Lord of the Rings Music Rockets to Radio City Music Hall

How do you get to Radio City Music Hall? Practicing isn’t enough. You need to write the score to a film trilogy that gobbles up more Academy Awards than a Gollum eats fish.

Howard Shore’s music for Peter Jackson on The Lord of the Rings trilogy won three Academy Awards, four Grammy, three Golden Globes and probably a free lunch or two at some Tolkien-themed convention somewhere. Now, the music for the first film in the set is coming to New York’s Radio City Music Hall with the breathy title of ”The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Howard Shore’s Complete Score Live to Film.” I suppose if Tolkien didn’t care about how long his titles were, the producers of the concert event shouldn’t either.

The 21st Century Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Ludwig Wicki will welcome vocalist Kaitlyn Lusk with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and The Collegiate Chorale. The musicians and singers perform the film music live, set to the film’s images projected on a massive high-def screen (above).

When you consider the Star Wars folks are touring the nation with their own similar set-up, it looks like this is becoming a new concert genre onto itself.

Hobbits and Orcs will invade the realm of the Rockettes for two nights only – Friday, October 9 and Saturday, October 10 at 7:30 p.m.

Lord of the Rings author Tolkien 'trained as spy'

LORD of the Rings author JRR Tolkien trained as a spy in the years leading up to World War II, it has emerged.

The Oxford University professor - who also wrote The Hobbit - was one of 50 intellectuals chosen by the British Government singled out to crack Nazi codes as it appeared increasingly likely Germany was preparing to declare war.

Tolkien was reknown as one of his generation's most respected linguists, and according to The Sun, was believed to have passed the training course "with flying colours".

He was offered the job at the famous Bletchley Park code-breaking centre, but for reasons unknown, turned it and its £50,000 ($94,000) salary down.

The staff at Bletchley Park would later achieve fame worldwide by cracking the Enigma code and saving Britain by helping its navy intercept and destroy Hitler's U-boats.

The Daily Telegraph reports Tolkien - a professor of Anglo Saxon at Oxford University from 1925 to 1945 - visited the base for three consecutive days in March 1939.

A record of his training carries the word ''keen'' beside his name, but he refused the job and went on to complete his Lord of the Rings trilogy.
"We simply don't know why he didn't join,” a spokesman for the UK Government's spy base said.

"Perhaps it was because we declared war on Germany and not Mordor."