Irish Rican Talks About The Upcoming LORD OF THE RINGS Concert, And THE HOBBIT, With Howard Shore!!

Merrick here...
There's a live performance of Howard Shore's score to THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS this weekend at Radio City Music Hall (tickets & details HERE). Our dude Irish Rican recently helped send an AICN reader to this presentation (details HERE and HERE); he also hooked up other readers up with some nice LotR-related swag. Rican also got a chance to chat with Howard Shore about this upcoming live performance, as well as where he is with THE HOBBIT at the moment. Before anyone asks: no, this doesn't mean Rican's gonna slide into ScoreKeeper's place, or anything like that. This situation's unique, and Rican talking scores is merely a product of location/timing/opportunity.
Here's Rican!

Irish Rican here! The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings Score Spectacular is being performed this coming weekend at Radio City Music Hall and the score's composer Howard Shore will be on hand to watch conductor Ludwig Wicki couple the film to a live orchestra performance. Howard took a few minutes out to talk about the experiences with the scoring and the events of the upcoming weekend.
IRISH RICAN: Howard, how do you look at your experiences scoring all of the Lord of the Rings films? HOWARD SHORE: They were a gift. They were great books and Peter (Jackson)'s great films.
IR: How did this whole performance come about? HS: It came about from the release of the Lord of the Rings Complete Recordings. I thought I never really heard the score in that form and I wanted to hear it performed by an orchestra in concert. That led to the concert, the screening, and the two going together. Since we've had the concerts in Switzerland, Germany, Poland, and England I've heard the piece performed and the experience is, to me, amazing for the audience. You go right into the film and the music has never sounded better. I conducted a piece titled 'The Symphony' which is a two hour concert that is pieces from all three films.
IR: You've never done this projection type of scoring performance before? HS: No. This projection project has only been led by Ludwig Wicki. I met him several years ago in Switzerland, he had done a retrospective concert of mine. When the idea came to this concert to a projection of the film I thought of Ludwig. He has a fantastic orchestra - the orchestra playing at Radio City Music Hall is his orchestra. They are all hand-picked, they know this music very well. Ludwig, besides being a great musician, is great with the technology to do the synchronization with the film. Really he's the only one in the world who could do this concert.
IR: Do you think this type of performance brings out people who may never have had interest in seeing a live orchestra? HS: I do think so. I've been playing 'The Symphony' since 2003, the premiere was in Wellington, New Zealand, during the premiere of Return of the King. In the last six years there has been about 150 performances of it all over the world by a few different conductors. I've done many myself in Europe, the Far East, Canada, America. The feeling is it is bringing a new audience to the concert hall - those who are interested in the film coming to hear the music performed live. We get a lot of younger people coming and hearing these instruments all played together live for the first time of their lives.
IR: There's a huge Lord of the Rings event going on in conjunction with the Score Extravaganza. What else are you looking forward to over the two days? HS: It's going to be a great gathering of those interested in Lord of the Rings and Professor Tolkien's work. His writings, his original documents, and sketches are at Fordham University for the weekend, the concerts are Friday & Saturday, and there's just some great stuff going on that I'm looking forward.
IR: How about The Hobbit films? Are you already thinking about how you are scoring it or what you may do different from the previous work? HS: There's lots of discussion going on. I've been in a ton of meetings. There's been a long period of reading, research, and just getting ready for the several years that I'll be back in Middle Earth - a place that I love. It's a great world to go into and I just want to finish all the projects that I'm doing so I can just enter back into that world.