Win tickets to the Dublin performance of The Return of the King. See my Twitter account for details, or click HERE!

I still can't answer many Hobbit questions, but for the time being, feel free to post them here and I'll do the best I can!

There are a couple of LOTR performances coming up that I haven't yet added to the blog. Sorry! Catch-up day today!

First, The Return of the King is coming to Dublin, Ireland in late October 2013. Details and order info are available HERE.

ROTK will also be coming to the Ravinia Festival next summer ... which means I'l probably be lurking there somewhere as well! The links aren't up yet, but they've already announced it publicly, so it's safe to mention here.

Third -- and this is very exciting news for those who missed the initial go-round of the LOTR cycle -- Fellowship is returning to Wolf Trap in September, 2013. This seems to indicate that the other two pictures will follow (timeframe to be determined). Details and tickets are HERE. These performances will be conducted by the great Erik Ochsner. If you haven't heard his interpretation before, I highly recommend it!

So, get to it!

I will be signing The Music of the Lord of the Rings at Ravinia's presentation of Howard Shore's score to The Two Towers on both Thursday, August 15 and Friday, August 16. Watch this space for details.

I put this on Twitter the other day, but forgot to put it on the blog. Shore's newest, Jimmy P., is coming out on Howe Records on September 10. The score, which was recorded in New York, features the Dover Quartet as well as some interesting interplay between the quartet and a small orchestra. It's currently available for pre-order on Amazon right HERE.

More #HowardShore news: his new score to Jimmy P. is coming to Howe Records on Sept. 10 -- http://t.co/CmxqMOcRXf pic.twitter.com/0oAH4GbsN5
— Doug Adams (@DougAdamsMusic) July 27, 2013

Peter Jackson has been live-blogging the final day of shooting on The Hobbit. Approximately 11 hours ago, he posted a shot from the spotting sessions with Howard Shore and spoke about the music of An Unexpected Journey and of The Desolation of Smaug.

Music spotting with Howard Shore

Next week, when I'm back in the cutting room full time, Howard will be getting a deluge!

The score for Film 2 is going to be terrific. Last year, we were a little frustrated because we had to revisit so many of the LotR themes - The Shire, Rivendell, Galadriel, Gollum, and the Ring - we did this because I'm wanting these 3 Hobbit movies to have great unity with the Rings films in design, wardrobe, story and music, so it meant "An Unexpected Journey" had to acknowledge what had gone before.

But this time around, apart from a couple of Ring moments, it's all new: Beorn, Mirkwood, The Woodland Realm, Laketown, Bard and Smaug all give Howard the chance to write brand new themes, and he's knocking it out of the park!

We've now finished yesterday's work, and can start on today's scenes!

*****

You can read more on Jackson's Facebook page HERE.

Please remind me to tell you about this later--maybe this fall sometime. Just remember the garish throw rug ... or the equally garish socks.

Thanks!

I put this on Twitter yesterday, but am just now adding it to the blog. (It is generally easier for me to post things quickly on Twitter, so please consider following!) Yesterday's big news was that the fantastic New Zealand Symphony Orchestra is going to be recording Howard Shore's score to The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug!

Yes, this is a slight break with tradition--only it's not. The NZSO was actually the first orchestra to ever perform Shore's Middle-earth music. When Fellowship's Mines of Moria sequence premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, New Zealand's leading orchestra--and a male chorus full of trained vocalists and footballers--recorded the score. That performance is still in the finished film today. (They also recorded the Breaking of the Fellowship, though when that portion of the film was re-edited, the London Philharmonic re-recorded the score; the NZSO's performance can still be heard during the FOTR: EE fan scroll.)

The Desolation of Smaug will put Shore and company back in the same room in which the 2001 Cannes preview was recorded, which is actually pretty cool! It's a wonderful way to take advantage of another of New Zealand's natural resources.

You can read the NZSO's press release right HERE.

Congrats to Howard Shore on winning Colonne Sonore's "Best Music for a Foreign Film" for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey!

Hi everyone,

As you know, I've spent the majority of 2013 on a non-Tolkien project. I'm hoping to be done with that by the end of summer, and with luck, will have more to share at that time. The upshot of that, of course, is that I've been a pretty negligent blogger as of late. True, there hasn't been much to report on lately, but I do feel bad that I haven't been able to connect with everyone.

Creative work is so odd. One dedicates years of hard, solitary effort to creating something, then finally gets to come into the sunlight and celebrate. But after that, one has to hop off the mountain and tackle the whole thing again. You're back in the foothills all by yourself--and oh, you're not allowed to take the same route in your attempt to return to the summit. The whole affair feels freeing, self-indulgent, satisfying beyond compare, and unnerving beyond recognition. I love it, but you really feel your mind straining at the seams ...

