Next weekend the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular – a live performance of music from the show – begins touring the UK.

CultBox recently caught up with Murray via Skype in New York to discuss the concerts, composing for Doctor Who, and just about everything else…

 

I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to ask next. Sorry, long day, slightly sleepy.

“I still haven’t had breakfast.”

 

What time is it where you are?

“It’s twenty past eleven. I’ll probably get hungry quite soon. I kind of like have to eat every two hours.”

 

Are you a grazer? I’m a grazer.

“Yeah, yeah. I can just have a massive meal and then two hours later I’m starving.”

 

That’s actually why I try really hard not to eat massive meals! You finish a whole pizza and two hours later you can somehow squeeze in an entire tub of ice cream.

“Yesterday, there was a hotel opposite and I just walked over to the hotel, and I dunno, because I’d had sushi at lunch, and then I had steak and chips and a gigantic piece of cheesecake. It was like the most protein-rich, cholesterol-y things you can have.”

 

Parts of that are healthy?

“Well, the sushi part. And the steak’s healthy!”

 

It’s full of protein and iron and B12, which is really important.

“There’s all kinds of stuff where I’m really, I don’t really care. My dad used to grow vegetables in the garden, and we used to just run out and pick them and eat them, so I just grew up with that. I love salad.”

 

So, when you’re working on the show, do you get a sort of brief of the kind of music specifically they’re looking for, or do they just sort of say, this is what the episode’s going to be and let you get on with it?

“They just sort of send me the episode, nobody really talks to me.”

 

But you’re so nice to talk to!

“I know. But I’m kind of a hermit, you know? I kind of just, you know, I think when Beth and Piers took over Doctor Who, they said, ‘What do we do about the music,’ and Julie and Russell said, ‘Don’t worry about Murray, it just comes.’

“And so they said ‘Okay, so we don’t have to do anything?’ and Julie and Russell said, ‘No, just don’t worry about it, it’ll just come.’ So now Brian’s running it more or less along the same lines.

“There is a permanent risk of chaos on Doctor Who, so I think I’ve developed a fairly healthy and trusting relationship with the executive producers. I think once you start tinkering, once you start playing, there’s not much time; often there’s a week to write the music for an episode, you know, sometimes even less. So the potential risks of changing the setup are quite enormous. Anyway, seems to go okay.”

 

I think that the listeners would agree, certainly.

“I mean, it’s built up a nice healthy little fanbase. What’s nice is that the music for Doctor Who gets these international awards from these movie soundtrack people, and you know, I’m the honorary president of the Córdoba International Film Music Festival. They just made me that.”

 

Well done! High fives for that!

“Thank you! I am very honoured about it. But it’s really nice, you know, because I don’t really do much promotion – Silva Screen have a limited budget with which they release the album, it’s the tenth year, we’re on. The Series 8 score is a triple CD!

“And I’m like, do they really want this? And it feels like, actually, and you know what, the truth is it could have been four. We have to leave stuff out because I put nine hours of music in each series, maybe eight, eight and a half.”

 

There is at least somebody here who would probably buy nine hours of Doctor Who music.

“I listened to the album last night, I listened to the first two CDs, and I just think it might actually be the best one. I don’t know, but it might be. There’s some stuff on it that I was like, ‘wow, that’s really good’. It was such a tight turnaround that series, Series 8, that I don’t really remember writing it.”