This brings back memories of playing the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy as the movies played. That was, as it turns out, a once in a lifetime experience for me, and it was one that I will never forget. (There are so many of those “once in a lifetime” events and I only now am realizing what that means. Sometime I’ll have to make a list of them, I suppose.)
May It Be
Songwriters: Howard Leslie Shore / Nicky Ryan / Roma Shane Ryan / Ethne Patricia Brennan
Voces8
C’mon … you know you want to hear this in performance! (We do the last rehearsal of this movie tonight and I can’t wait. Cara Sanabras is wonderful! It’s so difficult to play when I really want to just cry instead.)
I hope symphony doesn’t mind that I’m “borrowing” their photo. I’ll post this, but I’ll also go ask them! In any case, I now see who our conductor is: I didn’t have a name before!
I spotted the photo first on the Mercury News article.
We begin rehearsals for Lord of the Rings soon. I’m looking forward to it, even while I honestly don’t know what to expect. I do know my music looks rather minimal, which I found surprising. It seems like English horn would appear a lot in something like these movies, but I just don’t see many notes. (And yes, I’m playing English horn for these.)
Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes, these are the entire movies. Really.
Do you have your tickets? Sir Ian McKellen is inviting you!
When Symphony Silicon Valley performs The Lord of the Rings trilogy, simultaneous to the movies being shown on a huge screen, there will be 250 musicians on stage, made up of the orchestral instrumentalists, chorale members and children’s chorus.
These voices and musicians will be performing a total of 22 hours in a matter of four days. That only leaves a few hours for eating and sleeping. This becomes a marathon for each of the 100 instrumentalists, the 100 adult vocalists, and the 50 members of the children’s chorus. Not only a physical marathon, but a mental one as well.
The backdrop for the concert stage is a huge screen, 20 feet high and 48 feet wide, that will be showing the three Lord of the Rings movies in high definition.
Think of it: the sheet music alone…and this is just for the conductor…is 1200 pages, printed on 11-inch by 17-inch paper. Depending on the instrument, each musician receives several volumes of sheet music to study in advance.
… eat? Sleep? Meh … been there, done that. 😉
(The only sad thing about this is that I’ll have to cancel some students. I’m hoping some will come to the shows. Getting my students to attend concerts has been a struggle forever.)
Woo hoo! We just received this news, and being a LOTR fan I’m pretty happy!
Oh, ye lovers of Frodo and Gandalf, pay attention to the awesome news from Middle Earth: In a cultural coup for the West Coast, the “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy will be screened in its entirety in San Jose next April, with the original score performed live by Symphony Silicon Valley.
The film showings will be in HD on a giant screen, while the orchestra’s 90 musicians and 160 choristers perform the music from the soundtrack in sync with the films.
“The logistics are huge. It’s the biggest project we’ve ever done,” said Andrew Bales, president of Symphony Silicon Valley, which will present two cycles of the trilogy at the Center for the Performing Arts, with separate screenings for each of the three films over a four-day period, April 16-19, on a 48-by-20-foot screen.
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Hear Me At Work
Here are just a few recordings from the past. It's rare I have anything I'm allowed to share, due to union rules.