Anyway, enough of my whining. I'm actually checking in today to respond to a coupld of questions that keep popping up:

1) The LOTR: Complete Recordings seem to be very hard to find right now. The Two Towers, in fact, is listed as being out of stock, and is going for astronomical amounts on the secondary market. Will they be back, and if so when?

I've actually enquired about this, but the short answer is, I do not know the answer. The Complete Recordings have always been tricky to keep track of. Shore's company has a say in them, Reprise (the label) has a say in them, Warner Bros (who owns Reprise) has a say, CAMI (who produces the Live to Projection shows) has some say in which way stock is pushed. I, however, have no say. Thus, I don't really have any right to demand information. I can -- and have -- asked the various labels involved about what's going on, but the answers I get back usually involve a lot of checking -- again because there are simply so many fingers in the pie. If I am given information to post, I promise to post it. Otherwise, it's safe to assume that I don't know any more than you do.

It's important to note that the Complete Recordings are a very high-end product aimed at a very specific audience. They're very expensive to produce, thus labels can't go and run off an extra hundred every time stock dips. I know it's easy to assume that record companies are all conspiring to take advantage of the consumer by creating scarcities -- or that they simply are content to ignore the fans -- but this isn't the case at all. When creating something like the Complete Recordings, a company generally has to produce a massive number of units just to make it worth their while. They're paying another company huge amounts of money to create the physical products -- and each commissioned run comes with a hefty price tag. If a company did a short run every few months, they'd lose huge amounts of money, and would never again back projects like this. For such investments to make sense, record companies have to do very large runs once every couple of years. There's never a guarantee when -- or if -- the next run will take place. The labels know far better than I how to judge such things. Presumably, The Two Towers is between print runs. (I don't know this for a fact -- they could have a thousand sitting in a warehouse for all I know.) The decision, therefore, becomes whether or not a new pressing makes financial sense. Past sales are considered along with presumed demand, logarithms, forecasts, politics, chaos theory, and who knows what else! The point is, they have ways of making these decisions, and no one outside of a small handful of people is ever entirely privy to them.  I have a hard time imagining that The Two Towers is gone for good ...

2) This one's a chestnut, but it bears repeating: Will The Return of the King play Radio City Music Hall?

Again, I do not know. When Fellowship and The Two Towers played Radio City, I was very involved with CAMI, the show's producers. These days, that is not the case, so I don't have the access to the same information as I once did. I continue to hear there might be more large-scale performances coming elsewhere, and certainly the LOTR Live concerts are continuing to robustly tour around the globe. The Two Towers will make its Chicago debut this August (and I think I may be appearing in some manner, so stay tuned for that), so it's not as if there's no longer interest.

If ROTK comes to Radio City, it is unlikely to be announced on this blog. The producers will rightfully want a platform bigger than good ol' MusicofLOTR.com! And were I to know about such a concert before it was publicly announced, I would certainly be asked to keep my mouth shut about it. So, until the show's producers say something, assume that I either know nothing or am ethically bound to silence. Speaking of ...

3) I get a number of emails asking for hints about upcoming LOTR performances, either Live to Projection or the Symphony.

No can do, sorry. My relationship with the concerts has always been such that I'll announce things when contacted by producers, by the orchestras themselves, or by fans who have already seen something in the press. I cannot announce anything before it's official. It's really not fair to the organizers.


So what a cheery return to posting, eh? First I moan about the rigors of the creative process, then I list three questions that I can't answer! :) Sorry, all! I actually get a heavy handful of emails each day asking about all this, and while I do have some people that have stepped in to assist with such things, I thought it might be easier to just address this en masse.

It's important to note that nothing above represents an official announcement of any kind. I'm just trying  to explain why I don't know what I don't know, but I'm acting purely as an outside observer.

Back soon,

Doug

Hi everyone,

Just checking in quickly while posting the ROTK De Doelen review. If you've been following my Twitter feed (which is where I'm doing most of my mico-blogging during this busy spell), you may have noticed that I was scheduled to give a lecture at Boston's Berklee College of Music tonight. With the recent tragic events in Boston, it seemed best to hold off for the time being. We will reschedule in the fall when Berklee is back in session, and when Boston has had time to heal.

Boston is a beautiful city. I have many dear friends there. Shore attended Berklee, and I met my wife when she was a student there. If anyone is interested in helping Boston back onto its feet, please consider donating the The One Fund. You can read more about the organization HERE, but the short writeup below outlines its purpose: