The Fellowship of the Ring in Concert

[Beutlin]

Hope this fits in here:

So there is going to be a showing/concert of The Fellowship of the Ring in my home city next April (http://lordoftheringsinconcert.com/). I was wondering if anyone here has already been to such a show and could share his/her impressions with me. The tickets are a tad expensive but my brother and I are seriously considering going there.

Regards,
Beutlin

[Alatar]

I've been to all three movies, and the Lord of the Rings Symphony. I can highly recommend it. In fact, of all three movie orchestrations I think I enjoy Fellowship the most. Granted, we don't have that magnificent music at the lighting of the Beacons or Gandalfs ride up the streets of Minas Tirith, or the soprano solo at the destruction of the ring, or the Rohan theme or... actually nevermind. They were all brilliant.

But Fellowship has the Prophecy, Concerning Hobbits, the magnificent slow build of the fellowship theme before its full statement as the Fellowship do that wonderful "money shot" over the top of the hill, the male voice choirs in Moria, the ethereal lament for Gandalf and of course the beautiful May it Be mingled with the boy soprano singing The Road Goes Ever On to finish it all off...

Go. Go twice if you can afford it.

[Jude]

I've sung in the chorus for the Symphony. Do you sing? If so, try to join the choir in time to be part of the performance. I guarantee you it'll be an experience you'll never forget.

[Alatar]

Did you get to keep the music Jude?

[Jude]

Alas, no - we had to hand it back in after the performance.

[CosmicBob]

I saw the Symphony and quite enjoyed it. I bought the live performance CD. Kaitlyn Lusk was the singer on "Into the West" and I think I liked her version more than Annie Lennox. She has more depth to her voice, I think.

But I've never seen the live film score, that sounds cool.

[Frelga]

I've seen it in a nano-moot, and enjoyed it. Although I am not as musical minded as others here, I've always thought that the score was one of the best things about the movies. Focusing on the music and the visuals is the best way to enjoy them.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

What a coincidence. I saw it in a nano-moot, too. I have one very short word of advice.

Go!!!!!!

[JewelSong]

I saw Fellowship with live accompaniment (and a pre-movie talk by Howard Shore) and I saw the LOTR Symphony on Atlanta, conducted by Shore! Both were fantastic! Go!


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[Eldy]

I'm really tempted to make the drive up to Philadelphia to see TTT on 7/23 but I just spent a bunch of money going to the NY Tolkien Conference last weekend so I don't know if I can justify it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

How was the conference? Under different circumstances if I could have arranged a trip to visit my family at that time, I would have checked it out.

[Eldy]

I had an enjoyable time. It was my first time going to a Tolkien convention (or any sort of offline Tolkien fan event) so I don't really have a frame of reference though. It was pretty small, about 70 people, but they had some interesting speakers. I really enjoyed Kristine Larsen's and Jared Lobdell's keynotes. On the other hand, some of the undercard presentations had an unfortunate number of errors and/or omissions when it came to Lore stuff.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Kristine Larson and Jared and Lobdell are both top quality scholars! That it and of itself makes it worthwhile.

[/osgilliation]

[Beutlin]

Dear Halofirians,
Thank you all for your sound advice. My brother and I shall get the tickets on Thursday; hopefully they still have some of the premium seats right in front of the stage.
@Alatar: Sadly, there will only be one showing - so my finances will not deteriorate.
@Jude: That sounds wonderful. But alas, my singing skills are, well, to put it kindly, highly questionable.

[narya]

I'm glad to hear you are going. I saw the symphony at a nano-moot. And I saw the live performance of the music in front of a giant screening of the movie (FOTR), which appears to be what you will be going to. Both were marvelous!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That was a fun nano-moot.

[narya]

The best part was at the pizza joint, after the concert, walking up to a perfect stranger with a Tree of Gondor hair clasp on his pony tail, asking timidly, "Um, hi, are you Tom?" and getting a reply in a booming voice,"Why yes, I'm Tom Bombadil!".

I have no pics of the symphony, but here's an after party pic. I wonder whatever happened to Tom and Goldberry. This is a public forum, so I won't comment further. And I can take down this pic if anyone wants me to.

[Frelga]

Oh hey, I forgot about THAT moot. It was awesome.

That was LOTR symphony, though. I saw the movie with the live score performance years later, with Teremia. We were supposed to meet narya, too, but something happened.

[TheTennisBallKid]

Not strictly related to the thread, but I'll stick it here anyway. Howard Shore's alternate version of The Breaking of The Fellowship (recorded for previews of the film, along with the Moria sequence, and heard at the end of FOTR:EE fan credits) synced to the film (not by me):

https://vid.me/AuAU


Most striking difference is that Frodo standing on the shore is (wisely) left unscored in the final picture, but the music written for it is very poignant, and there are several very beautiful passages of music throughout the piece not used in the final version.

[Beutlin]

Forgot to post this in May. My brother and I greatly enjoyed the experience of watching the concert. Thank you all for your recommendations. We had not seen the film since 2012, so it was somewhat of a new experience for me - I find that this always happens when I re-watch the film(s) after a long time. Once again, I was struck by the beauty of the film, "The Fellowship of the Ring" truly is a masterpiece of modern cinema (although, from the perspective of the reader, there are indeed some issues that can be voiced).

I would say, however, that, if I had the choice, I would have preferred a concert without the film. The sound mixing for the film was sometimes too quiet (for example in the Moria scene with the cave troll), and I often could not decide whether I should focus my eyes on the screen or on the orchestra. My favorite part were actually the credits where I could completely focus on the music. On this note, I still regret that I did not attend a 2010 concert in my home city where Howard Shore himself performed parts of the score. That said, two other scenes truly stood out for me: the prologue when the music starts and you suddenly hear this music live for the first time. And of course, the stairs-scene in Moria when the dwarven choir starts to sing, which in my case was performed by the Charles University Choir of Prague (which gave the concert quite a nice monarchic feel^^).