Figure skatingBehind the (figure skating) music

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Before the first steps can be choreographed for any skater at any level, there has to be music. The way that the music makes its way to the rink is via a very special breed of professional: the music editor.

Canadians Hugo Chouinard and Lenore Kay are among the world's very best at this job. They were responsible for the strains heard 'round the world when three Olympic champions (in every event but ice dance) were crowned in Vancouver in 2010. Kay worked on the programs of men's gold medallist Evan Lysacek, and pairs champions Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao. Chouinard helped get Yu-Na Kim to the top of the women's podium.

Kay, whose suburban Toronto home houses her office and a collection of some 17,000 record albums and a wall full of CDs, sees herself not only as a music editor but as a researcher as well. She has worked with skaters whose programs have earned them eight Olympic medals and 28 world championship medals, and that's not counting junior, European and Four Continents medals.

"The whole process of choosing music for these impressive athletes can be quite daunting," Kay says. "At times [the job is] so very funny, stressful, difficult, amazing and, in the end, very satisfying."

Chouinard is based just outside Montreal. He started his business, Studio Unisons, with a loan for equipment provided by his parents in 1994 when he was 20 years old. He has long since paid back his parents and has grown his business to a point where it now also carries an English name, Sk8Mix, and employs two full-time secretaries who help the work flow generated by the 2,000 programs Chouinard creates a year.

Both Chouinard and Kay were competitive skaters, and Kay was also a coach. That experiences gives both of them the necessary standing in the tight-knit skating community to be able to turn their passion into full-time work. On his way to a bachelor's degree in industrial design, one of Chouinard's professors told him, "If you can turn your passion into work, you will never feel like you're working."

Both editors have worked long and hard to establish themselves as leaders in their field, with a list of Canadian and international clients that looks like a who's who of figure skating. Heading into this week's BMO Canadian Figure Skating Championships, Chouinard and Kay are both responsible for the music for an event favourite.

All those lovely programs, where do they all come from?

Chouinard, who frequently provides the musical canvas for choreographer David Wilson, turned his attention to Carol Lane students Vanessa Crone and Paul Poirier and their Eleanor Rigby free dance program, choreographed by Christopher Dean.

"Crone and Poirier's music had no constant audible beat in the Eleanor Rigby piece," Chouinard says. "It was a morphing project. I had to think of how to make it. The piece was great but the structure wasn't strong enough."

He had to figure out how to take parts from the original Beatles song and reconstruct it to make it work for skating.

"It needed an instrumental bridge, and the lyrics needed to be at the end to create a climax," Chouinard says. "In the original piece the lyrics were all located in the same place."

He was respectful of the Beatles' original composition and worried about making it "tacky," so he kept in mind the need for subtlety and sophistication. Working, as he has so many times before, with composer and artist Karl-Hugo, Chouinard articulated a wish list. For example, in Karl-Hugo's bag of tricks is a keyboard which can produce real - not synthesized - violin sounds through a very pricey software program.

Karl-Hugo and Chouinard agreed that the sound had to be authentic. Aside from adding an audible beat throughout, Chouinard had the artist recompose the section of music spanning from 2:42 to 3:05 in the four-minute free dance.

Why go to the trouble? Chouinard explains, "The music and the editing should never distract the public and the judges from the choreography or the performance."  

The version of Eleanor Rigby originally used by Crone and Poirier, before Chouinard worked on it, is from Joshua Hall. You can listen to what it was like here on YouTube.

The process for researching and editing the music can take from 10 days to two weeks for Chouinard, with the skaters, coaches and choreographers getting the chance to hear the frame of the program before anything else is created or added on.

When it's all said and done, Chouinard has the possibility of layering up to 16 separate audio tracks in the final version, and he can embellish or minimize or in some way tweak each one. The result makes you think that the music that underlines the skaters' program has never been altered. See if you can find the edits in the final version of Crone and Poirier's free dance.

 

Maintaining the integrity of the original piece by the composer is equally important to Kay. Although she graciously acknowledges having worked with many different coaches, skaters and choreographers, her most enduring partnership is with choreographer Lori Nichol. The two will get together on a Sunday afternoon, along with the skater with whom Lori will be working the following week, to kick ideas around and listen to music.  

After her visitors leave is when Kay gets to work in earnest, often editing until the wee hours of the morning in order to come up with some versions of music that Nichol can use the following day on the ice with her skater. As the choreography unfolds, the tweaking of the music continues. There is a version of the music that the skater takes home at the end of that week, which might be tweaked when they return to Nichol to polish the program.

Getting the music to the choreographer to be able to use on the ice when they need it is crucial, and Kay knows firsthand the huge advantage that today's technology provides.

She recalls being in a hotel room in Ottawa last summer and receiving a request for a version of Take 5 for Patrick Chan's current short program. By using a remote-desktop software program, she was able to get what she needed on her traveling laptop, even though "it took half the night to download." On the road back home the next day, Kay's sister drove while Kay edited on her laptop in the seat next to her. The only remaining issue requiring sensitive timing was where to find a Starbucks with Wi-Fi from which she could send the music. Belleville, Ont., filled the bill, and the sisters stopped for a DHB (delicious hot beverage) while Kay sent the version of music that Nichol required for practice later that day.

The groundwork for many skaters' programs is put down well ahead of the season. Kay and Nichol meet early in the year to talk musical ideas and possibilities and to plan things out for the following season.

"It's in the details and in the understanding of music, and how the choreographer can highlight not just the melody line but the layers of harmony underneath it," Kay says. "So it's very much teamwork, and as editor and researcher I feel it's up to me to make sure I give the choreographer/coach/skater something good to work with."

"The music should be like a good book, wherein you are brought right into the story, it develops, keeps you in suspense, and then resolves to leave you very satisfied."

Earning trust

If the music dictates, Kay can also avail herself of the services of a drummer and a couple of composers she knows if she needs to flesh out a piece. Her goal is to make the skater's experience as good as it can be on the ice.

"It's exciting when you see a skater skating to music and not through it."

Kay has been editing music for more than 20 years. What started as a small, local endeavour has blossomed into a business with clients from all over North America, Europe and Asia.

"People know I have a background in skating," Kay says. "They trust me and they trust my judgment."

Chouinard, meanwhile, sees something special in pairing music with figure skating.

"Music is personal. If music touches me, I know it is going to be good for skating. My wife said to me. 'You only love music that is good for skating,' and that is because it communicates something."

The music playing in the background at the studios of Kay and Chouinard will soon be making its way to a rink near you.

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