Metchosin music guy was as good as gold for Olympic skaters
Metchosin’s Murray Anderson knew Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir had won Olympic gold 30 seconds before they did.
Being in charge of the music at the Pyeongchang figure skating venue, Anderson was seated right behind the judges, so saw the ice dancers’ results before they were made public.
“That was pretty cool,” he said. Go Canada.
Oh, what a weird and wonderful path Anderson embarked on back in 1972 when he started doing the music for skaters at Victoria’s Racquet Club. You think you’re helping out, finding a bit of a hobby, and next thing you know the phone’s ringing from Toronto or Turin, somebody wanting to stick you on a plane.
Over the past 40 years, Anderson has become the go-to guy for figure skating events, the one they call up to make sure the right music plays at the right time for the right skaters and that it sounds good coming out of the speakers. It’s one of those niche jobs that goes with nomadic events such as national and international championships, where someone with the right skill set can end up seeing more of the world than many athletes do.
This time, it was the Pyeongchang organizers who asked him to supervise a team of six Korean volunteers (bit of a language barrier, nothing hand gestures couldn’t overcome). It was Anderson’s job to compile and play the music for all the figure skaters, just as it was in Vancouver in 2010 and Sochi in 2014. And yes, he saw many of the same faces in South Korea that he saw at previous events, other behind-the-scenes workers slotted into the same roles.
“The Games are very much the same wherever they’re done,” he said. Maybe security was a little less tight in Pyeongchang than in Sochi or Vancouver, but otherwise, they all felt the same once you were inside the arena.
Have no doubt, though, if the Olympics are the pinnacle for athletes, the same holds true for the support crew. “It’s a big rush,” he said. “It’s the big one.”
These Games kept him away from home for a month. The days were long and the pressure intense. In a role like Anderson’s, the best thing you can do is not mess up at one of the highestrated events in front of a global television audience. “If something goes wrong, they notice me right away.”
He tries to go unseen by the skaters when they’re training or competing, too. Afterward, they can talk. Anderson got his photo taken with Virtue and Moir after their victory. “They were pretty excited.” So was he. It was also pretty awesome seeing the Canadians skate to gold in the team event and watching Kaetlyn Osmond win bronze.
Again, all this grew out of a volunteer sideline. Anderson, 62, had a day job, a 31-year career with ADT Security Systems that gave way to the paid gigs in his “retirement.” For the past few years you might have seen him piloting one of Victoria’s harbour ferries. (“The skating is in the winter, the harbour ferries in the summer. It keeps me out of trouble.”)
He has worked more than 20 national championships and does 12 or 15 events a year for Skate Canada. He barely had time to unpack after getting home from South Korea on Tuesday before he was off again to a competition in Kelowna, which is where he was this weekend. “I’m still suffering,” he said the day after getting off the plane. “I was up for 35 hours.”
Over four decades, he watched (or heard) technology shift from vinyl to cassette tapes to CDs. “Every figure-skating musical technician has a horror story or two about crackling speakers, records skipping or tapes jamming,” he told the TC’s Cleve Dheensaw in 2011, when the Canadian figure skating championships were at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
The hiccups are less frequent now, thanks to digital sound. He’s also glad to have email when the skaters forget to bring their soundtracks, because some things never change. “It happens every time. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Juan de Fuca Skating Club or the Olympics, they forget their music.”