Award-winning composer Howard Shore will conduct the Sydney Symphony for the Australian Premiere of his acclaimed work, The Lord of the Rings Symphony. With 250 performers on stage, the Orchestra will be joined by Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Sydney Children’s Choir, with special guest vocalists. Following the extraordinary success of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at the 2004 Academy Awards, this unmissable concert event will be presented in the Concert Hall of Sydney Opera House on 17,18 and 19 June, 2004.
Howard Shore’s epic music score for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy is a brilliant portrayal of J.R.R. Tolkien’s world. The music captures its sweeping emotion, evokes the vast Middle Earth vistas, and carries us along the grand journeys undertaken by the characters. When Peter Jackson conceived his trilogy, he saw them as one work, at some point being able to be screened continuously as one film. When he commissioned Howard Shore to write the score, the same was true for the music.
After four years of writing, The Lord of the Rings Symphony now presents this award-winning music in a breathtaking symphonic concert. The vast scope of the work calls for a huge symphony orchestra, massed choirs and a children’s chorus, together with instrumental and vocal soloists. The work also features songs from the films including Gollum’s Song, and the winner of the 2004 Best Song Oscar, Into the West, co-written by Annie Lennox.
Shore’s music for The Lord of the Rings has garnered him every major award in cinema and music. At the 2002 Academy Awards, he won the Best Score Oscar for his music for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. In an unprecedented move, the Academy again awarded Shore the Oscar for Best Score in 2004 for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. He has also won two Golden Globes and two Grammy Awards.
Following his repeat triumph at the Academy Awards, Shore has commenced a major tour, performing The Lord of the Rings Symphony with the great orchestras of the world in major cities including New York, London, Los Angeles and Tokyo. In June, 2004 this extraordinary event arrives in Sydney.
The concert will be accompanied by the stunning imagery of John Howe and Alan Lee, the world’s foremost illustrative interpreters of Tolkien’s work and conceptual artists for the films. These beautiful and never-before-seen storyboards and sketches, which were the basis of the design of the films, will be projected onto a giant screen above the Orchestra.
Dates: Thursday 17, Friday 18 June at 8pm & Saturday 19 June at 2pm
Venue: Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
Bookings: (02) 9250 7777 or online at sydneyoperahouse.com
