Visitors to the studio website will know of earlier projects in connection with The Lord of the Rings Movie Trilogy. TOLKIEN: The Lord of the Rings 2007 Calendar, TOLKIEN: The Children of Húrin Calendar 2008 and The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook were all a true delight to design. Especially as they meant working creatively with Alan Lee. These days Alan is incredibly busy in New Zealand with The Hobbit Movies but he will soon be home, in Devon, for Christmas and we can't wait too see him again.
Well, more pleasure yet! We had a call from a very nice man in Chicago, called Doug Adams. Doug is the author and driving force behind the book The Music of The Lord of the Rings. For two years he has overcome every obstacle to bring his project to this point.
We love the power music has to bring emotion to movies. Naturally we are thrilled with great visuals, given our chosen crafts, but imagine Hitchcock's Psycho without Bernard Herrmann's score. Sergio Leone's Dollar movies without Ennio Morricone's wild talent. Southern Comfort sans Ry Cooder.
Just imagine the vast sweep of a project it was composing music to all three The Lord of the Rings movies . . . and then producing a score to join that musical elite. Howard Shore accomplished just that.
Doug Adams brings both his art as a musicologist, his boundless enthusiasm and scholarship together to create a diligent analysis of the composer, music, musicians, themes, instrumentation and recording process. Just fascinating.
And we are proud to be appointed for Creative Direction & Design of the book which hopes to debut at a concert at The Albert Hall next autumn.
More over the coming months, but for now we would like to thank Doug and Joe Augustine at Howe Records for this juicy commission. And thank the follower's of Doug Adams' Blog for their kind welcome to their community. Now we roll up our sleeves for work in the hope of meeting the challenge and justifying their generous praise for our work.
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I am really excited to hear about this collaboration. Howard's work is so full of depth and nuance and impacts so many. And Doug has given such meticulous attention to it, illuminating not only the musicology but the emotion of the music. The book design needs to rise to the same heights to do it all justice. It has been a long road full of twists and turns but if it all led to a place where you could join the project, I regret none of the delays.
ReplyDeleteI am thrillied to have heard recently from Dougs blog that you are taking on the design, it will mean an awesome book is on its way. I'm a huge Tolkien fan and a huge fan of the films, and also the score Howard Shore created for the films. Doug Adams has provided brilliant notes to the full scores available on CD so we've beenw ating for this brilliant book for so long. It will be a beautiful book I'm certain once its gone through your studio! Good luck and we look forward to seeing rthe finished result.
ReplyDeleteSteve Johnson, (born not a miliion miles from where Tolkien grew up in Birmingham, and now living in Staffordshire where he lived and served in the Army on Cannock Chase within walking distance from here - and my favouriute holiday destination being the Lauterbrunnen Valley, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland, his inspiration for Rivendell!)
Welcome, Steve.
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Magpie. Thank you for your kind comments and encouragement.
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