “Adrienne Clarkson Presents” we used soprano Rebecca Loutit against a landscape of ominous synthesizers and the poignant cello of Garret Knecht. One of our most popular scores was for director Michael Ostroff’s documentary, “Canvas of War”. In this show Rebecca and Garret were drafted again, as well as the services of violinist Pierre Lapoint. Using Latin texts and sonorous classical-like themes, we were able to effectively portray the horror and overwhelming sadness the Canadian War Artists experienced in Europe during the Second World War.
Not all of the music we write is dramatic, suspenseful or sad however. A lot of times we are hired to work on Lifestyle TV shows which usually require far more up-beat and happier themes. In 1997 we were hired to write all the music for a new show called Homes by Design. As the show was about beautiful houses, the music had to have a more stately approach. Very often the style would be in keeping with what the owners of each house appeared to listen to, and as such, varied from episode to episode. Some times it was jazz arrangements of fiddle-tunes, at others, string quartets in the style of Beethoven were needed. Through it all an ECM-Windham Hill-approach to the themes and bumpers unified the series. The show was very popular and went to four seasons for a total of sixty-nine episodes. Since then we have done the music for other lifestyle shows such as “The Great Canadian Foodshow”, “Wild by Nature”, “Get a Life”, “Our House”, “Photography 101”, “Job Matters”, “Get Set for Life”, “Footnotes”, “Wholenotes”, “TVO’s E-shorts”, “Artefacts”, “Painting Pictures” and many more.
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